Lyme Depot: A Drum County Crime Story

My country-noir novel

is available now at Amazon.

Please take a moment to check it out here.

Thanks!

Robert E. Howard’s Steve Costigan Stories

Fans of Robert E. Howard might wonder what took me so long, but it was not until last summer that I discovered his funny, fighting character, Steve Costigan.

Hopping around Amazon, I found a collection of 21 Costigan stories for 99 cents on Kindle. Now I am slowly working my way through the yarns.

So far, the stories feel like a combination of Popeye cartoons and the dark B pictures that used to play on TV on Saturdays when I was a kid.

Costigan is a merchant seaman who gets himself into fights and scrapes in every port.

The collection kicks off with Costigan in a Hong Kong saloon where he meets an old pal, encounters a beautiful woman and gets involved in the mystery of a missing jewel.

He and Bill McGlory, a guy he is either brawling with or palling around with, track the woman and get tangled up with a Chinese gangster. The trail leads to a fabulous compound which feels like a sort of maze as the sailors fight with guards and henchmen in dark mysterious rooms and closed-in courtyards that seem to magically appear out of Robert E. Howard’s pen.

In the next story, Costigan and his bulldog, Mike, are in a waterfront dive in Singapore when some tough, sporting types want Costigan to enter his pet in an organized dog fight with a notorious killer pooch. Costigan tells them to forget it, but someone kidnaps Mike and Steve fights his way through the city looking for the animal.

He offers a reward for his stolen dog and plans to raise the money by stepping into the boxing ring and winning the prize money. The fight is hilarious with Costigan battling but distracted with thoughts of who may have stolen his dog and worries about getting him back.

There is plenty of action and some very funny dialog peppered with cartoonish, phonetic seafaring words, and lots of 1920s-1930s slang.

The stories are fast, clever, and peppered with salty, but G-rated language, and funny observations as told in the first person by Costigan “hisself.”

By today’s standards, parts of the stories are either borderline to outright offensive. Howard was a writer of his time and I’ve got to believe he was not out to offend anyone, but to just tell a rip-roaring tale for the enjoyment of his readers.

Howard, author of the Conan the Barbarian stories, wrote about 27 Costigan tales from 1929 until about 1934. He died in 1936 at age 30.

For more on the boxing sailor, Steve Costigan, check out Paul Bishop’s post.

And for more posts on books, head over to Patti Abbott’s page.

An interview with author Dana King

Dana King is the author of 10 books and several short stories. His novels A Small Sacrifice and The Man in the Window were nominated for Shamus Awards. He’s written five novels in his Nick Forte series, and his fourth novel in the Penns River series came out January 21.

ELGIN BLEECKER: Dana, welcome to The Dark Time. Your new novel, Ten-Seven, just came out. Would you tell us about Penns River, your fictional small city in Pennsylvania, and about its police department, and what its detectives face in your new story?

DANA KING: Pittsburgh’s recovery after the collapse of the steel industry is remarkable, but it never really made it north up the Allegheny River. Penns River still has an economy that runs about as well as it did in the 70s and no real hope of things getting materially better. The new low-roller casino was supposed to bring untold riches; instead it brought a new way to siphon money out of the town, along with increased crime. The persistent poverty whipsaws the police between having more crime and less money for the resources to fight it. In Ten-Seven, an apparently random act of violence has repercussions out of proportion to its initial effect because there’s too much going on for the beleaguered cops to concentrate on anything.

EB: I am curious to know how the series began – the conception that lead to the first novel, Worst Enemies. Was it the location? Was it Detective “Doc” Dougherty? Or did you start with the killer and his crime?

DK: Worst Enemies began as an idea to put a twist on Patricia Highsmith’s classic Strangers on a Train. I’d not read the book, nor had I seen the movie; I just knew the premise. All my previous stories were set in and around Chicago but I hadn’t lived there in a while and wanted a location I knew but where I could also make the stories about more than the featured crime. I grew up in the three small towns that make up Penns River and went back often to visit my parents, so I took a page from the “Write What You Know” school and placed the story there. Ben Dougherty (pronounced “DOCK-erty”) was my anchor, the one person who saw the town the most like I did, as he’s been away for quite a while (in his case, in the Army) and was able to place his love for the place in perspective. I chose the name deliberately to anchor myself there: my father’s first name was Benjamin and my mother’s maiden name is Dougherty.

EB: I have a clear mental picture of Penns River, its neighborhoods and people. But you never wrote any long descriptions. It was all subtle suggestions, brief impressions. When describing a person or place, how much is too much, how much is too little, and how do you know when you’ve got it just right?

DK: Everything is subordinate to the needs of the story, so all descriptions have to be proportionate to how important they are in relation to the story. If something matters for the story—say a character needs to have brilliant blue eyes—then I’ll describe them. That’s not to imply I never make digressions from the main thread. Not at all. But when I do digress to set a mood or to build a character in the reader’s mind, then whatever I choose to describe is critical to that story, even though it’s smaller. I rarely worry if the description is too little, as I only want to give enough for people to form some image for the movie that’s playing in their heads. I know it’s too much when I’m editing and start to feel antsy for things to move again. When in doubt, too little is almost always better than too much.

EB: Your Penns River cops sound like real people. I think I can even detect a regional accent. Do you recall specific people when composing dialogue for your characters? And once you hear it, how do you get it down on paper?

DK: It’s a writers’ joke, but I listen to the voices in my head. Most of my dialog comes from me putting myself in a situation and transcribing how I think that conversation would go, making adjustments for character differences along the way. The first draft is very close to a transcription of what goes on in my head, so much so that I sometimes have pages with no tags or attributions as my fingers try to keep up with what I’m hearing; delineating each character’s method of speaking takes place in edits. I still have a fairly pronounced Western Pennsylvania accent and I can call up voices from my past pretty easily. I think it also helps that I was a classically trained musician so I have an ear for tone and rhythm that is helpful here.

EB: Thanks, Dana, for taking the time to discuss your new book and your writing.

Dana King’s Ten-Seven is available here.

His web site is here.

And his blog is here.

Three Hours Past Midnight by Tony Knighton

Tony Knighton’s 2017 book Three Hours Past Midnight checks all the boxes for a crime novel. It has a cool resourceful anti-hero, scary, relentless bad guys, tough savvy women, dirty cops, crooked politicians, a good mystery, plenty of action, and a sprawling urban setting.

The main character is a professional thief who is so deep in the shadows hardly anyone knows his name – including the readers of this noir story. He is a man known as a top professional, which is why a former city cop hires him to break into a sleazy politician’s townhouse and steal the contents of a safe.

The thief easily lets himself into the home, finds the safe, then surprisingly, chops it out of the wall and drops it out a side window where the ex-cop picks it up, puts it in his vehicle and drives away. The two will settle up later.

But when he arrives at the meeting place, he finds the ex-cop shot dead and the safe gone.

If he is to maintain his reputation, the thief cannot let this go unanswered. He spends the rest of the night moving about town, hunting down the guys who killed the ex-cop and took the safe. The thief wants to do more than just find and punish the culprits, he wants the money from the safe and he wants to know why they killed the man.

The crazy, tangled and violent journey of the thief is an exciting ride as he tracks down the safe and the thieves. And to complicate things, he is being tracked by someone willing to kill anyone in his way.

The story takes place in and around Philadelphia, a city Tony Knighton obviously knows well, perhaps from his day job. He is a lieutenant in the Philadelphia Fire Department.

Three Hours Past Midnight is a fast-paced, intriguing whodunit, and I look forward to reading more of his work.

Worst Enemies by Dana King

Worst Enemies, the last book I read before the close of the year, is on my short list of best reads of 2018.

It is the first book in Dana King’s Penns River series and introduces Detective Benjamin “Doc” Dougherty and the other cops in this fictional city in western Pennsylvania.

Doc and his partner, Willie Grabek, a slightly burned-out detective close to retirement, are called to the scene of a brutal homicide. A woman was killed in her home during a burglary gone wrong. Or, so the cops think.

The identity of the killer is revealed in the first chapter as Tom Widmer, a knucklehead who, while boozing in a strip joint, meets Marty Cropcho. The two share their problems and Marty comes up with a great plan to solve them. He tells Tom they should each kill the other’s wife in a Strangers on a Train type plan, and no one will ever connect them because no one knows they are acquaintances. Evidently these two never read the Patricia Highsmith novel or saw the Alfred Hitchcock movie.

With complete instructions on how to get into the house and just what to steal to make it look good, Tom Widmer goes first. But Widmer quickly learns it is not easy to kill a person. Marty Cropcho’s wife puts up one hell of a fight for her life, but loses in a brutally graphic scene.

The detectives soon have Widmer in custody when author Dana King pulls the rug out from under everyone. The case goes off in an unexpected direction. His story zigs and zags and speeds along following Doc as he tries to untangle a mystery that seemed so clear cut in the beginning.

King also provides a look into Doc’s personal life – his love life, his folks whom he visits every Sunday to watch the Steelers play football on TV, and his somewhat empty home life.

At times, the book feels like non-fiction thanks to King’s natural, realistic-sounding dialogue and the unusual surnames of many of his characters, including one police officer nicknamed Eye Chart.

The small city of Penns River comes to life as clearly on the page as any real place, complete with its wealthy suburb, a crumbling poor neighborhood, local taverns, chicken wing joints, and a veterans’ hall where old timers shoot pool and drink tap beer.

There are two more novels in the Penns River series, Grind Joint and Resurrection Mall, and Dana King just announced a fourth book, Ten-Seven, due out this month.

FFB: Bury Me Deep by Harold Q. Masur

New York City lawyer, sleuth and sometime tough guy Scott Jordan, the hero of a dozen books by Harold Q. Masur, was first introduced in the 1947 novel Bury Me Deep.

The year 1947 also saw the publication of Mickey Spillane’s I, The Jury, which introduced Mike Hammer. Masur may have been influenced by Spillane, or perhaps he was just writing to the tastes of the times.

While crafting a Perry Mason-like mystery, Masur peppered his story with sexy dames for Scott Jordan to encounter and a few thugs for Jordan to square off with. But Masur falls short of matching either Spillane or Erle Stanley Gardner.

The story begins with a scene that could be the first line of a joke. Jordan opens his apartment door to find a beautiful, nearly naked woman reclining on his sofa. The girl soon winds up dead and coincidentally turns out to have been a witness in a big inheritance case.

There are a lot of coincidences in Bury Me Deep. Too many.

Harold Q. Masur (1909-2005), was a lawyer, but unlike Gardner, did not give Scott Jordan nearly the legal acumen or cunning personality of Perry Mason, nor was Jordan as tough and entertaining as Spillane’s detective.

Bury Me Deep is a book I looked forward to finding and reading, but, instead of going on, I will send you over to others who enjoyed Masur’s work a lot more than I did, and you can read their takes here and here.

Down on the Street by Alec Cizak

In Down on the Street, Alec Cizak tells a truly noir story of a guy living too close to the edge, falling for the wrong woman and winding up in more danger than he ever dreamed.

How does an average Joe – his name is actually Lester – get himself into so much trouble? As Mickey Spillane might answer, “It was easy.”

Getting himself out of trouble becomes nearly impossible in this tense, gritty novel.

Lester is a city cab driver barely making it. He resides in the meanest, crummiest apartment house where there is only one bright spot – at least it is bright to him – Chelsea, a young woman living across the hall. Chelsea is a nasty sexpot who gives Lester a tumble one night, but rejects him the next day. He eats his heart out for her as he witnesses a nightly parade of men tramping in and out of her place.

Neither Lester nor Chelsea can make a go of life until Lester gets the bright idea to go into partnership with her. Their business is the oldest profession, with the ineffectual Lester as her pimp and protector.

Hey, what could go wrong?

Only everything.

Cizak’s novel will raise a reader’s anxiety level into the red zone. His writing makes it impossible to stop reading.

The story of these two people reminded me in many ways of Charles Willeford’s 1955 noir novel, Pick-Up (reviewed here), with a touch of Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver.”

Down on the Street, which came out in 2017, is a frightening, nerve jangling tale.

Skull Meat by Tom Leins

Last summer, I read Tom Leins’ astonishing novella, Skull Meat, and found myself at a loss for words. This short book has a driving pace and vivid descriptions. It also has some revolting, even horrifying passages.

So the question is: How do I recommend this?

With high praise.

And with a yellow and black hazmat sign slapped on it, warning readers they better have strong stomachs before opening this one.

Skull Meat is the story of Joe Rey, who might charitably be called a private investigator, but who is really just a guy who takes money to do dirty work. Joe is hired by a gangster to mess with a rival called “Swollen” Roland. And, as usually happens in noir novels, nothing goes according to plan.

The story is over-the-top harsh, brutal, violent, ugly, and yet amazingly readable.

Leins’ writing is magnetic, you cannot tear your eyes away from it no matter how awful the scene. And all of his scenes are an assault.

He told David Nemeth, “I wanted it to be a raw, nasty blast of dirty noir.” Skull Meat is raw. It is nasty. And he more than achieved his goal.

This is a new kind of noir.

In the old noir, readers went down mean streets under the safe guidance of Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and even Mike Hammer.

But in the noir of Skull Meat, there is no safety. Joe Rey will not protect you. Follow him at your own risk. But once you step into his world, Leins will have you following him right to the end.

I bought the Kindle version, and when it landed on the device I took a quick look. I did not set it aside until I finished the story. Others around the Web had similar reactions. Read the reviews by Colman Keane, Paul D. Brazill, Marietta Miles, and the Grim Reader.

Tom Leins set the story in the English seaside city of Paignton, which is also his hometown. After his seedy, sleazy, scary description of the place, it is a wonder the good folks of Paignton did not tar and feather him, and run him out of town a fence rail.

Lie Catchers by Paul Bishop

The reason I got so little done around the house last weekend was the fault of Paul Bishop. I started reading his recent crime novel, Lie Catchers, and could not put it down.

The book is more than just a crime novel, it is a behind the scenes look at how witness interviews and suspect interrogations work, how the police read the body language and subtle tics that tip them to whether a person is lying or telling the truth.

Lie Catchers is the story of Detective Jane Randall, a 12-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, whose career may be over due to a severe bullet wound to the leg. Her captain gives her a second chance, if she will agree to work with Detective Ray Pagan, a man great at getting the truth out of people, and great at pissing off just about everyone.

Jane, who wants to keep working, becomes partners with Ray and learns he wanted her as his partner. Ray noticed Jane’s special gift for detecting lies. He also has a gift for sensing the emotions of others and using those feelings to get to the truth.

The first case Randall and Pagan catch is actually two cases which may or may not be related. The six-year-old daughter of a tough, rap-record producer is kidnapped from his mansion leaving no clues behind. The same night as the kidnapping, miles away, a six-year-old boy disappears from the home of a well-to-do, straight-laced family. The people involved could not be more different, and yet the circumstances are way too similar to be a coincidence.

Lie Catchers is a fast read thanks to Bishop’s skill as a wordsmith. The cases are a puzzle, the action is quick and packs a punch, and the characters, situations, and work of detectives rings true, thanks to Bishop’s many years on the force. Paul Bishop is a retired LAPD detective.

FFB: Guns of Brixton by Paul D. Brazill

It is hard as hell to be funny in print – just ask anyone who ever sent a supposedly humorous text only to have it backfire.

But Paul D. Brazill makes funny writing look easy in his crazy crime novel, Guns of Brixton.

Fast paced, this 2014 book is filled with odd, weird, violent, and often hilarious characters.

Two dim goons are sent out to retrieve a lost briefcase for their gangster boss, and manage to screw things up at every turn, including a side trip to rob a jewelry store while dressed in drag.

They kill a man, hide him in the trunk of their car, then crash into the Mercedes-Benz of a young executive who is far tougher than they ever expected, and on and on.

In the meantime, the big boss sends others out to clean up the mess, including a killer priest.

Brazill loads up his story with bizarre twists and some of the most laugh-out-loud writing I have encountered in a long time.