The dame. The quintessential female of the film noir period. She saunters into the detectives office with bad news and a lit cigarette, is unimaginably composed, and is the very personification of the femme fatale. In any good noir pic, the chemistry between the detective and the dame is what builds the story and maintains the tension. Who is she? What does she Want? Can she be trusted? These questions help make that sense which pervades these films.

The companion piece to Noir: Detective, it even has the nifty feature of the backgrounds forming a continuous picture if you line them up side by side. Still more Illustrator work, yet trying to stay with that simplistic representation of light and shadow.