You don't write a "love letter" to Pulp Noir.

You don't wax romantic about a style of writing or filmmaking or comic book writing that deals with the darker, meaner, grittier side of life. The side of life that makes you look behind your back, thinking you'll see a burly brute with a hat over his eyes, and a set of shiny brass knuckles, that hit with the kick of a mule.

You don't get all mushy about character who drink whisky like most people drink soda pop, smoke cigarettes like fish breath water. You don't get soft in the gut when you think about the dirty deed and double crosses of women who are as calculatingly evil, and they are drop dead gorgeous.

You talk about the dark alleys and city streets wet with the rain that should wash away all the dirt in the world, but all it does it make it easier to see the cold hard cruel world reflected back at itself, in distorted features.

You don't use sweet words to describe a world where the double-cross, and the knife in the back, become art-forms, where you know that every move you make brings you closer to a sticky end, with the wrong people looking over you, and the the long black sedan comes to collect you and it's off to "Potter's Field," and you wind up filling the belly of a worm.

Where money has the same pull as a beautiful pair of getaway sticks, connected to caboose with moves sweeter than a ripe Georgia peach. Only money won't turn the tables on you, it won't put a roscoe to your bean and squirt lead until you're dead. Only that dame is worth the risk, the odds are in her favor of being a shady Sadie, but you don't care, you're in it to your eyeballs, and the only way out is down, the big sleep, the dirt nap with a granite blanket,

Yeah, you don't write a love letter to Pulp Noir, you give a rap in the mouth, and a stiff drink to numb the pain, have a smoke, and walk down that dark alley, and live to scheme another day.