rene said: a couple of things struck me: firstly, just how
much hb/noir is set in rural, small town or even marine
settings & how this has been the case right from the
git-go.
**********************************
that thought has been running thru my head too here recently,
rene. to me, the classic noir scene is the guy in the
overcoat with the upturned collar walking down the dirty and
dimly lit narrow city street in a drizzle. but that ain't
what i'm reading. now i'll admit that i'm still a noir
rookie, but almost every- thing i've read that i'd call noir
has been country or small town settings. charles william's
_river girl_, cain's _postman_, anderson's _thieves like us_,
thompson's _killer inside me_, gresham's _nightmare alley_.
and like you say, many that do occur in the big city, like
mccoy's _they shoot horses, don't they?_, for instance, don't
invoke what i would con- sider the scenery of urban noir. the
closest i've seen to using the big city as a noir prop is
terrill's
_shooters_.
shifting gears, i noticed in another post you mentioned
wanting to read terrill's _shooters_. i recommend it. i read
it in two days. i couldn't put it down. its a stunning piece
of work. marlowe's cynicism and sharp one-liners, well-drawn
characters, and a plot to knock your socks off. if i was
tasked to point to one book which defines noir, it would be
this one. this is one of the few books where i dogtagged
pages because there was prose that i needed to come back to
and read again.
miker
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