November 27 2025
December 2025: “On this month’s episode of Chris Chambers Noir, these two psychological thriller writers will make you understand the meaning of noir,” says our host, the award-winning author of dozens of books, short stories, and most recently the bestselling Dickie Cornish series.
Meet our guests!
Tracy Clark says: I was born in Chicago, the greatest city ever. It must be so, because I’m still here, loving the seasons, cursing the heat, shivering through frigid winters, complaining endlessly about the humidity. But none of it seriously enough to prompt me to pack up and move someplace else. People often ask me when I knew I wanted to be a writer, but, honestly, I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know, though knowing a thing and voicing it are two different things, and it would be many, many, many years before I actually told someone – out loud — that I wanted to be a writer. It was then many, many, many more years before I actually wrote anything good. I am an overnight success twenty-some years in the making. Growing up, I read everything I could get my hands on, but the progression toward a life of fictional crime went something like this – Dr. Seuss to Amelia Bedelia, Amelia to Harriet the Spy, Harriet to Agatha Christie and Christie to the ’80s and ’90s when a wave of fantabulous female crime writers swooped in bringing the thunder. Grafton, Muller, Maron, Paretsky, Bland, Neely, Wilson Wesley… I knew right away I wanted to be just like them.
Along the way I managed to graduate college and grad school, and then start a career in the newspaper business. I now edit by day and write around my work schedule. I’m up at 5:30 AM with my laptop and a cup of Earl Grey at my side, hopefully putting down something I can use before I have to then swivel over to start editing op-eds, comics strips, crossword puzzles and features. When I’m not writing or editing, I enjoy a good black-and-white movie. Something goofy or something noir. (Anybody else out there laugh out loud at Judy Canova?) Toss in a rainy Sunday and a couple of ginger snap cookies, and you’ve just described my perfect day.
About Edge: When a tainted drug starts claiming lives across the city, Detective Harriet Foster and her team race to track down the source…before it takes one of their own. Read more: tracyclarkbooks.com
Christine Kovac is the author of the Watch Us Fall and The Cutaway, writes psychological suspense/thrillers set in Washington, DC.
Prior to writing fiction, Christina worked in television news, covering crime and politics at Fox 5’s Ten O’Clock News in Washington, DC, and after that as a news producer and desk editor at the Washington Bureau of NBC News.
She lives outside Washington DC with her family. She loves morning writes with her cat on her lap, ballgames at Nationals Park, book hauls from her town library, and hiking national parks. Her favorites—C&O Canal National Park, Assateague Island, and Rock Creek Park—provided inspiration for Watch Us Fall. She’s currently at work on her third novel.
About Watch Us Fall: Lucy and her three best friends share a glamorous but decaying house in the heart of Georgetown. They call themselves “the Sweeties” and live an idyllic post-grad lifestyle complete with exciting jobs, dramatic love lives, and, most importantly, each other. But when Addie, the group’s queen bee, discovers that her ex-boyfriend Josh has gone missing, the Sweeties’ worlds are turned upside down. In the days leading up to his disappearance, Josh, a star investigative journalist from a prominent political family, was behaving erratically—and Lucy is determined to find out why. All four friends upend their lives to search for him, but detectives begin to suspect that the Sweeties might know more than they’re letting on.
As the investigation unfolds, Lucy’s obsession with the case reaches a boiling point, and with it, her own troubling secrets begin bubbling to the surface of her carefully curated life. A thrilling account of the lies and delusions that lurk beneath cloistered groups of female friends and the sinister realities of celebrity, Watch Us Fall is a gripping mystery and an examination of the things we tell ourselves when we can’t face the truth.
Learn more: christinekovac.com
About Christopher Chambers: A Washington, D.C. native, Chris is a lecturer at Georgetown University, Chair of the International Conflict Resolution Center and is General Counsel to a not-for-profit benefitting HBCUs: Student Housing of America. He is the author of the Angela Bivens thriller series for Random House, The Rocket Crockett pulp noir series, and Black Pulp for Prose-Press, and editor, along with Gary Phillips, of The Darker Mask graphic short story collection, the Bronze Buckaroo Rides Again: Honoring Harlem’s Herb Jeffries. He was a finalist in 2008 for the PEN/Malamud Short Story Award for “Leviathan.”
He’s contributed short stories to The Obama Inheritance: 15 Stories of Conspiracy Noir (Three Rooms Press) and is the winner of the Anthony Award. The Black Panther: Tales Of Wakanda, The Faking of the President, and Midnight Hour, Witnesses for the Dead with Gar Anthony Haywood–all major award-winning collections and bestsellers. His noir hardboiled mystery Scavenger (2020) won a starred review and profile in Publishers Weekly; the sequel Standalone sees the return of the indestructible homeless addict turned PI Dickie Cornish, patrolling the unforgiving city streets ravaged by COVID, with the third in the trilogy Streetwhys in 2025. His next Marvel contribution is in Captain America: The Shield of Sam Wilson.
About Chris’s latest book, “Street Whys:” We again meet Washington, DC’s notorious detective, former street denizen Dickie Cornish, who faces off with bloodthirsty cops and the justice department. Underground detective Dickie Cornish faces a vindictive murder rap from his past if he doesn’t agree to help prove that the fentanyl ravaging the streets of DC is bankrolled by shadowy donors of a certain former president. Broke and desperate, Cornish soon finds himself on a collision course with shady public defenders and corrupt police officers, forcing him to use his street connections to flip their plan. Or die.
The Dickie Cornish series has met with widespread critical acclaim: Publishers Weekly dubbed the series debut, Scavenger, “[A] no-holds-barred crime novel…a 21st-century twist on traditional hardboiled noir.” The Strand Magazine selected Standalone, the second book in the series, as one of the “Top 25 Mystery Novels of the Year,” adding, “It’s apparent that the modern heir to Chandler, Woolrich, and Cain is Christopher Chambers, enough said.” And renowned crime author George Pelecanos raves that the series “really nails Washington, DC in the current environment.” Click here to buy the book.
And there’s more: Chris has contributed short stories to “The Obama Inheritance: 15 Stories of Conspiracy Noir” (Three Rooms Press), which won the Anthony Award; “The Black Panther: Tales Of Wakanda,” “The Faking of the President and Midnight Hour,” and “Witnesses for the Dead with Gar Anthony Haywood.” Each book includes stories by award-winning and bestselling authors.
