Coming this Wednesday

Just an FYI for those of you who don't haunt your comics store every Wednesday. Marvel Comics continues its run of giving some of today's hottest crime writers the keys to its characters with Punisher Max Special: Little Black Book. The story is by Victor Gischler, author of Gun Monkeys and The Pistol Poets. I have no idea what it is about but I love Gischler so I'll be buying a copy. On top of this, Duane Swierczynski is currently writing Cable--Marvel smartly put an ad for it in the back of his (great) new book Severance Package. And Charlie Huston (A Dangerous Man, Six Bad Things) scripted the first issues of the recent Moon Knight relaunch. I'm immune to most of Marvel's stuff, but seeing these names on covers is making me pause when walking through the comics store on Wednesdays. Very smart moves by their editorial staff. 

200 Noirs

Given Paul's recent post about The Big Book of Pulps and our groups general love of noir, I thought y'all might find this interesting.

200 Noirs

Compiled by Allan Guthrie

A couple of years back I was asked to provide a list of my top 100 noir novels for the now sadly defunct magazine, Bullet. Recently I've had a few requests to ask if I would consider republishing the list, so I dug it out and had another look. I was horrified by some of the omissions, but my excuse is that 100 just isn’t nearly enough.

So I've taken this opportunity to add another 100 to the original list. And I've cut the list off at 1997 or there'd be 100 more.
Continued...

There were two surprising things about the list. The first was how many books I hadn't read. Some 32 of the 200 listed. The second was the noticeable absence of Raymond Chandler. How do you compile a list of 200 noirs with no Chandler?

While I don't always agree with Guthrie's assessment (L.A. Confidential? His earlier noir Black Dahlia is a much better book), and even with the Chandler oversight, Guthrie compiled an excellent list that is worthy of discussion. And a great resource for future reading.

(Thanks to Bill Crider for the link)