“Writing from an Illusion: Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961)” by Matthew Sorrento

NONFICTION: “The Hammett detective seeks any clues he can but is unable to recreate narratives through induction/deduction, hence his need to shake things up and unlock loose parts in the disorder he has confronted….”

“Daniel Woodrell: Pulp Outlaw and Pioneer of Rural Noir” by William Blick

NONFICTION: “Woodrell’s visceral and raw prose, combined with precise perception of stark, menacing environments and characters’ flaws and virtues….deserves to be recognized as part of the American literary landscape in the tradition of Faulkner, O’Connor, and McCarthy….”

“The Stranger and the Etiquette of Post-War Life” by Richmond B. Adams

NONFICTION: “Welles’s war-time writings demonstrated his concern that America, even as it celebrated military victory, might, in its naiveté, overlook the possibility of a rebirth of ‘fascism in America’ which could take root among ‘the sons of America’s first families.’ It is the ways in which Welles blends such historical concerns to various ongoing cultural traditions that make The Stranger a far more important film noir than has been generally thought….”

“Stranger Dangers: Sexuality, Adolescence and The End of Everything” by K.A. Laity

Abbott uses the crime and its investigation to upend all manner of assumptions about how we view girls and – as narrator Lizzie discovers – how they view themselves and one another. Megan Abbott’s 2011 crime novel The End of Everything deals with the situation most parents dread – and most news outlets exploit: the […]

“Noir at MoMA: Two Recollections” by Kurt Brokaw

Two favorite memories less about what was on screen and more about the audiences that were viewing them. If you’ve lived in Manhattan most of your adult life (and are reading this journal), you’ve probably watched some choice noirs at the Museum of Modern Art. These two favorite memories are less about what was on screen, and more about the audiences that were […]

“Hard Case Crime, December 2020: Unlikely Masters” by Matthew Sorrento

NONFICTION: “On a few surprising releases from the noir fiction mainstay.”

“From Witness to Victim: the Story of Donna Gentile” by Anita DeFrancesco

She was my first cousin. Her killer or killers are still at large today. And her autopsy was the first to be officially sealed in the City of San Diego. A young woman’s body was discovered off Sunrise Highway 30 miles east of San Diego County, in Mt. Laguna, California, set in the forest surrounded […]

“Alphaville (1965): Godard’s Noir Transformation” by Tony Williams

In the hybrid-noir Alphaville, fantasy, pulp fiction, and other influences all merge in Godard’s challenging process. Daphne du Maurier’s anonymous narrator opens Rebecca (1938) with the line, “Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderly again”. By contrast, I often fantasize about strapping up certain students in an auditorium and forcing them to watch Godard’s […]

“Bad Girls, RIP” by Charles Pappas

They were hotter than acetylene torches in hell, sex kittens before Bardot or Barbarella….Who will pick up the mantle today? Imagine you are a young man in the 1950s. Every day from dawn till dark you soak in a Jacuzzi of magazines, newspaper, and TV imagery: mothers in aprons worrying about which laxative to uncork […]

“Noir Inside and Out: Two Retrospectives” by Kurt Brokaw

In The Killer Inside Me (2010), Winterbottom choreographs the brutality neat and clean; there isn’t a gasp or a clutch that isn’t in the book. Deep into Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me (2010), the indelibly accurate rendering of Jim Thompson’s most important novel, is a defining scene in an Oklahoma jailhouse. Sheriff Lou Ford […]