- In the latest episode of “We Don’t Color On the Dog,” Nesbitt sat down to discuss his fifth Ed Earl Birch novel, “The Fatal Saving Grace,” released on his birthday, Dec. 5. The conversation revealed not just the evolution of a compelling character, but the craft behind creating fiction that feels authentic and raw.
A Different Kind of Detective
Nesbitt’s hard-boiled Texas crime thrillers deliberately subvert traditional mystery conventions. “It’s not a whodunit per se,” he explains. “I’m basically doing pursuits, chases. What I love to do is just throw my main character, Ed Earl Birch, in the brierpatch and see whether he comes out alive or not.”
Unlike the infallible detectives of classic noir, Ed Earl Birch comes with bad knees, a wounded liver, three ex-wives, and crushing guilt over a dead partner from his days as a Dallas homicide cop. After being forced off the police force, he’s spent 20 years in what Nesbitt calls “the peephole wilderness of a private detective.”
- “I don’t particularly like having detectives that are super smart and flawless,” Nesbitt says. “Ed Earl is not Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, and he definitely is not Frank Bullock. So he’s more of an everyman type.”
The Gift of Getting What You Want
In “The Fatal Saving Grace,” Nesbitt ages his protagonist while giving him something he’s long desired: a badge. Ed Earl becomes a DA’s investigator in the fictional West Texas town of Favor.
“Like all things that you get, that you’ve wished for for a long time, you really need to be careful what you wish for,” Nesbitt warns. “And he’s going to learn that the hard way.”…