The Shows That Inspired No Rest for the Wicked

People sometimes ask where the idea for No Rest for the Wicked came from.

The honest answer is that it came from a lot of places. Like most stories, it’s a mixture of influences that have been floating around in my head for years.

Some of those influences came from books. Some from television. And some from the kinds of stories I’ve always been drawn to — mysteries with strange edges, characters who operate outside the system, and worlds where something larger is happening just beneath the surface.

Here are a few of the biggest inspirations behind the book.

Spenser for Hire and the Spenser novels

If there is one character who heavily influenced Max West, it’s Robert B. Parker’s detective Spenser.

I grew up reading the novels that Spenser for Hire starring Robert Urich was based on. It was only later in life that I discovered this gem of a TV show that did such a great job capturing the essence of the books. Spenser was smart, capable, sarcastic, and completely unwilling to be pushed around by people with more power than him.

But just as important as Spenser himself was his closest ally: Hawk.

Hawk was dangerous, mysterious, and operated by his own code. The relationship between Spenser and Hawk — equal parts friendship, loyalty, and mutual respect — is one of the best partnerships in crime fiction.

That dynamic heavily influenced the relationship between Max West and his closest friend, Jerry “The Saint” St. Pierre.

They’re very different men, but when things get dangerous, they trust each other completely.

The X-Files

If Spenser for Hire helped shape the characters, The X-Files helped shape the world.

One of the things that made that show so compelling was the sense that powerful institutions were hiding things from the public — that beneath everyday reality there were secrets, conspiracies, and strange forces quietly at work.

That idea runs through the entire Max West series.

In No Rest for the Wicked, there are powerful families, secretive organizations, and people working behind the scenes to control things most people don’t even realize exist.

The truth is rarely simple, and the people who know the most are usually the ones least interested in sharing it.

Dark Shadows (before Barnabas)

This one might surprise people.

The original Dark Shadows television series had a particular tone early on — before the character Barnabas Collins became the center of the show and in my opinion ruined the show — that I always found fascinating.

The Collins family was wealthy, secretive, and clearly hiding things. Their world felt old, gothic, and a little unsettling.

That atmosphere had a huge influence on how I approached the Davenport family in No Rest for the Wicked.

The Davenports are powerful, wealthy, and deeply connected to forces that most people would rather pretend don’t exist.

And yes — the character Roger Collins absolutely helped inspire Roger Davenport.

Stranger Things

More recently, Stranger Things added another small influence.

One of the things that show does so well is give supporting characters real personality and drive. Murray Bauman, the plucky conspiratorial journalist, was one of my favorite and I believe underrated characters from this TV show.

Murray’s energy helped to shape Bobby, an investigative journalist who ends up key to the investigation of this first book and will be a recurring character throughout the series.

Bobby is the kind of person who can’t resist pulling on a loose thread, even when it leads somewhere dangerous.

Sometimes especially when it does.

Stories leave fingerprints

Looking back at these influences, what strikes me most is how different they are.

A detective series from the 1980s.
A paranormal conspiracy show from the 1990s.
A gothic soap opera from the 1960s.
A modern science-fiction thriller.

But they all share one thing in common: they’re stories about people trying to uncover truths that someone else would rather keep hidden.

And that, more than anything else, is what No Rest for the Wicked is about.

If you enjoy stories like The X-Files, noir detective fiction, or mysteries with a supernatural edge, you’ll probably feel at home in the world of Max West.