Broke, Drunk, and Horny

I’ve recently read a great many private eye short stories, both published and in manuscript form, and I’ve recognized three character traits many of these PIs share:

They’re broke, drunk, and horny.

They have money problems and stress about paying their rent, their bills, and their gambling debts.

They drink heavily, with a bottle in their desk drawer and a perpetual hangover. Or they are recovering alcoholics who attend AA meetings and stress about falling off the wagon. Again.

They have a healthy sexual appetite and poor judgement, which leads to carnal knowledge of their clients, their clients’ significant others, and/or other inappropriate relationships.

While not every private eye in the stories I read had all three of these characteristics, many had at least one and often two.

The broke, drunk, and horny private eye is a trope that verges on cliché, and writers who find new ways to use the tropes or, better still, avoid them entirely, usually write more interesting stories.

ALWAYS THE OFFICE

A great many private eye stories begin with a description of the private eye’s office, usually as a way to inform the reader about the poor schmuck’s financial state, and, during a rumination about the sad state of the furnishings, a potential client arrives with a case the PI doesn’t want but agrees to take for the financial renumeration or because it involves repaying a debt to an old friend who may or may not be dead.

A private eye story that begins anywhere else—a bar, a coffee shop, the client’s home, a zoo, an amusement park, or anywhere other than the PI’s office—stands out.

And a story in which the PI accepts a case for reasons other than financial desperation or to repay a real or imagined debt also stands out.

TOO MUCH BACK STORY

Too many private eye short stories begin with several paragraphs or pages describing how the protagonist became a PI, much of which has little or nothing to do with the story to come. Because of this, the actual story doesn’t begin until page three or five after the expenditure of too many words.

So, a private eye short story the begins with an inciting incident rather than a meandering backstory stands out.

LET HE WHO IS WITHOUT SIN

Here I am throwing stones while I live in a glass house. I have written about broke, drunk, and horny private eyes, started stories with private eyes sitting in their squalid little offices desperately awaiting the arrival of a client—any client—and bogged down beginnings with backstory while delaying the inciting incident until page five.

And thought I was oh so original.

Now that I know better, I’ll try hard not to let my tropes show, try to avoid dressing my private eyes in clichés, and try to find better ways to ensure inciting incidents occur on the first page.

* * *

February started with a nice one-two punch.

“Coyote Run,” the eighth episode of Chop Shop, was released by Down & Out Books on February 1. On February 2, “A Dime a Dame” appeared in Black Cat Weekly #179.

Also, on February 1, The Short Mystery Fiction Society announced the nominees for the inaugural Derringer Award for Best Anthology. Murder, Neat: A SleuthSayers Anthology, which Barb Goffman and I co-edited and which contains work by many current and former SleuthSayers, made the shortlist.