Thirty-Five Years Until He Typed THE END

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: What a complicated week, don't you think? So much going on, in so many ways, and so much to think about. And be grateful for.  I love this Friday post, it's thought provoking, and cinematic, and great storytelling, and sort of has a twist in the end. Like all good stories do.

 

I am so honored to welcome Bruce Leonard today!  When you read his bio—and do—it brings up one question I bet we will all want to know the answer to. See what you think!

 

Thirty-Five Years to Type THE END

by Bruce Leonard

 

I grew up in Malibu, California, in the sixties and seventies. The wealth that

many people attach to such an upbringing isn’t universal. The parents in my neighborhood were teachers, cops, stockbrokers, engineers, and editors. My parents bought their house in a canyon in 1967 for $39,000 because they couldn’t afford to live near my father’s aerospace job in Santa Monica, thirty miles east.

 

However, we lived only about three quarters of a mile from Broad Beach, a private stretch of sand on which many celebrities lived.

 

After college, I was hired at the weekly newspaper The Malibu Surfside News for $5 per hour. I incorporated that publication into the novel I started to write in 1989.

 

Hard Exit, my love story wrapped in a private-eye mystery, is set in Malibu and South Los Angeles. Narrator Jack Drake, a depressed private eye to the Hollywood stars, lives in a $30 million mansion on Broad Beach with movie star Amanda Bigelow, but he hates his life.

 

It took me thirty-five years to complete and publish Hard Exit, the most personal of my five novels. Much has changed in Malibu and in me over that span.

 

Broad Beach used to have many houses that could be called beach shacks—small, unassuming homes built seventy, eighty years ago that have been torn down so noted architects could build showpieces for rich people determined to outshine their neighbors. More than one house on Broad Beach has listed for $100 million. Although it’s not on Broad Beach, the Malibu “house” that Beyoncé and Jay-Z live in cost $200 million.

 

And then there’s Billionaire’s Beach, officially called Carbon Beach, to the east, where other entertainment moguls and titans of industry reside.

 

Decades ago, when I created Jack and Amanda’s fictional home, based on one of the first “oh, wow” architectural wonders on Broad Beach, climate change hadn’t eroded beaches around the world. The public could easily walk along Broad Beach between the houses on the sand and the waves. Today, a lengthy, tall jumble of sharp boulders acts as a seawall, diminishing the likelihood that the mansions will be flooded during storms. Beachgoers are still legally allowed to stroll along Broad Beach, but the boulders make fleeing large waves during high tides treacherous.

 

Not being rich is also treacherous in today’s Malibu. When I was young, my family and friends ate downtown at Pizza Palace, attended movies at Malibu Cinema, then bought dessert at Swensen’s Ice Cream Factory—an affordable way for residents to spend an evening. But those businesses long ago gave way to boutiques and artisan shops that sell items no one could everneed and high-end restaurants that offer meals at prices that seem to have misplaced the decimal point.

 

The most significant changes that occurred to me in the last thirty-five years are: I got sober twenty-five years ago; I moved to Kentucky, then Illinois, where I got married; I wrote Quilt City Cookbook and four Hadley Carroll Mysteries, cozies with attitude that take place in Paducah, Kentucky, the Quilt Capital of the World; my father died; my mother’s Malibu home

with everything in it burned to the ground in the 2018 Woolsey Fire; and I published Hard Exit, the white whale that’s haunted me for decades. And I continue to struggle with depression, as Jack Drake does.

 

Which obstacles have stood in the way of you accomplishing your goals?

If you overcame them and reached your goals, how did you do so?

 

HANK: What a great question! And who has been to Malibu? And do you have a question for Bruce that comes from his bio?

 

 

Bruce Leonard earned a B.A. in English with a creative-writing emphasis from UCLA. He has been a travel writer, a magazine- and newspaper editor, an owner of a bakery, and a guinea pig for the U.S. Government.

He writes the award-winning, bestselling Hadley Carroll Mysteries, the first of which, Quilt City Murders, was named Best Mystery of 2022 in one contest.

The next Jack Drake Private-Eye Mystery will be Stronger at the Break.

 

Hard Exit

Jack Drake shares a Malibu beach mansion with a gorgeous movie star but hates his life. The

depressed private eye can’t shake the death of his wife and can’t end his toxic relationship with

Hollywood heartthrob Amanda Bigelow. 

 

But an at-risk sixteen-year-old who is injured in an inner-city shooting gets Jack unstuck. As a

favor to a friend, Jack sequesters Game in the mansion, keeping him safe. 

 

Their worldviews differ, but they draw from their histories of loss and grief while investigating the shooting and three seemingly unrelated murders, tying Game’s world in downtrodden Oakville to Jack’s in idyllic Malibu. 

 

Fans of wisecracking investigators such as Spenser, Kinsey Milhone, and Stephanie Plum will cheer for Jack Drake, a man in love with two women—one of them dead. 

 

 

“This is a smart, edgy, state-of-the-art L.A. noir with heart. Jack Drake is a

private eye with grit, a few demons and a semi-glamorous life on the

beach in Malibu. This series is a terrific addition to the modern hard-

boiled genre.”

—New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz

MISSING: ONE STORYLINE.

RHYS BOWEN:  I really enjoyed Lyn Squire's first book with a mystery about Charles Dickens. Now he moves to another prominent Victorian and a mystery surrounding Charles Darwin.  But this story did not just fall into his lap, as he explains here. Welcome Lyn:

  LYN SQUIRE:

Having proudly sent my first book off to the publisher, I was itching to get started on the next.  My protagonist, Dunston Burnett, a diffident, middle-aged, retired bookkeeper, was raring to go.  And my theme for the three-book series – the tension between Dunston’s limited sleuthing skills and the complexity of the crimes he encounters – was firmly established.  All that was missing was… the storyline.  

             I had apparently used up my inventive quota on my first book, so what was I to do?  Draw on events in your own life, you might say.  Good suggestion.  But sadly, my twenty-five years traveling the globe as a World Bank economist did not bring me into contact with a single crime scene or murder investigation, nothing to set the little grey cells churning.

             What else could I do?  Learn from the greats, you suggest.  Yes, should have thought of that.  Arthur Conon Doyle!  All those ingenious Sherlock Holmes’s stories.  He’s my man.  And there, in his autobiography, I found his advice to would-be mystery writers: The first thing is…  Aha!  Here it is… get your idea.   Yes, but how? 

Would reading everything I could about prominent figures and major events in Victorian England, the setting for my series, help?  Many books later, I was an expert on the Corn Laws, Ragged Schools, the First Boer War, and other hot topics of the nineteenth century, but otherwise still idea-free, not a spark of inspiration, nothing.

Nothing, that is, until I read a biography of Charles Darwin.  Charles Darwin?  What, you ask, can England’s foremost scientist of his day possibly have to say about murder?  As those of you who have read The Origin of Species know, the words murder, crime, victim are nowhere to be found in the book’s seven hundred pages of facts and figures.  So what help could he provide? 

A lot, as it happens.  Did you know that Darwin was bombarded with scathing reviews, blistering editorials, and crude cartoons from believers in God’s creation of man?  Could this avalanche of rage and disgust have escalated into something more malicious?   Mmm, sounds promising.  And did you know that Darwin and his wife were first cousins?  And that in the nineteenth century, offspring of such marriages were thought to suffer infertility?  Was there an idea here?  A couple denied the joy of grandchildren by some cruel tragedy?  Yes!  I finally had the pegs on which to hang my second story. 

Fatally Inferior recounts the consequences of two events: the abduction of a member of Darwin’s family, followed a few days later by a ransom demand – renounce your blasphemous theory in The Times or the hostage dies; and the death, or so it seems, of a former maid birthing a son in a London workhouse.  Apparently unrelated incidents, you might think, yet they converge in a vile act of vengeance: a hellish torture for the victim; the perfect revenge for the perpetrator.

Charles Darwin makes only a few fleeting appearances in Fatally Inferior, but without him, the second book in The Dunston Burnett Trilogy would never have… evolved, as the great man might say.

RHYS: Any suggestions for a juicy Victorian murder for Lyn's third book?

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL THE REDS AND READERS.

 RHYS BOWEN:  I'm not even attempting a blog post today as I'm sure everyone is occupied with families, food, presents and festivities. But I want you to know that I'm thinking of all of you most fondly, the whole Jungle Reds family and wishing you much joy.

Here are some pix of our family celebration

To our Jewish friends warmest wishes for a joyful Hanukkah celebration.

As Tiny Tim would say, GOD BLESS US EVERYONE!

Getting in the Christmas Spirit

RHYS BOWEN:  Yesterday we talked about our Christmas books and our favorite traditions. I don't know about you but I always dream of that perfect Christmas and have spent my life trying to find it. I want to recapture that magic I had as a child, waking up in the gray dawn on Christmas morning and finding that stocking of presents at the foot of my bed, going to church with my family in the crisp snowy morning and coming home to the smell of roasting turkey. 

There have been times when I have actively tried to recapture this. When the kids were young a German friend and I were talking about how commercial American Christmas was and how we longed for simplicity. So, at great expense in those days, we rented a house up at Lake Tahoe for Christmas. We packed kids, presents, food into the station wagon and off we went. When we arrived it was like a Christmas card scene... house among the pine trees, covered in pristine white snow. Just perfect. We had a lovely first evening. The next day we took everyone skiing at the nearby resort. Mid morning it began to rain. Jane and the other family's Andrew were skiing the difficult upper run and were ordered to come down as it was turning into a blizzard up there. We came home, wet and cold. 


It rained. And it rained. It washed away a lot of the snow. It was too wet and cold to go out. The cabin had no TV. The other mother came down with a horrible cold and went to bed. She had forgotten to bring the Christmas cookies she had baked. We did the Christmassy things... presents, turkey, etc. Then we played board games. By the third day of rain we were all a little stir crazy. I was wiped out from being the only woman cooking for all these people. So much for the perfect Christmas.

I did try to find it again years later when John and I did a Christmas market cruise up the Danube. This was truly magical, stopping in small towns and going among the booths selling mulled wine, gingerbread, sausages as well as carved toys, glass ornaments, knitted gloves. To see a small child peering up at a wooden puppet dancing or a wooden man riding a bicycle up a rope with wonder in his eyes made me feel that this is how Christmas should be.  John, I should add, was not so thrilled. After the third market he asked, grumpily, "How many angels do you need to look at?" The answer, never enough!

I think they adopt the Christmas spirit much better in Europe. Maybe the towns are made for it, with their town square and narrow streets. Christmas just feels right there. But London, Milan and Paris also put on beautiful Christmas decorations. All the shop windows are festive. There are Christmas markets in all the big cities ( I hope they are not filled with fake angels from China!). There are houses near me that are over-the-top with lighting displays but not much in local towns.  Perhaps the lights aren't so magical when they are at a modern mall!

One thing we always do to start the holiday feeling is to attend the San Francisco Nutcracker with my daughter Jane and granddaughters Lizzie and Meghan. This is the twenty-second year in a row we have done this, starting when Liz had just turned three. It's always wonderful.

This year my daughter's small town had a lighted tractor parade. That was fun. And I attended a beautiful candlelight carol concert. And my whole family is here... so no complaints!

How are the holidays near you? Did you ever find that perfect Christmas?

Holiday traditions.

 RHYS BOWEN:  At this time of year I love to read books about the holidays, watch movies about them (Love Actually, White Christmas and The Holiday being favorites) and I’ve also written books set at Christmas time. I think my favorite of those was THE TWELVE CLUES OF CHRISTMAS, set in the quintessential English village with all of the customs of traditions that I loved when I was growing up: the carol singers going around the neighborhood, being invited in for mulled wine and mince pies, the Christmas pudding brought in flaming to the table and containing silver charms that predicted your year ahead (you had to eat very carefully). There were always crackers, the type you pull and go bang, with silly paper hats we all wore, and even sillier riddles and useless gifts in them. We played party games and I loved indoor fireworks. They were pieces of paper you lit on the fireplace. One twisted and turned into a snake. Another had fire racing through it and ending in a small bang. They were harmless enough if Daddy supervised but now they are illegal.

So I put all these traditions into my book, reliving them each time I read my own book again. I’ve tried to keep some in my life here. I make mince pies every year, and sausage rolls. I do buy crackers every Christmas. This year they contain wine up reindeer and we’ll have races. I buy a Christmas pudding although nobody likes it except John and me. But I miss the atmosphere… the carol singing, going out into the crisp night air. When I was in school I was in the madrigal group and we went around the big houses near by school.  Sometimes a maid came to the door and brought us out cookies or mince pies. Sometimes we were invited in. It was always magical to hear our voices hanging in the night air. 

So what family traditions do you try to keep up for your holidays? And who has a favorite Christmas movie they have to watch?

 

LUCY BURDETTE: I love writing books set at Christmas time! The first one I wrote was PREACHING TO THE CORPSE, taking place in my hometown in CT with lots of scenes at our Congregational Church. I could enjoy the holiday church supper, the beautiful lights and music, and more, vicariously. I have to say one of my favorite endings ever was in that book–very Christmas related, but you’ll have to read it!

I’ve also done two Key West Christmas installments, DEATH WITH ALL THE TRIMMINGS and THE KEY LIME CRIME. Key West is beautiful and quirky during the holidays, with the hometown parade, lighted boat parade, astonishing decorations, and more. I love sharing those traditions with my readers!

JENN McKINLAY: I’ve written a couple of Christmas mysteries and one romcom (THE CHRISTMAS KEEPER, SUGAR PLUM POISONED, and A MERRY LITTLE MURDER PLOT) and it is fun to write about the holiday, although I’m usually writing it in July - lol. 

My traditions are fluid because we often travel for the holiday, but no matter where we are it’s Christmas Eve service (love the candle lighting and carols), presents Xmas morning, and prime rib for dinner! Pass the horse radish sauce. And, of course, it’s never Christmas until the first box of See’s Candies arrives! 

HALLIE EPHRON: Just realizing that I’ve never put Christmas in one of my books. Not once. 

Jerry and I lit Hanukah candles and sang the blessing and ate brisket and potato latkes and mandlebrot (cookies) for dessert. Ecumenically, on Christmas morning we exchanged gifts. No tree and I hang some kind of greenery on the door. 

No Chrstmas decorations, though I do love having a bright red amaryllis in bloom, but usually I think of it too late. It worked for us. 

We’re surrounded by Christmas celebrants and it’s so much fun to walk the neighborhood and see magnificent decorated trees through the windows and glorious outdoor lighting. Not to mention blow-up Santas and Grinches and reindeer. 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Rhys, your Christmas books are so much fun, and the best part is the food! And you just reminded me that I don't think I got crackers for this year and now it is probably too late!

I've written three books that are set around Christmas, AND JUSTICE THERE IS NONE, WATER LIKE A STONE, AND A KILLING OF INNOCENTS, and I think they are among my favorites. I love seeing my characters celebrate Christmas.

We do a tree–so much work, but my favorite tradition. Christmas morning stockings and Santa presents, then Christmas dinner in the afternoon. The fixed thing is NO TURKEY! We usually do a rib roast, but this year I think we're doing pork shoulder, with potatoes and hopefully Yorkshire puddings. I love Jamie Oliver's recipe. I gave up on the steamed pudding, no one else will eat it. And no one else likes mince pies, either, boo!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: My first book, IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER, is set in the Cristmas season, but it’s taken until the latest one, AT MIDNIGHT COMES THE CRY, to really lean into Christmas, as it were - a visit to Santa, a Christmas parade, decorating the tree, etc. (One of my agent’s notes was, “Christmas it up!”) Since I love reading stories set during the holidays in November and December, I’m happy to offer the same experience to my readers.

One of our iron-clad traditions, that may be in the minority now, is having a real tree. I mean, living in the Pine Tree State, how can we not? This year, it’s going up very late - today, in fact - because although we’ll be having a gathering on Christmas Day, our real family celebration will be in mid-January, when Virginia comes home from the Netherlands for two weeks. Spencer and his new girlfriend will be flying up from Norfolk, and of course, Victoria and her new wife will be there as well!

HANK PHILIPPI RYAN: Growing up? We celebrated everything you could get presents for, frankly. We celebrated Hanukkah and one memorable tradition was us kids griping at my mom that she was giving low-key presents on the last day. GUM? We would howl. GUM IS NOT A GIFT! We were terrible kids. :-) 

We had a Christmas tree, too, until Mom decided it was inappropriate. We rebelled, but that’s a whole nother story. We always had standing rib roast and yorkshire pudding, and I can still recall the incredible fragrance.

Now we are truly low-key–the kids are coming whenever they get organized to this weekend–there’s finals week and soccer and so many things to juggle!--and we’ll celebrate the whole kit and kaboodle. Always champagne and delicious goodies, and I am, actually, considering the rib roast!

RHYS: I do love the scent of a real tree, but we moved from it years ago because I like it see it up early and I was always afraid it had dried out by the time Christmas was over. 

And you'll notice I have cleverly highlighted everyone's Christmas books, just in case you need ideas for last minute stocking stuffers!

What traditions do you have in your families?

What You DON'T See

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: What you do see, every Tuesday at 4 PM on CRIME TIME on A Mighty Blaze on Facebook, is my face, and an author's face, and you get to hear an interview with someone who just wrote a terrific new book. You get to ask questions, and spin the wheel of fun, and someone always wins a book.

And it all looks very seamless and fun. 

But what you don’t see is the brains of the operation.

Behind the scenes is a brilliant genius of a woman named Margaret Pinard. She and I have worked together for what – – five years almost now? She is the producer of CRIME TIME, and honestly Reds and Readers, without her the whole thing would fall apart. More than fall apart..be nonexistent. And I am astonishingly grateful to her every moment of every day.

But here’s the other part of Margaret. She is a brilliant, brilliant author! Her brand new book is called Orla Rafferty Seeks Her Fortune, which is about the best title I’ve ever heard. And you can find more about it  on Instagram @Margaret Pinard.

And like so many of us here at Jungle Red, she adores her research. And can come up with all kinds of reasons to do it! See if you agree – – and I will award a copy of Orla Rafferty, to one lucky commenter!

A Research Trip Is as Good as a Rest

By Margaret Pinard

Who here loves a novel that drops you into another place and time?

Yes, yes—you need story, character, pacing, and all that, but I love escaping into the tactile feel of Somewhere Else, be it fantasy, mystery, historical, or what-have-you.

So I suppose it’s no surprise that if readers enjoy this… writers might too! And this is how I, a writer in a slump and at a standstill with a draft, turned to a research trip to find my bearings.

These bearings appear to be permanently installed in Scotland. Having written six books with Scottish locations and/or people, my heart knows what it wants. And I needed to make my latest soul-refresher of a trip as useful to the draft as possible, which meant assessing, planning, and capturing.

I’m sure you all know how to plan a trip. But let me show you what I did to assess, plan, and capture, in case you ever need to use my excuse.

ASSESS

Where are we in the drafting or editing process? What do we need?

In my case, I had a sort of franken-draft. Started out with one idea, grafted another onto it, plotted a trilogy! But then I needed to reconcile all the backstories and motivations, which meant a lot of revisions. (I do not recommend this method; it landed me in the previously mentioned slump.)

So I was looking for supporting cast members and sensory details that would help ground the reader and reveal the main character. I had surfed through history books and bibliographies to narrow down the location and set my sights on ‘The Three Touns’ of Saltcoats, Ardrossan, and Stevenston (all in Ayrshire) for my founding myth of Irish rebels fleeing imprisonment.

The biographical sketches I’d read for people (men) of interest pointed me to Ayrshire, and I thought a small, seaside town would provide a good contrast to the industrial bustle of Glasgow (note: we’re talking about the 1830s!). Then I went to Google Maps to look for local museums and their hours (and possible closures).

Bingo!

A converted church in Saltcoats was open Monday through Wednesday and the last Saturday of the month—well, now I had my dates! (I opted for off-season for better airfare—February in the Lowlands!)

Since I had a few key letters in my story, I wanted to see some representative samples of those, or at least some on which I could model mine for authenticity’s sake. For that, I would need to seek out the Glasgow City Archives collections, in the Mitchell Library, which were available by appointment, Tuesday through Thursday and the first Saturday of the month.

Well, I could just make both of those schedules work!

Here were the two strongest leads to help me balance out my story. Now I just needed to plan the itinerary to make them possible.

PLAN

I sent the first email to the archives on October 25th, 2023. This is when I started requesting the airfare alerts, also. I had to find the right contact, confirm procedures, narrow down the materials I wanted to view for the short time I would have (six items only!), provide consent forms, etc.

(And yes! This was my idea of a relaxing good time!)

There was no one to contact at the North Ayrshire Museum, so that was left up to fate, which you’ll see wanted to have a laugh at my expense later. I arranged the plane, train, and room (because why would the airline fly me to Glasgow when it could just dump me in London?), and crossed my fingers.

CAPTURE

Then came the magical part.

It was ‘stotting down’ in London when I arrived, and the complete drenching I got on the walk to the hotel had to be remedied by a browse at the iconic Waterstone’s across the way. Suddenly, the woolens were not quite so sodden…

It was the darndest thing. Late February, I got on the dreary London train and zoomed north to Glasgow, and the skies cleared. The sun (sun! In February!) stayed out in Ayrshire for the entire four days I was there.

OK, OK, enough about the miraculous mental health bath, I hear you saying—how did I capture my details?

First to the countryside with its converted church. This part of Ayrshire has a lot of commemorated history, and so the exhibits that they’d arranged were not all relevant to my story’s class (middle), trade (newspapers), or era (1830s). But there was still a vibe.

The wooden marquis, polished to a dark shine, displaying names in gold of each year’s Best Boy and Girl of the local school: pride. The silver tea urn presented as a prize for a bowling tournament: wealth. The set of three dishes given to a servant when the Earl of Eglinton’s castle was to be abandoned: a complicated web of emotional connections between classes. 

With this museum, I was getting the material culture experience: what was important enough to save over the centuries?

I also perused the museum’s specialized library and chatted with the knowledgeable curators. 

And here’s the fate-laughing-at-me part. 

When I arrived, I was exactly on time for opening. But I walked the perimeter twice, stepping among gravestones, and couldn’t find an entrance. So I walked away, checked the website on my phone again, and returned, perhaps ten minutes after the hour. I was staring at the likely front door, wondering what I would do if it didn’t open—when it did! And I just about gave the poor woman a heart attack when she saw me standing 10 feet away.

She ushered me into the foyer, and as I took off my obligatory pack and coat quietly, the other woman in the library area turned around and I nearly scared her to death too! Apparently they aren’t used to folks being both eager and quiet? At any rate, they were great fun to chat with about local history and gave me several very helpful local walking tour maps.

At the City Archives, I again arrived right on time, but this time there were other researchers queueing with me outside in the cold. No heart attacks. I was ahead of my appointment time, so I browsed among the city collections and fell headlong into several histories of Glasgow’s banking sector—a fascinating evolution—or perhaps that’s my Shiny Object Syndrome speaking. Saving for later.

I did find representative samples of letters and records, though some of the records I saw were not those I’d requested. They were short-staffed, and trying to be accommodating, so I just rolled with it. What could I capture from:

An 1830s ‘letter book’?

An 1826 letter from a ward to his guardian?

An 1850 letter about a woman starting a lending library?

A letter from a group of men supporting the local laird in an election?

And this is when the magic of research obliterated my slump. When I arrived back home, I shuffled all my notes together, sat down, and actually made progress.

I had new names, new positions that made that society work, a desultory tone of voice for a woman, a tone to use when speaking to a superior and trying to stay in his good graces. These sent me swimming back into the whitewater of my political awakening story, with many personalities to choose from.

Margaret, 1; Slump, 0.

What’s the most powerful place you’ve visited for research, or incorporated into a story?


HANK: Slump, zero! LOVE this!

What do you think, Redsa and readers? Tell us one pivotal place–and a copy of ORLA RAFFERTY SEEKS HER FORTUNE to one very lucky commenter!

Margaret Pinard is a free-wheeling soul from the 19th century who finds it easiest to disguise herself by drinking tea, writing historical fiction, and popping off to the British Isles 'for research.' She has published seven novels and one collection of short stories. Her latest historical fiction work dives into 1830s Glasgow to highlight one woman’s political awakening to an age of revolutions--the first of a planned trilogy. Margaret hosts an active Youtube channel and blogs on the Patreon platform.

www.margaretpinard.com

Youtube: bit.ly/booktubemp

Patreon: bit.ly/patreon_mp4

Shop: bit.ly/shop_margaret 

A Man Drops From The Sky

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: The world works in mysterious ways, and we are grateful for that, right?

 

Here’s the scoop.  (And giveaway below.)

 

Some months ago, or whenever, Hallie emailed me asking if I could book an acquaintance of hers on my interview show called CRIME TIME on A Mighty Blaze. His name was David Freed, and his newest thriller DEEP FURY.

(You know Crime Time, I hope:  Every Tuesday at 4 PM ET on the Facebook page of A Mighty Blaze, I do a 30 minute live interview with an author, and then the audience chimes in with questions. I have done about 265 of them so far, can you believe it? And we always have a giveaway. We are on hiatus until Jan 7, but see you then.)

 

Anyway.

 

Any friend of Hallie’s is a friend of mine, of course, so I said, sure, and gave his info to the CRIME TIME show producer. (She's the one who decides who appears.) And it was scheduled.

 

Of course, before I do such an interview, I have to read the interviewee’s book, and that is always a treat – – sometimes they are books by author I would have read anyway, and sometimes they are new. This one was new.

 

So, darling, Reds and Reader. I open this DEEP FURY, and it is instantly, absolutely, terrific! Suspenseful, tense--and hilarious!

(And here is the interview. You will note I was so in control about it that I had no idea what day it was.)

 

David Freed, (whose bio is below, and it will make you gasp, truly,) has created essentially a genre of his own:  a witty and humorous noir.

 

How can there be a funny noir?

 

And that is why David is here today. And we are the luckier for it.  (And I will give a copy of DEEP FURY to one lucky commenter!)

 

Laughter and Murder: An Odd Couple of Comedy and Corpses

By David Freed

 

The legendary comedian and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin was once reputed to have said, “Life is easy. Comedy is hard.” The man knew what he was talking about. Trying to write funny is nothing to laugh at, especially when it comes to murder mysteries.

Trust me. I’ve been there.

If you’ve never tried it yourself, you might assume that all you have to do in writing a mystery with comedic elements is to come up with a few well-placed chuckles and—Shazam! -- you’re the next Janet Evanovich or Carl Hiassen. But that’s not how it works.

Not even close.

It’s been my experience that infusing humor in prose can be an ordeal, a chaotic whirlwind of trial, error, and sitting sullenly at my desk, weeping periodically into my coffee cup. And by coffee cup I mean a large tumbler of Irish whiskey. (Just kidding. I’ve tried writing a time or two after having had a wee too much to drink, just to get the old “creative juices” flowing. The results have always been masterpieces of unreadable hieroglyphics).

The fundamental struggle when writing funny, as every stand-up comedian knows, is that humor is highly subjective. What I might consider comedic gold might make zero sense to you, and leave you convinced I’m a few neurons short of a synapse. The good news is that doctors have discovered a medical explanation for this phenomenon, and that is this: the funny bone is not a universal organ.

What makes things even trickier for a writer trying to write funny is the endless sea of humor styles out there. Some readers prefer witty banter. Some enjoy sarcasm or slapstick. Still others find sardonic glee in the graphic spilling of blood and guts and triple-digit body counts. Thus, at that very moment when you think you’ve hit your comedy sweet spot, you’ve likely alienated broad swaths of your potential audience.

Then there is the seemingly dichotomous issue of murder and humor. As anyone who has ever watched Dragnet  or NCIS Sheboygan knows, homicides tend to be serious business. A mystery novel centering on homicides can’t be too funny. Or can it? It’s like baking a soufflé. The ingredients must be perfectly proportional and mixed precisely.

Like a soufflé, if the humor doesn’t rise just right, the whole thing collapses into one, big, gooey mess of confusion. One must be ever mindful of the delicate balance between timing and pacing, between being over-the-top too funny and not funny enough. It’s a high-stakes game. Get it right and it and it feels like magic. Get it wrong and it’s like a microwaved burrito from 7-Eleven. It’s either burned to a crisp or cold in the middle. And who the hell wants to eat that?

The next hurdle to overcome when trying to write funny is overthinking it. Humor is a cruel master or mistress. He/she demands that you constantly mull the merits or lack thereof of individual lines, even when you’re not sitting at your desk.

Such times can include staring up at the ceiling at 3 in the morning, taking a shower, walking the dog, and especially when your significant other is reminding you for third time about your social schedule this weekend, but you don’t hear a word she’s saying even if you’re looking straight at her because you’re thinking to yourself, “Hmm, I wonder if that reference to Engelbert Humperdinck is too obscure or too obvious?” or “Gee, I sure hope that line about kinky sex in Chapter Three doesn’t spawn a book boycott in the Bible Belt.”

You find yourself trapped in an endless loop of analyzing and second-guessing and being accused by your significant other of living in your head too much, all of which is the opposite of funny. Congratulations. You’ve now turned a simple thought into a three-act drama, and by the time you’ve worked through your internal monologue, the joke is so far removed from its original form that it might as well be a thesis about the wonders of quantum physics.

But perhaps the most excruciating part of writing funny comes invariably after you’ve set your pages aside for a day or two, then you go back and objectively reread them, only to realize... By the whiskers of Sherlock Holmes, this is just not funny!

Alas, this is the dark moment where every writer’s worst fears materialize: You’ve written something you thought upon first blush worked. It doesn’t. So you rework the bit 17 times and it’s still doesn’t work. All those carefully crafted sentences that you labored over so intently are now nothing more than tombstones of lost laughter. It's at that point that I’ll call it a day, get online, and explore other possible means of employment, like maybe becoming a plumber, because you know what they say about plumbers--when you have a plumbing license, it’s a license to steal.

But, alas, I digress.

Anyway, after I’ve pondered various other possible occupations, I’ll realize that really, I’m not suited to do anything other than be a writer. And so, the next morning, I will force myself to return to my desk, armed with fresh eyes and a clear head, and give it another go. The opening of Deep Fury, my new Cordell Logan mystery, is a good example of such an effort. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that the first paragraph went through no less than fifty revisions before I was finally comfortable in letting you read it:

Long after the naked man plummeted from the night sky and exploded like a bomb through the roof of Walt and Lena Rizzo’s double-wide mobile home at the Sun Country RV and Trailer Park, Walt couldn’t decide if it was the dog or divine providence that had saved his wife’s life.

Did you smile inside, if only a little? I surely hope so.

At this point, you may be asking yourself, “So, Dave, what’s the bottom line here? Is trying to write funny nothing more than a torturous pursuit that ultimately leads to the gnashing of teeth and wishing you were never born? Hardly.

Writing humor may well be a maddingly frustrating dance between wit, timing, and despair, but when you finally get it right, and a reader emails to tell you they guffawed out loud reading your book on the subway, it’s worth every agonizing second. Because in the end, humor is a gift. It may be difficult to pin down, but when you’ve manage to brighten a stranger’s day, all the struggles are worth it.

And that, my friends, is no joke.

HANK: SO great, Reddies! Do you enjoy humorous mysteries and thrillers? Like what?

 And remember, a copy of DEEP FURY. to one lucky commenter!

 

DAVID FREED

The son of a cop, David Freed is an instrument-rated pilot, proud aircraft owner, produced Hollywood screenwriter, and a former daily newspaper reporter. He logged nearly two decades in investigative journalism, the majority at the Los Angeles Times, where he covered the military, served as the Times’ lead police reporter, and reported from the Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq during the first Gulf War. Among many other awards, he was an individual finalist for the Pulitzer Prize’s Gold Medal for Public Service, the highest honor in American journalism, for his multi-part expose of ineptitudes within the Los Angeles County criminal justice system, and shared the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Reporting of the Rodney King riots. David was subsequently hired by the Los Angeles bureau of CBS News as an investigator and associate field producer to help cover the OJ Simpson case.

Later still, he worked as a contractor for the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the US Army’s Battle Command Battle Lab at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. He's also written frequently for national magazines, including Air & Space Smithsonian, where he was a contributing editor, and the Atlantic, where his story, “The Wrong Man,” detailing the plight of a government medical researcher falsely accused of murder, was honored as a finalist in feature writing by the American Society of Magazine Editors. 

A former special assistant professor of journalism at his alma mater, Colorado State University, David holds a master’s degree from Harvard University and currently teaches creative writing at Harvard’s Extension School. Deep Fury is the long-awaited seventh installment in his Cordell Logan series of mystery-thrillers. David lives in Santa Barbara, California, with his clinical psychologist wife, Elizabeth, and Oz, their brilliant, gentle Australian shepherd. They have two adult children and three grandchildren.

 

Deep Fury

A naked man drops from the night sky and crashes through the roof of a mobile home, nearly killing the elderly couple inside. The victim is soon identified as Pete Hostetler, a well-respected executive at a California-based toy manufacturing company. But detectives are baffled, and there are no leads. Did he accidentally fall out of an airplane or was he pushed?

For Cordell Logan—a sardonic, financially struggling flight instructor and former government assassin—Hostetler’s death is personal. The two men were classmates at the US Air Force Academy and later served together as fighter pilots during Operation Desert Storm, where Hostetler saved Logan’s life during one particularly perilous combat mission in Iraq. Logan is convinced Pete was murdered. But who would’ve killed someone in such bizarre fashion, and why?

Determined to avenge his battle buddy’s death, Logan starts digging and discovers nothing is as it seems, and that he may not have known Hostetler as well as he thought. Soon a vexing trail of clues lead him and his aging Cessna, the Ruptured Duck, across California, deep into Mexico, and relentlessly into harm’s way.

 

DavidFreed.com

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