Neither Here Noir There

Ok, before reading the rest of this post it is necessary to provide a caveat to you, dear reader, and that caveat is this; I've apparently become a huge noir fan. I liked Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, I downright loved Brick and now this....



Hugh Laurie is, of course, the British actor best known for playing the misanthropic American doctor, Gregory House. Prior to that he played a series of finely done comic characters on Blackadder, A Bit of Fry and Laurie and Jeeves and Wooster as well as many other fine BBC productions. So, to add to this rather long list of accomplishments he also went to Cambridge (and Eton) reading Anthropology and Archeology and was a national class rower there. So, on top of being one of the better actors of our day, this man is a fine athlete (his dust-jacket proclaims him to be an avid motorcylist too), and a none-too-shabby-intellectual. Oh, and more to the point, he is also a writer.
This book is both a fine send-up of the typical spy-novel and a witty tromp through a deconstructionist view of the noir novel. The protagonist's dystopian and amusingly cynical worldview leans more towards Atkinson's Blackadder than the character Laurie plays currently.
Generally in the summertime I find room for a bit of lighter fair, and I expected this to be just that. In one sense it was an amazingly easy read, and a fun world to be tossed into, but on a whole other level it was actually very well written in a way that other writers in the genre so rarely are.

Buy the book and read it, it's summer, there's no better time.