Neon Noir: Contemporary American Crime Fiction

Front Cover
Serpent's Tail, 1999 - Education - 276 pages
Neon Noir, the follow-up to Woody Haut's highly regarded Pulp Culture, brings the story of American crime fiction and film uptodate. From the Kennedy assassination to the Vietnam War and Watergate, through Reaganomics to Irangate and Whitewater, Neon Noir is a roller-coaster ride through the American nightmare. Haut investigates the dark side of America through the work of crime writers such as James Ellroy, Elmore Leonard, Walter Mosley, James Lee Burke, Lawrence Block, James Sallis, George Pelecanos, Charles Willeford, Jerome Charyn, Sara Paretsky, Vicki Hendricks, KC Constantine, George V Higgins and James Crumley. Mapping the fissures and scars of America's psychogeography, its morally ambiguous shadowlands, Neon Noir also considers the difference between past and present hardboilers, the impact of war and journalism on noirists, the portrayal of cities, the aesthetics of crime fiction, and the changing relationship between the books and the films. Like Pulp Culture, Neon Noir is set to become the reference book on its subject.

From inside the book

Contents

From Pulp to Neon
13
Total Crime
42
Figures in the Mirror
72
Copyright

7 other sections not shown

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About the author (1999)

Born in Detroit in 1945, Woody Haut grew up in Pasadena, California, attended San Francisco State University, and has lived in Britain since the early 1970s. Presently a London-based journalist, he has worked as a college lecturer, taxi-cab driver, record shop assistant, cinema programmer and Labour Editor for Rolling Stock magazine (US).

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