Dave wrote:
"While I enjoy almost any well-written noir, the books that I've written that critics have categorized as noir tend to fall squarely in the "fall from grace" category. Fast Lane, for example, follows a protagonists stumble into the abyss, . . ."
Really? Guess I can't really argue with the author, but that wasn't how I took that book. I would definitely group Fast Lane with Thompson's Kill Inside Me and, especially, Pop 1280 (which is a big compliment, by the way).
SPOILER ALERT
Instead of falling from grace, I saw Johnny Lane as an unreliable narrator who eventually stopped trying to fool the reader, but never really saw him as fooling himself, in much the same way I took Nick Corey in Pop 1280.
Now Small Crimes was different -- Joe Denton was kidding himself, but not the reader, who saw his impending descent very clearly in that seeming slow motion as cars are about to crash kind of way.
Mark
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