Noir | part one
Category: Film Noir
“A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.”
You’ll find the subsequent story here.
“It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.” (Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely)
“That most recalcitrant of all witnesses…”
You’ll find the previous story here.
The quote is from a description of the obstacles faced by the hard boiled detective, he encounters “blocking figures of all kinds, from the professional criminals and their hit men to corrupt cops, siren women, and that most recalcitrant of all witnesses, a dead man” (Dennis Porter, The Pursuit of Crime. Art and Ideology in Detective Fiction, 1981). This is also my take for the Weekly Photo Challenge, if a somewhat ironic one. After all, “murder must advertise.”
Down These Mean Streets a Man Must Go
The little guy looked like someone I knew. Someone I knew from the times when most everything I had to do was reading detective stories, and writing about them. And figuring out how we all know what detectives look like without ever having seen one (it’s not the most public or popular occupation in Germany; detectives are shabby people in department stores waiting to snatch the occasional sock thief).
Well, the hat and the coat rang a bell, and I suspected there must be a gun, too. As chance would have it, there was also a very intriguing project suggestion at 100% Stuck in Plastic: Come up with three toy photographs in a narrative sequence, or, as ME2 put it: “3 images. An introduction, a cliffhanger, and an ending.” As things go, this ending may not necessarily be where the whole story ends…
Ah, and just one more thing: I set up a page where you will be able to see the story unfold (and probably change): Down These Mean Streets a Man Must Go.
empire of lights 