Last Year’s Man by Paul D. Brazill

Picking up a novel by Paul D. Brazill, a reader can expect fast paced action, humorous observations, funny dialogue, and a seedy, noir quality. His book, Last Year’s Man, delivers all that and something else: a touch of melancholy, a bit of sadness.

Tommy Bennett, an aging gun for hire, reluctantly comes to the conclusion that he is too old for his chosen profession. That profession is killing people and doing it efficiently with no trace of his involvement.

The story opens with Tommy on a job. A moment’s negligence on his part screws up a nice clean hit. It leaves him wondering if it is time to get out of the business. His next job goes wrong, too, but in a much bigger way, and Tommy is no longer wondering. He has to quit and run.

With little money and no passport, there are few places Tommy can go. He chooses to return to his hometown, a small city by the sea that has seen better days. Brazill highlights the city’s decay as Tommy takes in the town for the first time in many years. He gets off the train and notes the shops that are gone and the once proud statute in of “an old civic dignitary,” with a road cone on its head, and “the remnants of a Chinese take-away in its outstretched hand.”

He isn’t in town five minutes when he stumbles into a killing in a crummy bar. Soon, he is back in the company of violent crooks and con men he knew in his youth. But Tommy has to make a living and the local criminals remember him as a guy who can make things happen.

The slangy speech of Brazill’s characters not only gave me a laugh, but also provided an instant picture of the speaker. In a few words, Brazill describes characters. Of an underworld dame, Tommy says, “Bev smiled but there was the familiar razor-sharp look in her eyes.” Placing razor and eyes in the same sentence made me cringe and I knew just what Bev looked like. Later, Tommy calls a local heavy, “an ex-copper who was so bent you could use him to unblock your toilet.”

Last Year’s Man is a raw story seen through the eyes of Tommy Bennett, and is another fine job from Paul D. Brazill. I rarely say this about a book, but I wish this one was longer so I could spend more time with Tommy.

(And, if you enjoy crime novels with lots of action, please check out Lyme Depot. Thanks.)

(For more posts on books, head over to Todd Mason’s blog.)

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!

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.

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: Stool Pigeon by Louis Malley

A man sitting in his car in New York’s Little Italy is shot to death and police Detective Vincent Milazzo is assigned to the case, in Louis Malley’s 1953 novel, Stool Pigeon.

Detective Milazzo, who grew up in the neighborhood, joined the police department, made good, and got promoted to detective, now needs to find a stool pigeon to break this case. But the neighborhood is traditionally wary of talking to the police. Even though Milazzo is one of them, his choice of profession makes him an outsider.

The dead man is part of a pornography racket luring young women, making sure they are soon broke, then sending them into clubs and onto the street to earn for them. These gangsters have mob connections and may even have powerful members of the police force protecting them. Milazzo finds himself up against the old neighborhood, organized crime, and his own department.

Louis Malley obviously knew how the mob and the cops operated in his era. He uses that knowledge and creates some fine character studies in this suspenseful, fast-paced novel. Every page of Stool Pigeon feels real and true.

Little is written about Louis Malley, other than he was born and raised in New York City and he published four novels: Horns for the Devil, 1951, (reviewed here) which was later republished as Shadow of the Mafia; Stool Pigeon, 1953, later republished as Shakedown Strip; Tiger in the Streets, 1957; and The Love Mill, 1961.

According to court records and a newspaper report, Malley was shot and killed in 1962 at age 40.

Today, Malley’s novels are hard to find, but Stark House Press plans to bring out Stool Pigeon as one of its Black Gat Books.

(For more posts on books, check out Patti Abbott’s blog.)

FFB: Dog Eat Dog by Edward Bunker

In Edward Bunker’s 1996 crime novel, Dog Eat Dog, three career criminals approaching middle age set out to score big money by ripping off drug dealers and other bad guys who, while dangerous, cannot report the thefts to the cops.

Troy, Diesel and Mad Dog have given names, but those are the names they go by and are known by in their world of violent criminals. They met years earlier in reform school and became wary friends. The three of them have been in and out of California institutions, jails and prisons most of their lives. Now, Troy, the latest to be released back into society, plans to get his hands on a lot of money, enough to disappear and never commit a crime again. To do this, he needs Diesel and Mad Dog as partners.

Diesel, with a wife, a child and a house in the suburbs, has begun to live in both the world of crime and the straight world. A big man, he earns by being the muscle for a local mob guy, dishing out beatings and destroying property. But Diesel has qualms about getting involved in Troy’s plans. His biggest concern is the third man on the team.

Mad Dog is a wiry killer with no conscience and a severe drug problem, but he will do anything Troy tells him to do.

While the book rambles a bit at the beginning, setting up the situation, the sense of authenticity is on every page and Bunker knows what is authentic. The author spent time in reform schools and state prisons. While incarcerated he began reading, and then writing. Bunker knows the criminal world, he knows how it works, he knows how it sounds, and he knows how men like Troy, Diesel and Mad Dog think. Once he gets those three together the story quickly gets down to business and reads like a great thriller.

(I would like to thank Col of Col’s Criminal Library for pointing the way to this book.)

(And for more reviews of books, please see Patti Abbott’s blog.)