What’s your favorite classic noir?
Chester Himes’s A Rage in Harlem.
Why?
It’s absurd, pungent, and full of community. Himes takes the more controlled, paranoid tone of his hard-boiled predecessors and turns it upside down.
What makes a great noir?
Pathos, a knife into the heart of our society’s ills.
Read more from Alta‘s Fall 2020 Noir Special Section.
Heather Scott Partington is a writer, teacher, and book critic. She is a regular contributor to Alta Journal and a board member of the National Book Critics Circle, where she serves as fiction chair. Her writing has appeared in publications such as the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She lives in Elk Grove, California.
