num_pages: 192
description: With impeccable skill Robert Coover one of America's pioneering postmodernists has turned the classic detective story inside-out. Here Coover is at the top of his form; and Noir is a true page-turner--wry absurd and desolate. You are Philip M. Noir Private Investigator. A mysterious young widow hires you to find her husband's killer--if he was killed. Then your client is killed and her body disappears--if she was your client. Your search for clues takes you through all levels of the city from classy lounges to lowlife dives from jazz bars to a rich sex kitten's bedroom from yachts to the morgue. The Case of the Vanishing Black Widow unfolds over five days aboveground and three or four in smugglers' tunnels though flashback and anecdote and expands time into something much larger. You don't always get the joke though most people think what's happening is still pretty funny.
language: English
title: Noir
publisher: Overlook Press