Noir focuses on the criminal mind, not a whodunit: more why they did it and will they get away with it. The abnormal psychology is what fascinates me rather than the puzzle-solving aspect.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
One difference between film noir and more straightforward crime pictures is that noir is more open to human flaws and likes to embed them in twisty plot lines.
Crime fiction, especially noir and hardboiled, is the literature of the proletariat.
One definition of noir is where a not-so-good man or woman tries to touch something good - and fails.
I think there are specific times where film noir is a natural concomitant of the mood. When there's insecurity, collapse of financial systems - that's where film noir always hits fertile ground.
When I first started writing the books in the 1980s, all of the female detectives were flawed in some way because they were based on noir characters.
That's what noir feels like to me. It feels like some kind of recurring dream, with very strong archetypes operating. You know, the guilty girl being pursued, falling, all kinds of stuff that we see in our dreams all the time.
I think a film noir demands a beginning and an end.
I got into reading a lot of noir and a lot of thrillers as well, and I really admired the plotting about those and the way that they can surprise you. And obviously to surprise people and to have twists in the tale, you have to plan quite carefully.
I didn't know I was doing film noir, I thought they were detective stories with low lighting!
Noir is dead for me because historically, I think it's a simple view. I've taken it as far as it can go. I think I've expanded on it a great deal, taken it further than any other American novelist.