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As for Mosley and Ellroy, their work has changed so
much that, whether or not their books are approved by literary
adjudicators, they may not find their way to the bookshelves of
traditional hard-boiled fans. Like many other books described as “neo-noir,”
they are too violent, too pornographic, and/or have forsaken one of
Chandler’s rules for mysteries: the criminal must be punished. In fact,
in some contemporary hard-boiled mysteries, the “hero” is a
criminal, a perversion of the genre disliked by many mystery readers.
The “restoration of the status quo,” which Boswell declares “central to
all mysteries” (158) no longer prevails. Even the traditional PI code of
loyalty, professional responsibility and integrity demonstrated by Sam
Spade and Philip Marlowe, has largely disappeared.
Walter Mosley’s books have traveled a long way from the
charm of Devil in a Blue Dress, 1990, in which he introduced
Easy Rawlins, “a man as hard-nosed as he needs to be yet still capable
of relishing decency.” (Newsweek, quoted on the book jacket of
Devil in a Blue Dress.) Devil in a Blue Dress is a
great book and was a fabulous film. In Blonde Faith, 2007, his
tenth Easy Rawlins book, Mosley has stepped up the violence, and Easy
and his killer friend, Mouse, leave a bloody trail. Easy doesn’t feel
guilt; as he says, “After murdering two men I went up to the farmers’
market…and bought a basket of extraordinary strawberries…three bottles
of champagne and a pint of cognac” (300). Is he relishing decency? No,
he’s celebrating murder.
In 2007, Mosley launched an “erotic” series that
shocked some of his fans. The first book, Killing Johnny Fry,
2007, is subtitled “a sexistential novel.” About it, a reviewer in
Radar wrote: “a fantastically filthy tale with the unmistakable
earmark of the red-headed stepchild of the literary arts: hard core
pornography.” And from Tracy Quan in the February 2, 2007 Washington
Post, “When a national treasure like Mosley decides to publish a
dirty novel, snippy reactions are inevitable. Does a journal of sexual
discovery have to be quite this filthy?”
Ellroy is one of three writers representing the 1990s
in Hard-Boiled, An Anthology of American Crime Stories, 1995,
(eds. Jack Adrian and Bill Pronzini). (The other two are Lawrence Block
and Ed Gorman). Of Ellroy, Adrian wrote: “There are no true heros in the
novels and stories of James Ellroy, nor are there any true villains…With
Ellroy, ugliness merely gets uglier, no one is redeemed, and villainy
simply doffs its hat in mocking salute. Ellroy’s is the darkest world
possible…a Boschean hell of violence and corruption and betrayal and
dreadful night, the continuum of the new nihilism and the new brutalism”
(488). This is apparently meant to be a compliment. It is certainly
accurate. In Ellroy’s story, “Gravy Train,” the protagonist is a scam
artist, on probation for his nefarious activities, including the
seduction of “teeny boppers” into prostitution. “Gravy Train” is
unlikely to please many traditional mystery fans.
Other writers entering the hard-boiled world embrace
the idea of the criminal hero. Jeffrey Lindsay’s “Dexter” series is a
prime example. Dexter is described in The New Yorker, July 26,
2004, as “one of the most likable vigilante serial killers in recent
thriller literature,” and Publisher’s Weekly, May 23, 2005,
reports that, “the hero of this intelligent, darkly humorous series
knows he’s a monster who loves slicing people into little pieces.” The
books are popular, and Dexter is now the subject of a successful TV
series.
As for other new writers, in Hardcore Hardboiled,
2008, subtitled “The Best of the Neo-Noir Fiction,” Otto Penzler wrote,
“The contributors to this volume are mostly young…writing in a style as
colorful as Elton John’s laundry. It is mostly vulgar, nasty, obscene,
violent and sewer-mouthed” (IX). Once again, this is probably meant to
be a compliment, and it, too, is accurate.
Who reads “Dexter” and these violent and pornographic
mysteries, written by these “mostly young” writers? Apparently there’s a
new audience for these books. A now-inactive website, noirnovels.com,
designed to support the new writers, at one time determined most
visitors to the site are in their twenties. This may be the age group of
both the readers and the writers of the works Penzler describes.
But the traditional market for the hard-boiled mystery
is apparently shrinking. Statistics on the sale of mystery books by
category are maintained by The Drood Review. Although there’s a
considerable time lag in collecting the data, The Drood Review
is the acknowledged source for trends. Between 1996 and 2003, the number
of mystery titles tracked grew 22.1%. By category, Hard-Boiled showed
the largest relative decline of any of the categories followed: a
whopping -61.7%. Traditional mystery readers seem to be turning away
from what is being written in the name of Hard-Boiled today.
For the 2006 Edgar Week Annual, Jim Huang wrote, “I
fear that our industry’s leadership is losing sight of what it is that
made mysteries popular…curiosity, ratiocination, heroism and
morality…These values have sustained the mystery story since it became
something recognizable a century ago, and will sustain the genre long
into the future—if only we stay true to them.”
Works Cited
Adrian, Jack and Bill Pronzini. Hard-boiled: An Anthology of
American Crime Stories.
Oxford:
Oxford
University
Press, 1995.
Boswell, Robert. The Half-Known World: On Writing
Fiction.
Saint Paul,
Minn:
Graywolf,
2008.
Cassuto, Leonard. Hard-boiled Sentimentality: The Secret
History of American Crime
Stories.
New York:
Columbia
Univ.
Pr, 2008.
Ellroy, James. “Gravy Train.” in Hard-boiled: An
Anthology of American Crime Stories.
Oxford:
Oxford
University
Press, 1995. 488.
Mosley, Walter. Blonde Faith.
New York:
Little, Brown and Co, 2007.
Mosley, Walter. Devil in a Blue Dress.
New York:
Norton, 1990.
Mosley,
Walter. Killing Johnny Fry: A Sexistential Novel.
New York:
Bloomsbury
Pub,
2007.
Quan,
Tracy,
“High Infidelity” The
Washington
Post,
February 4, 2007.
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