RARA-AVIS: Re: S鲩e Noire

From: jimdohertyjr ( jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com)
Date: 19 Dec 2006


Jack,

Re your comment below:

> It can also be condensed to one word, "screwed." With all
> of that, surely someone and often the protagonist is
> screwed.

That's true, but even in the most gentle cozy someone is murdered, which is about as screwed as you can get. In order for noir to mean something other than a traditional mystery, the person screwed has, by inference, to be the protagonist.

And if "noir" means that the protagonist is ALWAYS screwed, in some kind of ultimate sense, then, on the evidence of the books Duhamel chose for his line, he got it wrong, which strikes me as ludicrous, and puts us back on the same merry-go-round.

JIM DOHERTY



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