Crime Fiction FADE TO BLACK with Robert White

FADE TO BLACK’S stories present characters you might see on any street in any town anywhere. Or maybe you wondered about the guy at the end of the bar brooding over his drink. What’s he thinking about? Or the woman who cut her eyes away from you as you passed her on the street. What’s on her mind? And then you went about your day not giving another thought to that stranger. Here’s your opportunity to see what lurks beneath the surface, and it’s not pretty–malignant intentions, murderous plans, festering hatreds, and dark secrets never meant to come to light. Have fun exploring the depths of human behavior; you won’t be disappointed.

Robert White recently sat down with The Big Thrill to discuss his latest crime fiction, FADE TO BLACK.

Robert White

Can you pinpoint a moment or incident that sparked the idea for this book?

About eighteen months ago, I had an exchange of emails with Craig Douglas, publisher of Near to the Knuckle Magazine (website) and publisher of dozens of noir/crime paperbacks. I noticed I’d had three stories published on his site by that point and I wondered if he’d be interested in publishing a collection of twenty-two sitting around in files, most as yet unpublished. He agreed to look at a manuscript and FADE TO BLACK, my unoriginal title, was conceived.

A novel is such a major undertaking; there’s the writing of it, of course, then you’re spending months and months revising, polishing, and then promoting it. How did you know this was the book you wanted to spend the next couple of years on?

I can give a partial answer because most of my noir or crime stories were written or published within a four-year span with about a quarter of them previously published. Although I have written mainstream, horror, and a couple sci-fi stories, nothing satisfies the urge to write as much as dark stories where somebody is facing a choice that matters in a life-or-death sense. (I won’t say “existential” because I don’t want to picture old literary heroes like Camus or Sartre spinning in their urns.)

Were there any particular books, movies, or songs that were knocking around in your head while you were writing this one?

I’d like to say I compose to the silver notes of the Goldberg Variations a la Harris’ Hannibal Lecter, but the truth is I get all the alpha and theta wave meshing I need from popular music like the Cannons or Satin Jackets. As long as my breastbone isn’t vibrating from the background music, I’m good with whatever’s playing.

When you first created your protagonist for this book, did you see an empty space in crime lit that you wanted to fill? What can you share about the inspiration for that character?

No, noir is difficult to define, for one thing, and you can get so many variations in psyche, class, educational background, moral or amoral temperament that there’s no one model. I suppose Fred MacMurray’s Walter Neff reciting his crime into the newfangled recording machine in his darkened office while bleeding from a bullet wound is a classic stereotype but it’s easy to see Philip Marlowe going bad and looking just like him. I wanted good and bad characters, some middle-class, most from the bottom of society’s barrel. Yet I wanted to include a couple stories featuring an innocent boy traveling the hills of Appalachia with his drunk, religious fanatic father and a Caltrans road crew supervisor who decides his firing was unjustified and decides to punish people in a highly unusual and whimsical way.

n addition to a great read, what do you hope readers will take away from this story?

Goethe once said that there was no crime he deemed impossible for himself to commit. That sort of admission from a genius of Western lit gives one pause. I think my readers, if only half as brutally honest with themselves as Goethe’s claim will see situations, whether goofily morbid or threatening, that they, too, can find themselves in and how they would escape from it might shatter some preconceived notions of their own integrity or courage.

What can you share about what you’re working on next?

Just a brainstorm at the moment. I’m considering a serial killer novel about a man who trawls the nation’s highways killing at random. He discovers an itinerary left behind in a diner by a spatting couple. He decides to follow them on their “second honeymoon vacation” around a state, killing his victims in some ingenious ways to make them realize they’re being followed by him without attracting police to his trail.