This thread is not necessarily about the best authors, only
the authors who first 'turned us on' to Hardboiled/Noir
fiction, and those who continue to excite us. Here are some
of mine:
1) Dashiell Hammett: I had read mostly SF when I received a
book voucher from my employer as my Christmas bonus. I found
a collected edition of Hammett's novels, and read Red Harvest
the first day, on the train to/from work. Loved it so much, I
read the other 4 novels the rest of the week. I then bought
the short stories the following week. For me, the Op has it
over Spade. (I am not keen on Chandler and most PI
fiction
- with a few exceptions - because of the artificial nature of
stories. I can understand The Op or whoever working for a
company, doing industrial espionage etc. but I dislike the
wise-cracking, knight errant, underlying holier-than-thou
attitude of many PI novels.)
2) James Ellroy: I picked up a cheap copy of Black Dahlia
after comics writer James D Hudnall reccommended Ellroy to
me. It struck me that the central characters are cops, and
they are bad guys, and the differences between the good-bad
cops and the bad-bad cops was only marginal. I immediately
picked up everything else I could find and loved it. Ellroy
writes about obsession, mainly his own, and his style of
writing reflects this. He is experimenting, showing the
absurdities of life, and having fun with our perceptions of
history and the people who make it.
3) Jim Thompson: I started with The Killer Inside Me, read
three others in the collection (Zomba Books), went to Murder
One in London every month and picked up the Black Lizard
reprints when they were available. Thompson is Noir, in that
his books are confessions by people who know that there is
darkness inside them. Although not all the books are great,
many of them have a nightmare quality which I love.
4) Derek Raymond: It is very difficult to read some of Derek
Raymond's books because he confronts the 'evil' in people
head-on. He does not look away. He looks it squarely in the
face. The reason Raymond's stories work is because, as well
as the recognising the horror in the world, he shows the
compassion that one human being can have for another.
Although Patricia Cornwell may claim that Scarpetta probes
dead bodies so that she can bring them to life, I think it is
Raymond who makes the dead live more vividly. He confirms
that life can be beautiful despite the bad things around
us.
5) Charles Willeford: Once I had started the Hoke Moseley
series, I could not stop. And then I found the reprints of
his earlier novels. Only a couple more to find. The Moseley
series is special because Willeford expresses the fragility
of life (Junior breaks someone's finger and they die, Moseley
cannot move for days for no reason whatsoever) and the
importance of family (Junior tries to make a family, Moseley
assembles people around him). Willeford is showing that love
can protect us from dead, or if not protect us, at least make
the waiting more pleasant.
So those are the 5 that immediately come to mind, but I would
love to add Cornell Woolrich, David Goodis, Horace McCoy,
James M Cain, Gerald Kersh, Fredric Brown, Shane Stevens and
many others who litter my shelves and attic.
- paul duncan
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