Even though the author calls it narrative noir, it’s not prose for me. It’s an epic, a narrative poem.  The imagery is outstanding, mostly black and white, and if there is colour it is what in we could call dramatic cool. The plot takes the main character, Walker, through three American cities, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, of the 40’s and 50’s. These cities are steeped in the imagery of the noir genre movies, and black and white photographs throughout the narrative strengthen that feeling.  We see these cities from the perspective of a soldier who has fought in the Second World War and cannot shake it off.  He has seen and done things he cannot forget.  He cannot go back home.  He engages with fellow veterans, takes up their cause, but true to the noir genre, loses at the end.   There is social engagement there as well.  The cause of the soldiers returned from two wars, the Second World War and the Korean War, with PTSD’s and nowhere to stay, no jobs or medical help.  The homeless, corruption, crime, buildings, parks and whole blocks being sold to make more of endless parking lots.  The hopelessness that does the main character in in the end.  

Through the words of a movie director or a professor of literature Walker says somewhere in the poem that it’s German Expressionism meet the American Dream, and this exactly what it is.  I loved the imagery, but would have wanted the main character to succeed.