Noir seventies stories?

April 3, 2012 1:13 PM

looking for noirish novels/stories etc. that take place in the 70s - that might could involve a male protagonist dealing with a 'seedier' side of western living (motels/ dive bars etc.)
posted by mrmarley to Media & Arts (14 answers total)

Anything by James Crumley. The Last Good Kiss.
posted by mattbucher at 1:14 PM on April 3, 2012 [2 favorites]

King Suckerman by George Pelecanos.
posted by Rash at 1:19 PM on April 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice.

Jim Thompson's later work (Child of Rage, etc.)
posted by Sidhedevil at 1:20 PM on April 3, 2012

You basically just described most of what Elmore Leonard has written.
posted by cosmicbandito at 1:30 PM on April 3, 2012

Dennis Johnson, Angels
posted by mattbucher at 1:32 PM on April 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

I came in here to recommend Crumley's Last Good Kiss. I think the blurb on the back actually says "this noir novel takes place in the 70s and features a male protagonist dealing with the seedier side of western life, including motels and dive bars."
posted by Snarl Furillo at 1:35 PM on April 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

Cocaine and Blue Eyes is exactly what you want. Whatever you do, avoid the tv movie version at all costs.
posted by dortmunder at 2:09 PM on April 3, 2012

Since you included "etc." and because it goes up to 1971, I'm going to toss Larry Clark's Tulsa out there.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:17 PM on April 3, 2012

The later prose works of Charles Bukowski? Temporal setting in his novels is always kind of vague, but I get the idea that Ham on Rye, Post Office, and Factotum are set in the 40s or 50s, which is why I suggest the later works.
posted by scratch at 3:10 PM on April 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men is set in 1980 and may meet your needs.
posted by hot soup girl at 3:13 PM on April 3, 2012

Not western (Florida), but Charles Willeford's The Shark-Infested Custard meets your other criteria, I believe. A group of friends living in a "singles apartment building" in the '70s get involved in various shady dealings.
posted by Clustercuss at 3:20 PM on April 3, 2012

Actually set in the early 1980s but brutal in their depiction of the seediest side of London: Derek Raymond's Factory series, and particularly I Was Dora Suarez--the manuscript of which caused the author's publisher to vomit over his desk.
posted by Hogshead at 4:06 PM on April 3, 2012

Many of Evan Hunter's (aka Ed McBain) works are roughly set in whatever era they were written and tend to deal with seedy things since they take place in a fictional New York police precinct. The man was freakishly productive so there's a good 20 or so books written in the '70s.
posted by fiercekitten at 7:25 PM on April 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

I can't name specific novels, but Lawrence Block's Scudder series take place in fair part in Hell's Kitchen, or at least the early ones do. Maybe this or this?
posted by troywestfield at 7:38 AM on April 4, 2012