Writers Read: Verlin Darrow

Tuesday, February 24, 2026

Verlin Darrow

Verlin Darrow is a psychotherapist who lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near the Monterey Bay in northern California. They diagnose each other as necessary. Darrow is a former professional volleyball player (in Italy), unsuccessful country-western singer/songwriter, import store owner, and assistant guru in a small, benign spiritual organization.

His new novel is The Brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow.

Recently I asked Darrow about what he was reading. The author's reply:

At the moment, I’m oscillating between several genres. (Can you oscillate between more than two things? I’m too lazy to look this up). I like humor mixed into what I read, so I seek out comic crime, quirky science fiction, and offbeat mystery novels. (I did manage to look up synonyms for humor).

Here are the three I’m currently (and concurrently) reading:

Fortunate Son by Caimh McDonell

This is the ninth and latest book in The Dublin Trilogy (Go figure.) I’m not a laugh out loud kind of guy, but in this case…. All the books in the series feature Bunny McGarry, an Irish policeman with a distinctly alternative perspective from any cop you’ve ever read about. The plots are wonderfully convoluted—more like mysteries than most crime novels. I can’t recommend this author more highly.

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

I wasn’t familiar with this author until I streamed a TV series by the same title. The inner monologue of the sentient, cynical, misanthropic android is consistently amusing, and other elements are wonderfully imaginative. I can’t say this author is a paradigm of great writing, but it doesn’t matter to me. Inspired by this book, I actually started writing a novel featuring a sentient android, but it didn’t have legs (the book, I mean, not the android), so now it’s just forty dormant pages.

The Fugitive Pigeon by Donald E. Westlake

Westlake is my favorite author—in all his incarnations and pseudonyms. Nobody can do either comic crime or hard-boiled caper novels with quite the same consistent level of professionalism. And his screenplays—such as Grifters—have won awards. That said, I’m rereading this older novel and may stop. I really want to like it, but I guess it’s not possible for an author’s vision to always match up to what suits me.