Has anyone read their noir selection yet? How did you like it? I have "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and other classics on order. 

I sort of cheated and watched "Double Indemnity" (free on youtube.com) with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck last week and discovered that I do indeed like this genre even though every noir spoof I've ever seen has nailed it.

"I am crazy about ya, baby."  "Say yer prayers, ya double crossin' dirty rat." 

Though I have to admit, goofy Fred MacMurray playing a cold bad ass was hard to believe. He's just not the type since I only really know him as Steve Douglas, the father in the t.v. show My Three Sons. 

Raymond Chandler is one of only two authors I've ever read whose prose has literally made my jaw drop with its brilliance.  The plots are a little knotty, but they're worth it.  I'd start with The Long Goodbye.

I LOVE Raymond Chandler.   My other personal favorite is Erle Stanley Gardiner.  Perry Mason is a pretty great character.

Really hard core noir can be found by running a search "Hard Case Crime" - it is a publisher of fifties and sixties noir. Lots of action, with knuckle-headed characters doing things totally against their own interest, usually under the influence of demon alcohol.

The Library of America publishes a couple of very good collections of noir novels.

I've been reading noir lately. Cornell Woolrich's The Bride Wore Black really rocked.

Bury Me Deep by  Harold Q. Masur was good, if a little lighter.

I just got a nice copy of I Married a Dead Man by Cornell Woolrich. Haven't started yet.

How about some true-life noir?  Try James Ellroy's My Dark Places--his account of trying to solve, as an adult, his own mother's murder, which happened when he was ten.  It's a very dark read, chronicalling as well his descent into drugs and crime as a troubled youth.