Every fella has a drink of choice. Some fellas go for a whiskey neat. Others an ice-cold beer. Me, I prefer a full glass of noir. Pure, unsweetened, hardboiled noir. The stuff that nightmares are made of.

This summer, as the heat scorched the lawns and melted the pavements, I went on a bender of classic noir fiction. I read, then watched, The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain’s 1934 novel about a drifter who gets a gig at a crummy roadside diner. Soon he’s falling for the boss’s wife, a pretty gal who bats her eyes at him and drives him to break the Sixth Commandment (and the Seventh too, obviously). It was adapted for the screen many times, but the best version is the 1946 one starring Lana Turner as the pretty gal and John Garfield as the drifter. You can’t take your eyes off Turner’s big wistful eyes and Garfield’s cursed smirk.

Noir fiction, although decades old, feels more relevant than ever

Noir fiction, although decades old, feels more relevant than ever

That was just the beginning. Since then, I’ve been reading and watching noir: famous works like Raymond Chandler’s 1939 novel The Big Sleep, filmed seven years later by Howard Hawks with Humphrey Bogart in the lead, as well as forgotten gems like Detour (available on YouTube), the 1945 low-budget film about a starving pianist who hitchhikes a ride to LA and, next things he knows, to his undoing. I’m a sucker for the staples of the genre: the jaded anti-heroes who never go out without a pack of smokes and a Colt, the glammed-up dames with platinum blonde curls and veins full of arsenic, the snappy dialogue.

But there’s another reason why I’m hooked: Noir fiction, although decades old, feels more relevant than ever. It speaks to – and of – our febrile age better than most contemporary fare. Forget about Adolescence........

© The Spectator