It's funny but once you start looking you find 'noir' writing everywhere. We certanly have in our city-pick titles. Writers whose publishers like to call them noir but also other writers whose powers of description and sense of atmosphere and trepidation defy categories. From Pere Lachaise Cemetery to the River Thames to a Venetian canal, cities seem to bring out the 'noirist' in all kinds of writers. Are some cities better equipped for noir than others or can the 'heart of darkness' be found pretty much everywhere? Do let us know if you agree or disagree or have a favourite noir piece of writing you think we should include in future editions.
Here we go in trepidation ....
Venice: Daphne du Maurier's Don't Look Now ('Now, ill-lit, almost in darkness, the windows of the houses shuttered, the water dark, the scene appeared altogether different, neglected, poor, and the long narrow boats moored to the slippery slopes of cellar entrances looked like coffins')
Paris: Claude Izner's The Pere-Lachaise Mystery ('The carriage entered the cemetery fates moments ahead of a funeral cortege and proceeded down one of the looped avenues. The rain formed a halo of light above the vast graveyard')
London: Clare Clark's The Big Stink ('A breeze had got up. It played down the length of the river so that the water was chased into little overlapping waves. As the moon slid out from behind a shawl of cloud, casting up a pale silver light on the water, then glistened and squirmed. A gigantic black monster, she thought, that was the Thames')
Amsterdam: Rupert Thompson's The Book of Revelation ('In the winter months in Amsterdam there were nights of such perfect stillness that, if you were out walking, you could hear the ticking of bicycle wheels in the next street, or a couple talking in their bedroom three floors up. This stillness has always reminded me of the fairy tales I read when I was young')
Berlin: Paul Beatty's Slumberland ('Always a clean city, on winter nights Berlin is especially antisceptic. Often, I swear, there is a hint of ammonia in the air. This is not the hermetic sterility of a private Swiss hospital but the damp Mop &Glo slickness of a late-ngiht supermarket aisle that leaves me wondering what historical spils have just been tidied up')
Dublin: Roddy Doyle's The Deportees ('The door to the alley is my corner, and it is always open. Fresh air comes through the open door but I would prefer to lock the door, always. But, even then, it must be opened sometimes ... That night I carry a bag outside to the alley. I lift the lid, I drop in the bag, I turn to go back - There you are.')
All these writers and their works are excerpted in the city-pick series, each title published at £8.99, paperback, by Oxygen Books
