The Mystery, Crime, and Thriller Group discussion

I recently read and reviewed Paul Cain's "Fast One," a good example of early 1930's "Black Mask" pulp Noir. I drew a distinction in my review between Noir and the Hard-Boiled detective novel, in which I referenced Otto Penzler's Huffington Post article, "Noir Fiction is About Losers, Not Private Eyes." Here's an excerpt from my review:

"Quintessential 1930’s Noir. This is not Chandler or Hammett’s hard-boiled fiction. No Sam Spade, Continental OP, or Philip Marlowe. No tough but basically decent guy working the mean streets who is not himself mean. Gerry Kells, the protagonist, is mean. He's a gambler, a gunman, a crook. He isn’t hardboiled; he’s hard, raw and rotten. Moreover, there are no good guys and gals, just different categories of bad, like the damned souls in the several levels of Dante’s hell."

Fast One

Nice comment, Gary! Thank you!

William wrote: "Nice comment, Gary! Thank you!"

Thanks, William!

In an earlier post about whether "Rear Window" was noir and the point about its being filmed in color (as opposed to a lot of noir movies filmed in black and white) - one thing to remember is that in the WWII era, film budgets were smaller and color film stock was in short supply - the "look" of the noir movies of the '40s had a lot to do with that. "Rear Window", in the 50s, and later movies that might be called "noir" like "Chinatown" were filmed in color.

Also - on some of the Sherlock Holmes boards there was a discussion about the worst Holmes story. A lot of people point to The Three Gables because Holmes acts very racist in it, and the black character, Steve Dixie, is described in an insulting way. But what needs to be added to the discussion is that it was written in the late 1920s which was when a lot of noir elements including racist language, demeaning of women, amoral main characters, unsatisfying endings began to get popular.

If this is the wrong thread, please let me know where to post. Good Noir Bundle from Humble Bundle.

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