Hard-boiled fantasy fiction
20 years ago, I tried writing a mash-up between Philip Marlowe and the Forgotten Realms
I was, at one point in my life, pretty good at writing parody. It took, I think, the irreverence and lack of inhibition that come with youth — not to say that I couldn’t spin a good literary spoof now, but it was easier then. In particular, I had a gift for parodying Raymond Chandler and I was quite proud of it. Anyone could write parody Hemingway, but you need deftness and skill to parody Chandler. Hemingway, like so many High Modernists, made himself a fat, juicy target; whereas Chandler (who idolized Hemingway) wrote with enough self-irony that he’s harder to deflate.
The point at which things went south may have been when I read Bakhtin’s The Dialogic Imagination in grad school and I learned how to think theoretically and analytically about a certain kind of literary humor. As E.B. White famously said, humor is like a frog; you may dissect it to find out how it works, but you will kill it.
Even so, that didn’t stop me from, at one point after I’d started writing professionally for fantasy roleplaying games, thinking about what would happen if I tried to mash together two very different genres — fantasy and the hard-boiled detective story. Take a hero modeled on Chandler’s iconic detective-hero Philip Marlowe (here called Marluw, to give the name an archaic-fantastical twist) and drop him into a fantasy city, like Waterdeep in the Forgotten Realms. 20 years ago, I started writing a story called “A Dead Certainty” and started it thusly:
I’d had nothing to do that morning except stare at my thumbs until they started twiddling on their own, so around noon I went down the street to the Lazy Eye Inn and Tavern for a plate of fowl and some local gossip. Turned out the locals were having just as dull a time of it as I was, so I finished eating and returned to my lodgings.
When I got there Dion Jax was waiting for me in the outer room— which surprised me, as I’d locked the door when I left. “Hello, Marluw,” he drawled, draping himself over the hardbacked chair facing the door.
“How’d you get in here?”
He smiled lazily. “You should know better than to ask.” Dion was a sharp lad, a gambler and a dandy given to fine silk shirts, gaily-colored cloaks and a dueling blade with a gold hilt inlaid with precious stones. When he smiled, his fine features disappeared into thin lines. That, and the points of his ears, reminded me that he had elven blood on his mother’s side, although knowing the circles his father had run in, I’d always suspected it was really drow. “Do you mind?”
“If it’s you, I can live with it. I just thought I had a better lock. Come in.”
I led him into the apartment and sat down behind the desk. He took the chair opposite. “So,” he said, pulling off his bleached calfskin gloves. “Been busy lately?”
“What do you think?”
“From the dust on this chair, I’d say not. Maybe you’d like to do a job for me. It pays all right.”
I murmured to indicate he had my attention. Dion leaned forward, more serious now, his eyes wide. “I’m going to the Drunken Drake tonight. I intend to walk out of there with full pockets, if you get my meaning.”
“Houdon’s gambling den? Don’t you have your own license to mint coin? Why bother with his?”
“Yah. But Houdon’s been stealing my customers. Business isn’t so good lately. And that fat son of a swine, Hennis Poole— you know him?”
“Runs the local thieves’ guild, controls everything that happens under the counter in this part of town.”
“He sends his boys around and they tell me I have to start paying him every month, or else he’ll set his half-orc thugs on me. What can I do? If I pay him, I can’t afford to stay in business, and if I don’t pay him, he’ll put me out of business.”
I didn’t like where this was going, but I kept listening anyway.
“So I’m going to the Drunken Drake tonight. My… friend, Miss Alesia— you know her?”
“I think you introduced us once.” Alesia was a tall, slender redhead who claimed to know arcane magic, but she didn’t need any to charm a man she wanted. Other than that, I didn’t know anything about her.
“She says she’s figured out a way to use her spells on the dice, make them come up winners most of the time, even if the house has loaded them. She says she knows how to cast without saying anything aloud to tip it off. It’s a dead certainty, I’m telling you. But I want someone with me who knows how to handle himself in case there’s trouble.”
“I help people with their problems, but I’m no blade-for-hire. Besides, supposing Houdon has a spellcaster of his own who can tell if you’re up to any tricks.”
“He won’t. He’s not smart enough.”
“He’s smart enough to take away your customers.”
Dion didn’t appreciate that last crack. He let out a chuckle that was more of a sneer and got up. “Fine. I’ll be seeing you around, Marluw.”
“Look,” I called after him. “I didn’t mean it that way. I’ll drop by the Drunken Drake tonight if you really want some company. But you don’t have to pay me for it. And don’t draw any attention to me.”
He smiled at me sideways on his way out. “Thanks, Marluw. I’ll be a good boy.” I stared after him as he left, sitting with my back to the window as the streets of Waterdeep hummed with their midday business. If I hadn’t meant it that way, just how had I meant it?
When I got to the Drunken Drake that night, the place thrilled with the high pitch of despair and hope that you can only find in a first-class gambling den. But all the buzz came from one table in the middle of the floor, around which everyone in the place gathered. Even the fancy bard with the tambour in his hand and his two musicians had given up on what they’d been hired to do, and were craning their necks from the stage for a look at the action.
I sat down at the bar to get a discreet read on the situation, but that didn’t take long. Everyone stood back from Dion’s girl Alesia to give her room, and she seemed to rise head and shoulders above them anyhow. Her bright red hair blazed in the dim light. She wore a dark green traveler’s cloak and boots that rose up over her slender calves. Dion stood just off her shoulder, light flickering off of his dark eyes. She leaned over the end of the dicing table, almost hiding the pile of gaming markers in front of her.
“Come on!” she yelled. “Give me the dice while I’m still hot. You’re damned quick to take a girl’s money, but slow to pay when I’m winning.”
The old halfling holding the croup looked up at her under his heavy eyelids. “Please, madame,” he said evenly. “You have made a bet of five thousand gold. The table cannot cover a wager of that size. Perhaps Master Houdon will accommodate you.”
“Curse Houdon! You’ll—“
Just then, the door to the back room opened and a man wearing a tunic of white silk and a waistcoat threaded with gold lace drifted in. His smooth, tanned face held the same impassive, heavy-lidded gaze as his croupier, as if both of them had had plenty of experience dealing with hotheaded customers like her. “What is the problem here, Gregor,” he purred, his voice as smooth as the silk of his tunic.
“The lady wishes to bet five thousand gold against the house, sir,” the halfling replied.
Houdon looked at Alesia. A smile flickered on his lips, then disappeared. “Madame, you have quite a sum in your possession, and there are cutpurses about at this time of night. Perhaps you will allow me to have someone escort you home.”
“Five thousand,” she barked. “Will you cover it or not?”
Houdon pursed his lips and he seemed to take in the onlookers’ taut, expectant faces. Then he took a pouch from his belt and spilled ten cut diamonds onto the dicing table. “Take these to any jeweler in Waterdeep, and they will appraise them at a thousand gold each.”
“All right, then.” Alesia took a pile of markers and shoved them onto the 7 spot. It was a 2-1 bet, although the true odds against her were higher. She took the dice and held them close to her face; I couldn’t tell if her lips were moving. I scanned the floor quickly. All eyes fixed on her, but no one seemed to be speaking an incantation to reveal arcane magic at work. With a flash of her arm, the dice hit the felt of the table, and when they stopped, they came up four and three.
The crowd yelled. Houdon said nothing, showed nothing, except to motion for Alesia to follow him into the back room. Dion wandered over to the bar, working hard to pretend he wasn’t coming up to me.
“What did I tell you?” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “A dead certainty. That’s twenty thousand gold we got, altogether. Alesia’s getting it in gems so we don’t need a pack mule to carry it. You see anything wrong?”
“If she was using magic on the dice, no one spotted her, or at least no one tried to. I think her manners drew more attention. She could use a course at a finishing school.”
Dion shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now. If Houdon doesn’t pay, he gets a reputation as a bad host. That’s good for me, too.”
“I’ll wait for you outside. Keep an eye open and make sure I don’t lose you.”
Dion gave me a playful whack on the shoulder. I didn’t much appreciate that, and as I slid off my stool to leave, I saw Houdon eyeing me from the doorway of his back room. He glided my way and scowled. “You don’t like my place?”
“It’s fine. Nice atmosphere, good brandy, interesting floor show.”
“You don’t gamble.”
“I know the percentages too well. You ought to hire that redhead, though. She’s got a better act than your bard.”
“Don’t get smart with me. You’re nothing but a hired blade, dumb and cheap. Now get out and don’t come back.”
It was his house and the hired help worked for him, so I thought better of what I was going to say. When I got outside I took a deep draft of the clear night air and made for the corner of the building. That’s when I saw a large man with a large sword in a large scabbard silhouetted in the darkness in front of me. I slowly reached toward the shortsword strapped to my left leg. Behind me, I thought I heard muttering in a language I couldn’t understand. But before I could turn around, darkness overwhelmed me.
When I came to my head hurt like the Nine Hells and there was a bruise just behind my right ear. My guess was that I had been knocked out by a spell, then hit with a sap to make sure I stayed that way for a while. Apparently, I had been dragged into an alley to keep me inconspicuous, and once I could stay on my feet for long enough, I saw that I hadn’t been taken far from the Drunken Drake. But the streets were quiet now, and there was no trace of Dion and Alesia. My shortsword was gone, and so was any notion that this would be a simple matter.
Unfortunately, I have long since forgotten where I was going to go with this story — if indeed I ever figured it out in the first place. Obviously, the beginning echoes Farewell, My Lovely, in which Marlowe reluctantly takes on a bodyguard gig only to get knocked out by assailants who kill his client. So Dion Jax probably gets killed in this ambush. And Alesia? Well, I describe her as a femme fatale… or as a Jessica Rabbit look-alike.
Anyway, if you would like me to finish this story after all this time, let me know — if not by taking out a paid subscription to help support my writing, then by leaving me a one-time tip through Buy Me a Coffee. Or just least leave a comment to let me know what you think. Believe it or not, I found notes for three different stories in this vein. Why didn’t I just finish one before starting the others?
[Even after the paywall goes up, trial balloon posts like this will remain free and public. Completed works, however, will almost certainly go behind the paywall.]