Lee Clark Mitchell is Holmes Professor of Belles-Lettres at Princeton University, where he has served as Chair of the English Department and Director of the Program in American Studies. He teaches courses in American literature and film, with recent essays focusing on Cormac McCarthy, John Williams, the Coen brothers, and Edith Wharton. His recent books include Mere Reading: The Poetics of Wonder in Modern American Novels (Bloomsbury, 2017), Late Westerns: The Persistence of a Genre (Nebraska, 2018), and More Time: Contemporary Short Stories and Late Styles (Oxford, 2018).

This is a thoroughly compelling addition to the body of scholarly work on noir fiction, functioning both as a highly accessible introduction for readers with only passing knowledge of noir discourse and as an informative, rigorously scoped alternative perspective on the genre's 'furniture' for those with a more specialised interest in it.

• Prologue: Procrastinating Plots and Commonplace Pleasures 1: Hard-Boiled Intimations 2: Descriptive Digressions 3: Dialogue Scaffoldings 4: Lost Identities 5: Sequel Reminders 6: Cinematic Resolutions 7: Beyond Authenticity Epilogue: "If They Had Been Better" Bibliography

Lee Clark Mitchell is Holmes Professor of Belles-Lettres at Princeton University, where he has served as Chair of the English Department and Director of the Program in American Studies. He teaches courses in American literature and film, with recent essays focusing on Cormac McCarthy, John Williams, the Coen brothers, and Edith Wharton. His recent books include Mere Reading: The Poetics of Wonder in Modern American Novels (Bloomsbury, 2017), Late Westerns: The Persistence of a Genre (Nebraska, 2018), and More Time: Contemporary Short Stories and Late Styles (Oxford, 2018).

This is a thoroughly compelling addition to the body of scholarly work on noir fiction, functioning both as a highly accessible introduction for readers with only passing knowledge of noir discourse and as an informative, rigorously scoped alternative perspective on the genre's 'furniture' for those with a more specialised interest in it.

• Prologue: Procrastinating Plots and Commonplace Pleasures 1: Hard-Boiled Intimations 2: Descriptive Digressions 3: Dialogue Scaffoldings 4: Lost Identities 5: Sequel Reminders 6: Cinematic Resolutions 7: Beyond Authenticity Epilogue: "If They Had Been Better" Bibliography