Some Of The Best French Noir

Films From The Start Of Cinema

     Back in the mid-20th century, there were few traces of dark and gritty films, but it wasn’t long before filmmakers broke their creative boundaries and introduced the world to a new cinematic style – film noir. As Movie Web’s Soniya Hinduja recently noted, “Emerging from the dark alleys of crime dramas, the genre baked existential dread and moral dilemmas into a potentially captivating storyline and blessed us with moody films that stayed long after they ended. Shadowy streets and doomed individuals; that was the aesthetic of these films.

     “Zooming out on the industrial map, we had French cinema, which was blossoming into an art form of its own by using bold experimentation and social commentary in films and on stage. Whether it was a melancholic post-war drama or a unique crime-tinged mystery, the industry took cues from America’s gritty noir genre and fashioned incredible stories. Directors like Jean-Pierre Melville and Jacques Becker were particularly responsible for adapting great novels into pieces of visual art.”

     Politics and philosophy came together in these complex and atmospheric movies. This list celebrates some of the most excellent works that not only twisted the noir style to their advantage but also expressed how much potential the genre held. All these films appeared on the screen at least five decades ago, but they are enduring classics that still hold up as masterpieces.

Easter Crime:  The Norwegian Thing You [Probably] Didn’t Know About

     Here in the U.S., Easter weekend typically conjures up visions of secretive bunnies hiding colored eggs, parades with wide-brimmed bonnets, and big family dinners. Go to Norway, however, and you might find yourself involved in Påskekrim, a national tradition that translates to “Easter Crime,” and refers to the practice of reading crime novels or watching crime series on television throughout the Easter holidays.

     While engaging in crime stories during Easter is as normal in Norway as eating chocolate and going skiing, but to the outside world, the “Easter crime” phenomenon is – quite literally – a mystery. The British newspaper The Independent calls it “bizarre,” while The Mirror writes, “Curiously it’s become traditional in Norway to read or watch stories about crime…and you thought biting the head off your chocolate rabbit was weird?”

     Why do Norwegians thirst for bloody murders during the Easter specifically? To solve that mystery, the tourist site Visit Norway says we need to go back to February 1923, when two broke Norwegian authors named Nordahl Grieg and Nils Lie suddenly decided to write a bestselling crime novel. With publisher Gyldendal on board, the Sunday before Easter they launched a major advertising campaign, in which the book’s title, Bergen Train Looted in the Night, got the top headline on the front page of the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten. The stunt turned heads, as the ad was so believable that most people believed a train actually had been robbed. The drama attracted massive attention, and the novel became a huge success.

     “Many consider this novel to be the first Easter crime and the very origin of the tradition,” Bjarne Buset, the information manager at Gyldendal, insists. “More than any other holiday, Easter is a time when people head for a cabin in the snowy mountains or near the sea. Here, reading Easter crime goes hand in hand with great skiing conditions and eating Kvikk Lunsj chocolate or oranges in the winter sun.”

Yes, Mark Twain Really Wrote A

Novel Titled Tom Sawyer, Detective

      Not only did Mark Twain bring us the iconic American novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but over the years he penned several sequels—most notably [of course], The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. As Crime Reads’ Olivia Rutigliano recently wrote, in 1894—ten years after H. Finn was published (and 18 years after the initial publication of T. Sawyer)—Twain published Tom Sawyer Abroad, a parody of stories by Jules Verne and H.G. Welles [particularly Verne’s Five Weeks in a Balloon], recounting how Tom and Huck and Jim travel by hot air balloon to Africa, where they fight brigands and robbers and encounter various remaining ancient wonders of the world.

     Two years later, in 1896, Twain did it again with Tom Sawyer, Detective. “Like its predecessor, it was both a send-up of a new popular genre, detective fiction, and an immersive and satisfying participant in that genre,” Rutigliano writes. “As in Tom Sawyer Abroad, Huck is the narrator and Tom is the protagonist. Not only are they detectives in the style of Holmes and Watson, but they also investigate and correctly solve an outrageous mystery involving murder, stolen diamonds, mistaken identity, con men, and (possibly) ghosts." [Note: the novel was adapted by Hollywood in 1938, pictured left.]

     In 1909, a Danish teacher named Valdemar Thoresen accused Twain of plagiarizing the story from Steen Steensen Bilcher’s 1829 Danish novel The Vicar of Weilby, which was based on a true story dating back to 1626. Twain contended that, as Bilcher’s novel had been translated from Danish to German, but not to English, it was impossible for him to have plagiarized it, although he did admit knowledge of the original case.

DNA COLD CASE

Visalia, CA Man Sentenced For 1999

Murder Of Salinas Businessman

     On February 22, 2024, a judge in California’s Monterey County sentenced Jimmy Torres Rodriguez, 52, to 50 years to life in prison for the 1999 cold-case murder of Elias Diaz. In December, a jury convicted Rodriguez of first-degree murder and affirmed a special allegation that Rodriguez personally and intentionally discharged a firearm resulting in the victim’s death.

     Diaz, 39, was a father of seven children and the owner of a Salinas car dealership at the time of his murder. On November 19, 1999, Diaz was shot and killed by a person pretending to be a customer interested in purchasing a vehicle. The shooter fled the scene and abandoned the murder weapon and the distinctive clothing he was wearing in a trash can a few blocks away. Recent DNA testing on the clothing items, along with corroborating witness testimony, linked Rodriguez, then age 27, to the murder.

     Monterey County formed a Cold Case Task Force in 2020 to investigate, solve, and prosecute cold-case homicides. This was the latest successful resolution.

The Best—And Most Anticipated—

Mysteries And Thrillers of 2024 [So Far]

     In real life, sudden twists can be nausea-inducing; in fiction, they’re part of the fun. What makes mystery and thriller novels such stalwart cornerstones of the publishing industry is their dependability. As ELLE magazine’s Lauren Puckett-Pope recently wrote, “You know to strap in for a roller coaster, even if the track before you has vanished. The best authors take advantage of that blindness, and throw in drops that double as social commentary, emotional release, or (ideally) both.

     “The books on this list vary their drops: Some are skydives, others are gentle bumps. But all offer a story that resonates in this peculiar era defining the mid-2020s. [These are our]recommendations for the best and most anticipated mysteries and thrillers of 2024, from the months of January through April." As with ELLE’s other best-of book lists (including literary fiction, nonfiction, romance, and fantasy and sci-fi), this list gets updates throughout the year—so don’t fret if your crime writer of choice has yet to make an appearance. For now, we hope you find a new favorite and settle in for the ride.

     [Shameless marketing ploy: Order a copy of Beyond All Doubt today and see how it stacks up to the fine novels on the list.]

Launches Tomorrow!

Beyond All Doubt

[Reed Bunzel writing as Hilton Reed]

“Beyond All Doubt is an edge-of-your-seat fast-moving thrill-ride, kicked off by the reappearance of a dead man and propelling the reader along to the final bullet—and beyond.”— S.J. Rozan, best-selling author of The Mayors of New York

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“Beyond All Doubt is a taut, smart, and emotionally rich thriller. Reed has a sharp eye for character and a screenwriter's feel for action. This tale is sleek as a mink and fast as a bullet.”— T. Jefferson Parker, author of The Rescue

“Beyond All Doubt is not a 'who done it,' but a twisty, compelling 'who did what.' Cameron Kane is a sympathetic, yet unrelenting bulldog in his pursuit of the truth about his wife's death. Intriguing and intense, Beyond All Doubt is a winner!”—Matt Coyle, bestselling author of the Rick Cahill crime novels

“In this action-packed and engrossing thriller, Reed masterfully balances between a husband’s drive to uncover the truth about his wife’s death and a father’s instinct to protect his family at all costs. Once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down!”— Matthew Farrell, bestselling author of The Woman at Number 6

“Beyond All Doubt has plenty of thrills—deadly snipers, false identities, shocking deaths—but at its heart, this book is about a grieving single father whose desperation propels the plot like a speeding car with its brake lines cut.”— Cayce Osborne, author of I Know What You Did