Thu 1 Jul 2010
A Review by Tina Karelson: MARCUS SAKEY – The Blade Itself.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[4] Comments
MARCUS SAKEY – The Blade Itself. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover: January 2007; reprint paperback, November 2007.
Danny, a former small time criminal, has lived as a “civilian” for years, since a pawn-shop burglary went horribly wrong. Now his former partner Evan — the man who made things go horribly wrong — is out of prison and has come looking for Danny.
The latter starts to make all the wrong decisions, putting himself and his longtime love into jeopardy, even as he rationalizes every decision he makes as the right one to get Evan out of his life. His choices start to become more and more like choices his former, criminal self would have made.
In this sense, though not in every sense, The Blade Itself (the title is from Homer) is a noir novel. The noir quality is also supported by the vivid Chicago setting and unflinching descriptions of the unglamorous world of small-time criminals, young men living “the life” because they don’t see the possibility or the point of anything else.
I won this book playing trivia at one mystery convention or another, but it’s worth paying for. Recommended.
July 1st, 2010 at 9:01 pm
Two books by the same author, both unknown to me. One favorable, the other noticeably less so. What to do?
Assuming that “neo-noir” is your thing at all, perhaps you do the same as I. Which is to say, proceed carefully: perhaps reading the first chapter while standing in Barnes & Noble, or do as Walter suggests in his review just previous.
Take out your library card and use it.
— Steve
July 1st, 2010 at 10:03 pm
This is definitely a library moment — I’ll check around and see if there is somewhere you can download a sample chapter even before doing that.
I’m ambivalent about neo noir. Some is very good, some is very bad, and a good deal merely derivative rehashes of better Gold Medal and Dell originals you’d be better off reading.
Too much neo noir is a bit flat for my taste. Rather than reflecting a true noir sensibility it seems to reflect a nostalgia for real noir. Even when the writer may be technically better than some of the originals they too often lack the emotional core that marks the real thing.
Of all the sub genres dealt with here this is the one that most needs to reflect the experience and the nature of the writer. You have to live it or at least observe it to write it — you can’t just have read about it. Walter obviously didn’t feel this one met that goal while Tina liked the one she read on its own terms.
As you say, this is a good time to break out the old library card.
July 1st, 2010 at 11:35 pm
David
I love your description of much of neo-noir as being a “nostalgia for real noir.”
Perfect!
For some reason, and I haven’t yet been able to put my finger on exactly why, but I think the best of the current neo-noir writers is female, Megan Abbott.
I’ll see if I can’t locate my review of her first book and post it here soon.
— Steve
July 2nd, 2010 at 12:17 am
For me the best neo noir voices are British and translations of European (and even a few Japanese)voices. The best of them reflect that real noir voice and not just an imitation of it.
Some of the neo noir writers are better writers than their predecessors — technically anyway — but they are often trying to recreate something rather than writing naturally, and noir has always seemed to me the most personal of genres.
Even the noir writers who were relatively normal (as normal as any writer) seemed to have a fine eye for societies dark corners. Much of neo noir (by no means all or even the majority of it) seems to reflect the writers reading or film viewing and not a genuine world view.
John Gardner, the American one, had a term for his kind of writing — disPolyanna — a false or unearned dark world view, which he contrasted with the forced bonhomme of much early 20th century popular fiction — often called the Polyanna school.
I’m not suggesting you need to be unhappy to write noir fiction — only that you need to have an eye for the noir sensibility, not just have seen a few movies and read a few books.