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Drawing principally on the writings of the Critical Theorists Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer, this paper considers the contemporary neo-noir detective story in relation to three interwoven themes/motifs: spatiality (scenes, sites and settings); temporality (time and narrational arc); and, characterization (the detective as a figure of repetition and melancholy). Combining the traits and practices of flaneur, ragpicker and collector, the detective wearily undertakes the investigation through an archaeological/genealogical discovery of the antecedents of the crime so as to reconstruct thereby a 'bio-topography' of the unfortunate victim(s). The facts (Tatsachen) of the case are to be gleaned somehow from, among other things, the deed itself (Tat) and from, among other loci, the actual crime scene (Tatort). I suggest how, as the evidence – traces, testimonies, forensics – proliferates and accumulates, the crime investigation board on which these fragments are pinned and presented becomes the object of the detective's ceaseless and sorrowful scrutiny, transforming her/him thereby into one of Benjamin's most famous allegorical figures of historical witness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the use of the personal voice recorder in David Lynch's Twin Peaks, its connections to noir film, and its use to manage narrative space between characters and audience.

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Copyright of Leisure/Loisir: Journal of the Canadian Association for Leisure Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article discusses the growth of noir in France and the United States of America (USA) in the 1980s and 1990s. Under its various forms such as the polar, the sub-genre embraces a leftist agenda, aiming at exploring the rise of domestic issues such as race, gender discrimination, and poverty to expose the dark side of neoliberalism and its ideologies of equality, prosperity, and justice. A decolonial reading of Didier Daeninckx’s Meurtres pour mémoire (1983), Daniel Pennac’s La petite marchande de prose (1989), and Walter Mosley’s Black Betty (1994) demonstrates how the process of narration and a conscious focus on “decent people” threaten ideologies of nation building, consumerism, and gender/racial equality. Through the works of Walter Mignolo and Achille Mbembé, we aim to show how neoliberal capitalism follows the same pattern of appropriation of resources and bodies that has been in place since the Industrial Revolution. A pattern deconstructed by noir writers with the aim of promoting more humanity.

This article proceeds to analyze the Atlante freddo trilogy, focusing particularly on the interplay between fictional creation and the author’s cognizance of crime chronicles explored in his non-fictional works. From this vantage point, Bernardi’s novels emerge as an experimental terrain wherein he probes conceivable narratives, employing the narrative as a pretext to delineate the locales and dynamics of contemporary society. The trilogy by Bernardi directs attention to a spectrum of concerns, encompassing the marginalization of the foreigner, the erosion of the media’s informative function, and the interrelation between minor and major criminal activities. Ultimately, a comparative analysis between Bernardi and Carlotto is introduced, primarily examining ideological and thematic alignments.

In honor of Luigi Bernardi ten years after his death, this essay explores one of the most important of the author-editor’s areas of research, crime fiction. Where the rich and recent scholarship on the subject has favored a more transmedial approach, I here focus on the literary text, specifically three series of novels set in and around Bologna with female detectives: the series by Carlo Lucarelli with protagonist police inspector Grazia Negro, the series by Grazia Verasani featuring the private detective Giorgia Cantini, and two recent novels in a projected trilogy by Lorella Marini whose protagonist is Commissaria Barbara Larsen Givoni. From these serial novels I distill a triptych of ‘female dicks’: the Deferential, the Disquieting, and the Avenger, each of whom responds differently to the exigencies of the patriarchal system in which they operate, each of whose series illustrate greater and lesser degrees of adherence to generic conventions of the noir, representing the intersection of gender e genre.

Although he represents an essential figure for a full understanding of the phenomenon of so-called Italian noir, which has developed since the first decade of the 2000s, Luigi Bernardi remains a profile to which academic criticism has not paid due attention. This article proposes a path of analysis that looks at both Bernardi as an author and as an essayist, considering his Atlante freddo trilogy, first published in a single volume in 2006, and two non-fiction texts such as A sangue caldo (2001) and Il male stanco (2003). The aim of this study will be to highlight the value and uniqueness of Bernardi’s work in the context of Italian crime fiction.

The purpose of the article is to study the stage word, in particular its intonation component in acting works of the 40s and 50s in the noir genre, as well as the influence of the US ideology on cinematography of that period. The research methodology consists in the application of the method of historical retrospection, which is used to analyse the stage word in acting works in Hollywood cinematography of the 40s and 50s in the noir genre; the culturological method is used to study the influence of the US ideology of the 40s and 50s on the sociocultural environment through the stage word; the using of the method of role analysis makes it possible to analyse the work of actors on the speaking component of the roles created in the 40s and 50s in the noir genre. The scientific novelty is that, for the first time, a comprehensive study of the features of stage speech in acting works of the 40s and 50s in the noir genre was conducted, as well as their dependence on the current ideology of the US government. Conclusions. The intonation component of acting works, in particular male and female images in Hollywood cinema of the 40s and 50s in the noir genre, is considered. The influence of the US ideology on the artistic and aesthetic component of Hollywood cinematography, in particular on the stage word, is revealed. The features of the intonation image of the femme fatale in Hollywood cinematography in the noir genre are considered. The features of the intonation portrait of antagonists and protagonists in the Hollywood cinematography of the 40s and 50s of the noir genre are analysed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the beginnings of the popular Japanese crime genre coincided with the end of American occupation, this genre offers a space of historically visible transnationality. Through formal analysis, this research identifies a cultural plurality embedded within crime cinema. Examining the adoption of film noir aesthetics in Japan alongside the development of the nationalistic ninkyō eiga (chivalry film), I argue the crime genre formed as a culturally hybrid genre in tension between these conflicting identities. The crime film demonstrates a dialectical tension between local and international cultural signifiers and cinematic styles, which result in a set of hybrid symbols that repeat on-end the dialectic tension embedded in their formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noir's atmosphere of anxiety and/or despair stems not from environment and setting but rather from character and from an outsider defined by and riddled with a very Kierkegaardian sense of existentialist despair. As works by John D. MacDonald and David Goodis demonstrate, the despairing protagonist is the foremost defining characteristic of noir fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ironic detective is a relatively new genre in literature. Its development dates back to the middle of the twentieth century and continues up to the present days. The final crystallization of the genre is taking place in our time. The works of Polish author Joanna Chmielewska became one of the first examples of ironic detective stories. However, the French literature of the twentieth century also has notable representatives of the genre. The present article examines the peculiarities of the irony functioning in the detective genre, in the context of the work of the popular modern French writer Daniel Pennac. We distinguish irony as a means of comic and as a principle of work organization, which is inherent in the genre of ironic detective. Consideration of the ironic detective is impossible without a brief analysis of the detective development stages as a whole, therefore, the article also deals with the genesis of the detective genre from the classic to the French novel-noir. The emphasis will rest on the peculiarities of the ironic detective’s development. Using D. Pennac’s novel The Scapegoat as an example (the French edition is called Au bonheur des ogres, originally published in 1985), the features of the genre, alongside their manifestations at the content and formal level are illustrated. The article focuses on the fact that naturalistic details, scenes of cruelty, evil and chaos, caused by the consequences of the Second World War, are weakened due to ironic characteristics, stereotypes, as well as the very attitudes of the author and the narrator towards the surrounding world. The research proves that the analysed genre is an artistic form of a panoramic view of the society of the 80s with its false ideals and its consumerism.

La noche es esencial en la configuracion de las urbes modernas. Acudiendo a la película La noche avanza (1951) del director mexicano Roberto Gavaldon, este articulo explora como la noche conforma imaginarios urbanos y problemática las relaciones entre la oscuridad, la ciudad y los sujetos en el contexto de la modernidad en Mexico. En este articulo se definen dos espacios vinculados con el nocturno urbano, los que se construyen esteticamente a partir del cine negro. Finalmente, se propone que el cine contribuye a caracterizar el mundo fisico de la noche con ayuda de ciertas espacialidades y las acciones de los personajes que en ellas intervienen.

With the bibliographic repertoire "Mexican women writers: police, black and criminal writers, a bibliographical account (1951-2023)", the origin, evolution and development of detective fiction published by women writers during the 20th and 21st centuries will be documented. Likewise, the information generated condenses the production of fifty female narrators who have cultivated the genre in its police, black and criminal variants. Organized into six categories (novel, short story, essay, theater, anthologies and internet), this bibliography is designed to systematize a database that can be consulted by traditional metadata: author, title, publisher, collection, year of publication, city, award..., items that support revealing figures that inform about the editorial production of the genre. Based on the documentation collected, it is postulated that María Elvira Bermúdez was the pioneer writer in creating detective fiction during the 1950s; Her work as a broadcaster, anthologist, bibliophile, novelist and short story writer, as well as a lawyer, roots her in the fabric of crime stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thesis of this work points to the relationship, and the tensions, between the noir genre and the gender question. To this end, our analysis focuses on two figures: an extratextual one (the author) and an intratextual one (the protagonist, in the role of researcher), which will be developed through a case study of the novel Las niñas perdidas (2011), by the Spanish writer Cristina Fallarás. In recent years, numerous Spanish-speaking women narrators have significantly increased the publication of noir novels, giving rise to an emerging phenomenon that has been duly analysed in the academic sphere, given its interest for literary criticism. Our research stems from an interest in exploring the role of the female crime investigator as a subject of knowledge, traditionally occupied by detectives, private investigators or male police officers. In works such as Fallarás's, we can trace the tensions derived from this mismatch, from the fact that she occupies a role created as a model for a male character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of FLAMME is the property of Universite de Limoges and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper attempts to analyze whether the music video of the song "Alright" by Kendrick Lamar reveals new conceptions of the urban occupation and power relations within Oakland. To conduct this reflection, the author uses a Fanonian analysis of selected scenes from the music video with police officers and an analysis of the aesthetics of Noir cinema present in the music video. The article's argument is that the image of the police helps construct a dichotomous imagery of dangerous places in a city: on one hand, for certain groups, the police can represent the fight against crime; on the other hand, for other groups it represents the danger personified. According to the author, the video not only criticizes police violence but also reclaims urban periphery as an alive space of Black culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fines de los 70, en pleno proceso de Transición democrática y cultural, Nazario desarrolla una obra de cómic adulto, Anarcoma, que introduce una heroína transgénero con una voz propia. Sirviéndose de la tradición literaria y cinematográfica del género negro, describe una Barcelona donde el colectivo LGBT+ ocupa y se reapropia de nuevos espacios. Sin embargo, el optimismo erótico desenfrenado de la historia no evita la violencia implícita y duradera del régimen y sus rémoras legales.

Philosophy and detective fiction have relied on a regime of truth in which the darkness of crime is brought into the light of knowledge through a rational process of reconstructing clues toward a telos of explanation. The oscillations of noir—a dynamic play of the differential forces of darkness and light—keep reading, writing, and thinking in play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through his Factory series and the 'black novel', Derek Raymond highlights that violence in crime fiction not only provides a shock factor, but parallels societal issues at the time of a work's publication and serves as a vessel for philosophical thought. This paper explores Raymond's background and writing style in an attempt to align his Factory series with the issues British society faced during the 1970s and 1980s, such as class wars, economic downturn, political power, and a rise in violence. Raymond's work, specifically, included the design of the disturbing acts taken place in I Was Dora Suarez, the fourth instalment in the Factory series. A qualitative study was conducted to address the shock value of the criminal acts in I Was Dora Suarez, and whether or not the author went too far with his graphic descriptions and overpowered the message he was attempting to achieve through his black novels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reads Howard Engel's novels Murder on Location (1982) and Dead and Buried (1990) through border theory and as a form of border theory. Engel uses a soft-boiled comic Canadian variant of the hard-boiled American detective novel to explore sites, situations, and symbols of national sovereignty and examine cross-border cultural and ecological flows across the 'soft border' between Canada and the United States along the Niagara frontier, where Engel sets his Benny Cooperman series (1980–2018). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The presence of dual and ambivalent characters (good/ bad) has always constituted the aesthetic and educational content in children’s fairy tales. Since the Nineteenth century, fairy tales and children’s books have had as an essential reference increasingly complex images and illustrations with vivid colors. This, together with the narration, has allowed the flourishing of a genre of fairy tale noir, whose explicitly pedagogical content is grafted into the plots not always “to happy ending” of fairy tales. The book by Heinrich Hoffmann, Struwwelpeter, and that by Ernst Theodor Hoffmann, Der Sandmann, which are at the heart of this essay, constituted a first, important example of this new kind of narrative. They have revealed, from a pedagogical-psychoanalytic perspective, the value of what Freud in a 1919 paper, Das Unheimliche, analyzed as a necessary manifestation of presence/absence (conscious and unconscious) in the phases of human growth.

Ironic detective is a relatively new genre in literature. Its development dates back to the middle of the twentieth century and continues up to the present days. The final crystallization of the genre is taking place in our time. The works of Polish author Joanna Chmielewska became one of the first examples of ironic detective stories. However, the French literature of the twentieth century also has notable representatives of the genre. The present article examines the peculiarities of the irony functioning in the detective genre, in the context of the work of the popular modern French writer Daniel Pennac. We distinguish irony as a means of comic and as a principle of work organization, which is inherent in the genre of ironic detective. Consideration of the ironic detective is impossible without a brief analysis of the detective development stages as a whole, therefore, the article also deals with the genesis of the detective genre from the classic to the French novel-noir. The emphasis will rest on the peculiarities of the ironic detective's development. Using D. Pennac's novel The Scapegoat as an example (the French edition is called Au bonheur des ogres, originally published in 1985), the features of the genre, alongside their manifestations at the content and formal level are illustrated. The article focuses on the fact that naturalistic details, scenes of cruelty, evil and chaos, caused by the consequences of the Second World War, are weakened due to ironic characteristics, stereotypes, as well as the very attitudes of the author and the narrator towards the surrounding world. The research proves that the analysed genre is an artistic form of a panoramic view of the society of the 80s with its false ideals and its consumerism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper attempts to critically examine Allan Moore's Watchmen in terms of its elements that could be utilised for critical power thinking and the critique of fanatic and/or apolitical self-proclaimed saviours of society. The first part of the paper attempts to read Rorschach through the prism of critical criminology, as he represents the novel's most distinct expression of revenge and retribution, which, eventually, is linked to fascist-like practices. The second part of the paper is dedicated to the reading of Veidt's macabre plan and his set of advice for self-care in terms of a twofold biopolitical strategy that entails both the thanatopolitical effect of killing millions for the sake of life itself and preaching the need for the latter's optimisation to achieve individual and collective happiness. In the end, Watchmen is a 'superhero neo-noir' critique to both worldviews, since its point of departure is the critique of superheroes overall, as 'nothing works' and therefore 'nothing ever ends' if the structural reasons behind unfairness and oppression remain untouched. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of this study is the influence of the traditions of German expressionism on modern cinema, primarily the horror genre. The relevance of this work is due to the need to study the genesis of modern trends in one of the most popular types of art and its popular genres in the context of cultural history in terms of allusions and reminiscences, traditions and innovation. In order to prove that the traditions of expressionism are clearly traced to this day and promise to be quite productive in the long run, as well as to trace the nature of their presence in the history of the film industry, in line with the culturological approach, the method of comparative historical and historical situational analysis, as well as content analysis was mainly used regarding cinematography of the period under consideration. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the very prism of the study and its object — the films of 2021–2022 were considered in terms of traditions of expressionist aesthetics; in addition, the article presents a slightly different view on the masterpieces that have become classics of the cinema of the 20th century. As a result, it was revealed that the expressionist concept of man and the world is strong in the artistic world of cinema art of this period. The methods of German filmmakers of the beginning of the previous century were continued in a somewhat modified form at the level of the play of light and shadow, framing, the figurative system itself (vampires, homunculi, ghosts), mechanistic acting, sinister paraphernalia, and deceitful details. The common denominator of foreign and domestic films of all the genres and subgenres considered in the article was the use of a special musical setting — music that originates from the new Viennese school (in other words, musical expressionism), which also confirms the theory put forward.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the literary and televisual production of Carlo Lucarelli, highlighting in particular how his works interweave actual and fictional events at different levels. On one side, we will analyse the way through which the Italian criminal history and crime news enter in his novels and Tv series, taking into special account the fictional worlds of Inspector Coliandro, Inspector Grazia Negro and Police Commissioner De Luca. On the other, we will focus on how Lucarelli employs the conventions of the true crime docudrama in order to narrate and fictionalise criminal events that actually happened. This transmedia approach highlights a peculiar feature of Lucarelli’s crime fiction, that is a particular use of metalepses: the author exploits his own ‘figure’ to break the limit between realty and fiction.

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This article proposes that although Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 is, like the 1982 Ridley Scott film to which it is a sequel, most obviously located within the genres of science fiction and neo-noir, it in fact engages extensively with the history of the Western genre. Villeneuve's film, I argue, is a crypto-Western, recuperating Western conventions within the aesthetic superstructure of other genres. Blade Runner 2049 thus exemplifies how even our most future-facing popular culture can exhibit ghostly traces of nostalgia for popular frontier mythologies. The film engages with the debt that the figure of the fictive detective owes to the dime novel cowboys of earlier literature, locating its central thematic discourses about the nature of (post)humanity in a long American tradition of narrative art that glorifies the 'rugged individualist'. Meanwhile, in the film's world, human over-exploitation of the environment has, ironically, made the wilderness conditions of the mythologised Western past possible once more. This does not, however, render Blade Runner 2049 a film incapable of imagining the future. Rather, I suggest, the film's future is plausible precisely because it reckons with the adhesiveness of the past, and little in the American past looms larger than the real-and-imagined old West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé : La Croix du Sud de Joseph Ngoué porte sur le conflit racial entre Noir et Blanc. L’une des facettes du conflit est axée sur la nomination de l’autre par chaque communauté raciale, où on assiste à divers procédés linguistiques de désignation de la race adverse, une diversité qui est le témoignage d’une stylisation du langage de la nomination. C’est à cet égard que le procès de la désignation fait observer le problème de l’objectivité de celle-ci, qui n’apparaît plus objective mais subjective. Ce qui a inspiré la problématique suivante : comment les structures linguistiques montrent-elles que la nomination de la race se déporte de l’objectivité à la subjectivité, autrement dit comment la nomination se départit de la dénotation pour se réinvestir en connotation ? Ces procédés linguistiques font-ils observer une stylisation du langage dans le processus de nomination ? Quelle image de l’être est ainsi délivrée de cette esthétisation de la nomination ? C’est au regard de cette esthétique que nous avons opté d’analyser ce langage en nous fondant sur la stylistique, en donnant une orientation sémasiologique à notre démarche. Il ressort de l’analyse que la désignation de la race se montre de prime abord objective, en s’axant sur une vue dénotative de la référence, mais cette objectivité se perd quand le sujet parlant connote la désignation en la colorant de sa subjectivité. C’est alors que la désignation se donne en objet de style, faisant lire la manière dont chaque race conçoit la race adverse et la désigne. Se perçoit que le Blanc regarde le Noir comme un pseudo être humain, un être veule, sans dignité ni valeur. Le Noir, par contre, conçoit le Blanc comme un négrophobe, cruel et sans empathie. La couleur de la peau renvoie à un état d’être. L’œuvre devient une axiologisation de la valeur de la race qu’incarne la peau. Le Blanc regarde la peau noire comme ignoble, connotant le Noir comme un être abâtardi. Le Noir trouve la peau blanche belle, un trompe-l’œil qui cache l’âme inhumaine qui caractérise cette race.

Focusing on The Believers (1987) and Angel Heart (1987), this article examines how occult crime is framed through the central male protagonists' fragmented subjectivity in the respective investigation narratives. Through close analysis of the films' shared cinematic languages of horror and neo-noir, I present how these texts are in direct dialogue with the 'Satanic Panic', the contemporary phenomenon of religious hysteria propagated by Reaganite conservatism and the New Christian Right. I argue that post-Vietnam masculine identity anxieties are intimately tied, and interrogated in these films, as part of a traumatic national history of white, patriarchal Satanic scapegoating and theocratic hegemony in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Este trabajo analiza el film de Carlos Hugo Christensen Si muero antes de despertar (1952) a partir de la disputa de dos modalidades: la modalidad policial y la del noir. La primera de ellas se vincula con la ley, el orden y las instituciones (familia, escuela, iglesia), mientras que la segunda lo hace en relación con los deseos sexuales prohibidos y la criminalidad. De manera complementaria, se analiza la configuración de diversas masculinidades, que subyacen a dichas modalidades, así como también las zonas de la ciudad y su división geográfica y moral: de un lado, el barrio “cordial”, que incluye la casa paterna y la escuela; del otro, el baldío, el lugar del deseo sexual perverso.

Résumé : L’allemand contient des mots et expressions construits sur la base du lexème Schwarz (noir). Ces signes étant généralement connotatifs, la présente étude vise à examiner leurs indices de connotation, puis les motivations qui sous-tendent leur existence dans cette langue. Pour ce faire, nous avons recours à l’approche linguistique nommée « sémantique lexicale ». En analysant ces unités lexicales, nous avons réalisé qu’elles révèlent deux réalités plus ou moins opposées. D’un côté, nous avons une minorité d’entre elles qui sont créées à partir d’un rapprochement réaliste entre le signifiant et le référent et celles-ci apparaissent sans implication péjorative ; d’ailleurs certaines présentent des perspectives sémantiques plutôt mélioratives. D’un autre côté, nous avons observé des mots et expressions dont les rapports des signifiants aux référents semblent très problématiques car ils ne présentent pas de véritables indices intralinguistiques servant à justifier leur lien. Cette seconde catégorie de signes fondés sur des motivations socio-historiques, psychosociologiques et culturelles nous a amené à appréhender une conception négative de la couleur noire. Dans ces mots et expressions, les références faites au noir traduisent l’idée de l’illégalité, la clandestinité, le malheur, le pessimisme, la peur, le péril.

Nowadays, native crime novel is a cultural phenomenon whose significance cannot be narrowed down only to entertainment. The variety of currents that can be observed, comes from writers inspired by the novels about "crime and punishment", by various aesthetics and stylistics. They also do not restrict themselves to presenting the crime in modern scenery, but they choose the historical background. The very act of creating a crime novel became one of the themes as well, which indicates a reflective attitude of writers towards the possibilities offered by literature. The present draft constitutes an attempt of systematising the phenomena characteristic for Polish literary creation, which portray the obscure world of crime.

I think that, in order to understand the processes of subjectivation of black people, it is necessary the listening in which we focus on processes of racialization. My point is that racism is structuring for black subjectivities. My hypothesis is that the validity of psychoanalysis as a tool to explain the suffering of black people is conditioned, on the one hand, to listening to factors, in Fanon’s terms, sociogenetic; and, on the other hand, to the understanding that the processes of subjectivation of black people are structurally crossed by racism. Considering this crossing, I propose a clinic I call implicated, in which an anti-racist listening starts to appear as a psychoanalytic technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an interdisciplinary study of Gérard Delteil's Les Écœurés, a 2019 novel that was marketed as a "le premier polar en Gilet Jaune." In this essay, we explore the generic tensions that arise when murder mystery intersects with socioeconomic criticism in our age of advanced capitalism. We argue that Les Écœurés functions differently when read through a sociological prism than it does as a noir or polar. We demonstrate that analysis of social media data shows that Delteil captures quite well and to a large extent reproduces the concerns of the Gilets Jaunes movement, while at the same time showcasing the dispiriting durability of a corrupt establishment. Second, on the level of character, we maintain that in presenting a drably failed bildungsroman, the novel undercuts the importance of any individual agency or élan. And third, we argue that on the level of genre, the text—by sidelining its own murder mystery—raises questions about the force and relevance of crime fiction as a potential agent of social change. Ultimately, we maintain that the very failures in and of Les Écœurés point metatextually to the novel's position as an artifact of the period and as embodiment of the Gilets Jaunes movement's likely fate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the manner in which the recent collection D.C. Noir sets out to illuminate the dark urban corners of the so-called “Capital of the World.” I will look at how the neighborhood-based short stories in this collection reveal the urban underbelly of the American nation’s capital, its seedy underworld, the dark side of domestic life and murkiness of family ties, the racialized practices and institutionalized corruption plaguing the great American city. I argue that, through the collective voices of its residents, these stories offer precious insights into life as lived in the various corners of Washington, D.C., and bring to the fore a world populated not only by outcasts and the disenfranchised, but also by law enforcement officers, politicians, and high-profile representatives, similarly acting under the constraints of a dysfunctional city.

This essay focuses on the shift in Armand's œuvre, from consisting primarily of poetry and shorter prose, to longer forms of experimental fiction. These longer forms often mediate through a novelistic, noir genre frame, whilst consistently engaging with such themes as surveillance, the limits of realism, and the phenomenology of place. Jack de Highden's article confronts Armandian alienism, with special emphasis on the anti-novel Cairo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a reading of Steve Erickson’s Zeroville (2007) as a post-noir mystery novel in which the ‘cineautistic’ detective Vikar, haunted by the ghosts of his Hollywood myths, brings out the cultural meaning behind the fatal date 1969. Going beyond the tropes of the Hollywood Novel, as a solitary detective who tries to relate to the fragmented space that surrounds him, Vikar will shed some light not so much on the industry’s dehumanizing capabilities—which the classic Hollywood novels aimed to uncover—but on the force of the medium and its conventions. Vikar’s great skills as a film editor will piece together the clues in order to solve a metaphysical cinematic mystery and to confront the cultural transition represented by the New Hollywood and television. As Zeroville’s storyworld proves to be rooted in film experience, this essay also aims to detect the cinematic references and to analyze their meaning in relation to the novel’s discourse on medium.