Description
Book SynopsisFrom Sherlock Holmes to Sam Spade; Nick and Nora Charles to Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin; Harry Lime to Gilda, Madeleine Elster, and other femmes fatalescrime and crime solving in fiction and film captivate us. Why do we keep returning to Agatha Christie''s ingenious puzzles and Raymond Chandler''s hard-boiled murder mysteries? What do spy thrillers teach us, and what accounts for the renewed popularity of morally ambiguous noirs? In The Mysterious Romance of Murder, the poet and critic David Lehman explores a wide variety of outstanding books and moviessome famous (The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity), some known mainly to aficionadoswith style, wit, and passion.
Lehman revisits the smoke-filled jazz clubs from the classic noir films of the 1940s, the iconic set pieces that defined Hitchcock''s America, the interwar intrigue of Eric Ambler''s best fictions, and the intensity of attraction between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer
Trade Review
As one might expect from this distinguished poet and versatile man of letters, his sprightly new book isn't just deeply knowledgeable, it's also a lot of fun.
-- Michael Dirda * The Washington Post *
The real originality of this book lies less in its critical comments than in its creativity. Lehman, who is also a poet, includes poems, his own and others', inspired by or imitating noir. He even offers a haiku. As if conversing with another aficionado, he compares favorite actors and moments, repeats favorite wisecracks, and tries to recreate the pleasure of the initial experience. In his casual way he also sparks ideas. How often does a critical book actually make one want to read the books it discusses?
* The Times Literary Supplement *
Lehman's exuberant collection of essays, poems, and annotated lists captures the manifold associations stirred by a lifetime's attention to crime fiction and movies, touching on everything from wisecracks to cigarettes to musical soundtracks to Kenneth Fearing as "the patron saint of poetry noir."
* New York Review of Books *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Mysterious Romance of Murder
Part I: Killer Style
1. Cracking Wise
2. Paradise of the Damned: Eighteen Notes on Noir
3. Poetry Noir
4. Five Noir Poems
"Perfidia"
"Laura"
"Witness to a Murder"
"The Formula"
"Just a Couple of Mugs"
Part II: The Elements of Crime
5. Here's to Crime!
6. The Last Cigarette
7. Among My Souvenirs
Part III: Auteurs
8. The Great British Spymasters
9. The Limits of Logic: Trent's Last Case (E. C. Bentley)
10. Dashiell Hammett's Priceless Patter
11. Paperclip (Raymond Chandler)
12. "Grim Grin" (Graham Greene)
13. Rex Stout: The Emperor of Couronne de Canard
14. Ida Lupino: The First Lady of Noir
15. Black Friday (David Goodis)
16. Orange Noir (Charles Willeford)
17. Ed McBain: The Man from Isola
18. Hitchcock's America
Part IV: Dreams That Money Can Buy
19. Straight Down the Line: Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944)
20. Strangers and Mirrors: Orson Welles's The Stranger (1946) and The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
21. An Exchange of Bullets in Belfast: Carol Reed's Odd Man Out (1947)
22. Blind Accidents: John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
23. Epitaph for a Genre: Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (1956)
24. Shadow of Evil: Robert Mitchum in Cape Fear (1962)
25. A Reluctant Spy's Conversion: William Holden in The Counterfeit Traitor (1962)
26. Gangsters in Love: Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
27. Rogues' Gallery
28. Why Not New York?
Part V: The Imp of the Perverse
29. Three Astrological Profiles
Barbara Stanwyck (July 16)
Graham Greene (October 2)
Marlene Dietrich (December 27)
