Noir Meets Magic

I’m looking for touchstones of a genre, and I’m hoping you can help me find them.

A rough description of the novel I’m working on is “a private investigator in a fantasy world.”¹ This is such a simple concept that it occurs to me that there must be other examples of this kind of book out there. And yet, I’ve been having trouble finding them. The Dresden Files aren’t quite what I’m going for, since their fantasy world is our own. The closest thing I’ve seen is Glen Cook’s Garrett, P.I. novels. Are there are other books I should be taking a look at?

¹ My high concept pitch is Raymond Chandler meets Polaris.

Update

Fitness: Ran 2.5 miles
Sun, Moon, and Stars: 335 words, 231 seven-day average, 253 average, 25600 total, 400 to go for the week

Comments

[jessecoombs]

I'd say Tim Powers, but I honestly haven't read any.

[GB Steve]

Have you seen Cast a Deadly Spell (or its sequel)? Otherwise for a PI in an actual fantasy world, Martin Millar is probably the guy. He wrote the Thraxas novels (as Martin Scott). I prefer his drugged out magical realism set in South London but these are ok.

http://www.thraxas.com/

[JIm Henley]

Hm. Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy isn't quite your thing; it's more tea-cozy than hardboiled. But it's a start. There's the Roman-like detective Conan meets in "The Scarlet Citadel." Cool character, but he dies. And had he lived, he'd have starred in police procedurals anyway!

Richard K. Morgan's novel The Steel Remains has the right tone - it's the first fantasy (really science-fantasy) novel I've ever seen about PTSD. For quite awhile the main character sort of occupies the function of a hardboiled-novel protagonist, but it's ultimately swords & starships adventure, not a detective story as such.

So you're onto something!

[Eric Lytle]

Keith Baker's Eberron setting for D&D has are a few hardboiled detective novels set in it. The series that I remember most is The Lantern Light Files. That might be a place to start looking. Some of the Eberron setting D&D books also have guides for DMs to run Fantasy-Noir Eberron games.

[Rob Donoghue]

Simon Green's Hawk & Fisher books perhaps. They're pulpy cop mysteries in a fantasy city.