Re: RARA-AVIS: Tropical Noir

From: harry.lerner@mail.mcgill.ca
Date: 07 Mar 2008


Thanks so much to everyone for their terrific responses. It seems there is a real penchant for Mexico and the South Pacific as tropical backdrops for noir or hard-boiled literature. A couple of additional examples are JDM's Travis McGee tale A DEADLY SHADE OF GOLD that partly takes place in Mexico, and Hammett's THE HAIRY ONE (or BER BELU) that is set in the South Pacific.

Since your responses were so great, I have a follow-up question for you all. Has anyone written an essay or article (or book for that matter) that either provides a kind of overview of the use of tropical or
'exotic' locales in noir or hard-boiled fiction, or has compared the use of 'conventional' vs 'exotic' locales? I'm very interested in how different author's have used setting as a character (not a new topic on this list, I know) and how different settings can work as different kinds of characters.

Thanks again for all of your great replies so far!

Best, Harry

Quoting jean-pierre jacquet < jacquet@optonline.net>:

> Anthony Bourdain's Gone Bamboo takes place in St Martin. Clich餠plot
> but good dialogue.
> jpj
> On Mar 6, 2008, at 8:13 PM, BaxDeal@aol.com wrote:
>



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