Detroit Noir Author Blog

The Detroit Noir blog (link on the right) promises to go live in September.

It will feature profiles of, and interviews with, many of the anthology’s contributors
(Loren D. Estleman, P.J. Parrish, Joyce Carol Oates, Craig Holden, Megan Abbott, and others), excerpts from the stories in the book, and – as they say – more.

I’m almost done with the Q&A the editors sent to me. Here’s a sample:

What attracts you to the (broadly-defined) Noir style?
Like anyone, I grew up reading stories with heroes, and that’s what my lizard brain still expects whenever I crack open a book. I get suckered every time [reading Noir]. You’re implicated in the bad stuff that’s happening. There’s always a point where I think: That light at the end of the tunnel is a train, I should put this book down and walk away – but I never do. I love that feeling. It’s cathartic in the worst way. It’s a let’s-drink-up-the-rent-money feeling. It’s a great corrective to the insipid lengths America will go to concoct a hero for every situation.

Sunday = Paranoia

“Engage the asset,” evil David Strathairn intones on two occasions in The Bourne Ultimatum, and each time there follows a sequence of near-identical ciphers answering the phone and snapping into action in the anonymous room where they’d been zoned out in front of the TV; it’s a sly joke that’s niftier and chillier the second time around.


I picked up on Robert Littell earlier this year; I read Legends and was mesmerized by it. Now his magnum opus The Company is a mini-series airing Sunday nights on TNT. The first two hours centered on the Great Game in Berlin circa 1950s, and a fictionalized version of the Kim Philby story. Alfred Molina chews the scenery, Chris O'Donnell finally shakes off the dew, and Michael Keaton - you can practically smell his character's hair oil from your couch.

Do The Polymath

Ethan Iverson is the piano man in the mad-scientist-jazz piano trio The Bad Plus, and a great fan of crime fiction, of which he writes very insightful appreciations on the band's blog, Do The Math.

The most recent example is here: http://thebadplus.typepad.com/dothemath/2007/07/new-books-by-th.html

There's no archive-by-subject, but if you scroll around looking for his thoughts on Donald Westlake and wind up reading his thoughts on Herbie Hancock along the way, well, that's not gonna hurt ya.