Enter a world populated by private eyes, gangsters, psychopaths, and femmes fatales, where deception, lust, and betrayal run rampant. This film-by-film photography book on film noir and neo-noir begins with the early genre influencers of German and French silent film, journeys through such seminal works such as Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Vertigo, and arrives at the present day via Chinatown, Pulp Fiction, Heat, and the recent cult favorite Drive.

Entries include posters, tons of rare stills, cast/crew details, quotes from the films and from critics, and analyses of the films. Film director, film noir scholar, and Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader provides the introduction to this feast of noir worship. Populated by the genre's most revered directors, like Hitchcock, Wilder, Welles, Polanski, Mann, and Scorsese, the book also pays homage to its iconic faces, including Mitchum, Bogart, Hayworth, Bergman, Grant, Bacall, Crawford, Nicholson, Pacino, and so many more.