Top 10 rural noir novels

From James M Cain to Flannery O’Connor, novelist Tom Bouman chooses the best fiction showing the dark side of American country life

Classical noir ... Lana Turner and John Garfield in the 1946 film version of The Postman Always Rings Twice. Photograph: Alamy

Tom Bouman

Wednesday 20 May 2015  The Guardian

“Rural noir” is a 21st-century term used to describe a stream of American literature that has been flowing since the 19th century. We’ve had dark, dangerous stories set in the countryside since William Leggett’s 1827 tale The Rifle. Some of the best-known writers associated with the label have suggested doing away with it, but at this point it seems futile to pretend that it doesn’t exist. If your book, like mine, has an all-terrain vehicle chase or a fistfight over a deer rifle in the middle of a swamp, somebody somewhere is going to call it rural noir.


The following is an incomplete list of books and authors I feel have contributed to this trend.