No Saints Only Killers began life as my PhD project. Somewhere along that gruelling road, it became something of a cocktail of my favourite things—a blend of historical fiction, hardboiled crime, the Jazz Age, and the city of Edinburgh, with a dash of my own perspective as an American in Britain.
Every crime writer wants to bend the genre. Philip Kerr once described Bernie Gunther as a “what if” Chandler’s Marlowe operated in Nazi Germany? Walter Mosley used that same hardboiled voice to explore 1940s Black America. I was drawn to a different question—what happens when you take the American private eye and leave him in Britain?
The American PI in London has been done before; the poorly received Robert Mitchum adaptation of Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Robert B Parker’s excellent novel, The Judas Goat, and in one of my favourite two-part episodes of Magnum PI, “Deja Vu.” But these were all transient stories, whereas my detective, Logan Bishop, is not passing through, but staying…
Very early on in the process, I realised that Bishop was a complicated character to write. I found more layers to him the more I wrote. He’s a former U.S. soldier who has lost faith in his country, religion, and the wider world after the First World War, and has a terrible relationship with his family. He’s deeply cynical. And there was a good reason to be in the 1920s.
Looking at the landscape of historical crime fiction, you’ll see that most eras are well-covered. Victorian detectives are everywhere. WWII thrillers even more so. But 1920s Britain is oddly untouched within this genre—despite being a decade full of tension, change, and opportunity. It seemed the perfect setting for a darker kind of story. I don’t think Logan’s story could begin at any other time, or even in any other place than where readers first meet him.
At its core, No Saints Only Killers embraces the chaos of hardboiled fiction, which was just entering in the 1920s. And Bishop is navigating post-war disillusionment while confronting the exploitation of immigrant communities in Scotland, all while searching for a missing woman who is already marked for death.
I am of the opinion that historical fiction operates as an entertainer and an educator. I guarantee the stuff people think was made up will be from the history books! Readers also want their crime fiction to have something to say, and No Saints Only Killers certainly has something to say. And readers are in for one hell of a ride—I just hope they enjoy it as much as I did writing it.
No Saints Only Killers is published by MX Publishing.
The novel is currently on Kickstarter (until the 23rd of May). It will then go up for general sale and be available wherever books are sold (Amazon, Waterstones, Barnes and Noble, etc.) .Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lukedeckardbooks/no-saints-only-killers-a-1922-noir-set-in-edinburgh
