Film noir, which occurred mainly in the 1940s and ’50s, and its current manifestation, neo-noir, continue to attract many filmgoers and aficionados. Cinema expert Spicer has written widely about this genre and gathers information into a volume in the publisher’s Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts series. The core of the content consists of American film noir during and after WWII and includes separate entries for seminal examples, such as The Big Sleep, Body Heat, and Double Indemnity.

Other parts of the world are covered in entries such as German film noir, Japanese film noir, and Norwegian film noir. Subgenres (African American film noir, Gangster noir) and styles and themes (Visual style, Men) are also discussed. Representative directors and actors have entries. Spicer also discusses noir in other media, such as Comics/graphic novels, Posters, and Radio. Furthermore, he identifies precursors and other cultural phenomena that have influenced film noir, such as Existentialism, Hard-boiled fiction, and specific authors and painters. The A–Z entries vary in length from a half page to four pages (e.g., French noir) and are heavily cross-referenced. The beginning of the volume contains a chronology of film noir benchmarks and influences, from 1794 (publication of Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho) to 2009’s Duplicity (Stieg Larsson just missed the cut.) Eight pages of black-and-white photos of representative films and a poster are included in the middle. After the entries are a 60-page bibliography, divided by major topics, and a country-by-country filmography. Containing a wealth of detail about an intriguing film genre, this book belongs in most film collections.