If you are unfamiliar with Lupin, imagine Cary Grant in “To Catch a Thief” or George Clooney in the “Oceans” movies. Let’s consider the work of the gentleman burglar. In short, writing a layered novel requires the bold creativity of the cat burglar and the analytical sensibilities of the consulting detective. Nonetheless, I came to regard the process of its writing as an interaction between my initial, “ingeniously laid plot”-akin to that of a master burglar-and the subsequent consulting detective work necessary to discern and then further utilize the unconscious subtleties embedded in that original plan. The product of more drafts than I care to count, Hammett Unwritten owes little stylistically to the gas-lit work of either Leblanc or Conan Doyle it is more the product of Hammett’s “hardboiled” school with a playful, modern sensibility. Nonetheless, the notion of the master burglar as heroic protagonist in opposition to the archetypal consulting detective gained new resonance for me upon the completion of my first mystery novel, Hammett Unwritten (pseudonymously credited to Owen Fitzstephen). The Blonde Lady is imaginative and clever, though it is best enjoyed today as an adventure in literary archeology.
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