Noir - by Robert Coover (Paperback)

About the Book

With impeccable skill, Coover, one of America's pioneering postmodernists, has turned the classic detective story inside-out. "Noir" is a true page-turner--wry, absurd, and desolate.

Book Synopsis

In Noir, the legendary master of postmodernism, Robert Coover, takes the hardboiled detective novel and turns it inside out, giving readers a hallucinatory homage to the Dark City.

Meet Philip M. Noir, a private eye who wanders through a cityscape of eternal rain, flickering neon, and endless dead ends. He is on a case-something about a widow, a corpse, and a mystery that seems to dissolve the moment he nears the truth. But in Coover's hands, the shadows don't just hide secrets; they shift the walls of reality.

As Noir navigates a labyrinth of femme fatales, crooked cops, and jazz-soaked dives, the tropes of the classic 1940s "Black Mask" era are stripped bare and reassembled into a surreal, rhythmic fever dream. It is a story where the mystery isn't just "whodunit," but whether the world itself-and the man investigating it-actually exists.

"Coover is one of our most playful and daring writers... a master of the linguistic funhouse." - New York Times

Why You'll Love It:

• Literary Craft: Experience the virtuosic prose of a Pen/Faulkner Award winner and a titan of American letters.
• Genre-Bending: A brilliant subversion of the Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett tradition.
• Atmospheric Immersion: Perfect for readers who love the stylized, rain-slicked aesthetics of Blade Runner or The Big Sleep.
• Experimental Mystery: A challenging, rewarding puzzle for fans of Thomas Pynchon and Paul Auster.

Step into the rain. The case is open, but the exit is nowhere to be found.

Review Quotes

"As his dazzling career continues to demonstrate, Mr. Coover is a one-man Big Bang of exploding creative force."-"The New York Times"
"At age 75, Coover is still a brilliant mythmaker, a potty-mouthed Svengali, and an evil technician of metaphors. He is among our language's most important inventors." -Ben Marcus
"Just like Thomas Pynchon's "Inherent Vice" last year, we are looking forward to this experimental re-write of the pulpy genre."-Jason Boog, Galleycat
"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." - "Publishers Weekly," STARRED Review
"The whole book is a bruise, punctuated by dead bodies, and it smarts. You wouldn't have wanted it any other way...You see that now, here, in Coover's shady strut through the 'damp, dark night.' Just as you saw it then, in Chandler and Hammett and Cain." -- "Miami Sun Post"
"It's a great little book from him-lots of donuts and cross-dressing and satirizing/investigating/homaging the noir genre (easy to satirize, difficult to satirize "well"), this time in the second person, a weird but inspired choice that works really, really well." -- " Quarterly Conversation"
"Robert Coover has made a name for himself writing fiction that treads hard and fast on the rules. "Noir" is no exception. It takes the motifs of the private eye novel and tips them on their sides...Coover cleverly manipulates the traditions of detective fiction and uses verbal wit to tell this challenging urban fairy tale. Engaging and starkly noir...a delightful exercise in dark humor." -- "The Strand Magazine"
"The cinematic quality of this, with its layers of film metaphor, is no mere po-mo trope applied for its own sake. Film noir is about storytelling and so is this novel...Coover has always believed that narrative, however fractured, must still entertain. "Noir" will entertain some, as it did me, and irritate others who either don't see, or care for, the joke." -- "PopMatters"
"The great Robert Coover turns in another cutting-edge novel... Existing somewhere between surrealism and Oulipo fiction, "Noir" examines the formal limits of the genre... any new Coover novel is an occasion to celebrate." -- "CrimeTime Blog"
"[Coover's] use of a deliberately self-conscious, yet strangely endearing, second-person narration, draws you in so close you might take all the finely calibrated jokes personally...Rendered in a tone full of deadpan humor and crepuscular musings, Noir has a lot to admire...Coover [is] one of a dying breed of virtuosic stylists." -- "Brooklyn Rail"
"With perhaps the wildest final twist of the year to aptly climax the insanity, fans who relish a satirical sleuthing spin will appreciate the escapades of Robert Coover's zany antihero Philip M. Noir with the M being a family thing." -- Harriet Klausner, Mystery Gazette Blog
""Noir" is very, very good...Coover's enthralling writing, great humor, and boundless creativity make for a really fun read..."Noir" is a fireworks display of great writing...If you read "Noir" only for the prose, you won't be disappointed...What starts as a straightforward detective novel takes a mind-bending turn past reality, into surreality and irreality..."Noir"'s greatest strength is that it offers a treat, without fail, on every single page-from each new entry in the baroque cast of characters to the dynamite short shorts wrapped in loops of the narrative, and of course (most of all) the ever-present humor." -- Chamber 4 Blog
"Robert Coover delves into absurdist noir territory with his newest novel. A comical hard-boiled narrative, "Noir" nods to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett with a postmodern, metaphysical twist...BEST FOR: Amateur sleuths and intellectually-inclined mystery buffs." -- "Florida International"

About the Author

Robert Coover is widely regarded as one of America's most influential living writers, author of some fifteen groundbreaking books of fiction, including "Pricksongs & Descants, The Public Burning, " and most recently "Ghost Town." Coover has for the past decade been teaching experimental courses in hypertext and multimedia narrative at Brown University. His 1992 essay on hypertext in the "New York Times Book Review," "The End of Books," galvanized electronic literature fans around the world.