NPR

3 Supernatural Noir Tales That Reflect The Inhuman Condition

Some great noir fiction has been written about Los Angeles, but what happens when a different genre bleeds through? We've got three tales of murder, magic and robot detectives to cool your summer.
Source: Liam James Doyle

Jason Heller is a senior writer at The A.V. Club, a Hugo Award-winning editor and author of the novel Taft 2012.

Los Angeles is the city of many great traditions — one of them being crime fiction. From the hardboiled classics of Raymond Chandler to the gritty noir of James Ellroy, numerous novels have used the tough streets and affluent hills of L.A. as a backdrop for some of literature's most thrilling tales of murder, lust, and justice.

What happens, though, when an entirely different world seeps into L.A.? Say, the realm of with robots. Or Ellroy's with monsters. It might sound jarring at first, but authors have been catering to this weird juxtaposition — and the crossover audience that enjoys both crime fiction and speculative fiction — for years now. Not all of these books take place in L.A.; Jim Butcher's successful series, for instance, deals with the unholy mingling of crime and magic in Chicago. But three recent novels by Jason Ridler, Adam Christopher, and Richard Kadrey have focused the speculative-crime genre through a distinctly Angeleno lens.

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from NPR

NPR6 min readPopular Culture & Media Studies
Supreme Court Examines Whether Government Can Combat Disinformation Online
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Missouri, Louisiana and five individuals who were either banned from social media during the pandemic or whose posts, they say, were not prominently featured.
NPR7 min read
Q&A: Author of 'Bottled: How Coca-Cola Became African' on Coke's surprising history
How did the soda giant from America come to be seen as "local" in Africa? And what has the impact been on the continent for worse and for better?
NPR3 min readInternational Relations
Who Is Mohammad Mustafa, The New Prime Minister Of The Palestinian Authority?
Mustafa was appointed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a move seen as an attempt to appease U.S. demands for reform.

Related Books & Audiobooks