Recommended reading - The Big Book of Noir (1998)

 

The Big Book of Noir (1998).

Edited by Ed Gorman, Lee Server, and Martin H. Greenberg.

 
ISBN-10: 0786705744
ISBN-13: 978-0786705740
 
Description:
 
THE BIG BOOK OF NOIR
 
Noir is big. It was born in the hard-boiled detective story of Depression-era America. It flourished in the black-and-white B movies of the forties and fifties. And it’s been ingeniously reinvented in the film and fiction of the nineties.
 
Etched on our cultural memory by writers like Raymond Chandler, directors like Alfred Hitchcock, screen stars like Robert Mitchum and Humphrey Bogart, Lizabeth Scott and Gloria Graham, noir is big.
 
Noir is big, so The Big Book of Noir jam-packs its pages with articles, interviews, excerpts, opinion, and gossip that chronicle its history and explore noir in all its forms: movies, detective stories, television and radio shows, comic books, and graphic novels.
 
The Big Book of Noir pays homage to the big names in noir – John Huston, Fritz Lang, Mickey Spillane, John D. MacDonald, Ross MacDonald, Donald E. Westlake – as well as less familiar figures like Phil Karlson, Peter Rabe, Charles Williams, Harry Whittington, and Gil Brewer. It also includes two rare pieces: Stephen King writing about Jim Thompson in one and in the other Dulcy Brainard writing about Sara Paretsky, Marcia Muller, and Wendi Lee.
 
The evidence is in. The Big Book of Noir amasses fascinating and informative exhibits that amply illustrate one of America’s most significant cultural contributions.
 
Because noir is big.