Dark Side of Mercy centers around a private detective pulled into a case that begins as a missing persons case and quickly broadens into one of corruption, blackmail, and murder. What draws you to the noir genre? 

Noir tales are the modern day fairytales. The genre allows me to explore the dark psychological themes that humans struggle with while they look for hope and redemption. There is a saying that the men and women in noir stories aren’t fallen angels, but weak people who’ve tumbled into the gutter. I like the struggle of those people often clutching at anything in hope of dragging themselves out of the gutter, but often failing. 

The Arizona setting has a heavy, atmospheric presence—dust, heat, corruption, and isolation. How did place shape the tone and direction of the novel?

In the first novel, No Solace in Death, I used the heat to illustrate a sort of hell that the protagonist, Benjamin Thomas, feels that he is in. I believe the atmosphere should, in Noir tales, add discomfort to the protagonist’s struggle. In Dark Side of Mercy, I used the wind and sandstorms in the desert to convey the corruption underneath the facade of civility surrounding Benjamin, and that the facade will eventually disintegrate as quickly and easily as a sand dune in the wind.

Some scenes are deliberately uncomfortable and morally ambiguous. How do you navigate the line between realism and reader endurance in a story like this? 

Noir is like Odyssyus crossing paths with doomed, unsavory, and broken characters in the underworld, except in noir the protagonist is, in many cases, more broken than the people he/she runs across. Every character in Dark Side of Mercy is morally broken in one way or another. How the characters react to their situation and environment determines their level of strength or corruptibility. I believe every reader of this particular genre expects to be made uncomfortable. Like it or not, readers are going along with the protagonist into the downward spiral and landing in the belly of the beast with him to witness the vulnerability and brokenness of every character they meet in the story.

What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available? Right now I only have one chapter of a novel that takes place in the 80s about a Korean man (child of a comfort woman) who owns and operates a small convenience store and witnesses a murder. I have a few ideas for other novels that are percolating in my mind right now. Some are darker than others, and require more thought before I can put them on paper. At this time, I have no date for my next novel.

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