Robert Coover is an avant-garde novelist, critic, and playwright whose work combines fact with fiction and twists familiar stories in ways that expose the absurdities of modern society. He is the author of the William Faulkner Award winner The Origin of the Brunists and the acclaimed novels The Public Burning, Spanking the Maid, Gerald's Party, Pinocchio in Venice, John's Wife, Ghost Town, and Briar Rose, among many others. With Noir, Coover creates a classic crime story in which nothing is what it seems to be.