Check out the new Library Journal, with its story on
"Dark is the New Cozy : Crime in translation, the dominance
of noir, and conjuring the paranormal."
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6317229.html
A sample...
"Why are Japanese women writing noir fiction, the preserve of
mainly male writers? "There is a revolution going on in
Japan, and these books represent that," says Shatzkin. "These
authors write about angry female characters who act in ways
that go against the Madame Butterfly stereotype of the
submissive Japanese woman."
"Judging by the success of two-year-old retro-pulp publisher
Hard Case Crime, which scored a coup in 2005 with Stephen
King's The Colorado Kid (LJ 9/15/05), the resurgence of
hard-boiled crime fiction continues. Recalling how difficult
it was to sell a noir novel 20 years ago in a market
dominated by cat mysteries, publisher Charles Ardai wryly
notes that these trends run in cycles. "At some point, people
will get sick of angst, and they will want more cats. "
Among the noir titles Hard Case has scheduled are Bust (May),
the first collaboration ("very, very dark," says Ardai)
between award-winning crime writers Ken Bruen and Jason
Starr; Max Allan Collins's The Last Quarry
(Aug.), featuring a hit man Collins first created in the
Seventies; and David Dodge's The Last Match (Oct.), a newly
discovered unpublished novel from the late author of It Takes
a Thief.
"Publishers like Bleak House are revitalizing noir, too, with
books like Provincetown Follies, Bangkok Blues (May) by
Randall Peffer. The protagonist is a half-Vietnamese,
half-African American drag queen accused of murdering her
lover. Says publisher Benjamin LeRoy, "It's dark. I mean
dark. It's unlike anything I've read before, and the language
is art." This September, readers will go for a walk on the
dark side of Phoenix, not usually considered noir territory,
when Poisoned Pen publishes Jon Talton's Arizona
Dreams.
"The most original neo-noir voices, however, are British. A
rising star is Newcastle-based Martyn Waites, whose gritty,
hard-hitting thrillers have been praised by Ian Rankin. The
Mercy Seat, his sixth novel and the first to be published in
the United States, heads Pegasus Books' debut list this
spring. Founding publisher Hancock, who previously edited
mysteries for Carroll & Graf, lauds Waites's ability to
evoke provocatively a city's dark underbelly and predicts the
young writer will become a big deal in the crime fiction
world."
Looking good.
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