RARA-AVIS: Re: Welcome to Vicki Hendricks, guest of honour

From: thebradstevens ( bradstevens22@hotmail.com)
Date: 08 Apr 2005

In DETOUR, the
> protagonist begins the movie (I haven't read the book) as a poor
> schlep who gets a ride with the wrong guy at the wrong time--from
> there he makes 1 bad choice after the other leading him to a
certain
> fate--but when he hitched that ride he was completely clueless
about
> what "fate" had in store for him.

But all that actually happens is that Haskell, the man who gave Al a ride, dies of a heart attack. If somebody who had given me a ride died of a heart attack, I'd call an ambulance. But Al somehow manages to work out that if he walks away from the car (the only 'honest' course of action he sees as being available to him), somebody else will come along and steal it, and the police will claim that he did it. So he decides he might as well steal it anyway, along with Haskell's wallet and other belongings. What happens to Al after that is pretty much inevitable, but he has nobody to blame but himself.

  It's been a while since I've read
> CAT CHASER, but if I remember correctly the hero is an ex-soldier
> who's been invovlved in covert action & as such he at least has
> experience of the violent world of the "hardboiled." The fact that
> he comes out ahead also suggest that this isn't a "pure" noir--I'd
> say the real noir does not have a happy ending (or such an ending
> doesn't really ring true).

But the ending is only happy if seen from the central character's perspective. Leonard is extremely critical of the character. Most of Charles Willeford's novels end with their amoral narrators emerging triumphant, and these are among the darkest noirs ever written.

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