Anthony,
Re your comment below:
> I agree and actually I think a noir work is
more
> likely not to have
> hardboiled characters in it.
I think I've got to disagree with this. Lots of hard-boiled
writers are very noir. Certainly most of the films that were
labled film noir featured hard-boiled characters. MURDER MY
SWEET is almost the definitive noir movie, and it's certainly
hard-boiled.
On the other hand MARLOWE (the film version of THE
LITTLE SISTER), though it features the same hard-boiled
character, is not noir. It's all a question of atmosphere and
approach.
In prose, the best examples I can think of, since their books
are otherwise very similar, are Spillane's Mike Hammer
series, and Prather's Shell Scott series.
Hammer exists in a very noir universe, where the concrete
canyons of Manhattan are always in shadow, the streets are
always ran-swept, and the dawn never seems to come. Shell
Scott, just as tough, just as lethal, just as right-wing and
anti-communist (it's interesting to compare the Scott novel
PATTERN FOR PANIC with ONE LONELY NIGHT), lives in a
perpetually sunny atmosphere, where it's rarely night-time,
where even the worst crooks are good-humored, and where booze
is taken to boost his already ebullient spirits rather than
to drown his sorrows.
Noir just means a dark and sinister atmosphere, and it's as
easy to fit a hard-boiled character into such an atmosphere
(arguably, it's easier) than any other kind of
character.
JIM DOHERTY
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