Tag: North Noir

The King of Scottish Noir

A.M. Potter5 Comments

Who’s the King of Scottish Noir? Ian Rankin. Hands down. Some might say Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde in 1886, but I see him as the father. In any case, Rankin’s noir output far surpasses that of Stevenson.

Take Rankin’s Inspector Rebus opus. John Rebus is a hard-edge, no-nonsense police detective with a philosopher’s head and heart. He doesn’t always play by the rules. In the Rebus novels, mostly set in or near Edinburgh, Rankin deploys banter to counter the bleak reality of Scottish crime. He portrays tough criminals who are tougher men. The cops who hunt them are just as tough. Aye, but there’s humour too, of the Scottish ilk. Gruff, understated and, given the juxtaposition, doubly funny.  

At times, the plotting and crime MOs seem over-the-top. Some readers find the storylines overly bleak. If you read a Rankin novel, you’ll get punched in the gut, you’ll rail at what humans do to humans. However, if you’re like me, you’ll keep reading. The King of Scottish Noir will hook you.

See Wikipedia for more on Ian Rankin and his twenty-plus Rebus novels.

Barbecuing in the Anthropocene

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Normally, I write about fiction, but when reality is as strange as fiction, the two coalesce. Caveat: If you’re here for books, give this blog a miss.

On every continent, we’re battling COVID-19. We’re certainly resilient. However, we’re not immune to future viruses.

We’re not top dogs in the universe. We’re not even top cockroaches, which, apparently, are more resilient than us. They say this is the Anthropocene, the Epoch of the Human. GDP and ingenuity may be on the rise, but I don’t see our humanity evolving.

‘Enough, AMP. We’ve had enough gloom and doom. Got any good news?’ Always. Grilled roaches are delicious.

Dark Angels

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To some, crime noir is a subgenre set in grim urban environments, featuring petty criminals and desperate characters, permeated by a sense of disillusionment. I favour a wider lens. In the two North Noir series, crime noir is less bleak. It is more like life itself: not always dark, not always light.

Crime noir is linked to film noir, to movies such as The Maltese Falcon, which was first a novel. In a noir detective novel, the main character is sharp-witted and/or sharp-tongued. No quarter is given. Criminals try to rig the system, but fail.

Of course, noir detectives aren’t lily white. They cross lines, some more egregious than others, which they breach for the sake of efficiency or to apprehend criminals. Noir detectives are crime fiction’s dark angels. They know darkness, but follow the light.

Poe’s Legacy: Hominid Detectus

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Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849) is best known for macabre stories such as “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Tell-tale Heart.” He is regarded by many as the inventor of the detective genre, which has expanded into multiple forms now considered to be sub-genres; for example, crime, mystery, detective, thriller, etc.

In the decades since Poe’s death, hundreds of authors have fleshed out his prototype: Homo detectus, a man or woman with a wide-ranging mind, ever seeking, ever suspicious.

A detective doesn’t believe everything people say. In fact, when on a case, he or she can’t afford to believe anything people say. Although humans like to believe each other — belief builds cooperation; it’s a societal glue — detectives default to the opposite: they distrust others. What a way to live. As a society, we’re indebted to them. While we enjoy each other’s company, detectives probe dark holes and darker hearts.

Elmore Leonard – More Hemingway than Hemingway

A.M. Potter2 Comments

Elmore Leonard lived most of his life in Detroit, a working-class city, a ‘waste-not, want-not’ city. It’s no surprise he didn’t waste words in his fiction. Papa (Ernest) Hemingway is regarded by many as the ‘Father of Succinct Prose’: few adjectives, fewer adverbs. If Hemingway is the father, Leonard is the first son. In my view, he’s more Hemingway than Hemingway.

Leonard isn’t a traditional mystery writer. He doesn’t focus on sleuths trying to solve crimes. Instead, he delivers what I call Crime + Suspense. He keeps you guessing. You know the ‘hoods’ in his novels are going to pull a heist or execute a hit, but you don’t know how or when they’re going to do it.

Leonard generally writes from the point-of-view (POV) of criminals. In Get Shorty, for example, he creates an ambiance that sympathizes with – if not glamorizes – the criminal world.

As an aside, the majority of mystery novels feature detective leads, not criminal leads. When mystery authors use a murderer’s POV, to keep the whodunit in play they hide the murderer’s deepest thoughts – thoughts of murder. I’m not a big fan of using a murderer’s POV in a mystery novel. Not that it can’t work. An author can be inside a murderer’s mind, but not reveal everything that’s going on in there. Or, if the author reveals who the murderer is, they can keep the reader on the hook by slowly unveiling the how and why. In a sense, they deliver a howdunit.

Back to Elmore Leonard. He often presages what will happen near the start of a book, and then unravels how it happened. He knows how to tell a story: clean and fast, with lots of snappy dialog. That’s the signature of an Elmore Leonard novel. It’s noir, just not mystery noir.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmore_Leonard

A few excerpts from the Leonard opus ….

A male character called Foley to Dawn:

“Tell me, what is it about a girl’s navel? It catches the eye and won’t let go.”
“I suppose,” Dawn said, “because it’s right in the middle of the playground.”

Two “criminal” characters:

“I’m saying we’re all friends,” Frank said. “Kindred spirits. Birds of a feather.”
“Man,” Sportree said, “you need some new words.”