Dispatches From Noir

Once upon a time, I dreamed of being an author. I thought I would write a great noir novel. That never happened, but I still admire the spare, descriptive prose and retro sensibilities of the hard-boiled detective.

I also see people every day. Sometimes I can't help but wonder what Chandler, Hammett, Leonard, Cain or even Fleming might have to say about them. So I take a stab at it. Here is the rogue's gallery of the novels and stories I never wrote. Meet the villains, bystanders, toughs and low-lifes that would populate them.

This is also a journal of my own journeys through the wonderful world of hardboiled/noir crime fiction. I review books and movies, and I’m happy to answer crime fiction questions and give recommendations. I'm also starting to think I might just be able to write some fiction of my own. I don't know how that will turn out. I do know that anything that appears on this page is just a dispatch from the great land of Noir.

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Posted on Monday, 9 April 2012

I finally got around to watching the 2011 version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. After reading the novel and watching the Swedish film from 2009 several months ago, I watched the David Fincher adaptation over the weekend.

I don’t think either film is a definitive adaptation of Larsson’s novel. I thought Michael Nyqvist was probably a bit less self-assured (a good thing) than Daniel Craig, but I thought Rooney Mara was more complex than Noomi Rapace in the role of Lisbeth Salander. Michael Phillips was dead-on when he described the Swedish film as “shrewdly acted, [but] indifferently directed.”

Suffice it to say that Fincher’s auteurist film is anything but indifferently directed. The 2011 Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has atmosphere in spades. But the ending of the film (no spoilers to follow) eviscerates Larsson’s surprise ending. It was a good film (recent Oscar winner Christopher Plummer is always a treat to watch), but I’m hard pressed to declare it better or worse than the Swedish version.