The best (and most cynical) fixers in fiction

Matthew FitzSimmons is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling Gibson Vaughn series, which includes Origami Man, Debris Line, Cold Harbor, Poisonfeather, and The Short Drop, and the Constance series. Born in Illinois and raised in London, he makes his home in Washington, DC.

[The Page 69 Test: Constance]

FitzSimmons's new novel is The Slate.

At CrimeReads he tagged four of the best (and most cynical) fixers in fiction, including:

Mae Pruett / Everybody Knows / Jordan Harper / 2023

There are two different kinds of readers: the ones who hope the good guys triumph over the bad guys, and the ones who think the whole notion of good guys and bad guys is nothing but wistful thinking. Enter noir, stage left. This latter group prefers a story told in greyscale and stocked with damaged, jaded, and cynical characters. There are no heroes and no redemption to be found here. Their bookshelves are thick with first editions of James Ellroy novels.

Picking up on themes from L.A. Confidential, Jordan Harper’s Everybody Knows gives us the latest and greatest entry in the Fixer pantheon: Mae Pruett. It isn’t hard to imagine Mae as a distant relative of Jack Vincennes. Leaping forward to present day Los Angeles, she skillfully navigates a city where nothing has fundamentally changed in seventy years apart from the sophistication of the tactics that shield the powerful from repercussions or responsibility. Mae Pruett would be equally at home in either time period. Though young, she is calculating and eye-wateringly cynical. Qualities that make her exceptional but also come at a steep price. The price that all Fixers pay: her profound isolation. In the end, Fixers are prisoners of their own cynicism since the last thing they will risk is showing genuine vulnerability and getting played the way they’ve played so many others. For the Fixer that is a fate worse than death.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue