Noirboiled Notes

Big City Girl is not a particularly accurate title for this book, and the cover illustration and tag ("Joy didn't belong in the hi...

The underbelly of Los Angeles never comes alive in this novel as it does in Farewell, My Lovely , but the plot is less frenetic and more com...

David Goodis is commonly ranked in the top tier of noir novelists, and The Moon in the Gutter is commonly ranked among his best work. One r...

A note to noir enthusiasts: Fans of Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? should not miss Pamela Colloff's essay "...

Farewell, My Lovely reminded me of Cornell Woolrich in that Raymond Chandler's plot is at least as ridiculous as the plot of any (famou...

One problem with contemporary noir is that the freedom to curse openly and describe sex explicitly can make writers lazy. In The Last Quarry...

In Gil Brewer's fifth novel, he moves beyond the dated titillation that dominates much of his earlier work. A noir Everyman, his pregnan...

Straight Cut is narrated by Tracy, a freelance film editor with a fondness for Kierkegaard. Intellectualism is not uncommon in noir fiction...

Million-selling debut novel from noir giant Charles Williams. This story of alcoholism and unbridled sexuality, which was scandalous to many...

The only redeeming feature of Stephen King's disastrous The Colorado Kid is its dedication page, which plugs Dan J. Marlowe's The N...

Highly entertaining neo-noir from Hard Case Crime. Like a vintage Gold Medal PBO, but with curse words. Brisk and bleak with black humor. Gr...

A pro football player, forced into retirement by injury, tries blackmail as a new career, and noir ensues. Most of The Big Bite is top-tier...

The latest country noir from Daniel Woodrell. Less the story of Ree Dolly than a portrait of her inbred Ozark community. This community is h...

The first half of Witness to Myself is very good. The protagonist knows that, years ago, he assaulted a girl--but did he kill her? Seymour ...

Noirboiled by the numbers: A man has been shot by one of five friends, but he doesn't know which one, so he must track them down one at ...

On rare, unpleasant occasions, I read a novel so bad that I feel angry while I am reading it, and this, unfortunately, was one of those occa...