Noir A Novel

by Coover, Robert

• ISBN13: 9781590202944
• ISBN10: 1590202945
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-03-04
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams

Summary

With impeccable skill, Robert Coover, one of America’s pioneering postmodernists, has turned the classic detective story inside-out. Here Coover is at the top of his form; and Noir is a true page-turner—wry, absurd, and desolate. You are Philip M. Noir, Private Investigator. A mysterious young widow hires you to find her husband’s killer—if he was killed. Then your client is killed and her body disappears—if she was your client. Your search for clues takes you through all levels of the city, from classy lounges to lowlife dives, from jazz bars to a rich sex kitten’s bedroom, from yachts to the morgue. The Case of the Vanishing Black Widow” unfolds over five days aboveground and three or four in smugglers’ tunnels, though flashback and anecdote, and expands time into something much larger. You don’t always get the joke, though most people think what’s happening is pretty funny. 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

Author Biography

Robert Coover teaches at Brown University. He is the author of many novels, short story collections, and plays. He lives in London and in Providence, Rhode Island.