The seminal American noir writer was James M. Cain, who began writing in the early 1930s, and the noir novel has traditionally been set in its own time period – or the same century, at least!
Author Jeri Westerson has penned a medieval noir. In Veil of Lies, disgraced knight Crispin Guest, stripped of his rank and honor for plotting against Richard II, uses his wits to eke out a living in fourteenth-century London. He is hired to determine who killed a wealthy merchant rumored to be in possession of the Mandyllon, a cloth bearing the face of Jesus and possessing magical powers.
A starred review in Library Journal called it “A brilliant tale of survival in a hostile environment, where anything can lead to death.”
The Boston Globe dubbed Guest “A medieval Sam Spade.”
In a Mystery News interview in the December/January 2009 issue, when asked who or what inspired her creation of Crispin Guest, Westerson answered “Most definitely Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, with a bit of Errol Flynn thrown in.” She adds “Writing a tortured, conflicted hero is the best kind of fun!”
So much fun, it appears, that there will be a second book, Serpent in the Thorns, coming in the fall. Guest finds that he is the prime suspect in a murder with grave diplomatic implications. Visit the author’s website to read an excerpt.
Veil of Lies has been nominated for the 2009 Sue Feder Memorial Historical Mystery, along with Kelli Stanley’s Nox Dormienda, which is also an “historical noir,” this time set even further back in history in first-century Londinium.
Her protagonist Arcturus is a half-native, half-Roman doctor and friend of Agricola, the governor of Britttania. When the body of a Syrian spy is found murdered in an underground temple, Arcturus has one week to determine who murdered him and why before civil war erupts both within the province and with Rome itself.
The title, Stanley says, is taken from a line of verse by the Roman poet Catullus, and means “a long night for sleeping. A night you don’t wake up from. In other words, The Big Sleep.”
In an interview on her website, Stanley acknowledges that her major inspiration came – no surprises here – from Chandler … and from Catullus.
There is a second book, Maledictus, in the works. Until then, ave atque vale!
