Labels: Completely True, Crimes, Fiction, Journalism

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Labels: Comic Noir, Crimes, Duane Swierczynski, Fiction, Josh Bazell, Victor Gischler

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(Call me Carter. I’m old now and I’ve got the ulcer-inducing divorce and the gray hairs to prove it. I was an ink-stained wretch in the 1980s scribbling about crime, drugs, murder, rape, and unfortunate deaths in the rusty, old mill cities of Central Massachusetts, a mostly forgotten and generally ignored region of the state. This is the place where I pour out my guts and empty the remnants of my moldy reporter’s notebooks. These are the stories that made headlines.)*

The Case of the Flying Mechanic

Snow fell like confetti. It piled up in the dark, but the street lamp outside my window let me watch it grow. The wind stirred it up like a swizzle stick in a gin and tonic. It was cold and the snow pinged the frosted window above my desk. I hate snow.

I ate a six-inch BMT sandwich from Subway. The only sounds in the deserted news bureau were my jaws grinding meat and cheese and the scrape of the occasional snowplow. Then there was the static from the police ban.

I was melancholy, a goddamn modern day Scrooge. I kept waiting for the ghost of my dead career to come knocking – maybe strangle me with its long chain. Put me out of my misery.

I wiped my fingers on an oily napkin and leaned back in my swivel chair. There was a stain on my tie and a small dot of olive oil on my khaki pants. Oh, well. My body craved nicotine, but it was too cold to go outside for a cigarette. I shot the “No Smoking” sign a disdainful glare.

It was then I noticed more than the usual noise on the police radio. A serious wreck on Route 295; the highway that slices Central Massachusetts in half. Squad cars and an ambulance dispatched.

So I went. What else could I do? It was my job.

My old Toyota rumbled over the snow. It was like driving in a tunnel. I could barely see and the defroster had a difficult time keep the windshield clear. But finally blue lights flickered ahead. I pulled over, bundled up, and stepped into the blinding snow.

It was an odd scene. A van had smashed into the back of a Ford Mustang, but it appeared to be nothing more than a bad fender bender – a few thousand in damage. Yet, the driver of the van wept uncontrollable in the back of a police car.
Patrol Officer Daniel Roddy greeted me. His face was ashen.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

He told me the Mustang hit a patch of black ice under the snow and skidded to the side of the road – smacking the guardrail. The driver, a mechanic named Mick Peters, got out to assess the damage. Headlights washed over him and he looked up and saw the van.

The van lost control on the same black ice and headed right at him. Mick realized that he was standing between the van and his car. If he didn’t move, he was going to be crushed. But the van wasn’t going that fast – he had time. He glanced to the side and then ran and jumped over the guardrail.

“So where is he?” I asked.

Roddy beckoned with his flashlight and we walked to the guardrail. He flashed the light into the blackness. The ground was 100 feet down –a harrowing plummet. Unbeknownst to me we were standing on an overpass. Mick Peters’ body lay at the edge of a rail track, almost completely covered in snow.

“Can you imagine what he was thinking?” Roddy said. “He expected a nice soft landing in the snow and suddenly he’s falling through space and he realizes that he just made the biggest mistake of his life.”

To make matters worse, Peters landed on a stump – which punctured his chest. He was the father of a 3-year-old girl. Her picture hung from the rearview mirror in a plastic sheath.

I wrote the story, of course. It ran on page one.

Later that night, I sat in my rented room, in the dark. The snow had stopped and the cold seeped through the glass of the window I stared out of. I thought about Mick Peters – ready to land in a puff of snow – and then falling, falling, falling to his death.

Air and snow rushing by him. Did he think of the little girl in the plastic frame? Did he think of his wife? Vacation days at the park? Watching football games with his friends?

Or did he just scream all the way down.

I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep. So I drank. Drank until dawn.

The next day, I went back to work, and my story was above the fold. Co-workers slapped my back and congratulated me. One man’s death is another man’ victory.


*Names, dates, and locations have been changed to protect the innocence and the guilty.

Thor: Home Improvement Columnist

Our Favorite Will Ferrell Lines

10 Greatest Drunks in Cinema History

Labels: Completely True, Crimes, Fiction, Journalism

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Part 3

The world closed in on Amber. Her knees felt weak and she grabbed the banister to prevent herself from falling down the stairs. Someone was inside the house. Someone had the children.

“Amber!” a faint voice called.

She gripped the kitchen knife tighter and with a deep breath headed down the stairs. Halfway down there was a giggle. Joey? Was that little Joey? She froze.
A small figure darted across her line of vision. She caught a glimpse of blond hair and small feet in booted pajamas. More giggles.

“Joey!” she shouted.

And a moment later, the sheepish face of six-year-old Joey Curtain peeked around the entrance to the living room.

“Did we scare you?” Joey asked.

Amber’s face flustered. She wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, but when the fear suddenly lifted, all she could do was grin. Grin like an idiot.
She trotted the rest of the way down the stairs, casually hiding the butcher knife behind her back.

“You’re supposed to be in bed,” she said. “Where is your sister?”

“Hiding.”

“Hiding? From what?”

“From this.”

Joey stuck a steak knife into her thigh. The blade nicked her bone and she staggered back, blood splashing on the carpet. She thought: Mr. and Mrs. Curtain are going to kill me for this mess. Joey tried to tear the knife free and she shoved him. The little boy went flying and bumped his head against the wall.

Knife protruding from her thigh, she limped across the foyer and into the hallway leading to the front door. Joey screamed behind her and she heard his padded feet coming for her. He was crazy!

The pain in her thigh was intense. Blood covered her lower leg and she left a thick trail of gore behind her. She sobbed, reaching for the door, just as Joey’s hands grabbed the back of her blouse. She swapped back and her fist caught him in the temple. He cried out and fell on his back.

The door opened and a laughing Mr. and Mrs. Curtain stepped into the house. Their cheeks were flush from alcohol and good humor. A shawl was draped across Mrs. Curtain’s shoulders.

“Thank God!” Amber shouted.

“Amber!” Mrs. Curtain cried. “Amber, what is it?”

Amber sobbed again and pointed at Joey. The little boy was seated on the floor, cross-legged, rubbing the top of his head and wailing. Snot and tears glistened on his cheeks and chin.

“What have you done?” Mrs. Curtain said, rushing to her son, kneeling down next to him.

“My God,” Mr. Curtain said, staring at the blade buried deeply in Amber’s thigh. “She’s bleeding.”

“Joanie!” Mrs. Curtain shouted. “Joanie!”

The little girl appeared down the hall. A look of terror etched on her features.

“Damn it, Joey!” Mr. Curtain screamed, pushing Amber’s groping hands away from him. “How many times do I have to tell you!” He whirled and plunged a compact hunting knife into Amber’s belly. Blood exploded onto the floor. “Always kill with the first blow!”

Then he ripped the blade upward, cleaving Amber open from belly button to rib cage. Intestines and part of Amber’s stomach tumbled to the floor with a sickening plop. Amber’s eyes widened with horror and she collapsed – dead.

“Oh, honey,” Mrs. Curtain said. “The floor! I just polished the floor yesterday!”

“Sorry, dear.” He kicked Amber with the toe of his shoe and glared at his son, who was sniffling. “Didn’t we tell you not to kill this one? Christ, in the house!”

Joey hesitated and then nodded.

“Goddamn it, Joey, now I got to dump this one, too. Didn’t we tell you we had a wait at least month or two after Marybeth Kincaid? What am I going to tell her parents. Shit!”

“Honey,” Mrs. Curtain said. “Watch you tongue around the children! We’ll sort this out in the morning. Now come on, let’s all go to bed.”

“What about this?” Mr. Curtain said, gesturing at Amber’s body.

“Oh, we’ll clean it up later.”

And then the Curtain family headed upstairs and went to bed.

THE END (or is it!)

Labels: Fiction, Horror, The Babysitter

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Labels: Fiction, Horror, The Babysitter

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Labels: Fiction, Horror, The Babysitter

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“In the world of mystery fiction, Mr. Hillerman was that rare figure: a best-selling author who was adored by fans, admired by fellow authors and respected by critics. Though the themes of his books were not overtly political, he wrote with an avowed purpose: to instill in his readers a respect for Native American culture.”

Labels: Fiction, mysteries, Tony Hillerman, Writing

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Labels: Fiction, Hemingway, Writing

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An Interview With Thriller Novelist Dave Zeltserman

(DaRK PaRTY loves a tasty mystery novel (that doesn’t involve protagonists named Dexter). Crime fiction has never been more popular – so we were happy to run into Dave Zeltserman, a crime writer in Massachusetts who just published his second novel “Bad Thoughts,” a neo-noir mystery/horror novel that Booklist praised as a “compellingly clever wheels-within-wheels thriller.” Dave lives in the Boston area with his wife, Judy; is a die-hard Patriots and Red Sox fan; and when he’s not writing crime fiction he spends his time studying Kung Fu. We talked to Dave about crime fiction and the challenges facing emerging writers in today’s book industry)

DaRK PaRTY: How did you get your start in writing novels?

Dave: I always read a lot, and at times would try writing short stories. The thing was in high school I was more of a math and physics guy, and in college majored in Applied Math and Computer Science, so writing seemed more like a lark than something I should seriously pursue. After college I worked as a software engineer, and still found myself drawn to writing fiction in my spare time.

I was struggling with a private eye story and doing a bad job trying to imitate Ross Macdonald when I discovered Jim Thompson. Reading “Hell of a Woman”, “Swell-Looking Babe” and “Savage Night” changed my way of looking at how crime fiction could be written, and allowed me to see a different way to rework my story. This ended up becoming my first book, “Fast Lane,” which 12 years after writing it was sold to the Italian publisher, Meridiano Zero, and in 2004 published by Point Blank Press.

DP: What do you find so interesting about crime fiction?

Dave: I like the toughness of it. I also like the psychological aspects of it; all that guilt and desperation and darkness and raw emotion. Good fiction is where you’re constantly upping the ante as far as conflict goes, and crime fiction is a natural for that. That’s almost the definition for noir — characters who just keep making their situation worse until there’s no hope. This is really true with any fiction, but to me the best crime fiction is when it’s written at two or more levels.

“Fast Lane” at one level is a psychotic noir novel, but thematically is also about the damage child abuse causes as it’s passed from generation to generation. My new novel, “Bad Thoughts” is also at one level a crime/horror thriller, and at another about surviving tremendous abuse.

DP: Can you tell us about your new novel "Bad Thoughts"? What's it about and how did the idea for it germinate?

Dave: When I was writing it I thought of it as a metaphysical thriller, but readers and reviewers are calling it instead a mix of horror and crime, and I can see their point. The book focuses on Cambridge, Massachusetts police detective, Bill Shannon. When he was 13 he walked in on Herbert Winters murdering his mother. Now 20 years later, bodies start piling up and the victims are being killed in the same brutal manner as Shannon’s mother. Winters, who is now dead, is visiting Shannon in his dreams to tell Shannon that he’s committing these murders during blackouts. Soon everyone in Shannon’s precinct is suspecting him, even his own partner, and Shannon is beginning to have doubts about his own sanity. The mystery is for Shannon to discover what’s going on.

This is the only book I didn’t have any real inspiration for. I was working with a literary agent at the time who gave me a one paragraph plot for a book to write, that was kind of a “Silence of the Lambs” knockoff. I didn’t want to do that, instead I reworked it into something I was happy with. I was reading some books on metaphysics while I was working on this, and some of the ideas from that were used heavily in the book.

DP: What's the most difficult part about being an emerging novelist today?

Dave: Getting picked up by a major publisher is very hard. The industry has changed from a publishing house nurturing authors and working with them as they develop their skill over several novels to looking at everything as a commercial package. Editors today also have much less say in what they buy — I’ve talked with several editors at some of the large houses who like my works, but what they tell me is they can only buy formula. Books have to be overtly commercial, and these editors have a hard time buying anything that’s different.

I consider myself very fortunate to have my next three books published by one of the top UK publishers for crime fiction, Serpent’s Tail. They’re an independent, but unlike most of the small US houses, they have a lot of marketing muscle behind them. Their books end up in bookstores and they get treated seriously by reviewers. They’re old-fashioned in that they care only about the quality of the books they publish instead of the perceived “commercial” value of them.

My advice to beginning crime novelists, if you want to get published by a large house, write something that’s formula. If it’s too dark or different, forget it, the chances are you’re going to have to be published by a small house, which means few reviews and few bookstores other than a handful of independents stocking your book.

DP: What three crime novelists do you read on a regular basis and why?

Dave: In the past I’ve devoured everything that Dashiell Hammett, Jim Thompson, Rex Stout, James M. Cain, and Jonathan Latimer have written, and they’re the crime writers I most admire.

I run a crime fiction web-site, Hardluck Stories, so these days I’m mostly reading what publishers are sending me. Outside of that, I’ve worked my way through half of Charles Willeford’s books, and will be working my way through the other half — he was a brilliant writer, dark, sardonic, with very interesting sensibilities.

I’ll also probably be reading more Gil Brewer after recently reading “The Vengeful Virgin.” Probably the three best crime novels I’ve read recently are “Reasonable Doubts” by Gianrico Carofiglio, “Robbie’s Wife” by Russell Hill and “Cross” by Ken Bruen — where all three are very skillfully written and focus more on the tone and emotion than what you usually see.

Also, while not necessarily a crime novelist since he has only written two books, one crime, one horror, I think Scott Smith is an amazingly talented writer, and the writing in “The Ruins” – while very painful as far as the subject matter – was a real tour de force.

Labels: 5 Questions, Dave Zeltserman, Fiction, interview, mysteries

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(Our grand prize winner – our Undead Zombie General -- in the DaRK PaRTY Wicked Scary Short Story Contest is, believe it or not, a loving wife and mother. Tiffany Biles, a Native-American writer from Oklahoma, is married to her high school sweetheart and the mother of two children. She works in advertising to support her unnatural addiction horror, science fiction, and fantasy. Biles has previously been published in the magazine “Thirteen.”

The judges were impressed with Biles simple, yet elegant prose and her ability to mirthfully string along the reader as she sets them up for a twisting tale of horror. Remember – not everything is as it always appears!)

Cattle Mutilations

There are more cattle in Oklahoma than most people would think. In fact, in many areas, where the endless pastures of buffalo grass graze the horizon in every direction, a person could drive for hours with cattle, and the occasional red-tail hawk, the only evident life.

Martin Kingsley liked it that way. He hated the city. Not the city itself, of course. He always thought it would be nice to be able to walk to the nearest McDonald’s or Taco Bell whenever he had the urge for a midnight snack. No, it wasn’t the city he hated, it was all the people. People so involved in their own hunger and thirst, pain and pleasure, thoughts and emotions, they charge or loiter through life with a dull glaze in their eyes and a dim wit in their step. That’s why Marty liked the country so much. He could drive for hours and never have to talk to a single human being. He could set his own time and terms for each meeting, catch them at home, away from their human herd, and take what he needed from them.

Martin Kingsley was a vacuum cleaner salesman.

Marty usually tried to hit about three houses a day. If he only made one sale every two days that kept him in food, gasoline, hotels, and the occasional pair of socks or underwear. Everything a man like Marty ever really needed. Other than his art of course…that’s what really drove him in life.

Marty was in southwest Oklahoma, somewhere between Walters and Duncan…on his way to dump coffee grinds onto the carpet of a Mrs. Brocks, a 250 pound mother of five who always had the appearance of melting wax…when he found Clive impaled in a wheat field on what appeared to be the remains of an ancient windmill.

He didn’t know his name was Clive at the time. In fact, he couldn’t even wrap his mind around the idea that the gentleman was impaled until he saw for himself up close and personal. Marty was simply minding his own business, trying his best to avoid the worst of the pot holes, listening to Jerry Reed telling him he still had a long way to go and a short time to get there, when he noticed, not fifty feet off of the road, an upright piece of timber with what appeared to be a man slouched over the top of it. As he slowed the car, eventually coming to a stop on the dirt-red shoulder, he realized that the timber did not end at the man’s stomach, but continued clear through his back, ending in a splintered point, below which the man’s feet and hands dangled nearly four feet off of the ground.

“What the hell,” Marty mumbled as he climbed from behind the wheel of the old Buick, mopping sweat from his pink forehead with a more gray than white handkerchief. He took the cell phone out of his front pocket, figuring he should call the Sheriff before the buzzards started in, and noticed that, like most of rural Oklahoma, he couldn’t even pick up a single bar of signal. He put the phone back, placed his hands on his hips, and pondered on what to do next.

“I could just leave,” he thought, “No one around, no harm done. But, how the hell did a man manage to get all the way up there?”

The pole, which he then realized must have once been one leg of a windmill based on the abandoned trough not far from it, rose at least eight feet off of the ground. The only way a man could get up there would be to be placed there by someone else who was no longer anywhere to be seen. Marty decided he couldn’t leave until he got a closer look at how this accident had occurred.

Marty was a big man. Actually, those are the words he preferred to use. Marty was in fact a fat man; a pink, bald, short, middle-aged, heart attack waiting to happen, fat man. These qualities did not aid in the short trek down a slight embankment, over a stagnant ravine, up the other side, then over the barbed wire. The walk left him with a torn shirt, wet shoes, out of breath, and only about twenty feet from the car. After the final thirty feet over rock-hard clods of dirt under a scalding 102 degree sun Marty was just about ready to kick himself in the ass when he reached the foot of the pillar.

The stench was already abominable, like any slaughter house in summer, thick with blood, bile, and excrement. Marty looked up, shielding his eyes from the two p.m. glare, but couldn’t make out anything more than a vague human shape; further down the pole, however, dripped the remains of the man who hung there, already drying in the heat. Marty looked around, thinking he would find a ladder or maybe some tire tracks, but other than his own footprints, there was no evidence anyone had been here since the last failed crop was plowed under leaving neat little rows of infertile soil. Marty shrugged over his stupidity as he turned to make the walk back to the Buick, figuring that even if he decided to report it he could at least let the deputy know he had made some sort of effort.

“Excuse me, sir, could I maybe get a hand. I seem to have fallen.”

Labels: Contest, Fiction, Horror

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(The second place winner – our Animated Corpse Colonel – in the DaRK PaRTY Wicked Scary Short Story contest is a Canadian college student. Shannon Fay is a journalism student at King’s College in Halifax. Strangely, she admits that when home alone – she sometimes tries to move objects with her mind. We like her already!

The judges were struck by how Fay incorporated her journalistic style into her story. The straight-forward narration and strong voice of the main character kept us reading to the surprise ending. Short, but powerful.)

By Your Side

By Shannon Fay

Love has always frightened me. How could it not? It is an omnipotent force, cruel in its blind impartiality. ‘Love conquers all.’ ‘Love will find you in a crowded room.’ ‘Love can come at any time.’ I took these quaint sayings for what they really were: warnings. Dire messages tucked safely inside greeting cards and sealed in envelopes. I’ve always been able to see the true meaning behind common words and pictures, and I always took their advice straight to the heart.

And so I was careful. I wore long sleeves and wore my hood up and tucked my hands in my pockets throughout high school. I avoided eye contact by letting my hair hang in front of my face and looking at my ink scribbled shoes. Somehow I managed to graduate without love finding me.

But then I went to university. I let my guard down and got comfortable, sure that love would never find me among Plato and Darwin. But love comes when you least expect it. And one day, I noticed that Jonathon Thisby wasn’t in tutorial. Where was he? Had he dropped out? Was he sick?

He came back the next day. I listened to every word he said, laughed at every lame joke. I was just so relieved he was back.

It was only after tutorial that I realized what this meant. It was a new sensation, this nauseous feeling from the root of my brain stem to the pit of my stomach. Even after I threw up in the dorm bathroom the feeling did not go away.

Last year I went to a party knowing that he would be there as well. I didn’t drink, I never did, but I watched as Jonathon downed shot after jello shot. It almost made me wonder if he was as uncomfortable there as I was.

I stayed late because he did, but it was worth it because he offered me a ride home seeing as we both lived on campus. I barely heard myself say yes. I just couldn’t believe it. I was going to be alone with Jonathon Thisby. The hours of standing awkwardly in the corner of a stranger’s house had paid off.

We didn’t talk too much on the way back. I was always pretty quiet, but I just couldn’t think of the right way to confess my feelings.

“How are you liking philosophy?” he asked.

“I like it,” I replied, surprised that he had broken the silence. “Even though I wonder if I even belong here.”

“Hey, don’t sell yourself short.” He rubbed his forehead with his hand. “There are plenty of people who will do that for you.”

He didn’t see the STOP sign. I did, but it didn’t matter. There was no secret message in the sign; it was one of the few things in life that meant what it stood for.

He didn’t STOP. Neither did the car coming from the other direction, but they didn’t have a STOP sign so it’s understandable. They slammed into the passenger door and pushed us into the other lane.

I don’t remember the accident beyond that. It’s been a year but things are still strained between me and Jonathon. He blames himself. His hands still shake when he puts them on a steering wheel.

We haven’t spoken since then, but he knows I’m around, always. Sometimes he’ll see me out of the corner of his eye, or glimpse me in the mirror when he shaves or brushes his teeth. Or he’ll be studying and suddenly look up from his book as if he expects to see me standing there, but he never does. But I am there.

I think he thinks I blame him too. He thinks I’m out for revenge. No, Jonathon, that’s not it at all. I’m here because I love you. Maybe if I had told you that night, things wouldn’t have happened the way they did. I know this love is bad for both of us; it consumes me and soon I won’t have any soul left. It keeps you up at night and looking over your shoulder during the day. It’s eating away at both of us, but hopefully I’ll be able to make you understand before it devours us whole.

Labels: Contest, Fiction, Horror

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