You Want Noir — With a Happy Ending

Have experienced a messy friendship or had a quarter-life crisis

Hi friends,

I’m writing this after finishing a yoga class, and, wow, do I feel it. Every time I do yoga, I think “This is way harder than it has any right to be.” If any of you are yogis, please share advice in the comment section.

Quick programming note: I’m taking next Monday off so I can spend next weekend with my (almost one-year-old!) niece. My current plan is to spoil her rotten and give her books (I have Sandra Boynton’s Woohoo! You’re Doing Great! and Pop! Goes the Nursery Rhyme by Betsy Bird in my bag). I’ll be back on October 6^th with my annual Spooky Season edition.

And, now, what to read if …

You Know “Private Eyes” is a Bop

The Princess and the P.I. by Nikki Payne

I recently had to convince a friend that the Hall and Oates hit “Private Eyes” is danceable. She was skeptical, but I won her over. Try not joining in on the clap, clap-clap on the chorus. If you want a book starring a private investigator, complete with Veronica Mars vibes, you’ll want to read Nikki Payne’s The Princess and the P.I. ASAP.

Fiona Addai has spent ages using her internet sleuthing skills to plan the perfect crime: She’s going to steal back her deceased brother’s game-changing invention from the company that stole it from him. Unfortunately, her plot goes awry. Instead of getting justice for her brother, Fiona is accused of murder.

Maurice Bennett¹ has been living in an alcohol- and drug-fueled haze since failing to close his last major case — one that involved Fiona’s family — while working on the police force. Now a P.I., Fiona’s case intrigues him like nothing in years.

Together, they team up to clear Fiona’s name by using her cyber-sleuthing background and his real-world detective skills. Their partnership threatens to expose a tech conspiracy and dangerous family secrets, and it also leads to a spark between the two of them as they attempt to outwit a killer playing a dangerous game.

It’s unusual that I highlight a new release, but I read an early copy of The Princess and the P.I. months ago and have been dying to talk about it with people, so I’m pushing it on you now. With it, Payne does something impressive. She melds two genres that stand in opposition to one another — romance, which requires a happy ending, and noir, defined by the absence of hope. It’s a notable accomplishment and further establishes Payne as a romance writer to watch.

Bonus reading: I interviewed Payne for Crime Reads about this book.

You’ve Been Through a Friendship Breakup

All that Glitters by Orlando Whitfield

I’ve had a few friendship breakups that left me heartbroken, but none as messy as Orlando Whitfield’s separation with Inigo Philbrick, which involved an arrest, an FBI investigation and more than $86 million in fraud.

Orlando met Inigo at London’s Goldsmiths University, where they studied art and became fast friends. A year later, they began dealing art, in one case smuggling a piece across European borders in a puzzle travel box. Orlando went on to open his own gallery, while Inigo became a high-flying dealer, closing multi-million dollar deals, flying on private planes and renting luxurious houses for months at a time. But, behind the façade, Inigo was essentially running a Ponzi scheme with art. He owed millions to “partners” and spent his time dodging creditors and court summons.

In 2018, Orlando suffered a nervous breakdown and left the art world for good. Months later, Inigo fled to the remote island nation of Vanuatu, where the FBI would ultimately arrest him. In between his flight and arrest, the two men reconnected, and Inigo shared thousands of pages of files with Orlando with the idea they would co-write a book chronicling Inigo’s side of the story.

Instead, those documents served as the foundation of All that Glitters. I picked up All the Glitters expecting a fast-paced true crime story. Instead, I found a moving depiction of a complex friendship, as Orlando attempts to find the signs he missed and reassess their relationship through a new lens.

You’re Think it Might be Quarterlife Crisis or a Stirring in Your Soul ²

Supersaurio by Meryem El Mehdati, translated by Julia Sanches

The main character of Supersaurio is, like the book’s author, a trained translator named Meryem living in the Canary Islands with her Moroccan family. The fictional Meryem, though, interns at the corporate office of a superstore after failing to find a translation job.

Her job is far from fulfilling. She and her boss share a mutual loathing for one another, her coworkers purposefully exclude her from happy hours, and the highlight of her day is sneaking out for coffee. Meryem knows the best office closet to cry in and writes fanfiction depicting her coworkers in absurd, distressing situations.

Supersaurio is a hard one to describe because there’s not a ton of plot, per se, but more of an accurate depiction of the mundane pitfalls of trying to start a life in your twenties. It’s a quiet critique of the way we often allow our jobs/work to define our selves. It’s also darkly hilarious.

It’s kind of a cross between the TV show “Superstore” and Lily King’s Writers & Lovers, with a lost, loveable twenty-something that I just wanted to hug.

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1. Yes, Maurice from Pride and Protest is back.

2. Now you’ll have “Why Georgia” stuck in your head all day.