Extra, Extra!: Noir City

The new issue of Noir City is out, bearing word of changes at the magazine of the Film Noir Foundation. FNF honcho Eddie Muller will now be editor-in-chief as well as publisher, assisted by the estimable Steve Kronenberg as editorial director of classic noir coverage – and yours truly as contemporary kingpin. When the Czar of Noir asks you do to do something, you do it. (That’s true of any czar, when you get right down to it.) Planning has begun in earnest, and we have some terrific features coming your way.

Plus plenty to feast on in the current issue. F’r instance:

•  Steve’s appraisal of the hommes fatale of noir

• An in-depth survey of the career of one of the best of these smooth operators, Ray Milland

• Down these mean hallways: a look at the high school noir of Brick and Veronica Mars, including an interview with Mars star Enrico Colantoni

There’s also my take on TNT’s big-budget epic Mob City and the latest installment of my column Keenan’s Korner, with reviews of new crime novels by Theresa Schwegel, Lawrence Block, and Kim Cooper’s The Kept Girl, in which Raymond Chandler turns detective. We’re on a Chandler kick this go-round, as I demolish the atrocious gimlet recipe he set down for the ages in The Long Goodbye while Eddie sizes up Benjamin Black’s new Philip Marlowe novel The Black-Eyed Blonde. Spoiler alert: Eddie finds Black’s knowledge of imbibing every bit as dubious as Chandler’s.

How can you deny yourself this treasure trove any longer? Make a donation to the Film Noir Foundation and all this can be yours. Do it now, so you can be sure to get the rag by the time I start throwing my weight around.