Customer Reviews

The Night Mayor

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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.

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