In my new book, Catch You Later, Traitor, my protagonist, Pete, lives out his fascination with American noir detective fiction. In particular he admires Sam Spade, the gumshoe hero created by Dashiell Hammett in his book, The Maltese Falcon. In the course of my story, Pete now and again slips into noir fiction style to describe the world and situation in which he lives.
The front room of Ritman’s store was filled with rotating wire racks stuffed with paperback books, comics, and magazines. I headed for the back room, which has the old detective magazines. I loved those mystery monthlies, ones like Black Mask, Dime Detective, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Their covers always had some radio-active babe falling out of her dress next to a square-jawed guy about to either save her or kill her, it wasn’t clear which. The stories were full of hard guys in hard situations with hard bad guys and dames, talking in such hard ways it would take a chisel to break their sentences apart.
I adored writing those sections. I think there is something uniquely American in that noir voice. The tough love. The sarcasm. The wit. The truth telling. The very careful literary construction, all of which masks a deeply rooted sentimentality, an embarrassed, if you will, searching for love. Very complex. As a kid, I found the style fascinating. Still do. The thought that I can share this—introduce it—to my readers gives me great pleasure.
In Catch You Later, Traitor, the noir tone is a key part of the novel. The truth is, if the writer is lucky, he or she loves writing a book. I loved writing this one. I hope you will love reading it.