A Simple Favor

A Simple Favor is often described as a noir novel. Noir is a specific subgenre of the crime genre and can also be considered a psychological thriller. Noir fiction often features intricate plots with truths that are revealed in layers. People are not who they appear to be, and the narrative is filled with secrets and plot twists.

The noir subgenre is also recognizable by its dark tone, and in these narratives, sex and violence are often intertwined. The moral ambiguity or flexibility of the characters is another feature of noir. Darcey Bell draws attention to these noir characteristics in A Simple Favor by referencing noir fiction and film classics to draw the connection to the genre.

Many of Bell’s noir references are to Patricia Highsmith and her work. Highsmith was a psychological thriller and crime novelist whose work delved into noir conventions. Highsmith’s best-known work is her novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, published in 1955. This novel and four later Ripley books have become known as the Ripliad and cemented Highsmith’s reputation as a master of psychological thrillers. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, was published in 1950 and adapted into film by Alfred Hitchcock. In it, two men meet on a train and, discovering that they each want someone dead, agree to trade murders, thus providing each other with unimpeachable alibis. Strangers on a Train is mentioned several times in A Simple Favor.

The other Highsmith novel Bell references is Those Who Walk Away, published in 1967. In Bell’s novel, when Emily disappears, she is reading this novel, and Stephanie takes her bookmarked copy with the idea that it might give her some insight into Emily’s state of mind. She wonders, at one point, “not quite in a flash, more like a flicker—that Emily might have walked away. Left her son with me and taken off. People walk away. It happens” (30). The Highsmith novel emphasizes the tone and context of Stephanie’s comment, which seems more plausible in the context of these noir references.

Bell also alludes to the 1944 film Double Indemnity, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. In the movie, one of the fundamental noir film classics, Barbara Stanwyck convinces Fred MacMurray, an insurance salesman, to help her commit insurance fraud. Emily first makes the connection when talking about the development of her plan: “I explained the logical steps, and Sean went along, like all the scammed, bewitched men in those movies. He was the Fred MacMurray, I was the Barbara Stanwyck” (170). When she tells Eve the plan, her sister shows the history of their shared experience when she says, “Very Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray” (240). The connection to A Simple Favor happens not only on the plot level but also in the reinforcement of genre and convention. One other reference that Bell uses is Stephanie’s remembrance of Diabolique, a 1955 French film. Stephanie sums up the film best as being about “a sadistic high school principal and his sexy mistress who conspire to scare his rich, fragile wife to death by making her think she has murdered him and then making it seem like he’s come back from the dead” (137). All of these references, when deconstructed, work toward reinforcing A Simple Favor as a noir novel, but further, a part of a relatively new subgenre known as “domestic noir.”

The term domestic noir was first popularized in 2013 by novelist Julia Crouch, but sometimes these works are also referred to as domestic thrillers. These novels feature the same characteristics as noir—the dark tone; twisting plot; and complex, secretive characters—but in a domestic setting, concerned with matters of family and interested in the female experience. This genre first came to mainstream audiences in 2012 with Gillian Flynn’s blockbuster Gone Girl, which was adapted into film in 2014. Other domestic noir authors include Jean Hanff Korelitz, Paula Hawkins, Julia Crouch, and Araminta Hall.