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Archives: Joe R. Lansdale

While B & K are approaching the capital of the Northwest Territories, Yellowknife,  I’m thinking about some American or Canadian Noir thrillers that are situated in that area, but nothing comes to mind. A lot of Steve Hamilton’s books evoke  cold winters in Canada, but the stories told there are  located at Lake Superior, the East Coast. Hamilton once said:  „To me, when I think about “hardboiled” or “noir,” I think about cold. When just going outside to your car is an act of courage, that has to say something about you already, right? I know that Raymond Chandler’s idea of hardboiled was a sun-baked street in Los Angeles, but for me there’s just something about a frozen lake and a cold wind that will turn you inside-out.“ So far, so cold. Meanwhile I’m in the middle of the showdown of Michael Koryta’s book, in the mountains of Montana. A very different headspace. News came that a rather free adaptation of a Joe R. Lansdale  novel arrived in the cinemas of Great Britain: COLD IN JULY.  Richard Dane (Michael C Hall) is woken in the middle of the night by his wife Ann (Vinessa Shaw), who’s heard an intruder. He finds his gun, creeps down the hallway, and moments later, his entire life has changed. (The film gets quite mixed reviews, read excerpts of one of them in comment no.1.)  Texas is the territory of a lot of Lansdale books, and his great novel „The Thicket“ will be released in Germany in August, titled „Das Dickicht“. And it’s a Western Noir!

 

 
 

„The strongest, truest, and most pitch-perfect narration since Huck Finn’s. Marvelous and terrifying, EDGE OF DARK WATER is the result of real genius at work. A masterpiece.“ (Dan Simmons, author of The Terror and Drood )

„EDGE OF DARK WATER describes a trip downriver that is one-half Huck Finn, one-half Deliverance, and entirely Joe Lansdale. If you aren’t familiar with the work of this true American original, and master of hillbilly noir, climb in the boat and hang on for dear life: the water is rough.“ (Joe Hill, author of the New York Times bestseller Horns and A Heart-Shaped Box )

„Joe Lansdale has long been one of our finest and most difficult to classify writers. You can call his writing supernatural, horror, crime, or plain Southern, as long as you remember to call it great. Always a generous storyteller, in EDGE OF DARK WATER he offers a beautifully spun tale of life in the sticks, friendship and mortality, and tells it with the wit, humor and pure-dee power we’ve come to expect of him.“ (Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter’s Bone)

„Joe Lansdale always transports me. In EDGE OF DARK WATER, he takes me to the mysterious brooding landscape of Twain and Faulkner, with a compelling twist that is all Lansdale.“ (David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author of First Blood and Creepers)

„Joe R. Lansdale has a folklorist’s eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur’s sense of pace.“ (The New York Times Book Review )

„Scenes that stand your hair on end while you fall out of your chair laughing.“ (Chicago Sun-Times, on Leather Maiden )

 

Okay, Dan Simmons übertreibt ein wenig, aber in der Tradition von Huck Finn kann man Joe R. Lansdale schon erkennen. Kinder und Jugendliche, die in alter Zeit, und fernab der grossen Städte, dem Bösen begegnen und sich mit ihrem eigenen Waffen wappnen müssen, um dem Schlimmsten zu entkommen: ein Schlüsselmotiv mancher Lansdale-Romane. In den ersten drei Monaten des Jahres 2013 erscheinen drei Romane, die zu dem Besten zählen, was moderne bzw. zeitlos altmodische Kriminalliteratur leisten kann, erstmals in deutscher Übersetzung – neben diesem Buch von Lansdale werden viele Leser begeistert sein von R.J. Ellory und seinem Roman „Der Schrei der Engel“, sowie Pete Dexter und seinem Meisterwerk „Paperboy“. Wer sich auf diese Hochspannung, Abgründigkeit und diverse Formen von Noir amerikanischer Prägung einstimmen will, möge sich ab Donnerstag den neuen Film von P.T. Anderson, „The Master“ anschauen, auch die Filmmusik ist beeindruckend und stammt vom „Radiohead“ Johnny Greenwood. (M.E.)


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