One of the most interesting things is how there are some Noir and Neo-Noir films releasing next year. In Cold Light, The Rip, Crime 101, Maigret et le mor amoureux, Blood on Snow and Spider-Noir to name a few. Yes it seems like Noir is getting more apparent for next year, and as long as we’re focusing on Noir, I thought it would be interesting to talk to an actual Noir author, who while not a film writer certainly does enjoy Noir films and other Noir related subjects. He’s also a fan of Nicolas Cage, who is taking the lead in Spider-Noir. Ever since I heard Cage and other actors play a range of characters in Into The Spiderverse, I felt like they all needed their own spinoffs and series. Then maybe I’d get more into the Marvel fandom just a little bit more. But that’s a different subject. We’ve got to look into the case of the curious writer as I ask Alexis questions about his writing, his latest book, and what he likes about Noir films. Let’s look into this together, here’s our interview with Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson and his latest book, Opposite Sully’s Gym.
HNMAG: You’re really big into Noir writing. What made you pursue it?
Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson: I think mostly, I just loved the writers that were writing it. I’ve always been a really big fan of Raymond Chandler, Dashell Hammitt, and following from them, Ross MacDonald. I like James M Kane a lot, I think one of the things they say is “Imitation is the highest form of flattery” I was a great fan of their writing, I was trying to do some writing earlier in my life and my said why didn’t I try to write a mystery, and so when I did try to write a mystery, I really constantly looked at the basis of where I could start and do.
HNMAG: Most writers use ideas based on real life happenings. Do you find similar storylines based off incidents in your life?
Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson: Well, I can tell you I don’t have any first-hand experience with murder so I’m happy to say that. Certainly, I use stories from history, stories that happen here in Toronto, and in my first book, ‘The Road to Heaven’ one of the plotlines involves a bank robbery that goes wrong and the teller shoots someone. What many people don’t know is that in the 50’s and 60’s in Toronto, the bank robbing epidemic famously Edwin Boyd and the Boyd gang were somewhat the most famous people invovled in that. Bank tellers actually had guns behind the counter and so that’s a piece of trauma history that not many people know. I also use a lot of real life locations, so anyone who is familiar with Toronto will recognize many places. Places that have changed overtime, and were in the story.
HNMAG: What are some of the biggest challenges you face writing Noirs?
Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson: I think when you write a mystery there are a few different things, I would say. One is most of the people who wrote Noirs wrote in the first person and I write in the first person. When you use a first person narrator, there are some challenges. One of them is you can only have scenes where your narrator is there and in this case, it’s the detective Patrick Bird. So you need to carefully structure the plot so the detective is in the right place at the right time to see what he needs to see and talk to the people he needs to talk to. Another part of that with the first person is people who wrote the original mysteries are the Golden age in England, like Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, those kinds of characters had their sidekick be the first person narrator. You have Dr Watson, Art Hastings, and in that situation the genius detective is always saying “I’ve worked out the mystery, but I have to check a few things I can’t tell you yet.” Whereas you’re writing in the first person, you’re really the narrator’s thoughts, are there for the reader and it’s the reader and the detective are discovering it as you go. That can be tricky because you can’t reveal too much until you’re at the end. But it does create their benefits as well, like creates a narrative energy so I think that’s a really positive thing. The last thing I would say about a challenge in writing Noir is just that you need the ending to be a surprise or you want the ending to be surprising as possible. But it also has to seem inevitable.
Alexis told me how it has to make sense to everyone, take those two opposing tensions and somehow try bringing them to a resolution which can be tricky so the ending is something you have to work a fair amount over.
HNMAG: What are some of the most interesting things you come up with when writing?
Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson: In my upcoming book that’s coming out in March, called Opposite Sully’s Gym, I have a really interesting historical story which I’m using as the backdrop for the novel which is one that not many people know though. It should be a part of our history in Toronto, it’s that after assassinating Martin Luther King in Spring 1968, James Earl Ray drove to Atlanta then took a bus to Detroit, boarded his way to Windsor then made it to Toronto where he stayed for 6 weeks. He lived in a boarding house on Ossington Ave not far from where I live. He spent his time really getting a Canadian passport under an alias so that he could leave Canada and go to England. He was trying to eventually get to Rhodesia where racial policies were more to his liking. But he was arrested at Ethro Airport once people found out what his alias was. But it is quite a remarkable story that he was here in our city for 6 weeks during one of the biggest manhunts in US history.
HNMAG: Have you ever tried writing scripts for Noir movies?
Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson: No, I’ve never done any script writing.
HNMAG: Do you have any favourite noir movies?
Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson: Yeah, I have lots of favourite Noir movies. I like a lot of the classics that would be on everybody’s list. A lot of the detective fiction, so certainly The Maltese Falcon, certainly the James N Kane book adaptaions, like Double Indemnity. Raymond Chandler actually wrote the screenplay to that one. The Big Sleep would be another one, and another of my favourites is Sunset Boulevard. I certainly enjoy Noir film a great deal and most of those films came out in the 40s but were based on books written in the 30s. Treasure of the Sierra Madre is another which I think is great.
HNMAG: And you’re also a Nicolas Cage fan. What are your favourite roles of his?
Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson: (laughs) Neither of these are Noir but I would say that Face-Off with John Travolta is just fantastic. The two of them are acting as each other, I thought it was really good. The other one is Adaptation which is based off Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief where Nic Cage plays twins who are screenwriters writing the movie. I think this is just a fantastic film.
HNMAG: Now what kind of subjects do you research when you write your stories?
Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson: My stories take place in the 60s and early 70s so I have to do a fair amount of research to ensure that my time period is correct. I do some book research, some Internet research and I do much visiting locations as possible. I haven’t been inside it, but I’ve been outside the rooming house to look at where James Ray lived. I’ve certainly been to different locations that are in different books, this upcoming book I’ve certainly had to do more work around the history of it because it does involve real people and so there are historical facts that need to be correct. I can say that in the upcoming book, it is fiction but it is based on history and there’s really very few things in the novel that contradict what we know happened in history. The dates align and are all correct, an example of something that’s different is in reality the landlady was a Polish woman at the rooming house, in my novel she’s Italian because it ties in with Patrick Bird. She’s his mother-inlaw so I needed her Italian to be the mother of his wife. There are certain things that are slightly different but for the most part, it’s mostly accurate. That did involve more research on my part.
HNMAG: Are there other subjects you have looked into writing and making?
Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson: I was writing the other day and it was about a different detective in a different timeframe. The 50s and he was going through the garbage and so I was trying to find out when plastic garbage bags were invented and in use, so you find yourself in all sorts of rabbit holes trying to find out when things were invented, commonly used. I was looking at my third Patrick Bird mystery book, there was a motion sensor light, were they commonly used in 1971? You find there’s a lot of interesting things to look into and try to determine when things happen and didn’t. That kind of work is constant and a big part of the writing that I do.
HNMAG: Can we expect more books about this book, seeing it’s the second in a series?
Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson: Certainly, I plan to write a number of books about Patrick Bird. He is a young detective, the first book takes place in 1965. He’s 24 in that book, and I anticipate many more. Some people have done amazing things with writing, I think specifically of someone like Michael Conley and his detective Harry Bosh. He’s really written like a social history of Los Angeles overtime, you can see all sorts of changes in the city and important topics and social issues. If I could do something like that for Toronto, that would be really exciting for me. That’s sort of what I dream and hope for, and I would only dream of being able to do as well as he could.
Keep an eye out for Alexis’s book, Opposite Sully’s Gym coming out March 2026. And watch for those other movies I mentioned earlier as well.