Posts Tagged: Hardboiled Detective Fiction

I think it was Heywood Hale Broun who said, “When a professional man is doing the best work of his life, he will be reading only detective novels,” or words similar. I hope, even at my age, I have my best work ahead of me, but when I was writing The Death of the Detective, in my leisure hours I was exhausting the classic English who-dun-its written between the Wars, favoring Dorothy Sayers and Freeman Wills Croft, while also re-reading Raymond Chandler and re-discovering Nero Wolfe. In this regard I shared the addiction with the likes of William Butler Yeats, William Faulkner and FDR, among others. My first two novels, the companion novels, Toyland and House Across the White... more

Read More of Mark Smith on Writing THE DEATH OF THE DETECTIVE

Justice Never Sleeps by author Bob Forward

The Owl books were a lot of fun to write. The concept of a private detective who didn’t sleep spawned itself almost naturally from my lifestyle at the time. I was young enough (and dumb enough) so that I would routinely stay awake for three nights in a row. I’m sure you’ve been there. You start by pulling an all-nighter for some test or work deadline. Then you stay up a second night celebrating the successful completion of aforementioned test or deadline. At which point, you are running on fumes and probably not making the best decisions. So you decide to stay up a third night just to see if you can do it. Justice Never Sleeps Somewhere in there (probably during one of those... more

Read More of THE OWL: Pulling the Ultimate “All-Nighter”