Jim Nisbet at his "Wildest and Weirdest!"

Jim Nisbet's Windward Passage continues to received extraordinary review attention from all over the globe. Here's a new one, written by book critic Woody Haut for Crime Time, a terrific website from the International Association of Crime Writers:

"Jim Nisbet, author of The Damned Don't Die, Lethal Injection, Prelude to a Scream, Death Puppet and Price of the Ticket has long been one of my favorite noirists. In Windward Passage, his tenth book, he pulls out all the stops, combining his long-standing noir sensibilities with an off-the-wall post-modern disposition and cultural critique. Pacey, but filled with enough tropes to keep the most hardcore Jim Thompsonite happy- at least those partial to the final section of The Getaway or the surrealism of Savage Night- Windward Passage centres on a ship that sinks in the Caribbean, its captain chained to the mast. A logbook, a partially written novel, a brick of cocaine and the DNA of a President are all that remain. The appropriately named dead sailor's sister, Tipsy lives in San Francisco, where she hangs out at bars with her gay friend Quentin. That is until she runs into Red, Tipsy's brother's old employer.

Scrambling genres and voices, Windward Passage flits around geographically as well as linguistically, high-tailing it from San Francisco to the Caribbean and back again, dove-tailing from fast-talking, never-less-than-witty dialogue to tangential asides, reportage, paradoxical quips and a novel within a novel. With his ear to the ground, Nesbit not only updates the traditional noir narrative, combining it with a sea adventure story, conundrums, a dash of cyberpunk, and a sprinkling of literary concerns (including the likes of Tom Raworth, Paustovsky and Leonard Clark's The Rivers Ran East). From a prologue that will leave you scratching your head for at least a hundred pages, Windward Passage sometimes reads like a hardboiled Saragossa Manuscript, and bound to appeal to anyone looking beyond the confines of the genre. Still, I remember thinking while reading the novel that this is the sort of book we're told doesn't get published these days. So hat's off not only to Nisbet, but to Overlook Press. Because this is Nisbet at his wildest and weirdest. I'm still not sure what it all adds up to, other than an entertaining, insightful and highly recommended adventure."

More Praise for Robert Coover's NOIR

Christopher Guerin takes a look at Robert Coover's new novel Noir in Pop Matters: "The author of 23 works of fiction, Robert Coover is perhaps most famous, or infamous, for his hilarious satire on Richard Nixon and the Rosenberg Trials, The Public Burning, in which Nixon is, shall we say, abused by the mythical Uncle Sam.

In his 1968 novel The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., Coover proved himself a champion of the then-emerging postmodernist movement with a tale of a man who’s invented a form of baseball in which thrown dice determine every action. What appears to be a study of obsession and genius morphs into an ending so random and inscrutable that when I asked an English professor specializing in contemporary fiction what it all meant, he replied, “Damned if I know!”

Since then, Coover has applied his po-mo tactics to politics (casting the Cat in the Hat as a presidential candidate, and Nixon as Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears), sex and cinema (the story, “You Must Remember This”, describes what happens between Rick and Ilsa when the camera’s off), and, more recently, the fractured fairy tale, with wonderful re-imaginings of the Pied Piper, Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, and Pinocchio stories, among others. His parodies of genre fiction include Ghost Town, a western, and now the hard-boiled detective novel in Noir: A Novel.

Among other things, Noir is a hard-boiled detective novel about film noir. The entire novel is told in the second person, putting “you” at the center of the story.

The cinematic quality of this, with its layers of film metaphor, is no mere po-mo trope applied for its own sake. Film noir is about storytelling and so is this novel. “You” are one Philip Noir, private dick, and the novel wastes no time injecting “you” into the plot: “Following the usual preamble: You were in your office late. The phone call came in. You pulled on your old trench coat with the torn pockets, holstered your heater under your armpit, and headed for the docklands. The scene of the crime.”

What follows is a story that pours every conceivable detective story plot element into a multi-layered time frame. (

Along the way you’ll hear the Widow’s back story, which includes incest with three generations of men in her family, learn how two Japanese Yakuza once communicated across town by tit-for-tat tattooing a beautiful moll, and how to use a mummified hand to catch a murderous pawnbroker. “You” will be led to safety more than once by a bag lady and find yourself stark naked in a coroner’s drawer wearing only a toe tag and a new tattoo on your fanny. This is all serious fun.

The book is also a compendium of noir clichés, each one twisted to Coover’s purpose, which is to repurpose noir into a metaphor for existence itself: “On the third floor of a cheap hotel in the theatre district, a silhouetted woman was undressing behind a drawn blind. Same window as last night? No, different neighborhood. The kind of movie showing nightly all over town. The movie you’re in. Chasing shadows.” Noir is total artifice, self-consciously so, and with a tongue more often in cheek than sticking out at the reader, which is what postmodern fiction has pretty much always done."

Robert Coover's NOIR Reviewed in Dallas Morning News

Jane Sumner reviews Noir by Robert Coover in The Dallas Morning News: "Who but Robert Coover would name a hard-boiled detective character Philip M. Noir? In fact, that's the title of the postmodernist's latest short novel – Noir.

Makes you wonder if Coover listens to A Prairie Home Companion, or if Philip M. Noir is any relation to Garrison Keillor's hilarious creation, Guy Noir: Private Eye.

If the public radio storyteller spoofs the conventions of film and pulp fiction of the '40s and '50s, Coover deconstructs them for 192 pages. With its flashbacks and glittering allusions, Noir is an exuberant, edgy laugh in the dark.

Keillor is constrained by Federal Communications Commission regulations, but Coover, who's been called "a potty-mouthed Svengali," doesn't shrink from sex or mayhem. Noir has a penchant for getting conked on the head and, like Sherlock Holmes, is not averse to the occasional opiate. At 78, the author writes like a young lion on Red Bull. Either Coover has lusty genes or a good memory, because sex is still forefront in his wordplay.

Written in the slightly disconcerting second person instead of the subgenre's customary first, Noir opens with: "You are at the morgue. Where the light is weird." A veiled beauty in widow's weeds hires Noir to find her late husband's killer – if he was killed. Then the comely client – if she was his client – is killed. When Noir goes to view her body, it's gone. Only a black veil remains.

The game's afoot and so is Noir, as he chases down mean, dimly lit streets and even meaner, darker underground tunnels in what his unpaid secretary Blanche calls "The Case of the Vanishing Black Widow." Along the way, Noir encounters human night owls like Fingers, Rats and Snark, who has a contortionist wife and Siamese twins for kids. The dockside detective's lady friends include Michiko, a totally tattooed sex worker who was passed back and forth by "two yakuza bosses as a kind of message board," and Flame, a red-haired torch singer with a "smoky voice and the sort of body that cracks mirrors."

In his 23 works of fiction, this literary maverick has broken all the rules. Brian Evenson devoted an entire book to Understanding Robert Coover that's a primer for reading his outrageous, stylish prose. As in the Western sendup Ghost Town (1998) and parlor mystery Gerald's Party (1986), the master of magic realism seems to be having a high old time in Noir. We are, too, although with Coover, there's always a mordant undertow, a whistling-past-the-graveyard feeling. Examining old myths can be unnerving.

If you're looking for a Sam Spade, Mr. Noir is not your sleuth. He's an empty trench coat, which makes the ending so delicious. If you're a Coover groover, you'll love how the writer gooses this classic subgenre. Noir is an obsidian gem."

Robert Coover on Tour for NOIR

Robert Coover, author of Noir, will appear at several East Coast readings and booksignings in March and April:

Thursday, March 11, 7pm
Brown Bookstore
244 Thayer Street, Providence, RI

Wednesday, March 31, 7pm
Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street, Princeton, NJ

Thursday, April 1, 7pm
Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine Street. Philadelphia, Pa

Wednesday, April 7, 4pm
The Mysterious Bookshop
55 Warren Street,New York

Wednesday, April 7, 7pm
Unnameable Books,600 Vanderbilt, Brooklyn, NY

Thursday, April 8, 8pm
Animal Farm/Happy Ending Reading Series, 302 Broome Street,New York, NY

Robert Coover's NOIR: "Gritty, Compelling, and Filled with Danger, Death, and Dames"

A terrific review of Noir by Robert Coover in the current issue of ForeWord:

“Trouble with webs. When you’re in one, you can’t see past the next knot,” laments private investigator Philip Noir, the lead character in Robert Coover’s book, Noir: A Novel. Thus the sleuth perfectly summarizes this gritty and compelling story filled with danger, death, and dames. In Noir, Coover offers a classic hard-boiled detective novel with a literary twist. The tale certainly provides the genre’s required elements: a mysterious, classy, yet unapproachable woman in trouble; a dark plot filled with traps more and more impossible to escape; and a cast of crooked characters from the police and underworld. Yet the entire story unfolds in the second person (”You were in the alleyway…”), which proves as intriguing as it is challenging to read.

The story unfolds as a mysterious and beautiful widow hires Noir, that is, you, to investigate her husband’s murder. Then, she turns up dead. You feel compelled to solve her murder. So you slink through the city’s dark streets and wade through underground tunnels and sewers, digging up dirt from every contact you have. You interview prostitutes and torch singers, street rats and police insiders from the docks, diners, and bars. You’re a master at this shady underworld, but the widow’s story begins falling apart and few clues emerge. Then, as the bodies of those who help you start piling up, you are framed for murder. You get the idea. As the mystery unfolds, it leads the reader down a fascinating series of false paths and offers a slew of potential solutions. Each character, from the street rat to the secretary to the torch-song singer reveals clues and leads that keep the reader guessing.

Robert Coover, a professor at Brown University, has authored a number of plays, short stories, and novels. And his storytelling expertise is evident in this latest offering. He has created an intriguing plot with captivating twists. A word of warning must be offered to potential readers, however. This book, packed with raw language and sexual references, is intended for adults. Also, the second-person voice, especially when coupled with flashbacks that seem to come unexpectedly from nowhere, make this a challenging, even frustrating, read. But the final solution makes the trouble worthwhile. And the questions left unanswered at the end only make this mystery more fascinating. Mystery lovers who stick with it, adjust to the narrative voice, and are unafraid to tackle perplexing time jumps, will find this a satisfying read." - Diane Gardner

Starred Review in PW for Robert Coover's NOIR

Publishers Weekly awards a star for Robert Coover's new novel, Noir: "Metafiction lustily mates with hardboiled mystery in this hilarious homage to Raymond Chandler and company. A sexy widow with plenty to hide hires private eye Philip M. Noir to look into her husband’s mysterious death. Noir slips on his gumshoes and lacy underwear and hits the mean streets, where he encounters the Creep, Fingers, Rats, Snark, and an elusive fat man named Fat Agnes. He even meets people who “live in a different world. It was called daytime.” Prolific postmodernist Coover (The Public Burning) adds his dazzling two bits to the deconstructionist turf Paul Auster prowled in the New York Trilogy. “There’s a mystery here, but you’re a street dick, not a metaphysician,” the second-person narrative explains. Like Thomas Pynchon in 2009’s Inherent Vice, Coover pops off laughs on every page: “Her brother is in it somewhere and he is said also to be wearing women’s underpants and a bra.... Is he your double? No, you don’t have a bra.” And don’t forget, Chandler was really funny, too."

The Buzz Builds for Kris Saknussemm's PRIVATE MIDNIGHT

The buzz for cult-novelist Kris Saknussemm's Private Midnight is starting to snowball – it’s so strange that everyone wants a chance to weigh in – and it’s sure to generate all the controversy deserved by a psychoerotic noir thriller that Kirkus calls “off-the-wall strange and surreal—and definitely not recommended as a Mother's Day gift.”

Leland Cheuk of MostlyFiction.com just reviewed the novel, saying “his trademark capriciousness restrained and his imagination disciplined and purposeful, Saknussemm has delivered his most mature work of fiction to date.”

In addition, a fascinating piece by Saknussemm called "It's All in Your Head," in which he tells the back story of this mind-bending novel, was published on About.com.

Largehearted Boy also posted a Book Notes feature on the book, saying “part erotic thriller, part speculative fiction, Private Midnight is a showcase for Kris Saknussemm's talents for crafting a well-told tale with surprising twists and turns.”

Saknussemm will be kicking off his 9 city tour in Seattle on March 24th, and additional dates can be found here. He can be followed via his website, Facebook, twitter, or right here on the Overlook Blog.