The built-in form is a window frame. You can use this genre [crime fiction] to go where you want to go, and explore what you want to explore. In some ways it gives you a lot of freedom because you have a framework readers are looking for.

There were a billion lights out there on the horizon and I knew that all of them put together weren't enough to light the darkness in the hearts of some men.

Can't complain because nobody listens.

...it is how a person goes about quenching his desires or living with them unrequited that the readers get a glimpse of his true character.

I think books with weak or translucent plots can survive if the character being drawn along the path is rich, interesting and multi-faceted. The opposite is not true.

Momentum was momentum, whether you found it in music or on the street or in the beat of your own heart.

There is nothing you can do about the past except keep it there.