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My introduction to noir came some years ago. During an aimless meander, I plodded through the local strip mall. A tiny bookstore, one step shy of Chapter Eleven, had arranged a pathetic offering of used, on sale hardbacks and I picked up three of these well worn volumes, one of which was Robert B. Parker’s Judas Goat.
At the time, I didn’t know who Parker was or what he had written, only that I liked the straightforward text and no nonsense style. Two paragraphs in and I was hooked. Up to my elbows in hard-boiled fiction and loving every minute of it.
I didn’t analyze anything as I read. I just sopped up the story line and let myself be swept away with the vicarious experience. It wasn’t until much later, years after I had read that first book that I realized what Parker had done and how that would help me in the stories I wanted to write.
The linchpin to what he did, and what I wanted to do, was to explore the incongruous character, then place that person into an incongruous situation and make it totally believable. For a fiction writer, getting away with the maxim, truth is stranger than fiction.
To use Parker’s work as an example. The character Hawk is incongruous. He and Spencer should reside at opposite ends of the spectrum, but they share a common bond, which makes for great character development and an even better story line. It becomes a simple recipe to follow. Develop your characters in a similar manner and voila -- noir on a platter.
My character McDonaugh was developed along that line. He’s huge, six-six and two sixty, yet this quarterback crusher’s friends are all eggheads. Incongruous brains that should find McDonaugh a muscle bound bore. But he is to them, what they should be to him.
This also makes for great dialogue; the clash of the characters brings out a great repartee as long as you don’t make the eggheads total geeks. But therein lies the beauty of the incongruity. The brute exposes the eggheads to a wry wit, which then manifests itself in their banter.
As an example, McDonaugh who knows little or nothing about computers, and is blithely happy to remain so, deals with one Dr. David Zuckerman, who is arguably one of the premier computer hackers on the planet. The fact that Dr. Dave also makes his living as physics professor only reinforces the incongruity.
But perhaps this ploy is most evident in McDonaugh’s relationship with Mighty Mouse Muldowney. Muldowney, a brilliant forensics expert is literally the complete physical opposite of McDonaugh. Yet these characters share the utmost respect and loyalty. To quote McDonaugh, "Mighty Mouse never asks about the odds. I could call him in the bottom of the ninth from the Little BigHorn and he’d still come charging onto the scene. There aren’t many that I trust in this life, but at four foot ten he stands tallest in their number."
This incongruous theme continues with McDonaugh’s main squeeze, Nimble Nan the librarian. First, there are the basic philosophical differences between her friends and McDonaugh.
"The big break came when she, (Nan) tired to merge my world into hers. Academia. The tenured toads were the worst. Those were the ones who were fascinated by the violence that surrounded my life. Beware of full professors at the social events and fund raisers, especially the probers. Nan tried to put a pleasant face on it, but I always felt like a slide of protozoa under a microscope.
"Have you ever killed anybody?" the toads would ask.
"The night’s still young," I’d say.
"Do you like the idea of killing people?"
"Got anybody in mind?"
"Is that all it is? A joke?"
"Not the way you tell it."
The verbal volleyball went on like that a lot. Those manning the ivory towers wanted to know how things were going down at the moat."
Then there is McDonaugh’s insufferable womanizing. Nan is a complete monogamist, yet she continues to tolerate the lecher and for reasons that are not apparent to either character.
In essence, the incongruity breeds great story lines. Characters that would not or should not go together inexplicably kept together by forces that they themselves don’t comprehend. Great stuff. The stuff that makes, I hope, great fiction.
Copyright© 2003 Robert D. Bennett
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ROBERT
D. BENNETT is the author of three novels, Sector-12, Rendezvous 2.2 and Shaft-235.
These works were released through Fawcett-Gold Medal, a division of
Random House. Rendezvous
2.2 received a stellar review in
Publisher’s Weekly. Mr. Bennett is currently putting the final polish on White
Slave, the next installment in the Dillon McDonaugh hard-boiled crime
series.
Contact Mr. Bennett