Dieselpunk Detective Noir Q&A: Dan Willis + Complete Arcane Casebook Series
“Monsters stay scary the less you see of them.”
The author shares why he made the jump from sword-and-sorcery to a supernatural detective series set in Depression-era New York, lists off some of the stories that inspired him, and explains why victims in horror stories should be smart.
Dan Willis is an award-winning, best-selling author who has been writing for most of his life. He’s written for the long-running DragonLance series of fantasy novels, and worked in the board game and video game industries as well. His current work is the Arcane Casebook series, an urban fantasy supernatural detective series that offers a fantasy twist on the 1930s noir detective story.
The latest book in the series is Hostile Takeover:
Manhattan real estate has always been to die for, but now someone is willing to kill for it and Alex Lockerby is right in their way…
In this exclusive interview, Dan tells Monster Complex the role Jim Butcher played in the origins of the series, explains what sets the Arcane Casebook series apart from Dresden Files, reveals the genre interests that fuel his writing, and complains about his biggest horror pet peeves.
Also: Find a complete list of books in the series below. Including the free introductory book!
RELATED: 100 Supernatural Detective Series
Original version published July 13, 2020.
What inspired the overarching concept or themes of Arcane Casebook series?
I started writing the Arcane Casebook because Jim Butcher wasn’t writing any more Dresden File books until his divorce was final. I wanted a fix of magical detectives, so I decided to write my own.
I didn’t want to just ape Dresden, so I set my story in 1930s New York and made my detective, Alex Lockerby, a low rent magical CSI, using his intellect and his magic to solve crimes. It was a fun start and over the course of five books Alex and the word he inhabits, and the cases that confront him have grown and become much more rich and complex than they were at the beginning.
It’s fun to write and, if my fans are to be believed, fun to read.
What personal interests made it into the Arcane Casebook series?
I started out as a writer of typical fantasy books. I wrote for Wizards of the Coast and their DragonLance brand and that’s as basic a sword and sorcery tale as it gets. Somewhere along the way, I was offered the chance to do a short story for an anthology where the world was fractured into genre zones.
I asked the editor if I could do a noir detective story in a 1930s Chicago. He loved the idea and I wrote it. I was really surprised by the result, in about 8,000 words I had a mob hit, a fem fatale, and a revenge story. I didn’t know I had it in me to write detective stories but it worked out very well.
I shouldn’t have been so surprised, I love noir movies, the high style Art Deco of 1930s, and I’m a madman for police procedural TV series. It was the perfect fusion of my experience and I’m so glad I took a chance to write outside my normal genre. Now I love writing mysteries for Alex and mixing in those great Dieselpunk, retro-sci-fi elements with a twist of magic.
What draws you to write about this stuff?
As I said before, I love detective stories. I love watching Sherlock Holmes piece together a motive from random bits of evidence. I can’t get enough of Columbo picking apart the perfect murder until he forces the guilty party to reveal themselves.
At the same time I’m fascinated by the industrial era. Did you know that an industrialist proposed building a dam across the Straights of Gibraltar in the aftermath of WW2? He wanted to expose millions of acres of rich farmland by draining a bit out of the Mediterranean.
Stuff likes that fascinates me. It was an era when men and women weren’t afraid to think big, to tackle big things and build incredible machines. It was more like science fiction than you might think.
Now you take that setting add a dash of magic and some good old fashioned murder and mayhem. What’s not to like. I love it and I’m going to keep writing it as long as my readers keep reading.
What do you consider the essential or watershed works (books, movies, whatever) featuring your type of fiction?
Wow, that’s a list. First off, you’ll be hard pressed to find Dieselpunk Detective Noir stories in major media (RJD’s Sherlock Holmes movies are the closest). That said, you can piece it together but you have to have fairly broad tastes.
For books, the complete works of Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle. Add to that the Dresden Files, The Belgariad by David Eddings, The Stainless Steel Rat series by Harry Harrison, and probably anything by Jules Verne. There are lots of other books you should read to learn how stories are put together and told, but they teach general writing skills.
Movies: Anything with Humphrey Bogart (especially the Maltese Falcon), Double Indemnity, the Indiana Jones films (except that awful last one), Murder on the Orient Express, The Fugitive, Robert Downy Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes films, and any caper film you might like, such as The Italian Job. That should ground you in how to put together and pace a mystery.
Lastly TV is a wealth of mystery lore. Shows like CSI, Elementary, the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and scores of others. (I especially like Castle and Psych for their humor.)
So that’s a Masters level course on Detectives, Mysteries, Adventure, and Fun. (And if you’re going to write something, have the decency to make it fun, you’ll attract more readers).
What horror cliche(s) bother you the most?
My biggest pet peeve with Horror is having stupid people running around doing stupid things just to further the plot. “Hey, there’s someone around here killing people. Let’s all split up, and see if we can find a clue.”
Don’t insult my intelligence as a viewer. Make your victims smart. If you can’t come up with smart ways to kill them, maybe horror isn’t your thing.
The other big one is when the writer of a monster story has the monster doing a fan dance out in the open the whole time. Monsters stay scary the less you see of them. Watch Jaws and marvel at how scary the shark is when you almost never see it. In fact it’s terrifying in the beginning and all you are experiencing is an underwater POV and two notes of music. Brilliant.
What are the best ways for readers to connect with you online and learn more about you?
My books are all available over at Amazon, they’re even free to read if you’re a Kindle Unlimited subscriber. The Arcane Casebook novels are cheaper than a designer coffee, but if that’s still too much commitment, you can go out to DanWillisAuthor.com and get the prequel novella for free. If you want to contact me directly, catch me on Facebook in the Arcane Casebook group.
Complete Arcane Casebook Series by Dan Willis
0 Dead Letter (Arcane Casebook #0)
In 1930 New York, the sorcerers are the powerhouses of magic and the runwrights are the poor cousins. Private detective Alex Lockerby is definitely in the latter category, plying his meager magic skills to help people the regular cops ignore while barely making ends meet.
What Alex needs is a break. Just one good case to get his name out there and start bringing in business. When ambitious beat cop Danny Pak gets stuck trying to solve a John Doe murder, it might just be the break Alex has been looking for.
As Alex and Danny team up they begin to unravel a tale murder, jealousy, and revenge stretching back over 30 years. A tale powerful forces don't want to come to light. Now the cop and the private detective must work fast and watch each other's backs if they hope to catch a killer and live to tell about it.
Dead Letter is the prequel novella to the Arcane Casebook series. To get your free copy, click below.
In Plain Sight (Arcane Casebook #1)
When a magical plague is released in a Depression-era New York soup kitchen, private detective Alex Lockerby finds himself in a desperate hunt to catch a madman before he can strike again.
His investigations lead Alex to a famous thief, a daring heist, and the search for a mythic book of ancient magic, but none of that brings him any closer to finding the man responsible for the massacre. With the police and New York’s Council of Sorcerers desperate to find the culprit, Alex becomes a suspect himself, thanks to his ties to the priest who ran the soup kitchen.
Now Alex has his book of spells, a pack of matches and four days to find out where the plague came from, or that authorities will hang the crime squarely on him.
Ghost of a Chance (Arcane Casebook #2)
When a bizarre string of locked-room murders terrorize New York, the police have no leads, no suspects, and only one place to turn. Now private detective Alex Lockerby will need every magical trick in his book to catch a killer who can walk through walls and leaves no trace.
Unfortunately Alex’s magic hasn’t been working very well. He can’t even manage to track down several truckloads of stolen goods, including one belonging to New York's preeminent sorcerer, Andrew Barton. To make matters worse, Alex and his clients are being stalked by a shadowy cabal with strange powers that Alex has never seen before.
With the Ghost killer seemingly able to murder at will and the tabloids, the public, and Alex’s clients demanding results, Alex will need a miracle to keep himself, his clients, and his reputation alive.
The Long Chain (Arcane Casebook #3)
When New York is blanketed in an unnatural fog, Private Detective Alex Lockerby finds himself on the trail of a missing scientist, a stolen military secret, and a merciless killer leaving a trail of bodies in their wake.
In a city the size of New York, things go missing all the time. When a Nobel-Prize winning Chemist vanishes without a trace, his granddaughter taps Alex to find him. Locating people is easy for someone with the best finding rune in the city, but when Alex tracks down the missing man, he has no memory of who he is or what happened to him, and his research is missing.
Convinced that something larger is going on, Alex sets out to uncover the truth. Before he can learn anything concrete, however, the city is shrouded in a dense fog and that brings New York’s resident sorceress, Sorsha Kincaid, to his door. She needs Alex’s finding rune in order to trace the source of the unnatural fog, and she has no patience for his other cases.
Now Alex must keep the volatile and powerful sorceress happy as he tries to unravel a tangled web of science, murder, and missing memories before the clues vanish into the ever-present fog.
Mind Games (Arcane Casebook #4)
What do a murderous housewife and a wayward heiress have in common? If Alex Lockerby is right, someone is manipulating them against their will. Now all he has to do is unravel a dark tapestry of family, politics, wine, money, love, and murder before the people behind it put an end to him.
Alex Lockerby’s father once told him that It’s the simple jobs that take the longest, and finding missing things is about as simple a job as Alex can get. When wealthy socialites hire him to track down their wayward daughter, finding her is easy, but that’s just the beginning of his problems.
As he’s trying to deal with the no-longer-missing heiress and her family, Alex gets another case from a desperate young man. He wants Alex to prove his wife is innocent of murder, the only problem is that she was caught, red-handed. Alex takes the case, figuring it should be easy to prove what happened one way or another, but the more Alex looks into the murder, the worse it seems. The only thing he can’t find is a motive.
As Alex investigates he becomes convinced that both of his clients are being manipulated by someone with a bigger agenda. He knows he’s on the right track when a would-be assassin takes a shot at him. Now Alex has to figure out who’s running a deadly con game in Manhattan, hopefully before he and his clients become the sacrifice pawns.
Limelight (Arcane Casebook #5)
When a madman starts robbing banks the really old fashioned way, by blowing holes in them with magical explosives, the police want Alex to catch him before he kills and robs again. There are two problems with that, however. First, as far as Alex knows, there’s no such thing as a blasting rune. And second, his friend Danny Pak is up for a promotion and that’s not Danny’s case.
Alex splits his time between chasing the homicidal bomber and helping Danny figure out what happened to a dead writer who was basing her book on Broadway’s most famous murder. While the bomber continues to elude Alex, he becomes convinced that the writer was killed by someone who wanted the old murder to remain unsolved. Before he can pursue either case further, however, the feds show up, wanting Alex’s take on a series of bizarre magic related deaths.
Now Alex must solve the fifteen year old Broadway murder, catch a blast-happy bank robber, and figure out how average people are being killed by a mysterious, untraceable magic. All the while he has scant leads, even fewer suspects, and the inescapable feeling that he’s being played.
Blood Relation (Arcane Casebook #6)
Young women are turning up dead, exsanguinated by a killer who leaves strange and powerful symbols behind, drawn in his victim’s blood. Now Alex Lockerby must stop the killer before he can complete his dark ritual and release hell on the city.
Murder isn’t uncommon in a big city, but when young women start turning up dead next to mysterious symbols painted in their blood, the police turn to Alex Lockerby to find the killer. Unfortunately, the bloody symbols aren’t any form of magic Alex knows, leaving him precious little to work with and a nagging feeling that he’d better stop this madman before he finishes whatever spell he’s attempting.
Adding to the list of unknown symbols, Alex is called to the murder of a woman who worked with government secrets. She was found with strange coded markings written on a blackboard near her body. To make matters even more confusing, several robberies have been perpetrated by a highly skilled gang of thieves. Among the stolen articles were ingredients used by alchemists. These cases seem random and unconnected, but Alex can’t shake the feeling that they’re part of something bigger.
With a brutal killer on the loose, Alex must figure out an unknown magic, catch a group of professional thieves, and learn what government secrets the murdered woman might have passed on…and to whom. With luck, he might even be able to do it before the blood killer completes his dark ritual, and unleashes hell on the city.
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Capital Murder (Arcane Casebook #7)
When the FBI wants to sweep the murder of a US Senator under the rug, Alex Lockerby must navigate the halls of political power and corruption in order to catch a professional killer and uncover dark conspiracy that threatens the very foundations of government.
Hired by the widow of a murdered US Senator, Alex Lockerby is shocked to find out that she’s the only one who seems to want the crime solved. Between the local police and the FBI, everyone wants this case over and done with, even if they have to sweep it under the rug just to make it go away.
Not satisfied with the answers he’s getting, Alex dives into the world of high stakes power politics and the inherent corruption that goes with it. Quickly he finds himself with more motives and suspects than he can manage, all while being pursued by a professional killer, a murderous thief, and a powerful crime lord from his past.
With time running out to find the true motive for the Senator’s murder, Alex must find the link between a bizarre theft, a missing alchemist, and legislation the murdered Senator was working on. If he succeeds, Alex might just have a chance to uncover a dark conspiracy that threatens the government itself, unless they get him first.
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Hostile Takeover (Arcane Casebook #8)
Manhattan real estate has always been to die for, but now someone is willing to kill for it and Alex Lockerby is right in their way.
When Alex steps in to stop a gang of thugs trying to bully a client into selling his house, he suddenly finds himself neck deep in a world of shady deals and organized crime. Add to that the death of a highly placed runewright that looks like murder for hire, and Alex quickly finds himself with a price on his head and a target on his back.
As Alex tries to stay one step ahead of the mob, Sorceress Sorsha Kincaid has her own problems. Cursed by the Legion, her magic is being slowly bled away, leaving her weaker and weaker. Despite Alex’s best efforts, they’ve barely managed to slow the curse down. Now Sorsha has to face the two most important questions of her life; where is her siphoned power going, and what will happen to her when it’s gone?
With time running out, Alex must navigate a twisted vortex of corporate sabotage, mob murder, and dark magic that threatens to cost him everything he holds dear.
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IN PROGRESS (Arcane Casebook #9)
“Arcane Casebook 9 is being written and will be available in late summer of 2022…you can pre-order it when you finish Hostile Takeover, Arcane Casebook 8. The publication date listed is a worst case scenario, and the book will be available as soon as it’s finished and ready.”
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Horror and comedy both make us jump—which is why these elements work together so well together. Looking at books from authors like Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Tanya Huff, Kelley Armstrong, John Scalzi, Diana Rowland, and Kevin J. Anderson, plus many authors you should meet.