A Hard-Boiled Librarian in a Lonely City

by

Jennifer Quinn, Reference Assistant

West Warwick Public Library

There are 8 million pages in the library, and this librarian was looking through them. It was two o’clock on a hot and steamy afternoon; the shadows from the Venetian blinds offered cool comfort from the blazing sun shining in on the reference desk. She heard the soft patter of the black Rockports on the institutional carpet as they crept up the staircase. She could smell questions a mile off, and began to taste the sweetness of her next informational conquest. It was Mr. Q seeking the answer to his unique inquiry.

I wonder if you wonder about Mr. Q. Well let me tell you, he asks more questions than Torquemada at a Spanish inquisition. Anyway, on this scorcher of a day Mr. Q. approached the information desk, gave me a sly look and said, “Angel, could you tell me where I could find information on the value of a jewel-encrusted statue of a falcon?” The one thing I knew for sure was that this hard-boiled librarian was up for the challenge. You see folks, asking a question to a reference librarian is like giving candy to a child: we savor it while we have it, and crave for more when it is gone.

As I began my search through the plethora of reference materials, it suddenly came over me; there was something a bit fishy about this patron. As I directed Mr. Q in his beige trench coat and snap-brim hat towards the section on antiques and collectables, I noticed that he was looking as scared as a flounder on a Friday night. Perspiration began to bead on his forehead like the foam from a freshly poured stout. Upon opening the price guide to rare falcon statues, Mr. Q dashed out of the library, leaving only a note behind that said, “thanks, precious.” At that moment it was as quiet as a librarian’s ‘Shhhhhhhh.’ …..

Just then, the phone rang twice. Realizing that it was not the postman, I drifted back into reality, and my library noir scene faded back into the recesses of my imagination.

The art of Noir is a favorite of mine in both film and fiction. I love the casting shadows, peculiar metaphors, and the suspenseful plots that define this genre. The melodrama has a beautiful way of making the ordinary seem extraordinary. Building upon the style of the hard-boiled detective stories of the twenties and thirties, noir fiction emerged, melding the themes of guilt and deception, crime and murder, and obsessive passion and unraveling psyches. Needless to say I was hooked.

You may have guessed by now that the first hard-boiled detective I was introduced to was Sam Spade. He is the tough sleuth with the high moral code and underlying sentiment, characterized in the novel The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. With the help of the director John Huston, Humphrey Bogart immortalized the character of Sam Spade on film.

Another hard-boiled protagonist who sees the world through cynical eyes is the character created by Raymond Chandler, Philip Marlowe. Marlowe is a wisecracking maverick that evolved over the span of twenty years, from Pulp magazines to Hollywood flicks. Chandler mastered the art of the simile, while perfecting the role of the lonely truth seeker. In such stories as The Lady in the Lake and The Big Sleep, Marlowe shares Spade’s code of professionalism and integrity, along with pervasive feelings of disillusionment and martyrdom, the key ingredients to the noir style. Marlowe, however, is a little softer than Sam Spade, and typically ‘gets the girl’ in the end. In the film version of The Big Sleep, the audience would have accepted nothing less than Bogart and Bacall remaining together.

Some other great authors of the hard-boiled, noir fiction are James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity), Patricia Highsmith (Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley), and Ross MacDonald who created the Lew Archer series (The Moving Target, Black Money, The Chill, etc.). James Ellery (Black Dahlia and L.A. Confidential) and Dennis Lehane (A Drink Before the War and Mystic River) are contemporary authors who have embraced this genre with a clever pen.

So, if you like murky urban settings, slices of black and white, crisp dialogue and righteous overtones, then I recommend picking up any of these noir-style books. For those of you that enjoy the big screen as much as I do, I suggest watching The Blue Dahlia, The Sweet Smell of Success, Double Indemnity, or Chinatown. To see a modern view of this classic film style, be sure to see The Man Who Wasn’t There. After all, there’s nothing like a blanket of guilt, paranoia, bitterness and melancholy, with a weave of romance, to cuddle up with before bed.