Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse, #1)

by James S.A. Corey

Liquor doesn’t make you feel better. Just makes you not so worried about feeling bad.”

It’s an interesting scene. Miller’s trying to give this kid some wisdom, but what he has to draw from is pretty grim and dark. It reminds me of the old AA saying “A man has a drink. The drink has a drink. The drink has a man.” Miller is a very classic noir hero, and the thing that differentiates noir from hardboiled is whether the hero is moral. There’s a strong argument to make through Leviathan Wakes that Miller is at a minimum deeply flawed as a human being. His relationship to Julie Mao is riffing on Otto Preminger’s classic noir “Laura” with Dana Andrews and Gene Teirney.