Guy Noir

One of my fears about writing a detective fiction is that I might end up sounding like Guy Noir.  You know who Guy Noir is, right?  He’s the spoofy, campy detective  that Garrison Keilor uses on his show, Lake Wobegone.  His speech is more hardboiled than a five minute egg cooked an hour in a nuclear reactor.  It is so over the top that it becomes a parody of itself.  When he speaks, there is dramatic music that punctuates each statement, like one of those old-timey radio shows:  TATATA!!!!!!!!!

Here is the voice-over that introduces most of these sketches:  “A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, but on the 12th floor of the Acme Building, one man is still trying to find the answers to life’s persistent questions — Guy Noir, Private Eye.”  It only gets sillier from there.

Guy Noir

I didn’t start out consciously writing this way.  But this is the kind of style I naturally gravitate towards.  I’m a bit melodramatic and hardboiled and silly.  It can get a little excessive, no?

The thing is:  detective fiction already is a parody of itself.  It’s so self-aware of its own conventions.  Robert Crais has an entire chapter in Lullaby Town in which the narrator keeps saying “Take that Mario Puzo” and “Take that Dashiell Hammet” whenever the narrator lets out a hardboiled zinger.  So, there’s already this over-the-top quality of speech.

Can I just relax and run with it?  Am I a wussy because I don’t know how far I can take it?  I guess restraint isn’t one of the hallmarks of great detective fiction.  If I wanted understatement, I should write haiku.  Here’s an idea:  a detective fiction in haiku:

Murder Weapon Found

Body Broken Cut in Bits

Who dunnit?  Dunno.

6 thoughts on “Guy Noir

    • That’s an awesome haiku with a great pun in the last line! It has that quality that all good haiku has: both highly wrought and, simultaneously, like you just tossed it off without a second thought. Why don’t you string a whole bunch of these haiku together and make a murder mystery senryu?

    • Well, this means a lot, coming from a talented writer like you, with an MFA from a super-prestigious place and a halo of brilliance all around. I am humbled that you can perceive my amazing-ness.

  1. Even Poe and Conan Doyle were over the top, although in a different way.

    Would be kind of hilarious to have an L.A. noir written in the style of Poe, come to think of it . . . . (Not that I’m recommending you try it.)

    • Poe is one of my idols. I spent much of my high school years trying to emulate the Poe swagger. Get this: Poe was a raging alcoholic…just like my narrator! Kismet?

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