"'Darkness at Sunset and Vine' draws on conventions and stock characters from several genres such as comic books, anime, and action-adventure movies. For me, the most important influence on the structure of the novel is the tradition of Film Noir. As in a classic Humphrey Bogart movie, "Darkness" gives us the first person narrative of a jaded private investigator in Southern California, navigating his/her way through a jungle of violence and moral bankruptcy. As in the classic Noir film or Raymond Chandler novel, the heart of the story is not about solving the case. It's about the journey the protagonist takes to get there. "Darkness," like a good Noir film, is sort of a Pilgrim's Progress in a landscape with every scrap of moral certainty removed." From the Introduction by Kelly S. Taylor, Ph.D.