![]() ![]() You can list them in order of probability. “You can never tell what a drunken Irishman will do.You can make a flying guess you can make a lot of flying guesses. Let’s get to the tale, which is really quite good. It also involves an apparent ‘serial killer’ then known as a ‘homicidal maniac’. Then Brown does something daring stylistically –his stylistic elements would become a signature for him – the story is told by a omniscient narrator who addresses the reader directly as we’ll see in a moment. ![]() A hopeless drunk, seemingly beyond redemption. ![]() The tale opens with a typical Noir subject. Even the title conveys this with it’s play on The Screaming Meemees-an extreme attack of nerves or hysteria – named after the WWI bomb which was launched straight up in the air and came down with a high pitched ‘scream’ before exploding over the target. The story also has some over tones of horror, though it probably would not be considered very horrific today, this was written before Hitchcock made horror a standard fare for mysteries. Now considered a minor master piece of the so called, “Noir Fiction” genre, the story has more in common with the “Golden Age of Crime and Detection” as the protagonist, though not a detective, is a reporter trying to solve a murder, or actually a string of murders. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |