I’ve been reading a lot of detective fiction lately: Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Aside from the fact that they’re all about mysteries and detecting the solution to aforementioned mysteries, they’re also some of the more depressing books I’ve read. These writers have crafted worlds populated with brainless thugs, shallow women and men who are isolated from the rest of the world just because they’re half-way decent.
There is horror here, different from what I write, but there just the same. They are worlds that are bereft of redemption, where the only way out is at the end of a gun. The people are all monsters, spending every second of their lives trying to put one over the other guy. Here, the only thing worse than the crime, is the base motive behind the crime. There are never happy endings in these books, just a final terse word from the Detective that sums up the case before he goes back to his apartment to drink himself to sleep.
It’s not cheerful, especially not in massive quantities, but it’s been giving me ideas. Lots of ideas, ideas for writing, ideas for stories and beyond.
Could this be a prelude to an announcement of a new work by the great author Dylan Charles? Find out tomorrow right here!
Dylan Charles
dylancharles.net 