Noir Town

Two Philadelphia crime novelists shoot it out.

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Published: Mar 30, 2010

Our old boss Duane Swierczynski is on a crime fiction spree. There was 2005's Secret Dead Men, 2006's The Wheelman, 2007's The Blonde and, of course, 2008's gritty Severance Package — about the boss who announces his plan to kill all of his employees. (Hey, didn't he work at CP when he wrote that?) His new one, Expiration Date (Minotaur, March 30) looks to be another bloody thrill ride, and one influenced by his day job as a writer for Marvel comics.

Where Swierczy's a grizzled old veteran, fresh-faced Dennis Tafoya is a relative rookie just out of the academy. Following up his impressive debut, 2009's The Dope Thief, will be The Wolves of Fairmount Park (Minotaur, June 22). Since Tafoya and Swierczynski are sitting at their computers anyway, we told them to interview each other about the biz, the books and the city that inspires them to kill.

Duane Swierczynski: Why aren't there more of us? And by "us," I mean Philly crime writers? Don't we live in the most hard-boiled/noir city in the country?

Dennis Tafoya: Maybe it's because we can't hold on to people generally, so our writers wander away to other towns before they get an appreciation for just how fertile the city is for crime writers. I mean,we've been losing population every year since 1950. And maybe those of us who are left don't want to run down the place to outsiders. We're the city that spawned David Goodis, but we'd rather talk about how cool Fishtown is, and our Stephen Starr restaurants and Manayunk and the statues all over town. I guess it feels disloyal to groove just on the Divine Lorraine and the hookers on Ridge Avenue. Even writing a novel like The Wolves of Fairmount Park, which centers on the drug trade in Philly, I want people to know about the murals.

You do a ton of research into Philly history and there's always some interesting historical snapshot of Philly on your blog. Do you see yourself writing historical fiction set here?

DS: Funny you mention that. I have been working on a hardboiled historical novel set in Philly — but it's still in the early stages, and I'm superstitious about talking about books before they're written. That said, I'm a huge Philly history nerd and obsessed with this city's past. If I had a time machine, I wouldn't go back and kill, say, Hitler. I'd go back and walk around Philly and look at everything. (This probably makes me a bad person.)

Speaking of breaking out of genre, I've heard from a reliable source (and this "reliable source" may have been you) that when you wrote Dope Thief, you didn't really consider yourself a crime writer. Is this true? Do you consider yourself one now?

DT: Yeah, when I wrote Dope Thief I thought I was writing a literary novel with criminals in it, but my agent was the one who said, "Oh, no, this is a crime novel." The only thing I worried about was whether people who found the book in the "Crime" section of the bookstore would enjoy the read. I have to say that now I love being identified as a crime writer. I've always been a little obsessed with (real) crime and been a huge fan of writers like Elmore Leonard and Charles Willeford and Lawrence Block, and I think those guys have a ton to teach me about to do good work. If I ever produce a novel that's half as good as The Hunted or When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, I'll die happy.

You've written nonfiction books, you write Cable and a bunch of other comic series for Marvel, and now Expiration Date looks to stretch out of the crime genre to science fiction — would you like to try other genres?

DS: Definitely. I think of my novels and comics as a big pot of soup. The main ingredient, for lack of a better term, is "thriller" — in other words, stories where bad stuff happens to interesting people. Sometimes I'll add heavy does of espionage, sometimes it's horror, often it's black comedy. In Expiration Date, it's a big shaker full of sci-fi. But I can't help coming back to Philly, even with the stranger stories.

How about you, Dennis? Do you see yourself hanging out in the crime yard for the next few books? Or is there another genre you're itching to tackle? Or do you really not think in terms of genre at all?

DT: Yeah, I'd definitely like to move in other directions and stretch, if not break, the categories. I think of stuff like Scott Phillips' excellent books, Cottonwood and The Walkaway. I'm not sure how to classify those books, but they're diamond-hard examples of good storytelling. I think of Scott as writing a sort of underground history of his patch of the Midwest. I'm a huge fan of Elmore Leonard's western stories, and I'd like to try my hand at that. I've started a short story set during the Civil War, but I need to do a ton of research to feel confident I'm getting it right.

Both The Blonde and Severance Package have a pretty strong espionage component — is that something you're fascinated by in the way that you're fascinated with Philly history or the bank robberies that led you to write This Here's a Stick-Up and The Wheelman?

DS: It's funny — it's not like I grew up reading a ton of spy novels. For some reason, though, I found myself inching in this direction. It's probably a post-9/11 reaction: I'm more than a little obsessed thinking about what goes on behind closed doors — in our name.

We both have set our books in the Philly area, but I know you travel around quite a bit. Think you'll wander off the reservation in the next book or two?

DT: My third novel, Black Horse Pike, is about little criminals from South Jersey who commit robberies all over the region, from Scranton down to Rockville, Md., but I would like to go a lot farther. I've written a short story set in Las Vegas that's going to be in the next edition of Crime Factory, and it's fair to say I'm obsessed with the desert and want to spend more time wandering around the Southwest so I can get enough of it in my head to accurately set it down.

(editorial@citypaper.net)

Duane Swierczynski will sign copies of Expiration Date Sun., April 11, 2 p.m., at Port Richmond Bookstore, 3037 Richmond St., 215-425-3385, portrichmondbooks.com.

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