I’m poking along, compiling another LitCrit MegaPack of my selected essays and reviews. Just scanned through the over 200 reviews I did for Publishers Weekly. Almost all short. Very tight word count. One that caught my eye was Noir by Robert Coover from 2010. If you like this kind of spin on the genre, then you might like this spin on the genre:
Metafiction lustily mates with hard-boiled mystery in this hilarious homage to Raymond Chandler and company, as Private Eye Philip M. Noir slips on his gumshoes and lacy underwear and hits the mean streets. He has a case, a client, but the widow goes missing. He encounters the Creep, Fingers, Rats, Snark, and an elusive fat man named Fat Agnes. He even meets people who “live in a different world. It was called daytime.” Prolific postmodernist Coover (The Public Burning) adds his dazzling two bits to the deconstructionist turf Paul Auster prowled in the New York Trilogy. “There’s a mystery here, but you’re a street dick, not a metaphysician. . .” Like Pynchon in the recent Inherent Vice, he pops off laughs on every page. “Her brother is in it somewhere and he is said also to be wearing women’s underpants and a bra. . . Is he your double? No, you don’t have a bra.” And don’t forget, Chandler was really funny, too.
