The Day after Yesterday (Joe Hannibal) by Wayne D. Dundee

Joe Hannibal's been around since 1982 and is the creation of Wayne Dundee. In this novel Wayne shakes up the status quo of his protagonist up when he kills off his sidekick Bomber Brannigan. Of course Joe intends to find out who was responsible for this. At first it seems like an accident induced by too much sex and booze but we, the readers, of course know better.
Facing a crazy militant guy, hard-nosed lawmen and hot babes wherever he goes there's a pulpy feel all over the book. I was kind of sorry that there was a big setup for a terrorist plot to blow up Mount Rushmore but it wasn't taken very far other than just introduce the plan. It does keep the novel grounded in the crime genre though instead of having it plunge off in thrillers / espionage mode, which is good news to me.
At the end the stage is set for a new setting, which might freshen up stuff a bit. Because of that, this one might be a nice place to start reading Joe's stories.
Some of you might get irritated at the descriptions of hot women every time, or the very hardboiled, blazing .45 style of narrating. That is, if you like to read about Kay Scarpetta. However, if you dig Mike Hammer, you'll dig Joe.

Q & A with Ed Lynskey

This time we had the pleasure to ask Ed Lynskey, author of the Frank Johnson series a couple of questions.
Q: What makes your P.I. Frank Johnson different from other fictional private eyes?

A: Good question. Frank doesn’t hail from New York City, Boston,San Francisco or whatever usual big city setting, so that separates him from some of the pack. But I don’t know he’s so much different than the typical private detective. They’re all
big snoops and get into scads of trouble by doing it. His books tend to move out fast with space allotted for necessary back story and introspection.

One thing I shy away from is using Chandleresque metaphors. Mine are too leaden. Frank isn’t a “lone wolf” -- he has a coterie of loyal friends. He’s ambivalent about his job and abilities, but if pushed, he bares a violent streak and always gets the job done. He’s on and off the wagon, though he doesn’t make a big noise about it.

Q: What are your thoughts on the psycho sidekick in PI novels?
Is this a contemporary P.I. trend? I haven’t really thought on it. Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlings features the edgy, unpredictable Mouse, but is he a true psycho? Sidekicks aren’t new to crime-busting heroes, and I suppose one of the duo has to
possess the fiery or impulsive persona (i.e., a “psycho”) to differentiate him from the other guy.

Q: What would a soundtrack to your novels sound like?
A: Interesting question. I listen to jazz and bluegrass music while
I’m writing. I would’ve liked to have asked Warren Zevon to
score a soundtrack for a Frank Johnson movie.

Q: Has your writing changed much since the first novel?

A: I had little idea how to write The Dirt-Brown Derby other than
to just write it. I’ve read and written a lot more since then. I heard or read somewhere a journeyman writer has to churn out a million words before he produces good fiction.

Boy, it sure feels as if I’ve hit and exceeded that mark. Critics have said my plots and characters have settled down, but the “old-school charm” is still present. I know I do more revision cycles now, and I believe my plots have grown more intricate. Ultimately, the reader has to decide if they like (and will buy) the novels.

Q: Do you do a lot of research?

A: I wrote and published over hundred P.I. Frank Johnson short stories in print magazines and ezines before I ever tackled writing the novels. That lengthy effort was the spadework for writing the longer P.I. fiction treatments.

The Blue Cheer (Point Blank, 2007) took a large chunk of research, some of it done via telecon and email. Frank moves to West Virginia, a new locale for him, and I wanted to get the Appalachian setting, characters, and culture down just right. My
latest, Pelham Fell Here, required some technical assistance from the state forensics lab, P.I. licensing bureau, and even an old history professor.

I suppose reading the old and present-day P.I. novels qualifies as research since I was curious to see what other writers have done. I interviewed and wrote essays on a batch of stellar P.I. writers including Dennis Lynds, Dorothy Uhnak (before her big
books), Bob Wade, Stephen Greenleaf and some others I’m sure I’ve left out. Anyway, learning and understanding the genre’s traditions from past acknowledged masters and has been important to my own development.

Q: What's next for you and Frank?

A: Pelham Fell Here (Mundania), my next P.I. Frank Johnson title
due out early next year (2008), is published out of sequence and is really the first book. An ex-MP, Frank has left the military, returned home, and finds himself in a jam. He resorts to his criminal investigation skills to find a way out and by the end, he has few employment options open to him but to pursue a P.I. career.

I’ve one more P.I. Frank Johnson title, Troglodytes, under publication contract from Mundania. Frank returns to Turkey to track down a wealthy lady’s missing husband. He’s sort of a fish out of water and relies more on his own wits since none of his
crew are around to lend him a hand.

I have a pulpy science fiction title, The Quetzal Motel, also under a Mundania contract. Quetzal, a satire on writers and the publishing business in general, was a fun change of pace for me.

My standalone Appalachian noir, Lake Charles set in the Tennessee mountains during 1979, has attracted recently some interest by a publisher. I’ll remain hopeful and continue to rub on my rabbit’s foot.

Q: Do you have any favorite Sons of Spade yourself?

A: You bet. I enjoy reading such P.I. scribes as Stephen Greenleaf,
Arthur Lyons, Walter Mosley, Sue Grafton, Bill Pronzini, James Lee Burke, Jerry Healy, and Marcia Muller. I gravitate to the vintage stuff, too, from Bart Spicer, Raymond Chandler, and Wade Miller. That’s a bunch of name-dropping, but it constitutes a decent reading list of my tastes. I like nothing better than
cracking open a yellowed paperback and getting engrossed in a fast-paced, well-crafted tale. Charles Williams (not a P.I. but more a pulp writer) can do that for me.

Q: In the last century we've seen new waves of PI-writers, first
influenced by Hammett, then Chandler, Macdonald, Parker, later Lehane. Who do you think will influence the coming generation and in what way?

A: Today’s detectives are cyber-sleuths but that’s pretty boring,
stale fare unless you jazz up what the computers can do like you see done on the C.S.I. TV shows. I expect some future detectives will remain like old-school gumshoes, doing surveillance and legwork and fitting in the Hammett-Chandler-Macdonald traditional mold.

Some other P.I.s will become more violent and in-your-face, paralleling today’s neo-noirs. Some futuristic detectives will branch off more into the science fiction realm. But we’ve seen the P.I. novel evolve so much already. Dennis Lynds and later
Walter Mosley and George Pelecanos, for instance, injected a social consciousness into the private detective book. So, who knows what new directions the latest and greatest P.I. novels will veer? It’s certainly an exciting prospect to wait and see,
isn’t it?

Q: David Housewright, writer of the Rush McKenzie novels, came up with this question: "What do you have to say?"

A: I’m not sure I understand this question enough to offer an
intelligent response, so I better pass on it.

Q: What question should be asked every P.I. writer we interview and what would be your answer to it?

A: I sometimes wonder if I’d have the patience and grit to work as
a private detective. That’s a fair question to ask writers who create their own P.I.s in print. My answer to such a question would probably be no. The job strikes me as involving long hours and lousy pay, especially you’re your deadbeat clients stiffing you.

For more info about Ed Lynskey and Frank Johnson check out: www.thrillingdetective.com/eyes/johnson.html

Mask Market (Burke) by Andrew Vachss

Take a ride in Burke's Plymouth as he takes you to the dark and violent streets of New York City... In his trademark tough guy, straightforward and ultra-hardboiled style Vachss tells about how Burke, the urban mercenary and avenger of abused kids, is contacted to recover a girl he recovered 20 years ago. When the guy to contact him is killed he wants to get to the bottom of why this happened and especially what it means to him.
Not the most exciting plot he's ever written but you can still feel how authentic it is. The fun in a Vachss novel is not the surprises and storyline but the way he comments about the dark side of the world we live in.
I did note Burke seemed a bit softer this time around though, and the special gift to his girl Loyal (just love the names Vachss gives the ladies) was a nice, refreshing ending.

A Hard Ticket Home (Rush McKenzie) by David Housewright

Rush MckKenzie used to be a cop... until he decided to get rich from some insurance money. You can't take a cop out of a man though, that's why he still does some favors for people every now and then.
In this first novel to feature him he tries to track down the missing daughter of a friend. This girl's bone marrow is the only thing that can save her younger sister. Things, however, are soon complicated by pimps, pushers and a serial killer.
The whole favor-thing reminded me a bit of the old TV-show 'Stingray' that I used to love. Several times, like Nick Mancuso used to do in that show he enlists the help of people he did a favor for in the past. It makes sure Rush is up to the job and an okay gimmick when it's not overdone (which it's not in this one).
Rush is refreshingly nice guy. He can sure as hell handle himself in a fight but he still has trouble encountering violent death.
I enjoyed it enough to read the rest of the series.

Unborn Sons: When the Cactus is in Bloom (by Mark Cohen)

We present another new feature on Sons of Spade: Unborn Sons in which we present an excerpt of a novel not yet published. First up is Mark Cohen's new Pepper Keane novel in progress. Would you like your work in progress to be featured here as well, just drop me a line.


WHEN THE CACTUS IS IN BLOOM

© 2007 by Mark Cohen
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Chapter 1
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Every so often I drive down to southern Colorado to check on Uncle Ray. Uncle Ray is my mom’s youngest brother. He’s sixty-six years old. He lives in an eight by twelve plywood shack he built on five acres of cactus-covered land he bought on a land contract. He has no plumbing, no electricity, and no phone. He spent most of his life as a merchant seaman and a drunk, and he has a touch of schizophrenia. He divides all people into two classes – drug dealers and devil worshippers. Members of either group, he says, “will kill ya for five dollars.”
I guided the truck south on I-25 through the early morning Denver traffic. It was just after seven. Off to the right I saw Invesco Field at Mile High, home of the Denver Broncos. I remembered when the old stadium – Mile High Stadium – had stood on about the same site. Hell, I remembered when it had been Bears Stadium, named after Denver’s minor league baseball team, the Denver Bears.
I continued south, past the University of Denver, towards Highlands Ranch. That’s where my brother lives. Nobody had ever heard of Highland’s Ranch when I was growing up. It was just undeveloped land where kids drank beer, made out, and tipped cows. Now it is a 22,000-acre “master-planned community.”
My brother’s home sits at the end of a cul de sac. Each of the five homes on it has a driveway and garage, but the master planners had decreed that nobody – not even the homeowner – could park a vehicle on a driveway. Homeowners were to hide their cars in their garages, and visitors were to park only in designated parking areas. It’s a long walk from the nearest designated parking area to my brother’s home, particularly in winter, so I sometimes ignore that rule.
I eased my F-150 into my brother’s driveway and parked it. It was eighty-two degrees on a sunny July morning, but winter was just around the corner. I could feel it.
I got out of my truck, opened the front door to my brother’s home, didn’t see anyone, and yelled, “Let’s hit the road.”
“Be right down,” Troy shouted. “Just taking my morning steroids.” Troy is a bodybuilder and owns the most successful gym in Denver, but I knew he had stopped doing steroids years ago.
Troy had also stopped doing marriage two years ago, but he kept the house so his kids would have a place to stay when they visited. Now Andrew was in the Coast Guard and his teen genius daughter Chelsea lived with her mother in California. Troy and I are close, but he rarely talks about his marriage or the divorce. Once, when I asked him about why he had given up on marriage, he said, “Same reason I stopped using steroids – headaches, high blood pressure, and sleep problems.”
I helped myself to some coffee and clicked on CNN. A vivacious, well-endowed redhead walked me through the morning’s news, and not much had changed in the seventy-five minutes since I’d left my mountain home. The earth was getting warmer, the rich were getting richer, and Bin Laden (the only 6’5” Arab on the planet) was still alive and feasting on lamb in a cave somewhere in northern Pakistan. Just another manic Monday.
Troy came the stairs, looked at the smiling anchorwoman, and said, “You know, given the present state of things in this country, it’s only a matter of time until some TV exec lets an anchor go topless.”
“I don’t want to see Barbara Walters topless,” I said.
“There would have to be an age limit,” he said.
“Let’s get going,” I said. I clicked off the TV. Troy locked the front door, then we went out through his garage. He grabbed a backpack and a six-pack of Diet 7-Up, then pushed the button to close the garage door as we both ran to exit the garage before the door closed.
My truck is a gold/pewter color (Ford calls it ‘Pearl’) and has a matching shell on the back – the kind with a vertical door built in – and I opened it so Troy could stow his stuff in the back of the truck. Buck and Wheat saw Troy and started barking. “Might as well let the dogs do their thing,” I said. I held the door open and both dogs jumped down from the truck. Buck circled left and Wheat dashed off to the right.
“I hope Buck doesn’t take a dump on that guy’s grass,” Troy said, “he’ll turn me in to the HOA for sure.” Buck is a cross between a Great Dane and a Rhodesian Ridgeback. His dumps are impressive. Wheat, on the other hand, is a purebred Schipperke. He weighs only about fifteen pounds, so his dumps are less problematic. But neither dog left any presents for my brother’s neighbors. After a few minutes I whistled and the dogs bounded back to the truck and jumped right in.
We stopped at a McDonalds and bought two cups of coffee. As we headed back to the interstate, Troy pulled a CD from one of the pockets on his baggy shorts and said, “Put this on,” he said, “you’re gonna love it.” I took the CD from him and glanced at the cover.
“Dos Gringos?” I said.
“Trust me,” he said. My brother and I don’t always share the same taste in music, but sometimes he turns me on to good artists I’ve never heard of, and sometimes I remind him of some forgotten greats from the past.
Four hours later, with the words to “Jeremiah Weed” now committed to memory, we arrived in Blanca, Colorado, and I found the dirt road that leads to uncle Ray’s ‘cabin.’ It took another twenty minutes to get there.
I turned off the road and drove until we were about fifty yards from the shack. I stopped the truck and hit the horn a few times. You want to give Ray plenty of notice of your presence so he does not shoot you. There was no sign of Ray and no sign of Prince, his bluetick coonhound.
After thirty seconds or so I drove the truck another twenty yards toward the shack and hit the horn a few more times. Nothing.
I stuck my head out the driver’s window and yelled, “Uncle Ray, it’s Troy and Pepper.” Still nothing.
“Truck’s not here,” Troy said. “He probably drove into town to fill up his water jugs.” That was plausible. The last time I’d seen him he’d been driving an old pickup with a camper on it, and there was no sign of it at his shack.
“Let’s wait inside,” I said. “I need some shade.” Men in the Keane family have black hair, but we have light complexions.
I pulled forward until the truck was only about twenty feet from the shack. Troy and I climbed down out of the truck. I let the dogs out and hoped they didn’t come into direct contact with any of the yucca plants, prickly pear, or other species of cacti that surrounded Ray’s cabin for miles in all directions.
We walked toward the shack, alert for rattlesnakes. I stuck my tongue against the roof of my mouth and made a rattlesnake sound.
“Not funny,” Troy said. Troy had survived a rattlesnake bite many years ago. He had also survived a parachute mishap and a lightning strike. On the other hand, his son Andrew had joined the Coast Guard after high school and ended up in Iraq. Good luck does not necessarily pass from one generation to the next.
There was a padlock on the door, but I had a key. I opened the door.
Uncle Ray was dead.