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Re: RARA-AVIS: Locale



AnnyMiddon@aol.com wrote:
> 
> I've been thinking about common elements in hardboiled fiction, and found
> myself wondering whether an urban environment is a requirement of the genre.
>  My definition of "urban" would include some suburban locales; it seems to me
> that suburbs of older cities are often more urban than the heart of newer
> cities.
> 
> But what about small towns, farming communities, backcountry?  To be sure, a
> place like the desert outside Las Vegas is a good spot to get rid of a body
> or hold a "questioning" session without worry about interruptions.  But can a
> hardboiled novel take place entirely in a nonurban setting?
> 
> I couldn't think of any examples where it has, but admittedly I'm not that
> well-read in the genre.
> 
> Anny
> AnnyMiddon@aol.com


Yeah, it's a cliche to place the hardboiled genre on the "mean streets"
of the city, but if you think about it for a minute, there are plenty of
hardboiled and noir novels about lonely motels, juke joints, road
houses, small towns and country clubs on the "mean dirt roads" of the
country.  Just this moment I can think of _The postman always rings
twice_, W.L. Heath's _Violent Saturday_, Manning Lee Stokes' _The
crooked circle_ (aka _Too many murders_ in the Graphic paperback
reprint), Gil Brewer's _Hell's our destination_, Edward Ronns' (i.e
Edward S. Aarons) _I can't stop running_, and James Ross' _They don't
dance much_.  The hardboiled PI almost always works in an urban setting,
but there are exceptions (James Lee Burke's _Black Cherry Blues_ takes
place in Montana, as I recall).  This just goes to prove that hardboiled
lit is a complex genre that more often than not succeedes in avoiding
most of the preconceptions and cliches associated with most other genre
writing.

Jim Stephenson
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