Urban Waite: Sometimes the Wolf

I really liked Urban Waite's first novel, The Terror of Living. It's a tough crime novel, a bit reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy, but standing still very much on its own. I haven't read Waite's second novel, The Carrion of Birds, but I happened to pick up his third novel, Sometimes the Wolf, not long ago, and now I decided to read it.

I don't know what happened. The book started out strong and well and I got the hang of it. The story about a bad cop getting out of prison possibly looking for the loot of 200,000 dollars and his son working as a sheriff in a small town felt interesting.  Then somewhere on page 150 or so I realized I didn't anymore know what was going on and what the persons were after. There had been too many days when I'd only been able to read only a few pages, and that started to show. I pushed through, since the book was well-written, but even in the end I couldn't really tell what had happened between. The ending was strong, though.

I really wanted to like this. Hell, I would've liked to know what happened in the book! I'm sure it's totally my own fault - it's been really hectic around here for some time now, and I've also done some travelling, which is never good for reading. As I said, the start of the book was really strong with interesting characters and a good plotline.

Nevertheless, next I'll pick up Waite's The Carrion of Birds. It was translated in Finnish, as was The Terror of Living, but I believe Sometimes the Wolf won't be, which is a pity.

What did I say about noir in Hollywood in the 2010s?

Remember what I said about new noir films in Hollywood? See my post on Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners here.

I stumbled on a post at Hardboiled Wonderland listing the best crime films of the last year. Seems there are more noir or at least noirish crime films out there than I first realized. I hated The Counselor, but Jedidiah Ayres writes interestingly on other films he mentions. (Of course not all the films are Hollywood, but nevertheless.)

Denis Villeneuve: Prisoners

I just saw this in a movie theater (a press screening) and I was totally overwhelmed! What a movie!

The story about two missing kids and their families going through a heart-breaking and violent tragedy might play out sentimental and simplistic, but Denis Villeneuve, in his first Hollywood outing, keeps things both fragile and rough at the same time. You can feel the tension in the pictures, in the actors' movements, in the saddening Pennsylvania milieu the film takes place in... Although there are some things that were done less or more slackly, I'll give this five stars out of five.

It must've started out with Winter's Bone. There have been lots of recent interesting and touching films that have crimes in them, but are not crime films per se: Place Beyond the Pines, Paperboy, Mud, Take Shelter, End of Watch... There are also Andrew Dominik's admirable Killing Them Softly and William Friedkin's sick but funny Killer Joe, not to mention Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive and Only God Forgives and Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers.

Noir thrives in Hollywood.

Rural Noir: A Visual Essay

Brian Lindenmuth, the fiction editor of Spinetingler Mag, has put up another great Pinterest board, this time on rural noir. Take a look here.

And here's Lindenmuth's earlier visual essay on modern noir.