Welcome to Behind the Files—a corner of the Duvane & Calder universe where I step out from behind the typewriter to talk shop. This is where I share the stories behind the stories—what inspires me, where these characters came from, and why I chose to write noir mysteries with bite. You’ll find musings, observations, a few behind-the-scenes notes, and the occasional rant about the lack of women in classic detective fiction.
Sometimes the posts will be deep dives into worldbuilding or para-politics. Other times, they’ll just be me rambling with a cup of chicory tea and a cat named Juliet perched on my lap.
Let’s talk about why I write what I do, and why the hell no one ever gave Nora Charles her own case…
Why Not a Woman?
I grew up reading Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler and their protagonists—the smart-ass detectives, hard-boiled if you will—the knight-errants in dented, rusty armor squaring off against the world. They’d get kicked in the teeth, knocked to the ground, but they’d get up, brush themselves off, roll a smoke, have a drink, and carry on—not always smarter, but definitely wiser. If they didn’t always win, well… they usually came out better than whoever they were up against.
Movie adaptations were a mirror to the page—Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, and to a lesser extent, William Powell in The Thin Man. (Anyone worth their salt knows Powell played Nick Charles, not the Thin Man—but I digress.) These were great characters in a magically stark black-and-white world, both on the page and on screen. I loved them.
Still, there was always one problem: they were always male.
Where the hell was the female lead?
The Thin Man movies came closest with Myrna Loy as Nora Charles, but she was still a co-star—not the one out chasing leads in the field. No, where was the hard-boiled female gumshoe? Sadly, she didn’t exist. I was a kid, and at that age unaware of the rampant, accepted sexism in books and films. The mindset of the day was: Who would follow a female detective?
I guess I was naïve, crazy, or ahead of my time—but don’t try to tell me there wouldn’t have been a hell of a movie starring Katharine Hepburn as a PI chasing down leads in a gin joint and verbally sparring with her foil.
Damn, I loved her.
The characters I was looking for didn’t exist.
Not yet.
That brings us to my heroes—or heroines, if you want to be picky.
Sable Duvane is the private investigator I always wanted to see.
She’s as pure as the driven slush.
Not just surviving in a world she didn’t create—excelling in it.
And don’t you dare call her “soft-boiled” just because she’s a woman.
Sable came from a background not black and white, but steeped in shadowy greys. Her past is ambiguous and blurred, but she’s guided by a moral compass—even if it doesn’t always point due north.
But even she needs her Brigid O’Shaughnessy—or Ruth Wonderly, or whatever name Mary Astor was using at the time. Her Myrna Loy.
Screw it—if we’re going to have a female lead, let’s go full bore and have two. Let the men take the supporting roles for once.
Enter Tess Calder.
Where Sable is rough and tumble—a diamond in the rough—Tess is the opposite: precise, refined, controlled.
Sable has street smarts; Tess has intelligence.
Sable has grit; Tess has style.
Each the complement of the other. Yin and Yang.
I’ve always loved books and movies. I’ve spent my life immersed in both—but that’s a tale for another time.
What I love most is storytelling.
Watching stories, reading stories, and now—telling them.
One thing you’ll notice in my stories:
Women never take a backseat to men.
They kick ass and take names.
They may not always be right, but they’re never wrong.
They may not always win—but they’ll always get back up.
Thank you for reading.
I hope you find something here you like.
👉 Read more about Sable and Tess in The Duvane & Calder Files