If someone put a gun to your head and said your life depended on your ability to define a mystery or thriller, you’d probably walk away without breaking a sweat. But if the same assailant said, “Okay, wiseguy, tell me about hardboiled,” you just might find a Niagara coursing down your neck. For every genre that pop culture canonizes, there are three left in the outer darkness, and hardboiled -- an unsentimental, rough-and-tumble cousin of noir -- falls into the latter category. That's a shame, because if it were more popular then perhaps Andrew Klavan’s Edgar-winning novel The Rain would be widely available. As it stands, I had to wait for a British version to make its way over to me. But if life imitates this particular piece of art, the search is just part of the package.New York Star reporter John Wells is after a girl. No, no, not like that. You see, one of his less-seemly contacts offered him some snaps of a congressman Paul Abingdon caught in a -- shall we say -- comprising position, but Wells turned him down. Ensuring that the news doesn’t cater to the lowest common denominator is a matter of principal to Wells. And did I mention that the photos were taken in a bedroom? Well, before you know it Wells’ contact turns up drilled between the eyes with a .22, the rumor about the politician is out, and every reporter in town is on it like a rottweiler on raw hamburger. The Star’s brass isn’t happy that Wells lost the biggest story of a very slow, very hot August. He has a week to get a scoop or he’s out on his ear. Wells sees only two options -- find the pictures (which have mysteriously disappeared) or the girl in them.
Hardboiled is one of those rare genres where style is as important as substance, and Klavan (writing here under the pseudonym Keith Peterson) hits the proverbial nail on the head. The Rain’s prose is tight, punchy and vivid, the dialogue winningly witty. An example? Sure. When Wells questions an NYPD detective about whether he has any leads, the detective quips, “No naked Abingdon pictures. No naked lady pictures. No naked Abingdon with a naked lady. Right now, as far as the New York City police department is concerned, you’re a person who has sex fantasies about Senate candidates.” The novel’s no slouch in the thematic department either. Its ending serves as a piercing meditation on the nature of lust and personal corruption. The only place where it fizzles is in a portrayal of a misogynistic, Bible-thumping Pentecostal, a tired stereotype that ought to be permanently retired. Still, The Rain is refreshing -- even if you have to wait for it.
(Picture: CC 2006 by PieterMusterd)
10 comments:
For those of you interested in learning more about Andrew Klavan, he has a lengthy, five-part video interview at National Review Online, the first part of which can be found here.
(Hat Tip: Hunter Baker)
Your introductory paragraph is making me question my grip on reality--between hyper-hard-boiled films like Sin City and mock hard-boiled like Shoot 'Em Up, I never really thought hard-boiled to be all that undiscovered a genre.
I'll grant Sin City. (Is it bad that I forgot about it?) But most people to whom I mention the genre give me a blank look -- even if they're diehard Frank Miller fans. Am I off-base to think that it has a much-more tenuous cultural foothold?
Probably not.
My friends trend towards an eccentric nook of the "Christian nerd" designation that knows an awfully large amount about all things old and all things genre-fiction.
At the same time, I think that the *name* (whether "noir" or "hard-boiled;" I find it hard to differentiate the two) has far less cultural cache than the visual and moral style.
(By visual and moral style I mean a story told in high-contrast black-and-white, with characters who almost without exception inhabit a gray moral liminality. The good guys do bad things, the "bad guys" are folks like us gone understandably wrong--but the existence, and effects, of evil is writ in bold and unmistakable letters across the city. And generally also worked into its fundamental power-structures.
Visually, we can tell that because light and darkness, illumination and shadow fill the screen.)
Taking that into consideration, probably the guy most popularizing hard-boiled fiction is Joss Whedon. Everything he does is enormously hybrid, but by his own admission his natural film-making place is noir.
Interesting. I've never really followed Whedon, although I did watch an episode or two of Firefly years ago and enjoyed it.
If you like that "visual and moral style" of noir, you might enjoy Abel Ferrara's The Addiction. Warnings are that it's uber-arty and shot mostly with hand-held digital cameras. It's also more-than-a-little gory, although the black-and-white moderates that a little.
If I were asked, with a gun to my head, to define hard-boiled, no Nile or Amazon of sweat would rn down my forehead. I'd just reply, "Oh, you know." That's hard-boiled: We all know it when we see it, but it's hard to define. ==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Which may be a way of saying that it has more, not less cachet, than some genres because the term carries such strong associations.
Peter, I think you'd be the best-qualified person I know to face down such an assailant ...
Thanks, I think.
Noir seems to be a more contentious term than hard-boiled, but perhaps that's because discussions of noir's definition seem to use hard-boiled fiction as their starting point. Noir, people will say, is more than just hard-boiled.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
In case you were wondering, I intended the previous comment as a compliment.
Genre discussion are fun, especially in the minutiae. All you have to do is read noir -- Manchette, for example -- to tell that it's a different bird than hardboiled.
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