Identifiable by the bright front doors on their covers, domestic noir novels have become an established genre in recent years. But we don’t yet have a term for their office counterpart. And yet there is just as much power in this setting.
Much the same extremes of human experience play out there. Colleagues take on the emotional heft normally absorbed by family members; swathes of our most personal belongings often lurk under desks and in drawers. There are few in-jokes as potent as the office in-joke, but the mood can shift quickly with the pressure of an angry boss or a missed deadline. The office is a place of extremes, intense with the buzz of industry and the threat of failure, and that’s a perfect starting point for fiction.
