Declan Burke in the frame

SONS OF SPADE ( a new blog to me: it is for "spotlighting the fictional PI" and is run by J V D Steen) is featuring a Q&A with the writer for whom Petrona's flinty heart has a definite soft spot -- Declan Burke, author of Eightball Boogie and The Big O. No stranger to wielding the rubber truncheon on his own blog, Crime Always Pays, Declan has left the station to subject himself to the harsh lights of external interrogation. Here's a sample:

Q. Who do you think will influence the coming generation and in what way?

A. I think Ken Bruen will exert a massive influence on the next generation of PI writers. His Jack Taylor series is genuinely breaking new ground, given that it’s a post-modern appraisal of the notion of the PI and the PI novel – Bruen has gone beyond the conventional three-act investigation of a crime, gone beyond the protagonist as a righter of wrongs, a man or woman who uncovers dirty deeds and precipitates a satisfactory resolution. In Taylor’s world, everyone is equally culpable, and Bruen has inverted the focus of his PI’s gaze so that it’s himself he’s investigating, his morality, the part that he plays in creating the kind of world where good, bad and indifferent all jostle for pre-eminence.

See more at Sons of Spade--- there's lots of other reading matter there, too.