The Original C. Hardie

"Matt Brady" was the one-time pseudonym of Philadelphia crime novelist (and journalist) Joseph Shallit, and Take Your Last Look, Gold Medal #376, was his final novel.  I enjoyed two other Shallit novels, The Case of the Billion Dollar Body and Lady, Don't Die On My Doorstop, both featuring Philly tough guy Dan Morrison. So I decided to give Last Look, his only non-series novel, a whirl. I love a good hardboiled read set in my town.

There were two surprises:

One, Last Look isn't set in Philly. I mean, the place feels an awful lot like Philly, but Shallit/Brady goes out of his way to never specifically ID the city as the setting. As I read, I started playing association games: Was "Mayview" supposed to represent "Mayfair," the neighborhood in the Northeast? Is "Ardley" a suburban stand-in for "Ardsley" or "Ardmore"? Or maybe even "Yardley"?

But the bigger surprise was the name of the protagonist, tough and relentless (maybe-Philly PD) narcotics detective Cliff Hardie.

If you haven't read my novels Fun & Games or Hell & Gone, this means nothing. But those who've read either know that my protagonist is tough and relentless former Philly PD consultant... Charlie Hardie.

But man, you should have seen my double-take.

I intended the name "Charlie Hardie" as nod to a certain action classic. "Hardie" is a twisted mash-up of Die Hard, an obvious influence on the series. I even gave him the middle initial "D" so that his name, when unscrambled, is essentially "Charlie Die Hard."

But now it turns out there was another C. Hardie patrolling the mean streets of maybe-Philadelphia back in the 1950s.

From now on, of course, I'm going to pretend that my Hardie is part of a larger family tree of Hardies stretching throughout all of Philadelphia hardboiled fiction. Hell, it almost makes me want to contact Joseph Shallit's estate and negotiate for permission to write an official "Cliff Hardie" novel. Maybe he's Charlie's great uncle? Grandfather?

But only if I'm allowed to set it in the real Philadelphia.