Noir Novels/Hard Boiled Fiction

[MillersCrossing]

I hope you enjoy it. It was meant to be a homage to the books of the day that influenced me a great deal, Chandler and Hammett being the obvious ones. However, there is a lot of other influences in there too, notably James Ellroy and Jim Thompson (two of the greatest noir writers ever), and a lot of other cultural mish-mash that was churning around in my head at the time, films too obviously. I talk about it in my blog here: http://thecrozierreport.blogspot.com/2011_04_01_archive.html

will give it a go also...stumbled upon this thread while looking for hats- of all things; have a library of books still calling to me, and the
noir genre is a favorite-not just the times and settings, but the damn writing is plain old good. After having studied Post-Modern literary
theory and it's critical machinations, sitting back and reading a well-wrought piece of noir is a relief and a pleasure.

 

[Talbot]

I was getting some Donald Westlake and Richard Stark coming through there too...

 

[Touchofevil]

Agree on the point about Chandler over Hammett - and that the Contintal Op stories are worth reading.

My daughter swears by Ross MacDonald. We found a selection in a Canadian bookshop last year. The cover designs and description on the back cover were enough to sell them to her.

David Goodis has his moments. I haven't read many but was really impressed by 'The Wounded and the Slain' which came out last year.

It is also worth remembering the American books by George Simenon. I find them bleak but fascinating.

Ross MacDonald and David Goodis are two of the best. Georges Simenon's Inspector Maigret series is a great read as well. I would also recommend Dan Marlowe, Day Keene, and Ed Lacy as well, while not as good as the previous three or Chandler, they are very entertaining.

 

[MikeKardec]

Ross MacDonald was great, sort of a grown up version of Chandler's writing, ie. not so much cute wordplay and stuff that doesn't move the narrative forward. I love Chandler but he's sort of a hyper noir writer.

Jim Thompson was the noir-est of noir writers. Boiled so Hard he was petrified. Dark and deeply psycho but without the urban locations that many East and West coast writers had. My dad knew him in Oklahoma in the 1930s (he was dad's supervisor in the WPA) and I even met him once in LA in the 1970s, when I was a kid.

Thompson's modern doppleganger is James Ellroy. Of the newer writers both Alan Furst and Phillip Kerr are really good. There is no better Hard Boiled or Noir location than Nazi Germany. Furst can do more with an eight word sentence than some writers can do with a paragraph of any length.