A new entry in the pantheon of noir from Michael Amedeo

 

HALLIE EPHRON: Some of us began our enchantment with crime novels the more genteel way with Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. Others were hooked by the likes of Dashiell Hammett and George V. Higgins.

Today we’re happy to welcome Michael Amedeo to talk about his debut mystery novel, Past Tense (Level Best Books).

Today Michael ponders whether his hardboiled private dick, Matt Moulton, might find a place among the classics of noir.

Michael Amedeo: Would Matt Moulton bum unfiltered cigarettes from them or kill bottles of bourbon in their company in creative eternity?

These ideas bled my mind when I wrote that first novel, after decades of writing freelance on the arts. But excess drinking didn’t create my worry, as much as I love the “Sweet Smell of Success” martinis from Eddie Muller’s “Noir Bar” book.
The real reason: “Past Tense” not only lurks within the hardboiled genre, but it also threatens to reinvent it, and that may represent a crime to some fans. It’s the literature they grew up with—and the one that birthed film noir.

Like future books in my series, “Past Tense” tells of a private detective in the 1940’s/50’s who risks too much, pokes too far, and antagonizes too many. But the book also becomes a noir that deals with issues such as race, despite taking place when pop culture largely ignored it, or hardboiled literature and film noir certainly did.

The story unfolds in black and white: Moulton’s a tough, cynical white dick who’s carrying on an affair with a smart, beautiful black femme fatale who works for San Francisco’s corrupt police. Their noir romance is torrid, but that promises little in an America uncomfortable with race. After all, it’s only 1949. Only!

She—Gina—gives Moulton information that could help him not only solve his cases but also expose an assassin ring that includes the police and the mayor. Characters of color rarely played significant roles in classic-era hardboiled literature or film noir—but that changes here.

Moulton knows assassination—he served as a hitman for the U.S. Army in occupied France, and that memory still shames him. Sneaking around as an assassin didn’t seem heroic. He was antiwar before it became hip.

His past as a hitman haunts him even more when he gathers that his latest client—an amnesiac—may have been an assassin for the San Francisco ring.

“Past Tense” gives today’s readers/viewers greater access to the era’s hardboiled noir fatalism by intensifying the combined genres, putting a black woman at the plot center, making it seem more relatable—retro but real. It dwells in the past and finds a home in the present. It lives in San Francisco, the birthplace of hardboiled literature and the breeding ground for noir.

Many hardboiled stories inspired the writing of “Past Tense,” but none more so than Dashiell Hammett’s stylishly carefree, black and bleak “The Maltese Falcon,” featuring the coolest private dick in creative eternity, Sam Spade (especially as played by Bogart).

Film noir sparked “Past Tense,” too. Hollywood made several ambitious efforts to revive noir, most notably with the 30’s-set “Chinatown” (1974), directed by Roman Polanski. Private dick J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) practically got lost in the LA dark dealing with such issues as city water corruption and founding-family incest.

And the noir revivals kept coming, especially later from director Quentin Tarantino’s films.

Now that “Past Tense” has taken a hardboiled shot at reviving the private dick, could film noir be next? If Moulton and Gina could be compelling together in the book, how about on the screen—in glorious black and white?

HALLIE: Well I’m quite certain that NOIR isn’t dead though maybe there's a new generation of noir heroes that could be termed nouveau noir. And why not shake up the genre conventions with a male AND female lead, set it in San Francisco, and season it with a bit of romance?

When you look at a book (or movie) labeled “noir” or "hardboiled," what kind of protagonist do you expect to find?