Charles Jensen | Writer

and, finally, rounding out the week: I wish I were a private detective.

Yes, as corny and silly as it sounds, I’ve often been drawn toward the seedy underbelly of the city: the distraught housewife with the philandering husband, the playboy with the blackmailer, the woman looking for the statue.

It’s not just my Veronica Mars fandom talking here. My coworker was very surprised to discover that I’d read all but the most recent of the Sue Grafton-penned Kinsey Millhone mysteries. And true: in junior high and high school I was devouring Agatha Christie’s Tommy & Tuppence mysteries, Patricia Cornwall novels, and so forth.

It’s not just noir that attracts me. A fanatical, yet idealistic, man once insisted “The truth is out there,” and I believe that’s true—I’ve always been interested in ways of finding it, isolating it, discovering the most likely scenario from a handful of scenarios. Being a detective isn’t just finding truth, though—it’s also learning about human nature. How people fail each other and how they make amends. Critical human dramas play out when someone searches for the truth. And that’s what interests me. Who’s behind them. What does this all mean. What is the truth.