Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylized Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American film noir. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key, black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography. Many of the prototypical stories and attitudes expressed in classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Great Depression, known as noir fiction.
Lee Earle "James" Ellroy is an American crime fiction writer and essayist. Ellroy has become known for a telegrammatic prose style in his most recent work, wherein he frequently omits connecting words and uses only short, staccato sentences, and in particular for the novels The Black Dahlia (1987) and L.A. Confidential (1990).
Sir Ian James Rankin is a Scottish crime writer and philanthropist, best known for his Inspector Rebus novels.
Noir fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction.
Philip Ballantyne Kerr was a British author, best known for his Bernie Gunther series of historical detective thrillers.
Marianne de Pierres is an Australian science fiction author. Born in Western Australia, she finished her undergraduate studies at Curtin University in Perth and later studied a Postgraduate Certificate of Arts in Writing, Editing and Publishing at the University of Queensland. In 2019, she completed her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Queensland.
Ted Lewis was a British writer known for his crime fiction.
Torso is a true crime limited series graphic novel written by Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko, with art and lettering by Brian Michael Bendis. It is based on the true story of the Cleveland Torso Murderer, and the efforts of the famous lawman Eliot Ness and his band of the "Unknowns" to capture him.
Peter May is a Scottish television screenwriter, novelist, and crime writer. He is the recipient of writing awards in Europe and America. The Blackhouse won the U.S. Barry Award for Crime Novel of the Year and the national literature award in France, the Cezam Prix Litteraire. The Lewis Man won the French daily newspaper Le Télégramme's 10,000-euro Grand Prix des Lecteurs. In 2014, Entry Island won both the Deanston's Scottish Crime Novel of the Year and the UK's ITV Crime Thriller Book Club Best Read of the Year Award. May's books have sold more than two million copies in the UK and several million internationally.
Tea with the Black Dragon is a 1983 fantasy novel by American writer R. A. MacAvoy. It led to a sequel, Twisting the Rope.
Stuart MacBride is a Scottish writer, whose crime thrillers are set in the "Granite City" of Aberdeen, with Detective Sergeant Logan McRae as protagonist.
Kenneth Martin Edwards is a British crime novelist, whose work has won multiple awards including lifetime achievement awards for his fiction, non-fiction, short fiction, and scholarship in the UK and the United States. In addition to translations into various European languages, his books have been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese. As a crime fiction critic and historian, and also in his career as a solicitor, he has written non-fiction books and many articles. He is the current President of the Detection Club and in 2020 was awarded the Crime Writers' Association's Diamond Dagger, the highest honour in British crime writing, in recognition of the "sustained excellence" of his work in the genre.
Edward Joseph Gorman Jr. was an American writer and short fiction anthologist. He published in almost every genre, but is best known for his work in the crime, mystery, western, and horror fields. His non-fiction work has been published in such publications as The New York Times and Redbook.
Tom Rob Smith is an English author, screenwriter and producer.
James McAvoy is a Scottish actor. He made his acting debut as a teen in The Near Room (1995) and appeared mostly on television until 2003, when his film career began. His notable television work includes the thriller State of Play (2003), the science fiction miniseries Frank Herbert's Children of Dune (2003), and the drama series Shameless (2004–2005).
Nordic noir, also known as Scandinavian noir, is a genre of crime fiction usually written from a police point of view and set in Scandinavia or the Nordic countries. Nordic noir often employs plain language, avoiding metaphor, and is typically set in bleak landscapes. This results in a dark and morally complex mood, in which a tension is depicted between the apparently still and bland social surface and the patterns of murder, misogyny, rape, and racism the genre depicts as lying underneath. It contrasts with the whodunit style such as the English country house murder mystery.
Welcome to the Punch is a 2013 British action thriller film written and directed by Eran Creevy and starring James McAvoy, Mark Strong, and Andrea Riseborough. The script had been placed on the 2010 Brit List, a film-industry-compiled list of the best unproduced screenplays in British film. With seven votes, the film was placed third.
David John Young is an English novelist whose crime thriller series featuring a fictional Volkspolizei detective, Karin Müller, is set in 1970s East Germany. Young's debut novel Stasi Child won the 2016 CWA Endeavour Historical Dagger for the best historical crime novel of the year. Both it and the follow-up, Stasi Wolf, were longlisted for the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award in 2016 and 2017 respectively. In 2017, Bonnier Zaffre, the UK adult fiction division of the Bonnier Group, announced Young had signed a six-figure deal for three further novels in the series, making five in all, with the third, A Darker State, being published in February 2018. Young says the inspiration for the series came after his indie pop band The Candy Twins toured Germany in 2007 and he read Anna Funder's non-fiction book Stasiland between gigs. He secured the tour thanks to favourable comments made by Edwyn Collins about a tribute song Young wrote about him. Before becoming a full-time novelist, Young was a news producer and editor for more than 25 years with BBC World Service radio and BBC World TV.
Silver's City is a 1981 novel by Northern Irish author Maurice Leitch. It won the 1981 Whitbread Book Award for novel of the year and in 2017, on its republication by Northern Ireland's Turnpike Books, was described by his publisher as the "begetter of Northern noir". "Northern noir", also known as Ulster noir, is the Northern Ireland equivalent of Scandinavian Nordic noir, a distinct genre of crime fiction.
The Dark Remains is a Scottish crime novel of the tartan noir genre set in Glasgow. Part-written by William McIlvanney who left a half-finished handwritten draft when he died in 2015, the novel was completed by Ian Rankin and published in 2021. See Canongate website, with interview with Ian Rankin:
