I searched the rara-avis archives for "evil, nasty, wicked
noir with lots of kinky sex and raging violence" and
Harrington's DARK RIDE popped up. Mario has mentioned him
several times and here recently I think Bill Denton spoke
well of him.
DARK RIDE is aptly titled. It's difficult to not draw
parallels. Resurrect Jim Thompson, set him up with a meth lab
in a rundown trailer sitting by itself on some backwater
Florida dirt road, read Cain's THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE
to him and give him a typewriter.
Powerful, compelling, and very dark. It leads me to want to
talk about the evolution of noir fiction and suggest that
there hasn't been any. A thousand innovative variations
perhaps, but no evolution. Maybe I'm just playing word games
here by attempting to differentiate between a thousand
innovations and evolution, but what I'm trying to say is that
the basic formula of a loser trying desperately to better his
position through crime and failing at the end was the heart
and soul of the first noir and it remains alive and well
today. Maybe that's so close to being the definition that
moving outside would breach the genre.
I don't know. I'm not doing a very good job here. Let me bail
on the big-picture comments and just say that Harrington's
DARK RIDE has got a classic noir plot, including an ironic
ending, with a contemporary amount of sex and violence.
If you like noir, I recommend this book. If you want noble,
look elsewhere.
miker
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