The Wrong Goodbye

nothing more to bask in all the credit, it’s hardly mine alone in which to bask. To that end, I extend my deepest gratitude to my agent, Jennifer Jackson, and to the crack Angry Robot team of Marc Gascoigne, Lee Harris, and Darren Turpin, as well as honorary Robot John Tintera. And though I’ll never turn away a compliment for my lovely, lovely covers, it’s worth noting said compliments should rightly be directed to Marco once more, and to the fine folks at Amazing 15 Design.

Thanks to my parents for their love and support, and to my sister Anna, for occasionally distracting them so I can get some writing done. Thanks also to my in-laws (father, mother, sisters, and brothers), for putting the lie to the stereotype and championing me at every turn. My extended family deserves thanks, too, both for their great generosity of spirit and because I suspect they may well comprise the majority of my readership.

I’ve been fortunate in my writing career to cross paths with more wonderful people than I could possibly list here. However, I would like to single out a few of them for providing me support along the way (with sincere apologies to anyone I’ve missed): John Anealio, Jedidiah Ayres, Patrick Shawn Bagley, Eric Beetner, Frank Bill, Nigel Bird, Stephen Blackmoore, Judy Bobalik, Chris Bowe and the fine folks at Longfellow Books, Paul D. Brazill, Maurice Broaddus, R. Thomas Brown, Bill Cameron, Rodney Carlstrom, Kristin Centorcelli, Joelle Charbonneau, Sean Chercover, David Cranmer and cohorts at Beat to a Pulp, the Cressey family, my fellow Criminal Minds bloggers, Laura K. Curtis, Hilary Davidson, Tony DiMarco, Barna Donovan, Neliza Drew, Jacques Filippi, the whole Founding Fields crew, Renee Fountain, Kent Gowran, Janet Hutchings, Sally Janin, Naomi Johnson, Suzanne Johnson, Jon and Ruth Jordan, John Kenyon, Chris La Tray, Jennifer Lawrence, Brian Lindenmuth and the fantastic folks at Spinetingler, Sophie Littlefield, Jennifer MacRostie, Dan Malmon, Matthew McBride, Erin Mitchell, Scott Montgomery, Joe Myers, Stuart Neville, Lauren O’Brien, Sabrina Ogden, Dan O’Shea, Miranda Parker, Lou Pendergrast, Ron Earl Phillips, Kathleen Pigeon, James W. Powell, Keith Rawson, Kieran Shea, Julia Spencer-Fleming (and her husband Ross), Julie Summerell, Brian Vander Ark, Jeff VanderMeer, Meineke van der Salm, Steve Weddle, Chuck Wendig, Elizabeth A. White, and Shaun Young.

And, as ever, thanks to my lovely wife Katrina: my copilot, my ideal reader, my best friend. A good spouse will pretend not to notice their partner is making it up as they go; only the best of them encourage it.

About the Author

Chris F. Holm was born in Syracuse, New York, the grandson of a cop with a penchant for crime fiction. He wrote his first story at the age of six. It got him sent to the principal’s office. Since then, his work has fared better, appearing in such publications as Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Needle Magazine, Beat to a Pulp, and Thuglit.

He’s been a Derringer Award finalist and a Spinetingler Award winner, and he’s also written a novel or two. He lives on the coast of Maine with his lovely wife and a noisy, noisy cat.

Why the Hell?

Portions of this essay first appeared on Do Some Damage, L.A. Noir, and The SciFi Guys, and are reprinted with permission.

The Collector series, it seems, is a tough one to pin down. I’ve seen it referred to as gonzo pulp. Urban fantasy. Paranormal mystery. Even, to my great surprise, as science fiction, despite the fact there ain’t much science to be found within its pages.

Truth is, I don’t really mind what people call it, so long as they’re enjoying it. If you ask me, though, the Collector series is fantastical noir. But since there’s a teeny tiny chance I made that phrase up, I should probably explain just what the heck I think it means.

“Noir” is perhaps the slipperiest term in all of literature. That’s in large part due to its muddy origins; our modern use of the term derives from the film noir of the ’40s and ’50s, which in turn borrowed heavily from the bleak crime tales that began cropping up in the U.S. during the Depression. James Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, is widely credited as the creator of the modern roman noir. Before Cain, the term was used to refer to what we’d now call Gothic novels, but afterward, the term took on a life of its own.

Thing is, Cain wasn’t wild about the label, and those classic film noir flicks? Yeah, they weren’t called that then. The title was bestowed upon them by a French critic years after they began popping up in theaters, and the so-called noir canon wasn’t really well-defined until the ’70s, when critics and cinema historians adopted the label en masse; before then, most of what we consider film noir were simply melodramas. So really, noir fiction is the result of a decades-long game of telephone that bounced from books to movies and back again, with stops on two continents along the way. Now, there’s not a lot of agreement as to what it means; like pornography, it seems, most folks just know it when they see it.

The definition that’s gotten the most traction of late is noir preservationist Eddie Muller’s take on noir as “working class tragedy,” due in large part to the fact that it’s been championed by no less than Dennis Lehane. “In Greek tragedy, they fall from great heights,” sayeth Lehane. “In noir, they fall from the curb.”

Now, that doesn’t strike me as half bad, but it’s more descriptive than prescriptive; a shorthand for where noir’s been, as opposed to an instruction manual for where it’s going. For my money, noir boils down to bleak humanism —or, to put it more plainly: shit options, bad decisions, and dire consequences. The difference between Greek tragedy and noir ain’t the height of the fall, but the reason: those who fall in Greek tragedy do so because they’re destined to; those who fall in noir choose to their damn selves.

In short, free will’s a bitch.

But regardless of whose definition you go with, you’ll notice something’s lacking: namely, any mention of genre. That’s because for as much as noir’s assumed to be a subset of crime fiction, it’s more vibe than subgenre. And, as many an enterprising modern writer seems intent on proving, that vibe is one that plays just as well with fantasy and science fiction as it does with crime.

When I sat down to write Dead Harvest, it was the darker aspects of free will I was most interested in exploring. I was raised in a Catholic family, and I’ve long been fascinated with the Church’s teachings on the matter of free will. On the one hand, we’re told God gave to humankind, his most beloved creation, the gift of free will, and on the other, that said gift resulted in the humankind’s expulsion from paradise, and a taint that’s passed to every one of us at birth. We’re taught that three-quarters of everything we do —or even think —is sinful, and we should beg forgiveness at every turn lest we wind up burning for all eternity. We’re taught that even good people can go to hell if they don’t play by God’s rules. And we’re taught that if they do wind up in hell, it’s all their fault.

I’m not trying to knock my family’s faith. But being raised in such a faith can scare the ever-loving shit out of you. It puts no small amount of pressure on you to make good decisions, and no doubt has filled the pews for damn near two thousand years of Sundays with folks trying desperately to reconcile their decisions and their beliefs with a rulebook that’s both dense and difficult to comprehend. Because by God, if they don’t, they’re gonna take a fall.

Truth is, the old pulps from which my series draws its tone aren’t so far afield from the Church in that regard. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise: after all, what were the early pulps if not lurid updates of classic morality plays? James Cain’s tales of forbidden romance leading to violence, misery, and regret may as well have taken place in Eden. Chandler’s cops and criminals were often cut from the same cloth, while Revelations and the Book of Enoch talk of angels and their fallen brethren. Genesis tells the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah; in Red Harvest (whose title I not-sosubtly twisted to suit my own nefarious purposes), Hammett writes of Poisonville. And speaking of Poisonville, while nearly every culture on the planet has their own flood myth of rising waters sent to wash away the wickedness from the world, Hammett’s violent cleansing of that corrupt burg came courtesy of his nameless, unflagging Continental Op —but it was no less awesome for it. And what would any pulp