Book review: A Case of Noir by Paul Brazill

A Case Of Noir by Paul D. Brazill

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


All Killer No Filler is the title of one of my favourite albums. It's also a fitting description for Paul Brazill's book A Case of Noir.

Mr Brazill doesn't write at length. As he says: "I slice off the gristle." (Interview with Toe Six Press).

This guarantees there isn't so much as one wasted word. The result: his books are eminently readable, and you finish them wanting more (which is rather better than wishing there had been less, as is the case with many authors).

He's above all a prose stylist. He works within a tradition which was probably started by Raymond Chandler.

Chandler himself once said: "The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time."

Paul Brazill seems to have taken this advice to heart, irrespective of whether or not he's familiar with the quote. His style is as beguiling as it is instantly recognisable. Like Chandler, he's a lover of unusual similes and outrageous wisecracks. But he is far from being yet another Chandler imitator. His voice is distinctly his own, as is the world he's created.

His world, by the way, isn't the world of the rich or of the master criminal, it's a world of low-lifes, drunks and ne'er do wells. They're all memorable, even those with walk-on parts. Sometimes you feel his secondary characters are so good they're wasted on the minor roles he gives them, and they should have books of their own.

A Case of Noir follows this pattern, and is similar to a Chandler novel in that it's told in the first person by the wisecracking protagonist Luke Case. But unlike Chandler's lead character Phillip Marlowe, Case is not a Private Eye. He's a journalist with a shady past which, over the course of the novella, gradually but inexorably catches up with him. And where Marlowe follows a moral compass, Case follows only the principle of doing whatever hedonistic deed suits him at the time - with hilarious results.

I suspect that Brazill didn't set out to write a novella. A Case of Noir seems to be stitched together from a number of short stories (a working method similar to that adopted by Chander when he wrote The Big Sleep).

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts - although the parts are so good you’ll savour them individually, as you work your way through them.

I forgot to mention: this book is a whole lot of fun!



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