In a really general sense maybe, if the action was downplayed
and it was without the psychological suspense elements of
most of the works written
... concentrate more on the serial killer and what's going on
in their head, the inevitable fall they face. From what I've
seen and read, the majority of serial killer books belong in
the psychological thriller or just plan thriller genre. A
hard-boiled one would require a hard-boiled protagonist ... a
police procedural or a PI could fit the bill. Jim Thompson's
"The Killer Inside Me" is noir, but I wouldn't call Thomas
Harris' Silence of the Lambs noir or hardboiled ... doesn't
quite make police procedural even with an FBI investigator as
the protagonist (but that's a personal view).
-- Anthony Dauer Alexandria, Virginia
Send your femme fatale stories to Judas by 27 September 2002.
http://www.adau.net/judas_ezine/
-----Original Message----- From: Al Guthrie Sent: Wednesday, July 31, 2002 3:56 PM
John's actual words were "I suppose serial killer novels more properly belong to the horror tradition than the h/b", which is quite different from saying they belong in the horror genre. Horror, at least my understanding of the term as it relates to the fiction genre, requires an element of the supernatural. Isn't horror without the supernatural simply what some of us choose to define as noir ("dark and sinister")?
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