Paul D. Brazill's 13 Shots ..., or Noir: I know it when I see it

I don't think much about what noir is or isn't, but every once in a while, as Potter Stewart did with obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio, I know it when I see it.

My latest epiphany has come with the opening stories of Paul D. Brazill's 13 Shots of Noir. The stories are all dark, of course, in the sense that their characters do terrible things,  but they are filled with humor, and one even has a happy ending of a kind.

So, what makes Brazill's stories noir? Just this: Better than most authors whose work gets tagged noir, Brazill makes every villain, as the saying goes, a hero in his own story. In addition to the attendant irony and humor, that is apt to fascinate and horrify a reader at the same time. And that, it says here, is one of noir's defining characteristics.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015