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Lessons in Noir by Dave Zeltserman |
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Over the last couple of months I've had the pleasure of reading three exceptional noir books: The Dramatist and Priest, both by Ken Bruen, and Witness to Myself by Seymour Shubin. These books will be remembered and read long after today's bestsellers are forgotten. I thought I'd try to give a quick examination of them to see if any lessons in writing noir can be discerned. Obviously one of the reasons these are such great books is because Bruen and Shubin have such unique voices and that they're arguably two of the best writers working in crime fiction today. Hell, these are two men who have mastered their craft and are at the absolute top of their game. Also, these books are thematically rich. While The Dramatist and Priest are ostensibly PI novels, they are so much more. The Dramatist -- the fifth book in Bruen's wonderful Jack Taylor series, is ultimately about failing. Throughout the book, Taylor keeps failing people: his dying mother, his bartender friend, Jeff, an old girlfriend, his current girlfriend, and ultimately a failing that is going to have dramatic repercussions, both psychically and otherwise. Priest starts where The Dramatist left off with Taylor driven to the madhouse over a mistake and tragedy that he'll never be able to forgive himself for. While in Priest, Jack Taylor is searching for the person who beheaded a priest, it's really about loss and the walking wounded and the pain that people carry. The losses to Taylor have been dramatic, including the loss of an Ireland that Taylor sees slipping away; the pain is from the men who had been abused as boys by this decapitated priest, and of course, Jack's own pain over his losses and his mistakes. There's a simmering rage that is ever present throughout this book. Witness to Myself, while pure classic noir, also examines a deeper question -- whether one isolated act can define a person regardless of how out of character the act is. Witness to Myself is a perfect bookend to Shubin's classic Anyone's My Name, a book where the reader can feel the isolation and desperation of the protagonist, and can't help thinking there but for the grace of God... Another quality all three of these books have in common is that they take their time in unraveling. Bruen and Shubin are both experienced and confident enough to show patience. They both show the small details in their characters lives. Neither are in a rush for the fireworks, and the end result is a build-up in tension and power that is rare in today's crime fiction. All three of these books leave the reader breathless by the end. Another common quality is humor. With Bruen, there's an ever present bantering humor with a hint of fierceness. An example from Priest where Taylor has been struggling to stay sober, weakens, buys some booze and is given a free shirt. As he's leaving the store he has the following encounter with a homeless man: A guy leaning against a doorway asked, "Help another human being?" I gave him the T-shirt. Then Jeff's face loomed large and I turned back, said to the guy, 'God just smiled on you.' Handed him the whole batch of booze ... I was half a street away when I heard him shout, 'More like the devil.' Argue with that? I didn't. With Shubin, there's humor also, but it's more absurdist. At one point the protagonist, Alan Benning, whose life is unraveling because he may or may not have killed a girl fifteen years earlier when he was a teenager, ends up saving a man from committing suicide. The act is one of reflex and Benning doesn't want any (nor can he afford) publicity for it, but from that point on -- to his horror -- the man he saved torments him through phone calls and other means, accusing Benning of trying to be a hero. These are brilliant absurdist moments that only a writer of Shubin's skill could pull off. The doom in Witness to Myself is ever present and builds throughout the novel. The doom in Bruen's two books is there also, but it's lighter and hidden under the violence and self-loathing. Both authors use small, almost inconsequential events to trigger near cataclysmic ones (going to a library, failing to pay attention for a second). Both authors rely on character, and fill their books with small observations that build on itself. All three of these books have a lasting resonance. Priest, which has been the #1 book in Ireland, won't be available in the US until next year. My advice, if you're not familiar with this fierce poetic series, start with The Guards and work your way up to The Dramatist, and prepare yourself for when Priest is available. And when reading Witness to Myself, I also strongly recommend getting a copy of Anyone's My Name to go along with it. You won't be sorry you did -- at least not if you love dark crime fiction that affects the soul and makes you think long after you've finished the book.
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