Beware the Bonding by Robb White

Of all the genres I’ve published in, I enjoy hardboiled crime/noir the most. It used to be axiomatic that a writer had the sole right to choose his or her subject. To say there’s nothing sacred involved might be a stretch, but the boundaries of fiction aren’t easily constrained by any era’s ideology or predominant tastes. That principle had never troubled me as either a reader or writer until recently.

This week, I received similar responses to submissions in close proximity from two different publishers of short fiction. Both stories would fall under the rubric of hardboiled crime, or at the very least, a generic label such as “dark fiction.” One story was accepted; one was rejected.  But the reasons were remarkably similar. The publisher of Story #1 rejected  because he found my male protagonist, a thoroughly corrupt politician, despicable, a man who reveled in his misdeeds, which included solicitation to commit murder and embezzlement: “It’s like a lengthy harangue against a fictitious person who does only bad and enjoys it and succeeds.” True (I won’t quibble with the term harangue here).

Story #2 garnered a longer response with the editor/publisher tentatively accepting it pending revision. This editor found my female protagonist impossible to bond with, her actions against the antagonists (a family of cretins trying to ruin her) in excess of their own misdeeds, particularly the paterfamilias, whose “horrendous end” was “unjustified.”  Besides my lead character not being “very likeable,” she resisted a reader’s willingness to “buy into her” on the basis of her actions.  “Readers,” the editor explained in her critique, “don’t want to root for a murderer.”   

I’ve heard it all before, and it comes down to the need to bond with the protagonist. I aver a difference that matters whether victims (fictional, of course) need to be deserving of their ends before readers will stand behind the murderer. It isn’t about rooting for the murderer; it’s about verisimilitude in a putrid, evil landscape (call it aberrant psychology, if that helps). As lawyers say, crimes committed in hell don’t have angels for witnesses. Neither should dark fiction.

Author Bio:

Robert White lives in Northeastern Ohio. He has published many crime, horror, and mainstream stories in various magazines and anthologies. He’s been nominated for a Derringer for his crime fiction. Most of his novels feature private investigators Thomas Haftmann or Raimo Jarvi. Jarvi’s third outing in the Northtown trilogy is Northtown Angelus (Grand Mal, 2024). Betray Me Not, a collection of revenge tales, was selected for distinction by the Independent Fiction Alliance in 2022. Find him at: https://tomhaftmann.wixsite.com/robbtwhite