I used to write dark fantasy before I switched over to crime. Horror fiction, I tell them, is mostly a young person’s game. Where you get to dream up the monsters that are waiting ahead of you, around the next corner. Crime, on the other hand, is an older soul’s game. It’s about the demon that’s coming up behind you. It’s about all your regrets and mistakes that have brought you to the place where you are right now. It’s noir. It’s black. It’s bleak. It’s standing in your own overgrown yard with weeds up to your nuts, staring across the street at Boo Radley’s place, dreaming dark dreams, and waiting for Halloween. Maybe I’ll still be here by the end of October, or maybe kids will be daring each other to run up to an empty house where, in my worst nightmares, my shadow still walks, alone and in silence.
–From Tom Piccirilli’s column over at Mulholland Books
