Noir fiction for the modern reader.

Well, I just bought the new James Ellroy novel, Blood’s A Rover.  Lindsey Losnedahl of the Las Vegas Review-Journal liked it, and I have to admit, I’ve been looking forward to it for some time, as I do all of his novels.  In my opinion, his LA Quartet ranks as one of the greatest achievements in all of crime fiction.  I’m even going to get him to sign this new book when he appears here in Las Vegas in a few weeks.  But things are just a little different this time around.

His last effort, The Cold Six Thousand, was the second installment in his current trilogy.  The first, American Tabloid, was, in my opinion, a masterpiece.  It stood to reason that Six Thousand, which began literally on the very day of the finale of Tabloid, would carry me through more wonderful reading sessions.  I saw myself being enveloped in Ellroy’s machine-gun writing style, swiftly transported into his cynical world of killers, drug dealers, hookers, and high-level political intrigue.

All those elements were there, all right, but about halfway through the 600+ page book, I started to lose interest.  The characters started to repeat themselves, the story bogged down in its own multiplicity of plots, and worst of all, I knew where it was all headed. Nevertheless, I plowed on, turning page after page, hoping the whole thing would resuscitate itself.  It never did, and so, I did something I have never done in all my reading life.

I put the book down seven pages before the end.

Wracked with guilt, I stuck the book in a drawer and never looked at it again until I moved a few years ago, at which time I donated it, along with many other books, to the local library.

I might add at this point that I’ve never spoken to anyone about this, and in the years since, have heard only outstanding things about The Cold Six Thousand.

Without question, I’m going to read Blood’s A Rover as though none of the above had ever happened.  I’m sure it will pick up precisely where Six Thousand left off, and I know I’m going to love it.

Aren’t I?

Some of my favorite movies are in the film noir genre.  What a surprise, right?  Thing is, I’ve always liked them, since before they were called film noir, or at least since before I was aware of that French phrase.

Of course, it’s well-known that the filmmakers weren’t really aware that they were creating a whole new approach to cinema.  They were just doing their best with the low budgets they had to work with.

 These movies were almost always made by the “B” picture crews of the old Hollywood studios.  That meant less money, less time to shoot, lesser-known actors, and so on.  You want to shoot a scene with dark dialogue in it?  Just turn down the lights, cast a few shadows, and point the camera in such a way as to create a dark mood to match the dialogue.  These directors, among whom were greats such as Jacques Tourneur and Anthony Mann, would go on to “bigger and better” movies, but they will always be remembered for their role in forging the path through the uncharted film noir wilderness.

Growing up in a very small town meant one movie theater, where they had double features (an “A” picture coupled with a “B” picture) all the time, and would change the program three times a week. This meant a tremendous number of movies were passing through that little burg. We got a good smattering of everything Hollywood was cranking out in those days, but the black-and-white crime movies always got my attention.  Just seeing Richard Conte’s name on a poster was enough for me to circle the date and see the movie.

Some of my all-time favorites include Double Indemnity, Out Of The Past, Scarlet Street, The Damned Don’t Cry, The Narrow Margin, Raw Deal, Detour, The Asphalt Jungle, and the Jules Dassin classic, Night And The City.  I might add that all of these came out either before I was born or before I was old enough to go to the movies by myself, so I really became acquainted with these through TV.

Some of the great films noir I actually saw in my hometown theater include New York Confidential, Kiss Me Deadly, The Killing, Violent Saturday, and that sleeper of sleepers, Plunder Road.

Recent years have seen an upswing in the genre.  Movies like Body Heat, The Grifters, and After Dark My Sweet (all of which were in color, by the way) have shown there’s a substantial demand for well-done treatments of these great stories.

Also, the rise of the DVD has seen the floodgates open up in terms of releasing many of the really obscure examples of film noir.  Gems like The Naked Kiss, Bad Blonde, Shoot To Kill, Railroaded, and The Scar are now available after decades of oblivion.

Anybody got any favorites they’d like to share?

Here’s a novel use of license plates.  These commemorate the 2010 release of my crime novel, The Take, published by L&L Dreamspell.

My short story, Pickup Across The River, has been published on the outstanding online site, A Twist Of Noir.  A crime tale set in New Orleans, it features a touristy couple who are able to make passionate love to each other, then calmly attach silencers to their semiautomatics.  A direct link to the story is on the right of this page under “E-Publications”.

While the story was partly inspired by an old country song by the great Gene Watson, called Love In The Hot Afternoon, it’s not the first thing I’ve written that sprang from a song.  Three of my novels were inspired by just bits of songs, in some cases only two or three lines.  The Take, a noir novel which was recently picked up by L&L Dreamspell Publishing and will be released in 2010, came out of just two lines in the Marty Robbins song, El Paso.  The novel is a contemporary crime story, not a western, but nevertheless, the idea for it was revealed to me in those two lines.

I’ve heard of authors whose novels have emerged from flimsier ingredients:  the sight of rain hitting the street, the way a woman sashays into a bar, a fleeting memory of a long-ago moment, a newspaper headline, even dreams.  Anyone got any such stories they’d like to tell?

I’m happy to say that one of my short stories, Block, will be published in the 2009 Wizards Of Words Anthology, due out later this month.  It’s a noirish tale with Hitchcockian overtones, spun around Lila Rakubian, crime fiction author, who finds the characters of her novel-in-progress have deserted her.

I’ll be posting the anthology’s release date as soon as I learn it.  You can also go to wizardsofwords.org for more information on stories that will be appearing by other published authors.

Welcome to my website, mikedennisnoir.com.  This is my first post, and I’m very excited to finally get this site up and running.  A boatload of thanks to Leslie Michaelis of Las Vegas, who built it from the ground up.

I’m a crime fiction writer, living in Las Vegas, who’s been toiling in the vineyards for years until L&L Dreamspell Publishing picked up one of my novels, The Take.  It’s a fast-paced little noir effort that will be out sometime in 2010.   Thanks go to Morgan St James for her energetic efforts in helping me with the preliminary editing.  You can read an excerpt of it here on this site. 

I’ve always admired the best of the crime novelists.  I’m talking about hardboiled fiction guys like Jim Thompson, Charles Willeford, David Goodis, Gil Brewer, and Raymond Chandler, among others, who between them, managed to kick the door open a crack or two, all the while operating under the stigma of  “pulp” writer.  They made it ”respectable” to write crime fiction, elitist public opinion notwithstanding.  Later, you had Lawrence Block, Donald Westlake, Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy, and so many others who shoved the door all the way open so guys like me could just walk right through it.  Speaking only for myself, I owe these men a serious debt of gratitude.