It's no coincidence that Holly Black's "Curse Workers" novels, "White Cat" and "Red Glove" (due out next Tuesday), read a bit more like 1940s detective movies than your typical YA romance. Holly is a big fan of the noir genre, and in part two of her interview with pal and fellow writer Cassandra Clare, Cassie asked her about how she incorporates it into her stories about a young con artist in a family of magically gifted criminals.

"One of the things I really love about noir is it is an immensely romantic genre," Holly told the "Mortal Instruments" author during their annual writing retreat in Mexico. "The hard-boiled detective [stories] are very romantic! There's a guy who's come back from the war or some other hard time, and he thinks that he has lost his innocence. He's living a hardscrabble life, often as a private detective, and a lady walks in... She represents somehow his lost innocence, so he believes in her, even though he knows he shouldn't. He does whatever fool thing it is she wants him to do, and then she betrays him. In the process, he loses everything for that hope of love, which he usually doesn't get."

And while Cassel Sharpe doesn't go around calling girls "dames" or wearing a trench coat, he is in many ways a sort of teen version of a Humphrey Bogart character. His "war" was the childhood loss of his father and his belief that he murdered his best friend/love-of-his-life Lila. Since then, he's done his best to act completely cool and emotionless around his prep school friends, but underneath that facade he's a mess. And when he allows himself to trust or love again, it comes right back to bite him in the butt.

So in "Red Glove," does Cassel's love life get any simpler?

"No," Holly lamented. "In fact, in 'Red Glove,' I'm sure he would look back at 'White Cat' and think, 'My love life was so simple then.' He has a very serious and unrequited love. He has a really big terrible reason why he can't move forward with it, why he can't even actually declare how he feels. He is full of misery and despair, as with many noir heroes."

And Cassandra, who is familiar with the joys and sorrows of torturing her protagonists, offered a bit of sarcastic sympathy for Cassel. "It's hard for the sexy, isn't it?"

"Well, they should have some complications!" Holly responded.

Come back tomorrow to see what Cassie has to say about the new "Mortal Instruments" character she's introducing in "City of Fallen Angels."

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