This first novel is a highly entertaining and imaginative journey between fact, fiction, and fantasy in the depths of a city where it is always two-thirty in the morning and always raining. "The conventions of film noir are lovingly exploited in this entertaining novel".--New York Times Book Review.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
This quirky first novel by the author of Nightmare Movies: A Critical History of the Horror Film Since 1968 bludgeons the reader with a slew of references to crime movies, character actors and film cliches. In futuristic England, Dreamer Susan Bishopric is summoned for Conscription and brought to Princetown Jail, where she is asked to channel her Talent (which she uses to create entertainment for Dream subscribers) toward flushing out Truro Daine, master criminal. Daine has had access to 1940s and '50s "flatties" (films) to distract him from his foul deeds, but, with a dreamset smuggled into prison, he has leeched onto Yggdrasil, the world computer, and borrows elements from the movies to Dream his own universe--in the meantime absorbing critical file space in the computer. Susan is dispatched into Daine's Dream to reshape and ultimately destroy it. Newman's sci-fi gimmicks are inadequately explained and, like the heavy-handed movie pastiche, likely to annoy mainstream readers.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A small read with big thrills,
By
This review is from: The Night Mayor (Hardcover)
This is the first book by science fiction/fantasy/horror writer Kim Newman and, might I add, one of his best. Truro Daine, a dangerous criminal who has been confined to imprisonment manages to escape his incarceration by inventing a dream world that's computer-generated and where he is the Night Mayor, ruler of this dark city, plotting to take over the entire world. The only hope existing are two professional dreamers who enter into Daine's world to try and stop him. This is a pulse-racing piece of entertainment that springs surprises around every corner and leaves you desperate to keep reading. Newman humorously (but convincingly) mixes film noir and character actors with his own creations to make this an unconventional, quirky and highly fascinating read. I finished it in a single day, it amused me so.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
In -joke novel for cineastes ;clever but shallow,
By F. J. Harvey "Cricket ,country music and a go... (Birmingham England) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Night Mayor (Hardcover)
Kim Newman is an avid moviegoer and has written and broadcast extensively on movies ,with special attention to the horror genre,although in Wild West Movies he displayed a great insight into the Western. The Night Major was published in 1989 and was his fictional debut under his own name.It is a novel that brings all his interests into play. It is set in the future,when movies and TV have gone ,to be replaced with an electronic dream package that enables users to dream themselves into the shoes of their favourite movie stars .An archcriminal, Truro Dane , has escaped from prison by dreaming himself a private universe created from the elements of classic American film noir and crime movies.Suasn Bishopric ,the heroine ,is sent to enter his dream world and bring him back and in the process recue a crime writer ,Tom Tunney,who has become trapped in Dane's world. The book is packed with references to classic movies -mainstream and obscurities both,with appearances by stars of the era-and the use of metaphors is clearly an act of homage to writers of the pulp era such as Hammett and Chandler.Try this one for size "Truro Dane had a cultivated accent.The kind you cultivated on agar jelly in a petri dish" The book was clearly fun to write but it has serious weaknesses-all its characters are movie stereotypes and have no room to develop outside their movie personas,and none of the characters come alive . Its clever but self congratulatory and seems designed to be written by movie buffs who will pat themselves on the back for recognising the references If you want to experience the world of noir then read the noir writers like Woolrich,or McCoy ,or rent a Nicholas Ray,Jacques Tourneur movie.They will give you the dark brooding tension and nuances without the literary "smart arse"qualities
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