Dead Shot Available in One Week

 My first Western, Dead Shot: The Memoir of Walter Ferguson, Soldier, Marshal, Bootlegger becomes available next Friday, November 22. This date was chosen as a courtesy to my dozens of readers, as I know the holidays are a busy time and you might like to get this order off your plate before Thanksgiving makes life hectic. (Canadian readers should ignore the Thanksgiving part. Yours has come and gone. I hope you had a good one.)

Over the past weeks I’ve posted about how and why I wrote Dead Shot,. Today I thought I’d talk a little about why Westerns matter at all, since the core of the book, Walt’s time on the range, took place 120 – 150 years ago.

Western stories – in particular Western movies – have shaped American culture and politics since their advent. The image of the lone cowboy riding into town to right injustice has become so iconic a lot of people in this country – too many, frankly – think that’s how things were and, even worse, should be today. To them, everyone should not only have the right to carry a gun, but should carry one. They believe that’s what it takes to be safe in a world far less dangerous than they would have you believe.

The people who lived on the frontier, where guns were often a necessity, would have liked nothing better than to see fewer of them. Rifles and shotguns were critical for subsistence hunting in a land where the closest meat market might be two days’ ride with no guarantee the meat purchased wasn’t already half spoiled.

Guns were also needed for personal protection. The frontier was a place where a farmer’s wife could watch him disappear over the horizon for a simple run into town for supplies with no assurance she’d ever see him again, no way to check on him, and no way to notify anyone if he didn’t return. Pa would be wise to arm himself on the way to and from town, even if he left the gun in the wagon while he was there.

Why would he leave the gun in the wagon? Because a lot of towns, maybe even most of them, eventually had ordinances that prohibited carrying firearms inside the town limits. People checked their guns the same way we check our coats now. The folks in those towns were painfully aware of the misery caused by every swinging dick in town coming heeled.

That element isn’t very romantic, though, so it’s often overlooked, especially in what I call the good haircut Westerns of the 30s through most of the 60s. You know what I mean: men came into town after three weeks on the range with their hair cut and combed, with maybe a day’s growth of beard. That right there should have been a tip-off that the image about to be conveyed would be inaccurate, no matter how compelling the story.

(I make two exceptions to the above rule: Shane and the original The Magnificent Seven. The grooming in both is still pretty good, but the depictions of the lives lived are also unvarnished.)

The turning point came with The Wild Bunch; Westerns would never be the same after Sam Peckinpaugh’s masterpiece. Clint Eastwood then became virtual curator of the genre with a series of classics, including The Outlaw Josie Wales, High Plains Drifter,  and his Western tour-de-force, Unforgiven.

There were others. Off the top of my head Young Guns, The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Appaloosa, Open Range and especially Monte Walsh worked overtime to dispel the image built up over the previous forty years. On television, Lonesome Dove stands alone. Some were better than others. None glamorized the West, though they often displayed the heroism required to survive on the frontier.

Walt Ferguson’s story includes many scenes based on actual events. Action scenes that might lead one to believe this is just another shoot-em-up. I hope that’s not the general takeaway. I wrote the book to be entertaining, but I also wanted to show that Walt’s exploits were only necessary because the frontier was such a dangerous place.

One last excerpt from the book sums up Wat’s feelings toward his time on the frontier. The “current economic situation” he refers to is the Great Depression.

The frontier is gone now and will never return. That is as it should be, and while I miss it, I do not yearn for its renaissance. The world can never remain too constant or it will become stagnant, and a stagnant pool cannot sustain life except maybe mosquitoes and Lord knows we need no more of them.

What I do not speak much of, and why I am not sorry the frontier is gone forever, are the hardships. As bad as things are during the current economic situation, people who were not there have no idea of the depredations and suffering endured by those who made the trip west when the prairie had never felt a plow blade and was run by Indians. Even without the Indians it was a dangerous and unforgiving place where starvation and disease were constant threats. A relatively minor injury, easily treated by a doctor today, could prevent a man from working and cast his family into ruin.

My heart went out to the homesteaders who broke their backs and buried their children in small family plots. They had no thoughts of riches, only of a better life than the one they left. Maybe to give their children a leg up. They linger across the prairie in unmarked graves covered with stone to keep the scavengers away. The men like me who wore guns get all the attention nowadays but those unnamed millions deserve the credit. I could never have done what any of them did.

Important (For Me) Announcement

 The recent election had a side effect I’ll bet not too many of you saw coming:

Jeff Bezos can kiss my ass.

For those unaware – primarily low information Trump voters, I imagine – Bezos is the founder and owner of amazon.com and one of the two richest people in the world. (The other is Elon Musk, which should give you an idea what kind of high-quality individuals we’re talking about.)

Bezos also owns the Washington Post newspaper. Two weeks before the election, he decided the Post would not endorse a candidate for president. In a remarkably self-serving opinion piece, Bezos defended his action by stating he was returning the Post to the policy it observed until 1976. He argued it would imbue the paper with an aura of objectivity.

This is bullshit. Prima facie evidence to follow.

Bezos also owns Blue Origin, the company chosen by NASA to build the rockets that will return the United States to the moon. He is paranoid Trump will cancel the contract and give it to Dancing Elon (anagram: LONE SKUM), thus costing Bezos billions of dollars.

Let me rephrase: it will prevent Bezos from collecting billions of dollars.

Well, then, he can’t have any more of mine.

The Beloved Spouse™ and I are finding other sources for products we subscribe to on Amazon; we will not renew our Prime subscription. You can’t cancel those, so we’re locked in until August 2025. In the interim we will only use the services Prime provides for no additional charge, such as Free on Prime programming and the occasional sporting event. We will use Amazon as a shopping and information source for products we’ll buy elsewhere, even if it costs us more.

The reader in me has a more personal interest. The Kindle app of my iPad is more accommodating to my vision issues than most books; I’ll need to find another e-reader app and place to shop. (Suggestions welcome in the comments.)

My inner writer has a deeper dilemma.

I have long set aside my misgivings about Amazon, especially relative to physical bookstores, because brick-and-mortar stores don’t stock my books and are damn near impossible to book events into anymore. Bezos’s craven suck-up to Trump has severed that bond and I am removing from Amazon all the books under my control.

Where will I sell them? Nowhere. Anyone who wants one will be able to download it for free from my web site. Please stand by while the logistics are worked out. I hope to have physical copies through a POD source to sell at conferences, but that is also a work in progress.

I’ll still post notices here when books are available, as well as occasional reminders for the entire oeuvre. The books won’t be any harder to get to than they are now. You’ll just go to a different web site and it won’t cost you any money. If people are interested, I’ll see about working out a way print copies can be ordered from me directly, but that’s down the road and only if people ask for the service.

I hope this doesn’t inconvenience my dozens of readers; I’ll do all I can to see that it does not. The first book to go up will be next Friday’s release of Dead Shot: The Memoir of Walter Ferguson, Soldier, Marshal, Bootlegger. Once we get those logistics worked out, I expect to have everything moved over sometime in December.

Dead Shot: The Memoir of Walter Ferguson, Soldier, Marshal, Bootlegger Drops in Two Weeks

 

Dead Shot: The Memoir of Walter Ferguson, Soldier, Marshal, Bootlegger, drops November 22. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about what a departure it was for me to write a Western. Today I’ll come clean: it’s not as much of a departure as you might think. Dead Shot my second Western.

The still untitled novel was written in fits and starts several years ago after several western road trips put the bug in me. I squeezed bits in between drafts of Penns River and Nick Forte novels figuring I’d edit it into something usable.

The editing made it better, but I was still dissatisfied. The book struck me too much as a rehashing of my favorite scenes from other Westerns, both written and on film. I was pondering how to fix it, or if it was even worth fixing, when the character of Walter Ferguson came to me. The other book fell by the way during Walt’s lengthy gestation period.

These things happen. I’d thrown away thousands of words before. The Man in the Window, the third Forte novel, was almost half written when I decided I didn’t like where it was going. I salvaged what I liked and started over. The Man in the Window earned me a Shamus nomination as Best Paperback Original, so I guess I made the right decision.

The third Penns River novel, Resurrection Mall, started life as the fifth Forte. I was more than 30,000 words in and not liking how things were holding together – or, more accurately, not holding together – when it dawned on me what was wrong: this was a story better suited for Penns River. I threw away everything except the title and one sentence, shifted the whole operation to Penns River, and the rest went as smoothly as any book I’d written to that point.

Those experiences taught me to trust my judgment, so tossing a virtually finished novel did not keep me up at night. The time I worked on that book was well spent. I discovered what I needed to better understand to write a convincing Western, and that I needed to write a book in full, uninterrupted drafts if I wanted it to seem of a piece. I also needed a voice more suited to the period.

All those things not only made Dead Shot a better book, it made it a treat to write. I never had as much fun researching anything I’ve written, thanks mostly to the lively storytelling of those who wrote the histories and memoirs I used in my research. All the books listed below are well worth your time if you have an interest in Western history; the History Channel series, True West, is also recommended. (Alas, Wild West Tech has only random episodes available on YouTube.)

The Encyclopedia of Lawmen, Outlaws, and Gunfighters, Leon Claire Metz

The American West, Dee Brown

Why the West was Wild, Miller Snell

We Pointed Them North, “Teddy Blue” Abbott

The Johnson County War, Bill O’Neal

Deadwood: Stories of the Black Hills, David Milch (Focuses on the TV show but has a lot of good historical perspective)

Old Bill Miner: Last of the Famous Western Bandits, Frank W. Anderson

A Texas Cowboy: Or Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony, Charlie Siringo

Famous Gunfighters of the Western Frontier, Bat Masterson

Dodge City, Tom Clavin

Gunfighter, Joseph G. Rosa

Beyond the Law, Emmitt Dalton

 

Last time I left you with a brief excerpt of Walt’s early life. Today I’ll tease you with a little of his military experience in the 11^th Pennsylvania Volunteers.

I would have been happy to have no cause to fire my weapon during the War of Southern Rebellion, but I ended up doing more than my share of killing. There were two reasons for this. At Chancellorsville I saw a Rebel blow the head off my best friend, Charlie Bagby, while Charlie lay wounded and helpless. I killed that man and the three who were with him. After that I took it as my part to kill my share and Charlie’s too. It seemed only fair.

The other reason I killed so many was that I was good at it. A man should never shirk a God-given gift. The Almighty made me so I could send a bullet anywhere my eye landed. To deny that talent would be akin to blasphemy.

I was fortunate to have a captain who recognized my ability and took full advantage of it. Much of my time between engagements was spent hunting to bring back game that added variety to a diet I would not wish on vermin. Some of the other men resented that I was excused from the less glamorous duties of a soldier, such as digging and filling latrines or standing night watch. They got over it when they realized Company C was the best-fed outfit in the regiment.

As for the other Western, I’ve seen and read quite a few in the past several years that are also mostly rehashings of classic plots and scenes; the secret is in the execution. So, as Billy Crystal said in The Princess Bride, it’s not completely dead.

Chandler's Misogyny and The Little Sister

 A few weeks ago I noted Michael Connelly’s love of Chapter 13 of Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister. I have no quarrel with Connelly’s admiration for that passage. Reading it made me remember it had been a long time since I read The Little Sister, so I gave it another go.

Times change, but that rarely puts me off a book. What we would call “historical fiction” if it were written today gives an opportunity to see how things used to be without modern points of view re-interpreting the times for better or worse.

We change. Books I loved twenty years ago don’t do it for me anymore. (See Spillane, Mickey.) I can still appreciate the artistry, but the enterprise as a whole no longer moves me.

There are also books I didn’t care for when I first read them; second readings showed how badly I misjudged them. James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss and Adrian McKinty’s Dead I Well May Be fall into this category. (In my defense, I read both for the first time during a month-long bout of mononucleosis I doubt I would have liked the movie L.A. Confidential during that month.)

Tangential to what’s above, I remembered an article in The Atlantic by Katy Waldman that discussed Chandler’s misogynistic tendencies; Megan Abbott followed up. At the time, my initial reaction was similar to Megan’s first impression. Also like Megan, I changed my mind. It just took me longer.

Full disclosure: I am not what anyone would consider woke. I say things that appall The Beloved Spouse™ on an almost daily basis. She knows they’re either for comic effect, because I’m trying out something for a character to say, or are strictly factual but insensitive. From what I’ve seen of the Warriors for Wokeness, these comments eliminate me right there, regardless of what actions I may or may not take.

That said, I was appalled by my recent reading of The Little Sister. Chandler wrote noir. Femme fatales are a staple of noir. I get that. It’s why he gets a pass for Helen Grayle in Farewell My Lovely. The problem with The Little Sister is that, while Dolores Gonzales may play that position, Chandler’s descriptions of the other primary women in the book are no more flattering.

Orfamay Quest, the little sister of the title, is a conniving sociopath who’d sell out her family for a few bucks. Gonzales is beyond slutty and either killed or fingered several people. Mavis Weld comes off best, and she’s a bitch for most of the book until he finds she at least has a bottom.

The lesser characters fare no better. There’s the orange-haired police stenographer and the woman in the city offices. Both are described in disparaging terms even though neither does anything damaging to Marlowe.

That got me to thinking about Chandler’s other novels. In The Big Sleep¸ Carmen Sternwood is a nut job and  Agnes Lozelle is a selfish harpy; Vivian Regan comes off best of the three and she spends most of the book sexually teasing Marloe to get him to do her bidding, though her motives are good. Eileen Wade in The Long Goodbye is a hot mess start to finish; the veneer of worthiness she’s given early on is due almost entirely to Marlowe’s sexual attraction. (It’s been forever since I read either The Lady in the Lake  or The High Window, so I’m leaving them aside for now.)

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve used women as bad guys. I even used one as a femme fatale. By and large, I think my female characters come off at least as well as the men. The only women in a Chandler novel I can think of who resembles a good person more than superficially is Anne Riordan in Farewell My Lovely.

Raymond Chandler’s books were among the primary reasons I got into writing seriously. I have no idea how many times I’ve read The Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely, and The Long Goodbye. I can point to two things that have lowered him in my esteem;

1.    I read The World of Raymond Chandler: In His Own Words. Editor Barry Day uses Chandler’s letters to give a picture of the author, who never wrote a memoir. The image that emerges is that of a selfish prig who has serious problems with women. Anyone who knows the story of the relationship he had with his wife is already aware of this.

2.    I got into reading Dashiell Hammett and better appreciated the virtues of telling the goddamn story and getting out.

I’m not finished reading Chandler. I’m sure I’ll read the big three again, though he’s on an extended hiatus right now. It takes a lot to offend me when reading a book, but there were several places in The Little Sister where he had me thinking, “Okay, Ray, I get it. She’s a slut/bitch/cunt. Move on.” I’m sure that’s going to color my reading from now on, even when I’m not actively thinking it.

The short stories don’t have so much of this, nor of the other naval-gazing aspects of what it’s like to be a drugged Philip Marlowe, or his too often misanthropic observations. I have the complete collection. Maybe it’s time to give them another look.

Dead Shot: The Memoir of Walter Ferguson; Soldier, Marshal, Bootlegger To Be Released November 22

 Well, I finally got around to it.

After years of dithering and several abortive starts, I finished a Western. Dead Shot: The Memoir of Walter Ferguson, Soldier, Marshal, Bootlegger drops four weeks from today, on November 22, just in time for holiday shopping. (Hint, hint.)

Dead Shot is unique from my other books in several ways besides being my first Western. First, I didn’t “write” it; I am but the “editor.” The conceit is that I stumbled across the notes for a memoir by a western Pennsylvania native while researching a Penns River novel. Walter Ferguson (1844 – 1937) told his life story to a woman named Helena Elizabeth Judson, who took copious written notes and even a few wire recordings. Both participants died before the project came to fruition, and somehow the notes ended up at the Alle-Kiski Historical Society, where I found them. I then took it upon myself to complete what Walt and Helena had “begun.”

Another difference is that Walt crosses paths with historical figures and participates in documented historical events. Along the way he interacts with frontier notables, including Charlie Bassett, Butch Cassidy, Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok, Bat Masterson (and his brothers), Johnny Ringo, Al Swearengen, and Bill Tilghman among others. Walt also participates in the Second Battle of Adobe Walls and the Dodge City War.

I also had to come up with a new style and voice that felt more appropriate for the era. I read several memoirs of cowboys, lawmen, and criminals in hope of cobbling together something that would ring true as an oral history as told though Walt’s eyes without seeming too archaic.

I had a ball writing Dead Shot and The Beloved Spouse™ enjoyed listening to me read it to her; she is always a good judge of how well what I wrote is received by others. J. D. Rhoades, author of the Jack Keller series as well as the acclaimed Western The Killing Look, said, “A fascinating, picaresque journey through a tumultuous post-Civil-War American West. Walter tells his tale with scrupulous honesty and wry wit as he encounters legends and makes a few of his own. Fans of Thomas Berger's Little Big Man are going to love this one. Highly recommended.”

Here’s a tease from Chapter One:

My name is Walter Stewart Ferguson. I was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania on January 17, 1844. Or January 14, depending on who you ask. I celebrate on the 17^th, as that is the date Mother told me and I figure she should know. It is also the birthday of the greatest Pennsylvanian of all time, Benjamin Franklin, and who better to share a birthday with than he? [Editor’s Note: The facts are unclear. Many local birth records were damaged or destroyed in the flood of 1936, as were the baptismal records of the Ferguson family church.]

I am the second of five children to survive more than one year, along with an older sister (Oneida), a younger brother (Seward), and two younger sisters, Ella and MaryLou. An older brother was stillborn and a sister, Ethel, was taken by the whooping cough in her first year.

I could always shoot. My father, Gordon, was a more than passable marksman, but I bested him the first time he took me out to learn. People said it was a gift from God, my ability to shoot accurately with whatever was in my hand, be it musket, rifle, pistol, or bow and arrow. Only God knows if that is true. All I can say for certain is that it led me to do things I am not sure God would approve of. I suppose one day I will find out.

Dead Shot will be available on Amazon November 22. Look for special pricing over that weekend.

(Note: I know, I know. Some might consider releasing a book titled Dead Shot on the anniversary of the Kennedy assassination to be in questionable taste. For reasons of my own, I always planned to drop the book on the Friday before Thanksgiving. I didn’t realize that was the 22^nd until I looked it up just now. If anyone takes umbrage…well, damn, people. It’s been 61 years. He’d be dead by now, anyway.)

That's Just, Like, Your Opinion, Man

 It’s a common topic around elections:

Should writers express their personal opinions publicly?

The traditional wisdom says, “No. It might cost you sales if you offend a reader or potential reader.”

My thought is, “Has anyone ever done a legitimate, serious study with empirical evidence?”

I’m willing to bet the answer is no to that, too. Publishers and marketing firms don’t have anything like hard data to tell why people buy books, don’t buy books, what marketing works, or what marketing doesn’t work. Everyone is just supposed to cede the field to their “experience” and “expertise,” which I have boiled down into a couple of sentences.

No one knows what will sell, but we know what won’t. And your book won’t.

So I’m not overwhelmed by the It might cost you sales argument.

Two other thoughts come to mind:

1.    Has anyone ever checked to see if expressing one’s opinion might increase sales, at least enough to offset those lost by the people you pissed off? Let’s face it, unless you’re in the Stephen King, Lee Child, Diana Gabaldon stratus of writers, very few people pay attention to what you say outside the confines of one of your books. If you tweet or Facebook discourteous things about MAGA, might that not get the attention of some actual patriots? If your opinions are pro-MAGA, while they might cost a few readers on the other side, it could tick up your sales to MAGAites. (Assuming they have someone who will read the books to them.)

2.    We are all humans and citizens in addition to being writers. I’ll go so far as to say our humanity and citizenship should take precedence over our writing. If you’re afraid to speak out because it might cost you sales, what about if the wrong side wins and the libel laws are changed to what The Felon would like to see? Or if you books are banned altogether because the First Amendment doesn’t mean what it used to? How’s that going to work out for you?

Crime fiction writers are well-known for their empathy. If our consciences allow us to stand quietly by while injustice is planned and perpetrated, how much of a conscience do we really have?

Writers, by definition, have a gift for using words. That gives us an obligation to speak out when we feel something isn’t right, or to pass along compliments when someone steps up and does the right thing.

We all know the famous poem by Martin Niemöller:

 

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

Well, if you – or anyone you care about – are an immigrant, person of color, queer, Jewish, Muslim, or a woman of any description, the MAGAs and their ilk, armed with Project 2025, are coming for you.

Will you stand quietly by and allow the others to be demonized and marginalized – and worse – until there is no one left to speak for you?

I’m not. And if that means I never sell another book, I’m good with it. Book sales have never kept me awake at night. MAGA does.

 

The Ethics of Fictional Detectives, Part 2

 Welcome back to One Bite at a Time. Today Bill Gormley and I will conclude our discussion on the ethics of fictional detectives. For those who missed last week’s installment, here you go.

One Bite at a Time (From last week): You mentioned characters can go from Moralist to Pragmatist and from Pragmatist to Rogue as conditions dictate. Does it work in the other direction? Can a Rogue evolve into a Pragmatist or a Pragmatist into a Moralist?

Bill Gormley:  That’s an excellent question, Dana, but a tough one to answer.  I find myself asking whether there’s a fictional detective out there who previously served time in prison?  I know that there’s a very successful mystery author who served time in prison for a capital offense.  Anne Perry.  I wonder if she’s ever featured a detective who was an ex-con in one of her books.  Do you happen to know? 

The one detective I can think of who’s sort of progressed from a Rogue into a Moralist is Sean Duffy, who’s featured in Adrian McKinty’s splendid mystery series, set in Ireland during the Time of the Troubles.  As a young man, Duffy, a Catholic, tried to join the IRA.  Had he succeeded, he would probably have killed many people outside the confines of the law. Very rougish. But he was rebuffed by the IRA.  At that point, he made an odd choice – to become a policeman for the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which  was the police force for northern Ireland.  A great story line, right?

Truthfully, Duffy is very hard to classify, for all sorts of reasons.  At times, he’s been a Moralist, a Pragmatist, and a Rogue.  Sometimes while working the same case!  Another way to put it is that he has his own moral code, which reflects the reality that neither side in the long, bloody Irish dispute had a monopoly on virtue.  Duffy tried to apprehend and punish lawbreakers, but he also administered his own moral code, even when it was clearly contrary to the law of the land.  What I really like and admire about Duffy, in addition to his wonderful sense of humor, is that morality is front and center for him.  Instead of siding with his tribe through thick and through thin, Duffy distances himself from both sides and tries to act as a just God might act.  Vigilante justice, in a way.  But fueled by an ethical code, not by hatred or a desire for revenge.***

OBAAT: None of Ann Perry’s series protagonists had criminal backgrounds; I didn’t dive into her other works. While several writers served time themselves – Chester Himes and Les Edgerton come to mind – I know of none who wrote detectives who had themselves been felons. Given today’s propensity for companies and governments to hire convicts as security consultants, this seems to be an area ripe for exploitation.

I’m glad you brought up Adrian McKinty and Sean Duffy. I’ve been a fan of Adrian’s work since I first read the Michael Forsythe stories. I can’t remember reading anything that was better than the Duffy novels at putting me in a different place and time. Cold Cold Ground is a harrowing description of life in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, with the horror made more real through Duffy’s casual description of how he deals with it.

More to our point about ethics, your comment about Duffy’s personal code got me to thinking that may be the common thread that runs through all the ethical trees of detectives: fictional detectives, especially PIs, live by their own codes. A Moralist’s code may be to do things by the book, but that was his or her decision. Rogues and Pragmatists may/will break the written rules, but always in support of their own vision of what needs to be set right and how best they can do it without crossing the lines they have drawn for themselves.

This seems to me to be a core element of fictional detectives. Can you think of any who lack their own internally imposed set of ethics?

BG:  Thanks for investigating Anne Perry's books.  She may be one of those rare novelists whose personal story would be even more riveting than a great work of fiction.  When I think of detectives or P.I.s with a troubled past, I think mainly of recovering alcoholics.  Like Matthew Scudder in Lawrence Block's outstanding mysteries.  A detective who did hard time has some potential.  Or a detective who committed a crime that has not yet come to light, as in the first Kate Burkholder mystery by Linda Castillo.  The back story, from an Amish community in rural Ohio, is compelling.

 I think you're right that most fictional detectives and P.I.s have strong views.  I'm less convinced that they have a well-formulated system of values.  Many of them are deeply committed to preventing crime, capturing criminals, and punishing criminals.  To some extent, they are playing a role.  At the same time, it is a role they have chosen, which means it is probably consistent with many of their views.

In many of the mysteries I read, detectives and P.I.s frequently collide with their bosses.  Supervisors want quick results, which encourages detectives to cut corners.  Supervisors want to protect the rich and powerful, which encourages a cover-up.  Detectives may comply or resist.

We can infer values from the choices detectives make when they clash with their bosses.  But I like it when authors give their detectives the chance to articulate what they believe and why they believe it.  To me, that makes for rewarding reading.  It's great to get inside other people's heads.

OBAAT: Your comment, “Supervisors want to protect the rich and powerful, which encourages a cover-up.  Detectives may comply or resist.” Reminds me that many of the best detective fiction – cop or private – uses the reluctance of the detective to go along with a protective coverup as the core of the story. This always brings to mind A quote from Raymond Chandler’s “The Simple Art of Murder”: “He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.” That describes a man who is not likely to accede to a coverup and, if confronted with one he cannot overcome directly, will exact his own idea if justice, however flawed.

Detective fiction, especially private detective fiction, waxes and wanes in popularity; I doubt it will disappear, for the reasons we have discussed these past two weeks. There are just too many ways of exploring too many things.

Many thanks to Bill Gormley for his time and insights. I hope he had as much fun as I did. If you’re at a conference and have a chance to catch him on a panel, by all means do so.