With "Takeover" I attempted 'real life,' so to speak. I tried to get into the head of 'real' people, speak in their voice, have the events be completely believable. Of course, in the second half of the book, I went full plot, which was much less believable.

In hindsight, the second half was better than the first.

With this new book, I'm not even going there. This is a Noir-ish, hard boiled story, in its own little world. I'm trying to maintain the same tone all the way through, a story alone, consistent. But I realized yesterday that it is sort of in the eternal gray territory, that it could be set in the 50's or 60's or 70's or today.

It's a bit of world building, just without the supernatural elements.

Is this really so different from what Lee Child, or John Sandford, or Robert Crais do in their stories? Are these any more than a fantasy? I'm reading a T. Jefferson Parker novel right now, and it barely skims the surface of believably. It doesn't spend a lot of time with depth, just a quick easy story.

And isn't that why I read them?

Hard boiled land is a pleasant place to be. You can work out all your aggression with no real cost. You can pretend to be a bad ass. To meet the femme fatale. To stand up to the Bad Guys. None of it real. Just create it a world, spin a story, that the reader can comfortably sink into.