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.