Question: How do you create a character who is as ice-cold as a cadaver when it comes to killing someone--yet one who actually posseses a conscience?

Or put it another way, in a sea of hit-men/assassin killer types found floating around face down in the dark waters called hardboiled, how do you create a character who is different. Different--unique--sympathetic.

A challenge. And that's putting it mildly. But one I wanted to try out one day on a kind of a spur-of-the-moment writing exercise. And . . . I'll be go to hell . . .what popped up on the screen was a guy named Smitty. Fully developed. Mean as back alley Wolverine with an aching tooth--with the black eyes of a pit viper who took in everything and anything in one glance. Reticent in speech--yet rather eloquent in his reticence.

One mean sonofabitch. That's Smitty. Yet . . .

Read the stories closely and you discover Smitty only takes out those justly deserving to be taken out. He's like the grim Angel of Death coming to collect his due among the miscreants and sadistic. And he does it spectacularly. Guns, poisons, explosives--even the front end of an F-150 Ford truck. It doesn't matter. When Smitty sets his eyes on you as his next prey--buddy, you're as good as dead.

Ah. But now, how to make him sympathetic? Make him someone from the dark side who you wind up willingly . . . or unwillingly . . . rooting for? Therein lies the McGuffin, as Alfred Hitchock used to say concerning his films. There's the catch that hooks the reader. And the answer is; I haven't a fraken' clue. It just happened.

One day Smitty was born in the back of my subconscious. He came out like some god of Greek mythology; sprung from the sea fully formed and magnificent to behold. But a god clearly hailing form the shadowy lands of Hades.

Take him for what he is, kid. The guy really does get under your skin and makes you want to read more about him.

We all need heroes in our lives

Heroes.

We all need them. We may not admit it. We may laugh at the idea if asked. But deep down . . . deep down we all need heroes in our lives. Male or female--real or fiction--it really doesn't matter. We need'em.

All of us get slung around in this ocean we call Life. We're sitting in the middle of a small rowboat getting tossed around like a cork riding the cresting waves of a hurricane. We hold on. We call out in the night. In our own fashions we pray for deliverance.

We want a hero to save us.

I think in the genre called harboiled/nor that's exactly what happens when a character comes along a reader identifies with. They've found a hero. Or heroes. They've found a persona that does things they could never do in reality. They resist. They fight back. And sometimes . . . they win. Win against impossible odds.

That's the motivating factor for the creation of three of my fictional characters. Smitty . . . Turner Hahn and Frank Morales. Smitty is a hit man. Dark and bloody. But he is, indeed, a hero. A grim, dark, vengeful hero maybe. But he does things only others dream about. He is good in his job--and he wins.

Turner Hahn and Frank Morales are my two homicide detectives. Cops, honest and open, working a thankless job in a city filled with crime and corruption. Two honest, tough hombres who try to hold back the night. Who actually believe that the concepts of Law and Justice are concepts worth fighting for.

Sometimes they win. Sometimes they lose.

But without question . . . they are heroes.