Let's talk about noir

Mes Amis

I've been thinking. About noir.

Actually this has been spinning in my head since Bouchercon. And although certain people said that you never hear anything new in panels, its still worth sitting in on them sometimes because those "same old same old" ideas can sometimes set your head spinning in new directions.

I've been thinking about noir and series. I've heard it a few times now: thous shalt not have a noir series (it should be written in a stone tablet). The reasoning is that noir, by what we understand, is about mortality. A series character must, ispo facto, if he is to return, be immortal. Therefore one cannot have a noir series. The character does not neccasarily have to die. But if we know he is coming back in a few books time that sense of danger to his life is lost.

Of course we can have noir "cycles" whereby we stick with the same character for a limited series of books (Royston Blake, of Mangel fame springs to mind) but this is not the same as we know the character will come to an end sometime (not neccasarily death, of course, but still we only know them for a limited number of books rather than the open ended number that can be in a typical series, say Morse or Thorne or Scudder).

This bothers me. It bothers me because I think you can have a noir series *and* an "immortal" character. Because to me, a good series, especially a crime series, is rarely about the protagonist. I mean, the protagonist must feel real. Matt Scudder must have his troubles and his loves and his losses. But simply because he is immortal doesn't mean we lose that sense of danger. Because everyone else is (or at least should be) up for grabs. Matt (or whichever protagonist you wish to think about) becomes the camera through which we view the world. How would you feel if the camera in a movie could be shot? It would be kind of pathetic because you'd never see how the damn thing played out. The good noir series protagonist must be an observer. He must be a camera.

One of the things I always like about the Scudder novels was that the supporting cast are up for grabs. Look at what happens in Everybody Dies. People are put in real mortal danger. And as to the cast who are around for one novel. If they're not stuck in noir, I don't know who is. I mean they're definitely up for grabs and more often than not wind up decorating some slab in some NYC morgue.

But the point is that you cannot say a series is not noir. I think a series can be noir if we accept the central "camera" as immortal. You can tell noir tales with a series character and yet retain their immortality.

Or at least, that's the way I'm thinking on a caffeine high and far too many kit kats than can possibly be good for a man.

Au Revoir

Russel