RARA-AVIS: Re: Redneck Noir

From: JIM DOHERTY ( jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com)
Date: 27 Mar 2006


Chan,

Re your comments on DIRTY WHITE BOYS below:

"I also suggest Stephen Hunter's Dirty White Boys, which is more heavy on the redneck than the noir. Sure, Bud Pewtie (a truly great redneck name) is a Sheriff of a rural town, but he's an alcoholic cop, having an affair with his partners wife while his life swirls out of is control, which qualifies as noir. Bud takes on a twisted redneck escaped convict named Lamar Pye and his deranged, apparently inbred brother Odell, The book turns into a Terminator-esque series of shoot-outs at the end, but in the early parts when the book focuses on Lamar's prison story it's entertaining and very noir."

I won't get into whether or not it's noir, or even whether or not it's redneck. It's certainly hard-boiled, and, consequnetly, fair game on this list.

However, I will point out that Bud isn't a sheriff. He's a state trooper.

I'll also mention that, as a police procedural, the specific sub-genre into which the book falls, DIRTY WHITE BOYS, though it has an un-put-down-able quality I can only marvel at and envy (as does another of White's southern fried cop novels, HOT SPRINGS, in which the children who will grow up to be the bad guys in DWB make a cameo appearance), makes a lot of inexcusable errors about Oklahoma's law enforcement structure that even this California boy who's only been to the state once spotted right off.

JIM DOHERTY

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