Hard-boiled or Soft-hearted?
With Valentine’s Day around the corner, you might not be associating romantic love with crime noir. A reader of POISONED JUSTICE wrote to me saying that Riley—the (anti)hero of the story—reflects the genre’s typical tough guys: “chick magnets who appreciate the various parts of a beautiful woman but without any warmth.” While that seems a bit cold, my writing reflects the aesthetic of the hard-boiled detective. The reader went on to say: “Carol was a delicious character [but
