The detective sits across from his partner at the back of the diner where he can see the door. His coffee, strong and black, warms his fingers. The remains of a slice of apple pie sits on a five dollar bill at the edge of the booth, for the pretty waitress when she can pull herself away from those loud guys across the diner’s scuffed floor. Outside on the unforgiving sidewalks the steady flash of a neon sign refracts on the night windows through beads and rivulets of rain.

And so it goes. It helps you as a writer if you know your genre. You’re writing for people who are often smarter and more knowledgable than you. They know the form you’re daring to write, and they have expectations. You imagine them sitting there in their recliners, or propped on beach towels ready to flash score cards after every chapter. If they’re anything like me, they want the gritty atmosphere and the shadowy gloom of tension in the air. If they don’t get it, they’re going to flash a big 2 out of 5.

In broad terms there are two types of detective stories. There is the British tradition of sophisticated, cerebral mystery, full of train stations and country estates; and there is the American hard-boiled gumshoe. The American, Raymond Chandler, style was absorbed and refined through black and white movies into what became Film Noir. Naturally, the tradition is imbued with the detritus of New York life in the thirties: the taxis, the garish club scene, the theatres and automats. It’s all a little daunting if you’re writing in the modern Greater Toronto Area, trying to keep the atmosphere of Noir alive. ‘Canadian Noir’ sounds suspiciously like a contradiction in terms, and conjures up images of Humphry Bogart mumbling ‘Shorry’ (sorry) to an indignant civil servant. 

The coffee shop, or diner scene is a staple of American Noir, and this is getting harder and harder to pull off in modern fiction. I mean, look at this:

The detective stands in line, waiting to take his turn at the tall screen of the kiosk. He watches the woman in front of him, with her spandex leggings and fuchsia hair, awed at the way she navigates from beverages to side orders with a deft poke of her finger. At last she taps her card on the payment pad and steps away. 

Conscious of the line forming behind him, the detective moves up to the screen and touches ‘start’. The screen changes in an instant and a dozen choices bloom, each with a check box. Maybe if he’d been here a hundred times all the pictures would make sense, but under pressure he taps away with a bravado he doesn’t feel. All goes well until the glowering screen asks him to review his order. Apparently he has poked out three cups of coffee and an apple pie that looks like a tiny stealth bomber. That wasn’t even remotely what he wanted. 

He glances quickly over his shoulder where a skinny young man with eye makeup is frowning impatiently. There must be an undo button on the screen. Ah here it is. But does that mean he has to start all over again? He can’t really tell. He has the sudden urge to just walk away with the appropriate disdainful sneer. Of course, that would leave the skinny guy having to untangle the mess he has left. 

Street-wise and steely-eyed, the detective hesitates a few seconds too long, then turns to the skinny guy. The neck muscles under the detective’s trench coat tighten, and he looms over the young man, watching the kid’s Adam’s apple bob, and his  granny glasses slip down his nose. Leaning so close he can see the mascara beaded on the young man’s lashes, he snarls, “She’s all yours, Bub,” and walks away—out into the mean, halogen-washed streets.