I chose to read the four short stories from The Gold Coast section in the book Los Angeles Noir. The Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones, Kinship, The Hour When the Ship Comes In and What You See. The story I felt best described noir was "The Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones" by Scott Phillips. It definitely wasn't my favorite story in fact it was the story that I liked the least out of the 4.
The reason why it fits film noir is because you have this beautiful, seductive, femme fatale in the story named Cherie. She calls her co-worker Tate to come over for a favor. At first he thinks she has a conflict with the schedule but when he picks up she ask him to come to Pacific Palisades and since he is highly attracted to her or as he stated "I have a great boner with Cherie's name on it, and if she asked me to shovel shit I'd ask her how fast she needed it shoveled" (287) so there he goes.
When he gets to this beautiful home he gets seduced by her. They end up having sex for 3 minutes but it works out for the both of them. He gets to have sex with her and she has evidence that they were having sex while the owner of the house Gary Hinshaw a famous producer lay dying on the kitchen floor. It isn't till she leads Tate to the kitchen that he smells the horrible aroma and sees Gary's body. He wants to call 911 but Cherie wants him to help her get rid of the body. She's deadly and wont take no for an answer. She points a gun at Tate's head and wont put it down until he pulls the body. As she goes to turn on a light Tate kicks her and she stumbles and shoots at him. He gets to his car and finds the nearest payphone where he calls 911. Then the next thing you know he see's Cherie driving toward him he says " the face behind the wheel bearing down on mine, jaws clenched so tight they're bulging, and all I can think is how pretty she still looks. (298)"
So this story out of the 4 best described noir, you have the crime, the femme fatale, which is the murderer with lies and deceit but I didn't like it at all.
Short simple, I agree with you a lot of these articles here lately haven't been that appealing to me either, if I wanted to hear about stories like this all Id have to do is turn on the 10 o'clock news. Good brief review of the article, and awareness of the Neo-Noir works within the article. Nice work from what I can tell which isn't much, hopefully the professor sees it the same way. Well Done.
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