Crime Fiction and Film in the Sunshine State: Florida Noir Review

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(More customer reviews)"Florida Noir: Crime Fiction & Film in the Sunshine State" should come with a couple of caveats: The fiction discussed herein is not all "noir" or hard-boiled. The editors admit to using "the broadest possible definition of noir", meaning all crime fiction. This is a book about crime fiction set in Florida. Secondly, there is only one essay about film noir, and it's not worth mentioning. It briefly discusses some films that aren't noir before getting to 1980's "Body Heat". The author of that essay, Ellen Smith, clearly doesn't have much background in film and doesn't even mention "Miami Vice", which surprisingly made pastels the `80s noir aesthetic.
There are 11 essays by 10 writers, including editors Steve Glassman and Maurice O'Sullivan. Ten essays address a variety of topics in Florida crime fiction: the California origins of hard-boiled fiction and its move south, comparing author John D. MacDonald to his character Travis McGee, Florida crime fiction before 1945, the grotesque in the novels of Charles Willeford and Carl Hiassen, the women detectives of TJ MacGugor and Edna Buchanan, novels set in the Florida Keys, nature and ecology in Florida crime fiction, the fairy-tale inspired work of Ed McBain, and crime novels set in North Florida.
This is an interesting resource for Floridians who enjoy crime fiction, as it discusses writers from the early 20th century through the 1990s. The essays are academic but not abstruse or very ideological, so they are not dense. For literary criticism, it's lightweight, but that makes it a readable resource for crime fiction fans. There is also a "Bibliography of Florida Mysteries, 1895-1996" in the back, listed alphabetically by author. "Florida Noir" is a decent introduction to the sub-genre of Florida crime fiction. I give it only 3 stars, because I kept getting the feeling that the authors of those essays could have done better. It's hardly rigorous.

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Even before John D. MacDonald first anchored TravisMcGee's houseboat, the Busted Flush, at Fort Lau-derdale's BahiaMar Marina, Florida had developed a rich legacy of fictionaldetectives. Since McGee, the state has become the home of perhaps thegreatest number and variety of mystery writers in America.From Elmore Leonard's professional hoods to CarlHiaasen's amateur grotesques, Florida's mystery writers havecreated a criminal universe that centers on Miami but stretches fromthe Key West of James Hall and Laurence Shames through the Palm Beachof Lawrence Sanders and the Orlando of John Lutz to the panhandle ofGeoffrey Norman. This is a world of sophisticated Latina journalistslike Edna Buchanan's Britt Montero and retiring ichthyologists likeRandy Wayne White's Doc Ford, of Armani-clad socialites like EdMcBain's Matthew Hope and leisure-suited cops like CharlesWilleford's Hope Moseley.For the first time, a group of literary critics examines howthe center of crime shifted from the City of Angels to the home ofMiami Vice and the Magic Kingdom and why the country's southernmoststate has developed such a concentration of talented mysterywriters. In addition to essays on the origins of the detective novelin Florida and its contemporary masters, the book includes a chapteron Florida film noir from Key Largo to Body Heat and the firstcomprehensive bibliography of mysteries set in the state.