Long Island is one of 50 locations where similarly bleak themes have been explored to date, in books ranging from "Paris Noir" to "Istanbul Noir" to "Philadelphia Noir".
The same bleak themes are continued in his next novel, Platform, a lurid account of the world of sex tourism in the Far East.
In passing on this message, it helps that Middleton has previously carved himself a niche in balancing bleak themes with cheerful melody and lively rhythms.
More significant was Jan Needle's My Mate Shofiq (1978), a groundbreaking story about two boys caught up in increasingly violent racial tension, which was praised for its honesty and criticised for its overwhelmingly bleak themes.
The collaborative efforts of Jan Lenica and Walerian Borowczyk foresaw the bleak themes and absurdist trends of the Polish school of the 1960s; such films as Był sobie raz… (1957; Once Upon a Time…), Nagrodzone uczucie (1957; Love Rewarded), and Dom (1958; The House) are surreal, pessimistic, plotless, and characterized by a barrage of disturbing images.
Anohni was a darkened phantom onstage, but synced video close-ups of a range of humans performing the lyrics brought the album's bleak themes into visceral clarity.
Despite its bleak subject matter, the popularity of the inaugural Holocaust film series demonstrated the inspiring diversity of movies on that theme.
This is a breezy, funny, well-acted film that moves at such a clip that you don't quite realise how bleak its themes often are.
Revelations about a small subculture of gay men engaging "chemsex" – sex, often involving multiple partners, under the influence of drugs such as GHB or crystal meth – formed a bleak and worrying theme of 2016.
The Appeal is a bleak variation on this theme.
