Weekend Guest Thomas Burns

 We're delighted to welcome Thomas to Type M for Murder.

Thomas A. Burns, Jr. was born and grew up in New Jersey, currently lives and writes in Wendell, North Carolina, and is the author of the Natalie McMasters Mysteries. Tom started reading mysteries with the Hardy Boys, Ken Holt and Rick Brant, and graduated to the classic stories by authors such as A. Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, John Dickson Carr, Erle Stanley Gardner and Rex Stout, to name a few. Now that he's truly on his own as a novelist, he's excited to publish his own mystery series, as well as to contribute stories about his second most favorite detective, Sherlock Holmes, to the MX anthology of New Sherlock Holmes Stories.

 The Evolution of the PI Novel

I want to thank Donis Casey and Frankie Bailey for allowing me to do this guest post. Since my heroine, Natalie McMasters, is a private detective (trainee, to be precise), I’d like to briefly discuss the evolution of the PI novel in American crime fiction.

The private investigator can be distinguished from the amateur sleuth because investigation for hire is the PI’s profession, not avocation. I think the PI most responsible for the popularity of this genre was, of course, the master, Sherlock Holmes.

 It is arguable that Holmes, both in Doyle’s seminal works and in countless pastiches, is even more popular today than he was when the original stories were published. Evidence for this is provided by the MX Books of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, which have gone to 15 volumes since their first publication in 2015.

 After Holmes, the PI became much more popular in America than in England where police officers and amateur sleuths seem to predominate, with the notable exception of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. The popularity of noir in the early decades of the 20th century led to the development of the hardboiled PI in American crime fiction, typified by Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe, Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer, and Mickey Spillane’s epitomical Mike Hammer. All of these men were flawed, struggled to follow a rigorous code and meted out justice to wrongdoers despite their flaws—these characteristics doubtless accounted for their popularity. Notable exceptions to this archetype were Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, who were much more in the mold of Sherlock Holmes—eccentric to be sure, but neither struggled with ethical choices as much as the typical hardboiled PIs did. Stout also introduced one of the first woman PIs – the redoubtable Dol Bonner. Younger readers were lured into the genre by the boy detectives in the Stratemeyer syndicate’s series books featuring the Hardy Boys.

After WWII, a lighter, more happy-go-lucky type of PI became popular. Robert B. Parker’s Spenser is a good example, as are Jim Rockford and Thomas Magnum, who had their origins on TV. These guys had the same fierce independence as their progenitors, which made them attractive to an American audience, but seemed less tortured by personal demons. The first women PIs arose shortly thereafter, the most famous being Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone, but Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone and Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski must also be mentioned.

I would like my Natalie McMasters to follow in these formidable footsteps, and it’s a daunting responsibility. When my series opens, Nattie is a pre-law student who’s moonlighting for her uncle’s 3M Detective Agency, surveilling insurance claimants to be sure they’re hurt as severely as they claim. It’s not long before she’s confronted by the ugly reality of a horrific crime, which results in a loss of innocence and ignites her innate sense of justice.

Nattie changes as the series progresses, and not always for the better, reinventing her career and discovering her sexual orientation is not what she first thought it was. Like many of today’s young people, she has a strong moral code, but she’s unsure of the basis for it and must constantly struggle to make the right choices as she encounters the evil in the world. For this reason, the stories are dark and gritty, definitely not cozies! Trafficked will be available on Amazon April 1.

I think the private investigator has always been an archetype of the American psyche—strong, independent and at war with traditional ideas while simultaneously embracing them, and driven to right the wrongs in the world, often to his or her own detriment. I deliberately chose a young American woman as the heroine of my new series, because I hope to bring a new generation of readers to this wonderful genre.