Noir mysteries, Dashiell Hammett,
inspiration, and Pete Collison

Catch You Lat­er, Trai­tor is, in many respects, a detec­tive sto­ry. My hero, Pete, is a great admir­er of Sam Spade, the hard-boiled detec­tive from The Mal­tese Fal­con, as cre­at­ed by Dashiell Ham­mett. Not only does Pete decide to become a detec­tive to solve a major mys­tery, from time to time he takes on a noir voice.

(Are you a fol­low­er of the Lit­er­ary Land­marks tour? This plaque is on Ham­mett’ home in San Fran­cis­co, which you can see here.)

The genre has an inter­est­ing his­to­ry, usu­al­ly begin­ning with Edgar Allan Poe, and includ­ing Wilkie Collins and The Moon­stone, which is often put for­ward as the first mys­tery novel.

I’m not sure when I first began to read mys­tery sto­ries. I sus­pect, like so many, it was when I dis­cov­ered Sher­lock Holmes as a kid. Over the years I’ve been fas­ci­nat­ed by the genre, and have come to believe mys­ter­ies are a unique form of fic­tion. I think they are spe­cial because unlike oth­er forms of fic­tion, in which the writer seeks to cre­ate a bond (belief) between author and read­er, the mys­tery writer seeks to fool or out­wit the read­er.  The mys­tery is, in many respects, a game, a mind game, with cer­tain unspo­ken rules—fair clues, no hid­den sur­pris­es, etc.

The Amer­i­can tra­di­tion owes a great deal to Ham­mett who put for­ward a real­is­tic, hard-edged, but sup­pressed, sen­ti­men­tal tone.

I decid­ed to write Catch You Lat­er, Trai­tor with some of these ele­ments because it is ulti­mate­ly a painful, but emo­tion­al sto­ry. That said, I have to con­fess, writ­ing in this noir style was won­der­ful fun.

Ear­ly respons­es sug­gest read­ers think so too.

There’s Chap­ter One on my web­site. I hope you give it a try.