Hard-Boiled Prose
Denise Hamilton and company bring crime up to date with ‘Los Angeles Noir’
By Carl Kozlowski 04/12/2007
As the famous line goes, there are a million stories in the naked city, and Denise Hamilton has heard plenty of them. First as a longtime reporter at the Los Angeles Times and now in her current career as a best-selling and critically acclaimed novelist, Hamilton has taken a rich array of stories from the streets and turned them into riveting tales for readers of fact and fiction alike.
Now she's taken on an assignment that sheds even more light on the dark side of Los Angeles, as the editor of the new crime-fiction collection “Los Angeles Noir.” Featuring dark stories from 17 diverse writers, including top names ranging from Janet Fitch to Michael Connelly and Neal Pollack to Robert Ferrigno, the book not only offers an array of enticing stories but also serves as an intriguing travelogue of LA's neighborhoods and side cities.
“I got brought into it by Akashic Books, a small, edgy, independent publisher whose motto is ‘reverse gentrification of the literary world,'” explains Hamilton. “They started with ‘Brooklyn Noir,' and have gone on through ‘Dublin Noir,' ‘San Francisco Noir' and a bunch of others, and they decided it was time for ‘LA Noir.' I thought, ‘Hasn't this been done before?' because LA is the capital of all things noir, from books by Raymond Chandler and James Cain to films like ‘Double Indemnity.'”
The mission for Hamilton was to select writers she thought could add vibrancy to a classic and often time-worn genre, and to have them adapt the hardboiled style of the older stories to modern settings. Her own stories had long been considered modern noir, so she accepted the challenge with relish.
“LA is so rich for this sort of book, because you've got the First World butting up against the Third World, and immigrants from 100 other countries bringing their cultures here. Hollywood is as strong as ever so people still come to pursue dreams of stardom. The disparity of rich and poor has never been greater, and when you have a disparity like that, you have desperation and people dreaming and hoping for the big break — and sometimes that leads people to do things they shouldn't,” says Hamilton. “Also, there's way more crime now than ever. Everyone's trying to make it, to scramble to the top, and not everyone's going to make it, and bodies [are] dropping along the way.”
“Los Angeles Noir” takes readers through a host of interesting settings, with Hamilton setting her own story in San Marino, Irwindale and the Angeles National Forest. Others wind through downtown LA and Korea-town all the way to Mulholland Drive, the Hollywood Hills and the beach. Hamilton's story is the one set closest to Pasadena; she also included a story by Pasadena-based writer Naomi Hirahara.
But perhaps the most offbeat inclusion is that of Neal Pollack, the humor writer and popular blogger who was named Rolling Stone's “Hot Writer of 2000.” While Pollack is known for funny tales of his own life and the world around him (see “Un-split personality” on page 20), he had previously been tapped to be editor of Akashic's “Chicago Noir” collection and proved to have a handle on a uniquely desperate corner of LA living: the casinos of Commerce.
“With Pollack, we met halfway down the dark alley, and he's got this really interesting story in a gambling center with Russian mobsters. Commerce is really in this forgotten southeast quadrant of LA County, and unless you go to those casinos to gamble, you don't really know anything about it,” says Hamilton. “And with Russian gangsters, how much more noir can you get?”
Hamilton is also pleased to include a story by veteran Los Angeles Times reporter and columnist Patt Morrison, who shares Hamilton's ability to transform harsh realities into riveting reading. Working with her former colleague sparked Hamilton's memories of her own leap into fiction writing.
“I had been tired of daily journalism's ‘who-what-where-when-why-and-goodbye.' People would tell me amazing stories of their lives and success despite incredible odds, harrowing escapes from other countries, and I'd have to put it in a 12-inch story,” recalls Hamilton. “I had all this extra material, stories, characters and voices I heard and was itching to write them in a different way. I joined a writing group where I was living in Silver Lake, and that's where I created a character who was a reporter just like me. I wanted to make LA a real character. I wanted to write about east of La Brea, the Eastside, Silver Lake and the San Gabriel Valley because I was working for the Times covering SGV. The stories are really very much ripped out of headlines, very much out of being a reporter.”
And she's got a million of 'em.
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT