The Chopping Blog

In And Then There Were None, Christie subverts several tropes in the mystery genre. She disguises the central plot so completely that we don’t realize who the protagonist is until the final pages.

This isn’t a hero with flaws.

Darling Axe senior editor David Brown just published his debut novel 🤩

Harry Dresden is a magical PI in Chicago with all the familiar fixtures of a Chandler mystery: a down-on-his-luck detective, a corrupt city, a femme fatale, and a secret too dangerous to name.

Darling Axe editor Heather Tekavec just published a new book 🤩

"The world that we live in is deeply fucked... and I don't want to read about that right now."

Chandler drew heavily from Arthurian legend. One of his early fictional detectives was even named “Mallory,” a direct nod to Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. He later renamed the character Marlowe.

In noir, the detective is hired to do a job—usually to find someone or uncover some buried truth—but the story unfolds more like a quest than a casefile.

At the heart of noir is a central tension: the world is corrupt, maybe even irredeemable—but the protagonist refuses to be.

"One of the most significant lessons I’ve learned along the way is to protect my creativity at all costs."

"Be tenacious. And find fellow writers who challenge you, and who understand this crazy journey is absolutely essential to staying sane and leveling up your craft."

"I finally did get that contract, about 25 years after I started."