How to Watch Devil in a Blue Dress as a Crime Fiction Writer
In Devil in a Blue Dress, Walter Mosley begins with a familiar noir proposition: an unemployed man, a desperate need for cash, and a job that looks easier than it is. What follows is not simply a mystery, but a study in how crime fiction elevates stakes by turning social systems into antagonists. Easy Rawlins’ investigation unfolds in 1950s Los Angeles, where every choice is shaped, and constrained, by race, power, and institutional violence.
How Get Shorty Uses Plot Devices to Serve Character
There’s a lot going on in Get Shorty, the film adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s classic crime novel. The plot is not for the easily confused. It does add up, but it needs traction—chains on the wheels—to keep from slipping. And yet, paradoxically, it never feels overplotted or mechanical.
How To Watch Double Indemnity as a Crime Fiction Writer
Every noir, neo-noir, mystery novel, true-crime documentary, and thriller offers lessons in craft. The task is to resist immersion and instead keep the work at arm’s length: to examine it clinically, forensically, like a body on a slab. That may sound hyperbolic, but studying what works makes it easier to replicate those effects in our own writing—not by copying plots, but by absorbing underlying principles.