Crafting a Timely, Timeless PI Novel
Crafting a Timely, Timeless PI Novel
By Julie Tollefson
Since childhood, Delia Pitts has been drawn to the noir, jaded world view of the classic private eye. She’s read all the British Golden Age mysteries — Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie — and appreciates the streamlined language and emphasis on action of the American classic detective novels of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Now the author of two private investigator series — the Ross Agency Mysteries featuring Harlem PI SJ Rook and a new series starring Queenstown, New Jersey, PI Vandy Myrick — Delia has five tips for the PI novelist.
1) Create a timely and timeless protagonist — From Sherlock Holmes on, PIs have shouldered the role of the outsider poised to help those in need who can’t get satisfaction from official channels.
“I think the PI from its inception has set up for us that there is on the one hand the law — Scotland Yard or an American police department or Secret Service or any other agency of the government — and there are gaps in what those agencies can accomplish,” Delia says. “The PI steps into those gaps and serves as an answer, in some cases a supplement or in others as a rebuke, to the law enforcement agencies or officers. I think that’s always been the attraction of the PI because it holds out the hope for us that there are others who are working beyond the reach of official law and order.”
Delia believes it’s important to see the private detective as the champion of people whose concerns are ignored, who are dismissed because of who they are, because of their race, gender, or economic status, for example.
“The PI can find a way to step in and bring comfort and assistance to those people who are overlooked by the force of law,” Delia says. “It’s one of the reasons that PI fiction never goes away. There’s apparently always going to be a need for someone to step into those gaps.”
2) You’ve gotta have plot — Strong, vibrant, and layered characters are vital, but for PI novels, action is where it’s at.
“I love books that focus on character, but I want to see characters in action,” Delia says. “I think that’s what draws me to the genre. Plot works on the character, and the character reveals the shades and the shadows of their selves in their inner workings through the plot that we are thrust into.”
Danger, violence, and shady characters are hallmarks of the PI novel, and Delia’s novels have them in abundance, but there’s one line Delia’s detectives won’t cross: Neither Rook nor Vandy will carry a gun.
“Each of them in their own way has experienced that having a gun is an invitation to violence, and they just don’t want to dance at that party,” Delia says.
Which leads to tip No. 3:
3) Get a grip on tropes, then break them — Read widely in the PI genre. Read the classics dating back to the beginning of the 20th century all the way through to the PI novel rock stars of the present.
But don’t limit yourself to books.
“It’s useful and stimulating and fun to look at some of the noir films of the Golden Age of the ‘40s up to the mid-50s,” Delia says. “What you get from those films is a sense of the bleakness of the lives portrayed in these stories, the sense of pace and the plot, the ideas about characters, ordinary people who make really bad choices. All of these things come out not only in the books but also in the films.”
Build your knowledge of the tropes and expectations of the genre to make informed decisions about the ones you want to weave into your own work and the ones you want to discard.
Delia points to the work of Lev AC Rosen, whose historical mysteries set in 1950s San Francisco feature a gay male PI, and Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski, a woman investigator battling political forces, religious hierarchy, and other patriarchal institutions.
Paretsky has “bent that basic trope of a white male investigator in a very significant way,” Delia says. As for Rosen, “he’s set up a situation which I find very worthy and meaningful in the PI tradition of an investigator who by his definition stands outside of a community and defends the interests of an overlooked and in many cases despised community, one that doesn’t get the full protection of police force.”
In her own work, Delia wholeheartedly embraces some tropes — her investigators are outsiders, allowing them a greater freedom to act — but turns others — like the detective brandishing a firearm — inside out.
“I took some of those basic tropes — the lone wolf, the operative who is cynical and divorced truly from almost every human contact who is often in his cups, who has plenty of women at his beck and call and a high powered car as well and lots of access to guns and uses them frequently. I took some of those and said I’m not going to go with that,” she says.
Her new series features PI Vandy Myrick, based in the most general way on Delia’s cousin, Esther Myricks, who with her husband ran a small security agency in Chicago in the 1960s and 1970s. Their cases involved insurance fraud and background checks, not murder, but the precedent of watching her cousin operate in a profession generally not accessible to women inspired Delia to create Vandy, a Black woman investigator who, admittedly, has a bit more violent and dangerous portfolio than her namesake did.
“I wanted to build for Vandy a circle of resilience, a group of women who are in their own ways high-powered professionals but who provide friendship when she needs it but a check on her most destructive instincts. I was very consciously bending the trope of the lone wolf operative,” Delia says.
4) Set yourself up for series success — If you’re looking to write a series, it’s hard to beat a private detective as your main character. The nature of the PI’s work means there will always be another case, another reason to investigate.
“But it’s important as you build out your series to think not only about your PI but also the people around him or her,” Delia says. “Those people have to have very vibrant and layered lives of their own. You have to be strong in developing the individuality and the interests and the liveliness of the language and the backstory of a number of the characters around your main character.”
But, she says, don’t get so caught up in the fun of creating surprising side characters that you overwhelm the reader.
“You don’t want to have so many that you lose track of your story,” Delia says. “And they all, one way or another, have to contribute to the core story.”
5) Know the ending — You don’t have to write the climax and resolution first, but it’s helpful to know where you’re going, Delia says.
“You can always change it. You’re the only one who knows,” she says, “but it helps you plant clues, plant theme, plant references that neither the reader nor the investigator know are there until you get to the end.”
Delia says she’s part pantser and part plotter, and she’s happy to let characters lead her in new and exciting directions.
“I’m definitely open to hearing from the characters. Once you’ve got the character, put them in a situation, like real human beings they just go. They respond in ways that are consistent with their background, history, knowledge, and goals. That’s how your plot works its way out,” she says.