Editing by Elizabeth

July 06, 2012

Blood Red Turns Dollar Green by Paul O’Brien

This was the first minute of his life where he knew the clock had started; he would never be able to let his guard down again. – Danno Garland

Think the organized crime genre is played out? Think you have no interest in a story about professional wrestling? Think again, on both counts.

Author Paul O’Brien’s debut, Blood Red Turns Dollar Green, is a magnificent melding of the two, breathing fresh life into an old genre and presenting the late 1960s/early 1970s world of pro wrestling in a light even those who aren’t fans of the sport will find fascinating.

Unfolding over the course of three years, Blood Red Turns Dollar Green weaves together the fates of three primary characters. Having worked himself up from circus strongman to wrestler to territory owner, Proctor King is a man who does not take no for an answer. He’s paid his dues, and King’s ready to collect on his investment. He’ll work with you if he can, but he’s more than happy to run over you if he has to.

Lenny Long is the eternal hanger-on, desperate to break into the money side of the business but stuck on the ring crew. Married with a kid, and another on the way, Lenny’s resorted to providing transportation for some of the wrestlers between gigs and selling them his wife’s homemade sandwiches. To ever be more than a lackey Lenny’s going to have to make a bold move, but doing so may put both his marriage and his life in danger. →

July 06, 2012

Flaws and Ambiguity by John Hornor Jacobs

Monday I’ll be reviewing This Dark Earth, the latest novel from rising star John Hornor Jacobs, but today am excited to welcome him back for another guest post (you can read his first here).

John Hornor Jacobs In art, it’s called chiaroscuro, the play of shadows and light. In graphic design, it’s called positive and negative space. In photography and film it’s called contrast. In music it’s called tension and release or dynamic tension. Every art form has its version of it.

In writing, it’s creating flawed and ambiguous characters. In the same way that the pregnant pauses in a musical piece add weight to the passage, in the same way that it requires shadows to create a sun-dappled field, believable, empathetic characters require flaws because real people have flaws and are aware of them. I can think of twenty decisions – amoral ones even – I’ve made that I regret.

I can’t speak for other authors and how they create believable characters, but I often present mine with dilemmas in which they must choose between self and the greater good. They’ll often put a check mark by the SELF box. And, if I’ve done my job correctly as an author, the reader will agree with them, in some ways making them complicit in the choice. →

July 02, 2012

Never Tell by Alafair Burke

“Not everything is black-and-white, or even shades of gray. Things can be black and white – right and wrong – all at the same time.” – Janet Martin

Things certainly seem pretty black-and-white to NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher when she and her partner are sent out on a death call to a luxurious Manhattan townhouse. Empty wine bottle on the floor in the bathroom? Check. Prescription pill bottle? Check. Handwritten note on the bed? Check. Dead teenager in the tub with a slit wrist? Check. Suicide? Check. On to lunch, right? Wrong.

Not when the dead teenager is sixteen-year-old Julia Whitmire, daughter of fabulously wealthy and famous music producer Bill Whitmire. And certainly not when the dead girl’s mother is adamant her daughter would never have killed herself and isn’t shy about using the family’s name and money to force an investigation into what Hatcher sees as an obvious suicide.

A funny thing happens on the way to closing that slam dunk suicide case, however, when Hatcher’s reluctant investigation begins turning up more questions than answers. Why had Julia become withdrawn in the weeks leading up to her death, hiding things even from her best friend Ramona, someone she’d been close to since grade school? What exactly is going on at the exclusive prep school Julia attended, a place where everyone seems to have something to hide? Why was Julia visiting a blog written anonymously by someone claiming to be a survivor of sexual abuse, and is there some connection between her death and threatening comments being left on the blog? →

June 21, 2012

The Whole Lie by Steve Ulfelder

Talking doesn’t always work out so well for me. I dig holes. – Conway Sax

Conway Sax can’t seem to catch a break. He tries. God knows he tries. But no matter how desperately he wants to walk the straight and narrow, something always seems to pull him off track and into trouble of one kind or another. Ironically enough, it’s usually Conway’s desire to do the right thing that lands him in the wrong place.

A recovering alcoholic, Conway belongs to a tight-knit group of AA members known as the Barnburners. Given his physical size and status as an ex-con, Conway has become the group’s de facto “problem solver.” When a Barnburner asks for help, Conway responds. No questions. No excuses.

Savannah Kane was a Barnburner. Seven years ago she was in trouble and Conway helped her disappear. Now she’s back, and Conway can’t help but remember the passionate affair they had, and all the trouble she got him into. Some things change. Conway has a life and business now with his longtime girlfriend and isn’t interested in rekindling the flame with Savannah. Some things, however, stay the same. Savannah’s still a Barnburner. And she’s still getting Conway into trouble. →

June 20, 2012

Kings of Midnight by Wallace Stroby

No matter how much you plan, allow for every contingency. Things go bad, and then you have to work twice as hard just to get back to where you started.

Picking up shortly after the events of Cold Shot to the Heart, author Wallace Stroby’s Kings of Midnight finds professional thief Crissa Stone working an ATM heist gig with two partners as she continues her efforts to build up enough of a nest egg to get out of the life for good. One big, final score should do it. No matter how much you plan though…

When her last ATM heist goes seriously off the rails, Crissa is forced to use an unfamiliar source to quickly launder the cash she does have so she can disappear. Unfortunately, as the saying goes if it wasn’t for bad luck Crissa would have no luck at all. The sleazy attorney she sets the deal up with doesn’t exactly come through, leaving Crissa once again behind the eight ball struggling to find a way back on top.

The answer seems to present itself when an old friend, and former wiseguy, puts Crissa in touch with Benny Roth, himself a reformed mobster, who has an intriguing proposition. Seems Benny’s boss back in the day, Joey D., was involved with the infamous 1978 Lufthansa heist that netted nearly 6 million. Word on the street is that Joey D. never spent his share of the money, and now that Joey’s dead people are starting to look for it. Benny hadn’t given it a second thought since he got out of the game 25 years ago, but when his former cronies showed up on his doorstep with an offer he couldn’t refuse Benny figured if anyone was gonna find the loot it may as well be him. But he can’t do it alone. →

June 19, 2012

The Five Best Crime Novels You’ve Never Read by Wallace Stroby

Tomorrow I’ll be reviewing Kings of Midnight, Wallace Stroby’s follow-up to the excellent Cold Shot to the Heart, but today Wallace is here to hip you to the five best crime novels you’ve never read.

Wallace Stroby Crime novels come and go, and some of them go too fast. Sometimes an excellent novel – either through bad timing or fate – never quite finds its audience, or gradually fades from memory (and out of print) as the years pass. Here are five overlooked crime novels worth seeking out.

KISS TOMORROW GOOD-BYE by Horace McCoy (1948): McCoy’s best-known for his 1935 novel THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY?, but this is his noir masterpiece. The rise and fall of sociopathic gangster Ralph Cotter, told in first person, beginning with his violent escape from a chain gang. James Cagney played Cotter in the equally overlooked 1950 film version.

VIOLENT SATURDAY by W.L. Heath (1955): Three strangers arrive in a small Alabama town to rob the local Savings and Loan, and precipitate the titular event, tipping the entire town into chaos. Filmed in 1955, with Victor Mature, Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine. I’ve written about the novel at length.

JACK’S RETURN HOME by Ted Lewis (1970). Lewis’ novel is mostly remembered as the source material for the great British gangster film GET CARTER, starring Michael Caine as Jack Carter, a London thug who heads north to investigate the death of his brother, even though he never really liked him that much. A hard-boiled gem, and, like KISS TOMORROW GOOD-BYE, another great sociopath novel told in first-person. Lewis wrote about Carter twice more, in the prequels JACK CARTER’S LAW and JACK CARTER AND THE MAFIA PIGEON. →

June 15, 2012

Meet Author Jack Kerley

This piece originally appeared on the site Shotgun Honey as part of their feature “Take A Shot.”

I’ve been meaning for the longest time to write up a post about criminally unknown (in the US at least) thriller author Jack Kerley, but something always seemed to get in the way. So, when Ron and the gang at Shotgun Honey asked if I was interested in doing a post for their new Wednesday feature I figured I should take that as a sign to finally get it in gear.

Jack Kerley, also billed as J.A. Kerley, writes a series set in Mobile, Alabama featuring Detectives Carson Ryder and Harry Nautilus. The first three books in the series (The Hundredth Man, The Death Collectors, and A Garden of Vipers) were published in the US to overwhelmingly positive critical reviews, they received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist, yet for some reason the series never really gained a toe-hold with American readers.

Readers in the UK and Australia were more welcoming and the series, which recently saw the publication of its eighth entry (Her Last Scream), is a bestseller in those countries. It’s also been translated into ten languages and published in over twenty countries, with The Death Collectors even being voted “Best Foreign Mystery of the Decade” in Japan. →

June 11, 2012

Art As A Plot Device by Linda Schroeder

Happy to welcome Linda Schroeder to the blog today to talk about the use of art as a plot device and how the need to come up with an “object of desire” for a mystery writing class led to her novel Artists & Thieves.

Linda Schroeder Need something to steal, to ransom, to fake? Need modern forensic technology to solve a crime? Need a detective with guts?

Try using art as a plot device.

Art is a high price commodity. One of the four versions of Edvard Munch’s The Scream just sold for 120 million. And it is pastel on cardboard. Lots to think about there. So you need look no further than art if you need a writing topic.

The Thomas Crown Affair. The Da Vinci Code. The Rembrandt Affair. The hunter and the hunted. See what I mean?

A question I am often asked is, “How the heck did you figure out what to write about?” That’s an easier one to answer than, “Why the heck did you even want to write a book?” I’ll answer the easy one here by getting back to art and how I figured out what art piece to write about. →

June 07, 2012

Con Job by Jason S. Ridler

“Christ, Sputnik, is there anybody you didn’t piss off in this town?” – Keith ‘The Bullet’ Winnick

You certainly wouldn’t think so from the way events unfold in Con Job, author Jason Ridler’s follow up to Death Match, the book that introduced readers to ex-punk rocker turned indie bookstore clerk and reluctant amateur detective Spar Battersea.

Still reeling from the events in Death Match, including having lost his best friend/roommate and his part time job writing for the local newspaper, Spar finds himself holding on desperately to his position at the bookstore as he tries to put the pieces of his life back together. Unfortunately for Spar, this requires him to work the store’s booth at CosmiCon, a huge sci-fi and comic book convention.

Not exactly a warm and fuzzy people person under the best of circumstances, being surrounded by a bunch of pudgy wookiees, Trekkers, and hobbits isn’t exactly Spar’s cup of tea. Things go from bad to worse when Spar learns he has to babysit an egomaniacal, over-the-hill science fiction writer who’s been contracted to sign at the store’s booth.

Annoyance turns to alarm, however, when Spar learns that his former high school crush, who was supposed to be working at the convention as a “booth babe,” has gone missing under very suspicious circumstances. Spar may “hate most people” but he’s not the kind of guy who turns his back on a friend – or a smoking hot babe – so he sets out to track her down and make sure everything’s ok. →

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