Film Noir

There are a series of programmes and films showing this weekend on BBC 4. I'm looking forward to seeing tonight's films, especially "Farewell My Lovely" which I saw many years ago. When it came out everybody was surprised that Dick Powell, song and dance man before that, was chosen to play Philip Marlowe - too soft, not tall enough, not a bruiser etc. He was astonishingly good. Maybe Bogart was the best of the Philip Marlowe's (though he was hardly big enough) but Dick Powell came a good second, in front of Robert Mitchum, Robert Montgomery and others.
They are also showing a documentary on Film Noir which is described in a part of The Times today as: "Dark city streets. Treacherous femme fatales. Fatally flawed heroes adrift in a cruelly amoral universe. Such are the essential ingredients of Film Noir."
They mention more modern versions of the genre: "L.A. Confidential"; "Chinatown"; "The Last Seduction"; "Basic Instinct". But they don't mention my favourite: "Red Rock West" with Nicholas Cage and that master of the art of "stealing a scene", Dennis Hopper. Also with J.T.Walsh, always good (alas, with us no more).
A friend of mine, Roger Ormorod, a writer of detective fiction who had 40 or so novels published which featured a male detective, Richard Patton, decided he would like to try his hand with a new novel featuring a female detective. This proved quite successful for a few books. The female detective's name? Phillipa Marlowe.