March 2024
An interview with Valerie J. Brooks, the Argentinian noir version of The Quiet Place, and wine scams
What’s new
I’m back in Los Angeles and I’ve gotta tell you—I’m happy to be home, but I still miss France.
I celebrated being back in LA this past week by attending the opening night of Noir City: Hollywood, the annual film noir traveling film festival. The opening night double feature was made up of two films that were both adaptations of Cornell Woolrich stories.1 The first, No Abras Nunca esa Puerta (in English, Never Open That Door) is an Argentinian noir from 1952. I absolutely loved this film. Without giving too much away, there’s a suspense sequence that plays as heart-in-your-mouth intense as anything I’ve seen on screen (think The Quiet Place by way of 1950s noir), beautiful chiaroscuro throughout, and the ability to go dark-dark with the ending in a way that Hollywood never could2.
If you get the chance to see this film—and you will, it’s coming to Turner Classic Movies’ “Noir Alley” feature in June—I can’t recommend it enough. I’ve seen it three times now, and each time, it’s a little richer. I even had the chance to be interviewed for an upcoming documentary featurette about the film and Cornell Woolrich’s work, which will be included on the DVD release of the restored film—quite the life highlight!3
You can find an essay I wrote on Hollywood as muse in the spring 2024 issue of Mystery Readers International, next to hard hitters such as Tori Eldridge, Lee Goldberg, and Gary Phillips! You can also read a Q&A from me in The Reading Corner UK, a literary charity across the pond.
Valerie J. Brooks became enamored with crime when she overheard a Boston mobster planning a hit. She reported it, and twenty minutes later, two FBI agents arrived and took down the details. She never found out what happened. That’s why she writes thrillers where the women are badass (The Angeline Porter Trilogy) and she can create stories with endings. She’s won many awards including the Nancy Pearl Book Award and the International Readers’ Favorites Thriller Awards twice, plus has won an Elizabeth George grant. NY Times best-selling author Heather Gudenkauf calls Brooks the “queen of the femmes-noir thriller.” She’s a staff writer for “Mystery and Suspense Magazine.”
You can find her online at https://valeriejbrooks.com.
What tabs do you currently have open on your computer?
Right now, I have tabs open for research on my fourth psychological femme-noir novel: cult language, the dark behavioral arts [Editor’s note: Say more, please!!!], how to visit the Oregon State Penitentiary, Gordon Ramsay shrimp and grits recipe (yes, there’s a hot chef in this one), and Eugene’s Shelton-McMurphy- Johnson Victorian historical house. Oh, and I also have a tab open to an AI class I’m taking. I’m scared to death of AI, so I want to understand it more. Plus, if it can help me with marketing, I’ll cave.
Where do you go to refill your creative well?
Long drives or walks. Cafes. White noise helps me escape into my imagination. I also love my beautiful writing cave room.
What was the last piece of art that made you want to create something?
I keep certain things around that I love and inspire me, like an issue of “womankind” magazine with its brilliant artwork and an article titled “The Psychology of Creativity.” I watched the series “A Murder at the End of the Earth” and read Heather Gudenkauf’s chilling new thriller EVERYONE IS WATCHING. Both gave me insight into working with an ensemble cast of characters.
What have you learned about your process of writing now that you didn’t know when you first started?
An early mentor pointed out that I write the way my brain works—fast. I’d write something, then jump ahead without building to the outcome. Once I learned to recognize this trait, I slowed my brain by learning to be in my character’s shoes instead of outside like an observer. Maybe that was the curse of once being an ad writer.
What would you like to shamelessly plug?
My femme-noir Angeline Porter trilogy. Ang is a disbarred criminal lawyer. I love writing her! Ang stepped off the Paris Metro after I traveled there in 2015. I didn’t know her then, but I knew someone was there with me, so I kept all my receipts and brochures, took a million photos, followed my nose. knew the first novel would start in Paris. I used true events that happened at the time.
There’s also a sexy Frenchman [Editor’s note: Oh la la, tres bien!] who happens to be working undercover for the FBI. And that’s just the beginning. I set my novels in places where I’ve been, Ang trying to save her sisters, fighting the mob, and trying not to be involved with the Frenchman—from Paris, to Portland OR, to Kauai, to New Hampshire and Hollywood, Florida. The trilogy is available on Amazon and bookshop.org and signed books via my website. They are also in audio via AppleBooks.
Book 1: Revenge in 3 Parts, Book 2: Tainted Times 2, and Book 3: 1 Last Betrayal
What do you think people would be most surprised to discover you’re obsessed with?
Nothing. I think I’m pretty much an open book. Pun intended. For those who don’t know me, I’m obsessed with Stevie Nicks. I even named my Havanese pooch Stevie Nicks. I’m a Fleetwood Mac fanatic.
What’s your definition of noir?
I love that so many women are writing noir today. Classic noir used to be men claiming that femmes fatales “made me do it,” blaming women for their bad deeds. Modern noir, or neo-noir as it’s called, has turned that trope on its head. We still use dominant themes like cynicism and disenchantment about the world to tell our stories, but in the age of “Me Too,” noir is told by women who no longer let men get away with blaming them for anything.
Cheney Ryan who is an expert on noir and the son of Robert Ryan, the famous noir actor, made an important point about noir. He said you can’t understand the actual mood of noir unless you place it in exactly the political mood of the country. Now is a perfect time to write noir. [Editor’s note: I couldn’t agree more!]
My favorite definition of noir is from James Ellroy:
“The thrill of noir is the rush of moral forfeit and the abandonment to titillation. The social importance of noir is its grounding in the big themes of race, class, gender, and systemic corruption. The overarching joy and lasting appeal of noir is that it makes doom fun.”
What draws you to noir?
I blame it on growing up in New Hampshire. We lived in this idyllic place that hid secrets and seemed dark beneath the surface. The famous and infamous novelist Grace Metalious wrote Peyton Place about our area and spilled the truth on what really went on behind closed doors. I even knew some of the people she based her characters on. My home culture was strict, judgmental, racist, right-wing, and religious. I left there when I was 19. When I went to college, I studied film noir and that was it for me. I’m a realist, not a fantasist. I also love delving into what makes people tick psychologically. Happy endings—no. Lessons learned—yes.
What are some of your favorite works of noir?
Favorite noir novel: IN A LONELY PLACE by Dorothy B. Hughes (the book, not the movie)
Favorite neo-noir films: CHINATOWN, BODY HEAT, and (tech-noir) EX MACHINA
Favorite place to watch film noir: “Noir Alley” Saturday nights on TMC
What do you think a lot of people get wrong about noir?
I’ve observed several novels marketed as noir when, in fact, they are only darkly atmospheric but don’t follow the main characteristic of noir: noir never has a happy ending. Justice usually loses to power. However, the main character, if they are still alive, may learn a lesson. Noir is stark realism.
So, remember what Ellroy said: it makes doom fun.
Backlist beauties
Recommending: Rear Window and Other Murderous Tales by Cornell Woolrich
Year published: 2022 (but! All the stories were originally written and published between the 1930s and the 1950s so TECHNICALLY I’m not breaking my own rules here)
I’ll be honest—I struggle with short story collections sometimes.4 I feel, simultaneously, often not as invested as a novel, and also somehow like I’m not ready to say goodbye when a story ends. I picked up this collection of Woolrich stories to brush up on the documentary interview, and it took about halfway through the collection to click—and then it clicked big.
Woolrich is so readable—he’s not as pretty a prose stylist as Chandler, nor does he pack as muscular a punch as Cain, but he hooks you in with a deep creeping sense of unease and suspense. Chandler once called him ‘the best idea man in the game’ and I see why—it’s not so much that he has so many new ideas, but he can take a few different iterations of a plot and find constantly new angles on them. He was extremely prolific in his lifetime, publishing over 200 short stories and 16 plus novels.
What really sets Woolrich apart for me is how dark he’s willing to go. Woolrich stories are like nightmares, in that once you glimpse how bad things could get, you’re on an inescapable ride to that spot—and then it gets a little worse. He always leaves you with one more twist of the knife in the very last paragraph.
These stories are as noir as they come.
My open tabs
Scaachi Koul is one of my favorite writers on the internet so it’s not a hard sell to get me to read anything she writes, but Scaachi Koul AND a thinkpiece on SVU??
Trying to convince myself that making my own shrubs will turn out better than that time I tried to infuse tequila with jalapeno and pineapple (sorry Mom and Dad, that was a real eyesore for a few weeks). Not yet convinced, but this recipe is inching me closer.
Pretty sure I’m about to get obsessed with the disappearance of Malaysian Flight MH370 with the help of this podcast.
Always fascinated by the Doris Duke alleged murder.
Cornell Woolrich is a noir writer you know, even if you don’t know that you know him. He was the most widely adapted noir writer of the golden era, outpacing Hammett and Chandler easily. The most famous adaptation of his work is Hitchcock’s Rear Window, but you might also know him from Mississippi Mermaid, or its 2001 remake, Original Sin, starring Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie (which I definitely watched at a much too-tender age one weekend on my parents’ Cinemax when they were out of town 😎).
Argentina wasn’t constrained by the Hollywood code, so the ending didn’t have to have moral value.
The interview happened at this insanely gorgeous house in Hancock Park, which felt like walking into the film Chinatown. Think: a hidden room off the music salon; a balcony where live musicians would play for guests during parties; and a child’s playhouse, built to the specifications of the little girl of the original house, who never grew taller than 4’11”.
I was in noir heaven.
The owner of the house shared one story of the house with me. The original owners were in the movie business (because of course they were) and would host lavish parties for stars. Legend has it, one party Tallulah Bankhead came down the stairs totally nude except for heels and lipstick, walked up to the beet-red butler, and said, “What? You’ve never seen a woman who’s a natural blonde AND a natural brunette before?”
Except for my girl Kelly Link.