Four books. Four hunts. One unforgiving highway.
For the invisible women — who no one missed and no one looked for. The first Blacktop Widow novel.
COMING SOONFor every woman who ever had to learn the hard way that the highway doesn't care about your plans.
COMING SOONWhat is highway noir, and how does it connect to the pulp fiction tradition?
Highway noir is a subgenre of crime fiction set along America's highways, truck stops, and roadside margins. It focuses on the invisible people who live and work in these transient spaces—truckers, hitchhikers, runaways, and those the system forgot. Like classic noir, highway noir features morally compromised protagonists, bleak atmospheres, and stories where right and wrong aren't clearly defined. The highway becomes a character itself: lawless, indifferent, and unforgiving.
Highway noir descends directly from the hardboiled crime fiction that dominated pulp magazines like Black Mask in the 1920s-1940s. Writers like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain pioneered noir's essential elements: cynical protagonists, corrupt systems, and the idea that everyone is fallen. Highway noir transplants these themes from rain-slick city streets to America's trucking corridors, updating the genre for a modern landscape where isolation and danger still thrive beyond the reach of law and society.
Rural noir (sometimes called "country noir" or "Southern noir") is set in small towns, farmland, and isolated communities—places like the mountains of Georgia or Pennsylvania farmland. Highway noir specifically focuses on the transient spaces between places: truck stops, rest areas, interstate corridors, and the people who move through them. While rural noir explores rooted communities with dark secrets, highway noir follows characters who are always in motion, invisible to the communities they pass through.
Highway noir draws from the hardboiled tradition of Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon), Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep), and James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice). Modern influences include Jim Thompson's bleak psychological crime novels, S.A. Cosby's rural noir thrillers, and Megan Abbott's unflinching crime fiction. The genre also owes a debt to true crime journalism that exposed the dangers faced by vulnerable people along America's highways.
Jackie Mercer writes for the invisible women—the ones the system forgot, the ones no one missed and no one looked for. Highway noir allows her to shine a light on the margins of American life, where predators hunt and victims disappear without headlines. Her Blacktop Widow series confronts the real darkness that exists in these spaces, giving voice to those society ignores while delivering the gritty, unflinching crime fiction that pulp readers crave.