Favourite colourful metaphor, Gregg Taylor!
One of my treasured times in the morning is the early ride to school. Once the car windshield has been sufficiently scraped, and the engine makes its protesting chugs to start, on goes the ipod, and the car stereo plays the only music worthy of a car ride- radio drama.
This morning was As the Northern Star- episode three of season 11 of Black Jack Justice. In a genre that’s already littered with modern greats like Harry Strange, The Scoop Sisters, TamLynn P.I. and Jim Nolan among others, after eleven years Jack Justice and Trixie Dixon still top the charts.
Detective noir dialogue can be unnecessarily stilted and in danger of parodying itself. Taylor has both an ear for the lingo of the age, a quick wit, and an understanding that characters need a reason to bust a few chops. The chief reason is the often boredom-staving opportunities the protagonists have to lean on a proverbial sore spot.
Taylor makes the writing easy. He’s said in the past (go look up our annual round table events), that keeping Justice and Dixon quiet after a while so they don’t crowd out the plot is more of a challenge than writing witty repartee. Taylor’s style is so effortless, that one would think that Dash Hammett would be wiping the tears of joy from his priority podcast feed (Of course some folks think Dash’s liver is still alive and fueling up using regular at some rundown dive in the Big Apple).
Of course, the success goes to the Decoder Ring Theatre team. Andrea Lyons as Trixie and Christopher Mott who voices Jack along with Taylor and his talented wife Clarissa Der Nederlanden Taylor make the solid base that so many friends from their days on stage complete the powerful scripts.
The upshot is, as I work on Phillipa Graves (arguably older than those Justice and Dixen kids), it’s really important to remember consistency and talent are what drives the best modern pulp detective show out there. So raise a cup of Joe!
