Several years ago I was asked to contribute a story to an anthology called New Orleans Noir, which was part of the wonderful series of city-based anthologies produced by Akashic Books. This local New Orleans version was being edited by the sublime, award-winning mystery writer Julie Smith. It was an extraordinary opportunity—the other contributors included mystery writers I’d long admired, like Julie herself, Laura Lippman, Eric Overmyer, Ace Atkins, Barbara Hambly, and Chris Wiltz, among others—but it also presented me with a conundrum: What is noir, exactly? Because, you see, that was the question Julie gave us all as our assignment—to come up with our own definition of noir, and then write a short story illustrating that definition.
I thought about it for a very long time before I started writing my story.
I realized that, for me, noir was “the endless nightmare”; in other words, a story in which our hero makes a wrong decision—which leads to an endless nightmare of consequences and other choices that must be made—only with each progressive choice the options are bad and worse. An endless nightmare that continues to spiral downward, as the main character slowly loses their moral compass and continues downward, ever downward, until they’ve lost their sense of humanity. And so, my story “Annunciation Shotgun” was born. The story itself was inspired by a friend about whom I once joked, “the great thing about so-and-so is you can call him and say ‘I’ve just killed someone’ and he’ll answer, without missing a beat, ‘Well, the first thing we have to do is get rid of the body.’”
Always a good trait for a friend to have, don’t you think?
When the book was released, I did signings and readings with a number of the other contributors—and the question always came up. “What is noir?” we would be asked, and I would listen, fascinated and humbled by the brilliant definitions my fellow contributors had come up with. I was always rather embarrassed when it was my turn to define noir for the audience.
But all the varied definitions also made me think about the term, and the books and films categorized by it—and the influence they had on me as a writer.
I don’t remember which noir film I watched first, but I have to say my absolute favorite is Double Indemnity. When I watched it for the first time as the afternoon movie, I only knew Fred MacMurray as the perfect father on My Three Sons or from his Disney “Flubber” movies. I was stunned to see MacMurray embody the larcenous insurance agent perfectly, with his snide smirk and wise-ass attitude, figuring out how to defraud the company he worked for—and what’s a little murder for profit between lovers? The movie profoundly affected me…after that, the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries I had previously enjoyed reading paled a little bit in comparison. It was the first film I can remember evoking so profound a reaction in me, and from that point on, I watched any film I could that had “noir” in the description.
I was a teenager when I discovered, with enormous joy, that Double Indemnity had also been a book—and the same author had also written The Postman Always Rings Twice and Mildred Pierce. For some reason, my local library didn’t have the books—but a secondhand bookstore did. For about a dollar, I bought almost the entire James M. Cain library. I spent a weekend reading them—they were all, alas, rather on the short side—but Cain’s spare prose and cynical characters opened up a whole new world to a mystery-loving teenager who, at that point, had only read Agatha Christie.
Cain inevitably led to other authors who became heroes of mine—John D. MacDonald, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett—and I like to claim all four of these men as influences on my own mystery writing. And while I write the humorous Scotty Bradley series, I like to think my other series is more noir.
Ironically, in 2010 Julie Smith got me yet another gig writing noir—only this time, it was a radio play. I had never written a radio play before (neither had she), and it was a lot of fun for the two of us. Her contribution to this anthology, “Private Chick,” and my own (“Spin Cycle”) are adaptations of our radio plays into short stories.
When Bold Strokes Books conceived of doing a gay and lesbian noir anthology, to be co-edited by me and my dear friend J. M. Redmann, I didn’t have to be asked twice.
We eventually decided to split the book into two—a gay noir and a lesbian noir. We selected a group of writers—some of them mystery writers, some of them new writers, some of them better known for writing outside of the crime genre—and asked them the very same question Julie Smith asked me five years ago: “How do you define noir? And please, write a story illustrating that definition.”
I cannot tell you how pleased I am with the results.
I hope you will be, too.
Now kick back, dim the lights, and pour yourself a nice, stiff cocktail.
And join me on the dark side.
Greg Herren
New Orleans, 2011