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Night Mayor Paperback – 7 June 1990

by Kim Newman (Author)

8 ratings

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A funny first novel with elements of science fiction, fantasy and horror, set in a fantasy world fabricated from images of classic American crime movies where it's always 2.30am and always raining. Kim Newman has also published several SF stories and a book on horror films "Nightmare Movies".

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Product details

Publisher : New English Library Ltd; New edition (7 June 1990)
Language : English
Paperback : 192 pages
ISBN-10 : 0450524663
ISBN-13 : 978-0450524660

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8 ratings

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jcmacc

Great re-issue of the original novella and 4 other short stories

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 December 2019

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The Night Mayor is an interesting short novel, set in a world based on detective noir films of the 1930s where it is always raining and always 2:30am. The world works like this as it is a dream - in this future dreams have replaced films and there are dream-makers who "script" the experiences. Not all are good people......It would help your enjoyment if you are a fan of early gangster films and Bogart detective movies, but no special knowledge is required to understand what's going on.

This re-issued version of the Night Mayor novella comes with 4 additional short-stories.

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Not really

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 November 2015

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As a rule I really enjoy KN's books. All the way through this I just couldn't make up my mind. It's one of those tomes set in a dream world with real people chasing each other. He's great at listing movie star names and evoking atmosphere but none of it felt like his style. By the end I just didn't care and the whole thing just fizzled out. The bonus short stories, set in the same world, are all filler no killer. Sorry.

Bonnie

So Fun it's Probably Fattening

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 October 2016

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"The Night Mayor" is everything you want from a Kim Newman book. It's jaw-droppingly original, clever, dark and outrageously funny. And as an added bonus, this particular title acts as an excellent guide to the best old timey movies, especially Film Noir detective stories.

Honestly, it's so enjoyable I felt guilty after reading it.

Peter S. Bradley

Cyberpunk and Film Noire

Reviewed in the United States on 20 September 2015

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The Night Mayor by Kim Newman.

I haven’t read anything by Kim Newman previously. I know that he writes “vampire historical” novels, but this seems to be set in a completely different world than that one. In this world, the popular entertainment media consists of Dreams, the world seems to be run by an artificial intelligence known as Yggdrasil, and people can be “resurrected.”

The book opens with hardboiled private detective Tom Tunney standing in the rain of the City. It always rains in the City and it is always night. And Jimmy Cagney is murdering someone again as Frank Bellamy is the good cop and Tony Curtis is being beat up and John Carradine is quoting Shakespeare…. The clichés and canards of film noire are piled on deep and heavy, and if you have a liking for that genre, this book can be a master’s course in movies to see. (Hmmmm….I’ve never seen “The Sweet Smell of Success”; perhaps it is time.) Tunney is looking for super-criminal Truro Daine, and then weird things happen.

We are then introduced to Susan Bishopric, a Dreamer of great reputation, who is conscripted into going after a criminal named Truro Daine who has locked himself away in a high security prison in his own private Dream, a dream which he has fashioned on film noire movies of the 20th century.

We don’t get much information on Dreaming or the society that Daine, Tunney and Bishopric come from. There are odd allusions to an insanely high level of personal security that the characters use, as if murder was a constant reality, but this is not important to this story – although in the following short stories, it does become important.

Night Mayor is generally entertaining. There seem to be some false moves and unnecessary duplications of plot points, but for the most part Newman moves the story forward at a decent pace. As a character, Tunney is fairly two dimensional – but, then, he’s playing a two-dimensional film noire detective. Susan Bishopric has more depth, but it is a depth in a society that is alien and not part of the main story. The reality of Dreams means that there are jumps in internal logic and setting, and absurdity is part of the setting and plot, and the characters can deus ex machina, i.e., Dream, to resolve the plot, which actually works in the context of this story, which is about a Dream, after all.

If you are opposed to illogic and absurdity , then this is not going to be your book. On the other hand, the value added for me was Newman’s constant homage to detective movies and film noire. You might find that to be too small a pay-off for a book set in a world that is nothing but a cliché.

This book also offers four short stories set in the same world. What we see is that resurrection and dream technology has created a culture of sociopaths. Murdergrams are sent, husbands and wives hunt each other in murder games, and dream technicians create works of art that have permanent results. This is a very dark future that Newman is imagining and one wonders if he isn’t making a statement about how removing death and providing more and more direct forms of entertainment creates an addiction for experience that can never be satisfied. The stories were well-written and disturbing.

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Lila Richards

Dark fantasy with wry humour

Reviewed in the United States on 14 September 2018

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Another great outing from Kim Newman, whose seemingly boundless ability to create disturbing, yet oddly familiar, environments and characters never disappoints. Here, his encyclopaedic knowledge of films is used to great effect.

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Night Mayor Paperback – 7 June 1990

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