Noir - Softcover

Robert Coover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0715641689 ISBN 13: 9780715641682

Publisher: Gerald Duckworth & Company, 2011

Synopsis

With impeccable skill, Robert Coover, one of America's pioneering postmodernists, has taken the classic genre of the noir detective story and turned it inside-out. Here, Coover is at the top of his form, and Noir is a true page-turner - wry, absurd, and desolate. You are Philip M. Noir, Private Investigator. A mysterious young widow hires you to find her husband's killer. If he was killed. Then your client is killed and her body disappears. If it was your client. Your search for clues takes you through all levels of the city, from classy lounges to lowlife dives, from jazz bars to a rich sex kitten's bedroom, from yachts to the morgue. 'The Case of the Vanishing Black Widow' unfolds over five days above ground and three or four in smugglers' tunnels, though flashback and anecdote, and expands time into something much larger. You don't always get the joke, though most people think what's happening to you is pretty funny.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Coover teaches at Brown University, and he lives in London and Providence, Rhode Island. He is the author of many plays, novels and short story collections, including The Origin of the Brunists, The Universal Baseball Association, Inc, Pricksongs and Descants, The Public Burning, Gerald's Party, Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears?, Pinocchio in Venice, John's Wife, Briar Rose and Ghost Town. His work has won the William Faulkner Award and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Metafiction lustily mates with hard-boiled mystery in this hilarious homage to Raymond Chandler and company. A sexy widow with plenty to hide hires private eye Philip M. Noir to look into her husband's mysterious death. Noir slips on his gumshoes and lacy underwear and hits the mean streets, where he encounters the Creep, Fingers, Rats, Snark, and an elusive fat man named Fat Agnes. He even meets people who live in a different world. It was called daytime. Prolific postmodernist Coover (The Public Burning) adds his dazzling two bits to the deconstructionist turf Paul Auster prowled in the New York Trilogy. There's a mystery here, but you're a street dick, not a metaphysician, the second-person narrative explains. Like Thomas Pynchon in 2009's Inherent Vice, Coover pops off laughs on every page: Her brother is in it somewhere and he is said also to be wearing women's underpants and a bra.... Is he your double? No, you don't have a bra. And don't forget, Chandler was really funny, too. (Apr.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Gerald Duckworth & Company
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0715641689
• ISBN 13: 9780715641682
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192