S9 Ep. 22 Jeff Boyd on Cops, Teachers, and Chicago

fiction/non/fiction · Mar 19, 2026 · 42m

Novelist Jeff Boyd joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about his new work of literary crime fiction, Hard Times, which is set in Chicago, where he lived previously. The hosts ask about the influence of police procedurals on the portrayal of the novel’s main character, a mixed-race cop named Curtis, and Boyd considers whether there is a gray area between “good cops” and “bad cops.” He also discusses the character of Curtis’s brother-in-law, a high school teacher named Buddy Mack, and reflects on how his own experience as a teacher informed his writing of Buddy as…