Noir itself is a nostalgic genre : Rogue Island

Author Bruce DeSilva responded to my blog post yesterday regarding his mystery novel, "Rogue Island," and we got into a discussion about my observation that the story, though set in the near present, feels as if it's set in an earlier era. I noted that Providence, the setting, is not nearly so down and out today as it was 20 years back, and that the protagonist, an investigative reporter named Mulligan, seems like a throwback to an earlier day in journalism when you were more likely to find plenty of hard-drinking, chain-smoking, streetwise reporters. Bruce notes that Providence is far from genteel beyond of the downtown renaissance district (true), that there still are plenty of reporters like Mulligan though they are (like newspapers) an endangered species (true), and that Mulligan does venture into some tony places on the waterfront and at the mall, though he feels uncomfortable there (also true). I guess in part it comes down to a feeling or mood - and it may have less to do with specifics of DeSilva's craftsmanship and plotting than with the nature of noir detective fiction itself. Isn't there something about the genre that is and always will be retro and nostalgic? It seems to me that every noir hero, by his/her nature, is looking for something, a time or place, that no longer exists. Noir itself is a nostalgic genre, though nostalgia of a specific type - like its characters, it's too hardboiled or sharp-edged to concede that it's sentimental at the core, its protagonists almost like medieval knights pledged to live by and restore a code of honor in a world that's gone to hell. Some noir writers today confront that nostalgia head-on - I'm thinking of a book I admired by Meaghan Abbott written today but set 50 years or so back. When it comes right down to it, though - whether DeSilva's Providence is real or not, contemporary or not, that may be fun to debate, but the main point is that he - like all really good writers - has created a world that's his, a Providence that's unique to his work, complete and compelling. As noted yesterday, I can't imagine that anyone, especially Rhode Islanders, wouldn't get a charge out of this book.