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Noir and Hardboiled Mysteries (part 2)
289 Plays2 years ago
Brook and Sarah continue to learn about noir and hardboiled detective fiction with special guest Frances from the Chronicles of Crime online bookshop. Part 2 of 2. Reading list recommendations: Hardboiled Carroll John Daly, Three Gun Terry (Black Mask, May 1923) Carroll John Daly, Knights of the Open Palm (Black Mask, June 1923) Dashiell Hammett writing as Peter Collinson, Arson Plus (first Continental Op story) (Black Mask, October 1923) Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon (1930) Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man (Redbook Magazine, 1933) Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939) Mickey Spillane, I, The Jury (1947) Ross MacDonald, The Drowning Pool (1950) Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake), The Hunter, (1962) Lawrence Block, Eight Million Ways To Die, (1982) John D. MacDonald, The Deep Blue Good-Bye, (1964) James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss, (1978) Noir James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) Horace McCoy, They Shoot Horses Don’t They (1935) James M. Cain, Double Indemnity (Liberty Magazine, January 1936 as a serial in the magazine) *Cornell Woolrich aka William Irish, It Had To Be Murder, (Detective Dime Magazine, May 1942) This became the Alfred Hitchcock film, Rear Window. *Cornell Woolrich, any short story or novel David Goodis, Dark Passage, (1946) Dorothy B. Hughes, In A Lonely Place, (1947) Fredric Brown, The Fabulous Clipjoint, (1947) Fredric Brown, The Screaming Mimi, (1949) Patricia Highsmith, Strangers On A Train, (1950) James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia (1987) Megan Abbott, Queenpin, (2007) Duane Swierczynski, The Blonde, (2006) Fuminori Nakamura, The Thief (2012) Roger Hobbs, The Ghostman (2013) Others George Pelecanos Ken Bruen Peter Temple Gary Discher Robert Crais Michael Connelly Charlie Houston Dennis Lehane Sam Wiebe Joe Id Philip Kerr For more information: cluedinmystery.com Instagram: @cluedinmystery Contact us: hello@cluedinmystery.com Music: Signs To Nowhere by Shane Ivers - //www.silvermansound.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Clued in Mystery with Sarah and Brooke
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome to the Clued in Mystery podcast. I'm Sarah. And I'm Brooke. And we both love mystery. So Brooke, we're going to pick up the conversation that we were having with Frances about noir and hard-boiled fiction. We had such a great conversation with her.
00:00:28
Speaker
Yeah, our listeners are in for a great treat today and a list of book recommendations included and who better to get them from than someone who's been in the book selling business for over 20 years, Frances of Chronicles of Crime Mystery Bookshop.
The Role of Urban Landscapes in Noir Fiction
00:00:46
Speaker
I wonder if we could talk a little bit about setting. So, you know, the stories that you've mentioned, they all take place in cities. You know, you mentioned that Washington kind of lends itself to this kind of story. And it's the, you know, I've read Sam Weeb's work set here in Vancouver. And, you know, I think Vancouver lends itself really well as well, because it's this sort of juxtaposition of
00:01:14
Speaker
the darker side of the city in this beautiful setting. And there's a lot of, you know, flash here as well, right? And is that, you know, I think about Chandler stories set in, they're in LA, right? And same kind of thing. There's that sort of seedy, seediness to it. Well, you need to have that.
00:01:39
Speaker
Because realistically, a countryside does not have the clientele that you need, right? Or the ambiance of what you need. If you look at it from that perspective. So it's usually, noir and hard-boiled are usually in urban landscapes. New York City, Boston, Washington DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, they're old cities that
00:02:06
Speaker
have a lot of people who need private detectives or that sort of thing. Noir is easier perhaps to set. So when I talked about the postman always rings twice, that's like at a roadside place, right? Double indemnity is not. That's in a major urban center because it had to be. So setting, as with anything we write, is is integral to telling the story.
00:02:36
Speaker
James Lee Burke and his is New Orleans setting. I mean, he treats New Orleans as if it's a huge character. And in noir and hard boiled setting is all about being a character. In in my mind, the way that I look at it. Yeah, and the settings are they're always bleak. They're gritty in noir matching the characters. Yeah, you need shadow.
00:03:05
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Oh, yes. And that's a big part of noir film is the lighting. That's what sets the tone for it all. And yeah, it's huge.
Modern Noir Writers and Their Impact
00:03:18
Speaker
So you Francis talked a little bit about some kind of modern examples of noir. Can you can you give us a couple of those? Yep. So
00:03:35
Speaker
So if you want modern writers, there is a Japanese writer, Fuminori Nakamura, who wrote The Thief in 2012. It's brilliant, very well done. We're reading a translation, Soho Crime put it out. It's one of my favorite noir books. It all focuses on this guy who's a thief and he gets wrapped into something much larger. And so there's the noir, you know,
00:04:00
Speaker
Nothing good is going to happen. Roger Hobbs wrote to a young man, and unfortunately he died. But Ghostman was his first one, and it's a heist book. I love heist books because they're smart crimes, right? You got to be able to get away with that. And so Roger Hobbs is excellent. Dwayne Swierzinski wrote The Blond in 2006. He does a lot of film work. He writes a lot of short stories. He's really good at noir.
00:04:30
Speaker
Queen Pin, which was written by Megan Abbott. Now it's unusual for women to write hardboiled and noir. They do, but it is unusual. But Megan Abbott, when her first books were published, wrote some excellent noir books. They take place in the fifties, but she's a young woman today. And then there's Krista Faust. She does quite a few for hard crime.
00:04:57
Speaker
She writes a lot of different things, but her noir stuff is very edgy, very good. And of course, there was Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train. It's probably her best known noir book, but again, that was written in 50. So those would be considered modern noir writers. Then there's Joe Eide. He's noir. There's a lot of crossovers, like I say, fine line. So
00:05:25
Speaker
Sam Weeb writes noir, but there's a lot of hard-boiled elements. He's from Vancouver. George Pelicanos does a Washington, D.C. detective, a police detective that is amazing, very edgy. Washington, D.C. is an edgy place, especially at night. Lots of areas of it are. And so he captures it beautifully in it. Walter Mosley.
00:05:51
Speaker
but who does easy Rollins, but they take place in the fifties. They start there and then work their way up. He's excellent. Ken Bruin is an Irish writer and he's really good. Peter Temple is an Australian. Gary Disher is an Australian writer. Robert Crace, American writer, does the Joe Pike series. Michael Conley is considered hard-boiled to noir. So if you watch the Bosch series,
00:06:20
Speaker
or read any of the Bosch books. Although the poet was, that's probably his, I consider it his best book. It's extraordinarily dark, but it's really good. Charlie Houston, Philip Kerr, who is a spy writer, it's actually considered to be noir slash hard-boiled slash spy. And Dennis Lehane is the current writer. And S.J. Rosen, I love her stuff.
00:06:45
Speaker
So she does a Chinese-American character, a female, and a male non-Asian character, and they have a detective agency together. And they're really good. I like those too. Those are probably my favorites.
Serialization in Hard-boiled Fiction
00:07:00
Speaker
James Lee Burke, he's considered hardboil slash noir.
00:07:06
Speaker
brilliant at setting, so he sits you right into the middle of New Orleans, and nothing ever good happens, although he always tries to seek good his robot show character. So there's so many that we don't, Lawrence Block, eight million ways to die, Matthew Scudder is his character. Matthew Scudder, again, the character is a big drinker, but he's always on, he tries to be morally correct, and he usually is. So those are some of mine.
00:07:37
Speaker
Let's see if I've missed any. Charles Williford, his Miami Blues, Hulk Mosley series is on my top 10 of noir slash hard-boiled writers. But I'll send you a list because that'll be easier for you. Awesome. Yeah, thank you. A lot of people got to learn about hard-boiled because when they bought the Black Mask magazines, the stories were serialized like Sherlock Holmes was.
00:08:06
Speaker
So it would carry over for three or four months the story and they couldn't wait to get the next one because it would always leave at a cliffhanger. And then the book would come out. So for instance, um, double indemnity was, uh, serialized started in January of 36 over three months. The book did not come out until 43 when it appeared with three other of his works, three works altogether, three of a kind.
00:08:34
Speaker
And it was double indemnity career and C major and the embezzler. And so that's when it came out as a book, but it was actually serialized in a magazine. Um, so a lot of, a lot of people got to learn about all this stuff. And then of course they started to go to the movies and see all of that. And the movie might attract the person to read the book as well.
Origins and Influence of the Term 'Noir'
00:08:57
Speaker
Oh, Nino Frank. So he's the fellow that wrote the.
00:09:03
Speaker
review or the critique on the American films. And I've got the line where his term came out. Let me just grab it here. These noir films no longer have anything in common with the usual kind of police real, real meaning a film, or EEL. They are essentially psychological narrative with the action, however violent or fast paced, less significant than faces, gestures, words,
00:09:31
Speaker
than the truths of characters. And that's where Noire came out. So that was, I've got the date, 46. He wrote the essay for a French magazine. And he talked about the four films that he actually referred to was the Maltese Falcon made by John Huston, Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity, Otto Preminger's Laura, which is a brilliant film and a brilliant book
00:10:00
Speaker
by Vera Caspry, a woman, and Murder My Sweet, Edward Dymtrick did that one. And it was a very different kind of film. It brought out a different sort of way to tell the story. So that was the original, that was the original where Noire came from. So it wasn't until 46. So you have a long time between 1923 and 46 before everything was hard boiled, no matter what was,
00:10:30
Speaker
written, it was all considered hard-willed. Because in those magazines, there are a lot of one-offs of stories that aren't character-driven, but they aren't series characters. I don't have any more questions. This has been really, really fascinating for me. I don't know, Brooke, did you have anything that you wanted to ask or to add?
00:10:53
Speaker
No, I loved this. I have an entire page of notes and I just was feeling like I was back in a lit class and having a lot of fun. And it definitely filled in some blanks. It filled in some blanks because like you, Sarah, I did some reading this last week and I did some research, but I feel like all your information kind of filled in and made all the connections for me.
Character Dynamics in Noir vs. Hard-boiled Fiction
00:11:18
Speaker
So this has just been awesome. Let me finish off with a Cornell Woolrich.
00:11:23
Speaker
a quote from his autobiography. So Cornell Woolrich also had a very dark life. And he wrote his autobiography called Blues of a Lifetime, the Autobiography of Cornell Woolrich. He was prolific in writing, wrote novels, very dark, very noir, tons of short stories. So in his autobiography, he writes about himself.
00:11:52
Speaker
I had that trapped feeling like some sort of poor insect that you've put inside a downturned glass and it tries to climb up the sides and it can't and it can't and it can't. That's noir. We all see that image.
00:12:15
Speaker
and can sort of feel that, right? And I think that really captures what you were talking about, that the characters don't really have any control. Yeah, they have none, they can't. Whereas in Hardboiled, there's control and their goal is always to write things, to put the world into perspective again in a right way, for their client, for themselves,
00:12:45
Speaker
And they're often, hardboiled characters are often on their own. So the PI is on their own or they might have a sidekick. Whereas in noir, the femme fatale is always there. So there's always at least a couple of main characters that travel around together or, or destroy each other, shall we say.
00:13:13
Speaker
Bleak. Yeah. That quote, I think sums up so much and it's like beautifully painful. Yes. Yeah, exactly.
Reflections on Noir and Hard-boiled Fiction
00:13:23
Speaker
Well, thank you very much for joining us, Francis. I think this was, this was wonderful. Pleasure. Thanks for having me.
00:13:32
Speaker
So Brooke, this was just such an incredible experience to learn from Francis all about hard-boiled and noir fiction, a genre that, or two genres, as we've just learned that neither of us is particularly familiar with.
00:13:51
Speaker
It was just great. I think I said in the first episode that I felt like I was back in a lit class and I mean that with the highest of compliments because that's like someplace where my heart goes. I love learning about literature and it was just fantastic. I loved the learning about the beginnings and the reason why we call it that and it was just everything was wonderful.
00:14:16
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. I think for me, one of the things that I really enjoyed was just learning about the magazines that a lot of the stories appeared in. And I do highly encourage people to take a look at the covers, you know, just search them online. They're really quite amazing.
00:14:40
Speaker
Exactly. I agree. It's almost a genre of art that came out of these stories. So it's really worth it to look online and find some of that. And I would refer people to Frances's Instagram account. She's at Chronicles of Crime and she posts a lot of things regularly about the hard-boiled and nor
00:15:02
Speaker
era, particularly because she writes her stories in that space. So she's got a great Instagram feed that you would really enjoy looking at, I think. One thing that you and I, Sarah, both found interesting was that a lot of times we place this genre or these genres in the 1940s. But in fact, these writers were contemporaries with Agatha Christie. This started clear back in the 1920s, and that was a real eye opener for me.
00:15:31
Speaker
Yeah, I found the same thing that I had placed it in a different time period than from when it actually started. And I think it's interesting that people, as we heard from Frances, people are continuing to write Noire and Hardboiled, and I'm definitely going to look into some of the authors that she recommended.
00:15:55
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah, it was just fantastic.
Podcast Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:15:58
Speaker
Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your feedback. You can reach us at hello at cluedinmystery.com or on Instagram at cluedinmystery. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating or a review or telling a friend to help spread the word. Thank you for listening to Clued In Mystery. I'm Brooke. And I'm Sarah. And we both love mystery.
00:16:20
Speaker
Clued In Mystery is produced by Brooke Peterson and Sarah M. Stephen. Music is by Shane Ivers at Silvermansound.com. Visit us online at CluedInMystery.com or social media at CluedInMystery. If you liked what you heard, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or telling your friends.