Hard-boiled/noir/whatever

[mrissa]

So you have the blonde walking into the cynical detective's office. You have some "broad" in an evening gown singing torch songs in a club that's maybe on the edge of sketchy. You have probably some thugs somewhere, somebody covering up something horrible for someone they love.

What else have you got? What are your favorite stock elements for this kind of story? Tell me, that I may warp them!

(I'm heading down to St. Pete for lunch as soon as I get my shoes on, so I won't be able to respond to answers right away.)

Comments

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

There should be guns, and they should be called "heaters."

There should be slouch hats and seedy alleys.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

There should be a Sydney Greenstreet-style decadent uber-criminal sitting among Chinese antiquities and caressing a Persian cat (or equivalent)
There should be a Peter Lorre/Elisha Cook jr type of terrorisable crook: bad to the bone but easily scared.
The loyal non-blonde (wise-cracking if possible) secretary/whatever.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

And of course, any apparent "what do we do now ?" moment interrupted by a man with a gun coming in the door. I'm envisioning an antechamber where half a dozen men who burst in the door with guns out are milling around and probably having a live-action gun-control thread.

[baronlaw.livejournal.com]

"The fan slowly turned over his desk, one got the impression it was dying a slow death rather like the occupant of the office."

Gotta have the classic desk, bottle of scotch in the drawer and a 45 under the armpit. ;)

[jamesgilmer.livejournal.com]

Everyone smokes and there's always a bottle of whiskey and tumblers handy for the pouring.

The cynical detective gets set up by the "broad", who usually gets killed and offers a deathbed confession and proclimation of her innocence/love.

The little guy always loses (usually this is the detective) whether through death (of himself, loved ones) or through losing the case.

The hero gets roughed up by some toughs.

[jamesgilmer.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, the classic Mickey Spillane (sp?) school of writing. "Whenever I have writer's block I have two guys burst in the doors with .45s"

A classic.

[brithistorian.livejournal.com]

The trenchcoat and fedora-wearing detective who drinks rather more than he should.

The doctor who lost his license but still practices for the mob.

The keen-eyed newsboy who sees everything that goes on in the neighborhood.

The European foreigner of uncertain loyalties.

The stolid bartender who's always there with a double shot and a sympathetic ear.

The veteran Irish cop who's willing to bend the rules a little.

The inscrutable oriental who has ties to the criminal underworld in every city from New York to Shanghai.

The eager cub reporter.

The naive small-town girl who came to the big city to make it as an entertainer but ended up a chorus girl - or worse.

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Smoke, whiskey, trenchcoats, dubious morals, dangerous women.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

i am still too cranky about sin city to talk reasonably about noir. my unreasonable suggestions include men who can't see any solution to a situation besides violence and women who have it in their pretty little heads that they can take care of themselves but really can't.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

I like the guy who takes five minutes to die, with his head in the lap of someone-or-other, with a Cryptic Dying Gasp.

[raecarson.livejournal.com]

The bombshell blond is, of course, a rich divorcee who doesn't tell the cynical detective the Whole Story because she has Things To Hide.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

The case is never what the client says the case is.

Clients always lie. They're worse than suspects that way.

The detective will be betrayed. By the client, by a friend, by the only person in the case he genuinely likes.

Everyone drinks too much; everyone smokes too much. The California highways are always deserted and it's always three o'clock in the morning.

No one is who they say they are, including the detective.

[palinade.livejournal.com]

Some misdirection, an object of desire, redeemable characters who believe they are beyond redemption, and protagonists who will go to any lengths to "get the job done".

(Mickey Spillane, Leonard Elmore, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammet are all really good noir authors.)

[athenais.livejournal.com]

The shop girl who's a tough cookie and doesn't like 'tecs or coppers because they usually rough her up but can't resist the detective's mug and tells him what he wants to know anyway. Then she asks for a kiss, a date or some money.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

The image I get from this is of Classic Fannish Male Somatype #1 with beard, glasses, gut and ponytail, tipping the desk very slowly onto one side while the detective looks on in bemusement.

[gaaneden.livejournal.com]

You need the anti-hero who gets knocked around a lot. You need the hard bitten language. There's lots of drinking and smoking. Things are shadowed and meetings are clandestined. Also, your anti-hero needs to be betrayed by someone at least once.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Well, so far as twisting things goes, I am firmly of the belief that Rufus Wainwright should be a torch singer, of the 'sprawl on the piano and sing' sort, since those are the songs of his that I love the best.

Elements. let's see. Dark, ugly office in a bad/cheap part of town. Scruffy looking detective, usually a borderline or recovering alcholic. Bad relationships in the past. At least one failed marriage, usually a string of casual girlfriends/clients.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Oh! and the opening that Tim Powers makes fun of. "Bang! Bang! Bang! As the bullets ripped through my body, I thought back to the first time I'd seen her walk into my office, and how I'd never dreamed I'd end up here, dying in an alley, at the time." Or some such horribleness.

[baronlaw.livejournal.com]

I entered my office and heard some strange sounds from within, fearing the worse I pulled my heater out and kicked in the door. I expected a thug or two, I was hoping for a pretty dame, what I got was a slightly overweight fellow with a beard glasses and a ponytail attempting to flip my desk over. He managed to get it on it's side and collapsed on top of it puffing and groaning. For a minute I thought he would have a heart attack before he could tell me what the hell he was doing.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

Rain, fog, or some other atmospheric weather.

The circle of light under a lamppost.

A petite singer/dancer/actress who, upon being questioned about the murder in the nightclub where she works, reacts with unexpected hostility and says something like, "Whaddaya botherin' ME for??"

Heavy doses of cynicism.

Inhuman calm from the alcoholic (anti)hero upon being confronted with the business end of a pistol.

Odd similes or metaphors ("She looked at me with the disgust a platinum goddess would feel for a green American Express card.")

[songwind.livejournal.com]

The cynical detective is almost supernaturally proficient at violence, and isn't really bashful about it. Degree of violence employed varies from story to story.

Female secretary/receptionist/office manager/business partner may or may not be in love with hardboiled detective. Issue is never directly addressed and they never, ever sleep together unless she's about to die.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Girl Friday

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

Also, the fact that it's frickin' never daytime.

[whipsmartgirl.livejournal.com]

Don't forget Jim Thompson for your ultra-violent type noir. "The Grifters" and "Hell of a Woman" are prime examples.

However, most of Thompson's characters are *far* from redeemable.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Fabulous.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The case is never what the client says the case is.

Clients always lie. They're worse than suspects that way.

The detective will be betrayed. By the client, by a friend, by the only person in the case he genuinely likes.

Heh. Ohhhhhh, is that part ever taken care of already.

There is no California, but the rest of it can be taken care of.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm not up for ultra-violent, I'm afraid.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Mickey Spillane, Leonard Elmore, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammet are all really good noir authors.

Yep, I was going to reread some Chandler. (Elmore Leonard or Leonard Elmore?)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yep, got that one, but you're going to...um. I have no idea how you're going to react to what the deal is there, but it's a deal, that's what I have to say about that.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Okay, lemur statuette, you say....

(I need an icon for "scribbling furiously.")

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

men who can't see any solution to a situation besides violence

Umm, you haven't been reading this journal long enough to know that the story in question relates to the Aesir, have you? And yet. Oh, and yet.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

[snort]

okay, just promise me it won't include clive owen being a delectable sexist (but only for our own good) bastard, hm?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Clive Owen does not exist in the universe in question.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Also, the social structure is such that delectable sexists for our own good are likely to get axes shoved sensitive places.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

California is just because my default noir setting is Raymond Chandler with a side of Ross Macdonald.

It's that sense that the detective is the only person awake in the world that matters.

[palinade.livejournal.com]

Elmore Leonard... call me slightly dyslexic. erm. heheh.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

A waterfront. Steam coming up from grates. Everyone has a hat.

[ladysea.livejournal.com]

The head thug's girlfriend must be in love with the good guy of the story. ;-P

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Can I? No.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Reason #587914 that we loves us some Dark City.