Arkhangelsk 8 - Mystery

clash_bowley

Much of the book is handled like a noir mystery. Was this successful?

RichardAbbott

I confess to not being very up on noir so can't comment. Interested to hear what others say.

Apocryphal

I didn't get noir from this at all. Where were the colourful similes?

clash_bowley

I said it was handled like a noir mystery, not written like one! I was thinking of something like Poisonville or The Maltese Falcon - both Hardboiled, actually, but I said noir as the later film style which was used in the movie versions of these stories takes a lot from that genre. and I was reading this as a movie. The mystery unpeels gradually, and seems to point in different directions throughout the process.

Apocryphal

Could you explain how a noir unfolds differently from, say another kind of mystery? I agree with the onion peeling, but I didn't know that was distinct to noir (or at least don't understand the distinction).

BarnerCobblewood

I agree it is written like a movie, specifically a detective story. I think this is because Bonesteel knows where the payoff is. Unlike say the Maltese Falcon, it lacks the characters who are searching for the MacGuffin (the Exiles), except the reader, who becomes increasingly bored as hundreds of pages go by without a spark of insight on the part of the characters, who all lack imagination because of SECRETS.

NeilNjae

I think the key features of hardboiled stories are that "the system" is vast, oppressive, and unassailable. People are broken because they have to deal with the system, and bad things happen because of venal, self-interested reasons rather than true evil or noble emotions.

Does this book fit that characterisation?

It certainly has oppressive systems that break people. Yulia, the governor, is evil, but her justification for that comes from putting the system (the community) over any consideration of human decency. Rolf's killing is a vehicle for people to vent frustrations at their situation rather than enacting justice.