Noir Fiction

Noir fiction is a hybrid genre. The coinage of the term film noir to describe US crime films popular in France after the end of World War II gave generic coherence to an otherwise disparate body of American film and fiction. Noir fiction, like noir film, emerged as a label useful for describing works that exploit the conventions of mystery fiction, especially with regard to the genre's presumptions about social order: that crime can be punished, that justice can be restored, or that there is even such a thing as a social order.