“Why, despite the blinding brightness, did everything look gray? It was as if the painfully sharp lights were helpless to dispel all the darkness the people had brought in from the night outside.”

― Georges Simenon, Three Bedrooms in Manhattan

Daylight savings is depressing. It should never be dark at 4:30, it just shouldn’t. When you rarely see full sun at the start or end of your workday, you can start to doubt its existence. In this monochrome season of eternal night, after the color has fallen from the trees and before snow at least lends some sparkle to the streets, why not curl up inside and find comfort in the stylish dark of noir?

Marked by its hard-edged characters and moody settings full of violence and intrigue, the noir genre offers nearly endless diversion to fill dark windy days, from movies to graphic novels, sci-fi noir, swamp noir, or Nordic noir. My preferred format for it is film. I find that noir’s cumbersome, winking metaphors (“We looked at each other with the clear innocent eyes of a couple of used car salesmen” – from Raymond Chandler) are a little more digestible when delivered by some quick-talking actors than when they’re on a page.

My favorite classic Hollywood duo are Bogie and Bacall. Humphrey Bogart has such an intimidating charisma, and I have an unapologetic girl-crush on Lauren Bacall with her deep voice and wryly arched brows. The two are masters of that sort of biting, double-meaning banter that’s iconic to noir films, and they co-starred in several noir classics: To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947), and Key Largo (1948).

But there are plenty of good noir and noir-influenced stories that have been produced more recently than the 1940s. Another personal favorite is The Expanse book and TV series. The neon signs and gritty underground of classic noir are updated in this sci-fi setting, with dark alleys being replaced by dim tunnels within a settlement on an asteroid. The story even features a detective with a gritty exterior but a thirst for the truth as he is tasked with tracking down an unforgettable dame…and yes, Detective Miller wears a fedora.

That timelessness, the continued appeal of imperfect heroes, snappy dialogue, dramatic lighting, and foggy alleyways, may be due to noir being not only about the double-crosses, murder, and seduction. Noir plays out questions of cynicism vs. idealism, crime vs. justice, and murky morality with style and flair. As described in Catherynne M. Valente’s Radiance:

“Your hardscrabble detective is nothing more than a noble knight with a cigarette and a disease where his heart should be. He talks prettier, that’s all. He’s no less idealistic—there’re good women and bad women, good jobs and bad jobs. Justice and truth are always worth seeking. He pulls his fedora down like the visor on a suit of armour. He serves his lord faithfully whether he wants to or not. And he is in thrall to the idea of a woman.”

Author James Ellroy offers a simpler explanation:

“The overarching and lasting appeal of noir is that it makes doom fun.”