Linda Morris | In praise of difficult men

Thanks for having me at Fresh Fiction today. I guess you could say I've always had a spot for difficult men. Maybe it started with my adolescent obsession with Moonlighting, the show that launched Bruce Willis's career before he decided to become an action hero. The show was a deliberate throw-back to the screwball romantic comedies of the thirties, and once I realized that, I was off like a shot, tracking down all the Thin Man movies, His Gal Friday, anything with Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, and anything, absolutely anything, with Gary Grant. Those movies are full of difficult, wise-cracking men and the spunky women who love them.

Difficult men are my weakness, but not too difficult, mind you. I don't want to deal with a real jerk or an abuser, in reality or fiction. But that guy who sees through all the heroine's smokescreens, who doesn't suffer fools, who says what he thinks, regardless of what anyone wants to hear? The guy who can stand up for himself and his lady, and stands up to his lady when it's necessary? The guy who occasionally shoots himself in the foot because he can't stop himself from saying what needs to be said? The guy with a little tarnish on his shining armor? They get me every time.

Guys kind of like Joe Dunham, the hero in BY HOOK OR BY CROOK. He's gotten himself kicked off of the Chicago Police Department because he wouldn't go along with a corrupt scheme in his department. Now he works as a security consultant for wealthy developer Richard Smithson. You'd think that having lost one job over his impulsive actions, he'd have learned to keep his mouth shut and follow orders.

You would be wrong. When Smithson asks Joe to work with his spoiled daughter Ivy to prevent a foolish marriage by his other daughter, Joe senses trouble coming, but even he is taken aback by how fast he gets in over his head with his client's beautiful daughter.

After they're stranded together in a mountain cabin, things heat up between them, but Ivy wants no part of it. She's trying to keep her sister from a disastrous relationship with the wrong man, not get entangled in one of her own. Here's a quick excerpt:

She pulled her hand away with effort. "The cabin was a special situation," she explained. "Not really the real world. Now that we're back in the real world, I think we ought to try to put things between us on a professional footing once again."

"The real world? I didn't know we'd ever left it. Tell me about this distinction. Why is this motel parking lot the real world, but a cabin an hour or so away is magically not?" His jaw had that pugnacious angle that it took on when he made her life difficult, and Ivy sighed.

You don't think Joe is going to go along with that, do you? No way! No difficult man would make it that easy on a heroine.

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