Announcing the Big Holiday Sale!

The holidays draw nigh and everyone is in a dither about what to buy their family and friends. If you’re reading this blog, there’s an excellent chance your family and friends would like a book. Not just any book; a Kindle book. Less clutter, it won’t clog up their bookshelves, and the chances of a paper cut are nil. And not just any Kindle books, either. What they’d really enjoy is one—or more—books from the double Shamus award nominated Nick Forte series.

I’m your friend and I’m here for you. To aid in this endeavor, I‘m having a special on all four Forte novels between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but timely action is key. All four books will be on sale for the better part of a week, one book at a time, in a series of Kindle Countdown promotions.

Here’s how it works: starting Monday, November 28, Book One of the Forte series, A Small Sacrifice, will go on sale for 99 cents. Tuesday it goes up to $1.49. Wednesday it’s $1,99, Thursday is $2.49 day, and by Friday you’re paying full freight. Here’s the schedule:

November 28 – December 1: A Small Sacrifice.

December 5 – 8: The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of.

December 12 – 15: The Man in the Window

December 19 – 22: A Dangerous Lesson.

“But wait,” you say. (You must have said it pretty loud for me to hear it all the way over here.) “How do we give a Kindle book as a gift?” It’s simple. How simple? It’s so simple even I have done it, both pitching and catching. Here’s how it works:

1. From the Kindle Store, select the book you want to purchase as a gift.
2. On the product detail page, click the Give as a Gift button.
3. Enter the personal email address of your gift recipient.
4. Enter a delivery date and an optional gift message.
5. Click “Place your order” to finish your gift purchase using your Amazon 1-Click payment method.
6. The lucky recipient receives an e-mail with download instructions and the warm feeling that comes with knowing they are loved.

Everyone is busy this time of year, Lots of stuff going on. Lots of things on your minds. Don’t worry. I’ll post reminders in Facebook and on the blog margins. You don’t have to thank me. It’s just how I am.

But wait!! There’s more!!

You may well receive an Amazon gift card as part of your personal holiday gelt. Do not feel left out. You may not be able to get the Forte books for dirt cheap—and 99 cents is as down and dirty as it gets—but our Hanukkah/After Christmas sale runs December 27 – 30. Same .99/1.49/1.99/2.49 deal as before, but on Wild Bill, my standalone novel about how an FBI agent’s case of a lifetime is jeopardized by a mob war.

If my stuff is not to your taste and you have gift cards burning holes in your pockets, that’s okay. Stop back here on January 5 for my list of the best books I read during 2016. Not necessarily books released in 2016, though some will be, but the best books I read during the year. Not that my opinion outweighs anyone else’s, but that’s all I do here is give opinions, and you’re still here. Do the math.

A Dangerous Lesson: Jan Rusiewicz

Jan Rusiewicz (rue-SEV-ich) is a Violent Crimes detective for the Chicago PD. Works for Nick Forte’s best friend, Sonny Ng. Jan and Nick were romantically involved for a while until one of them broke it off. Neither was exactly sure whose idea it was to split. Things were touchy for a while, but the original friendship survived the demise of the more elevated relationship and moved into a place where it would be hard to say which actually had been the more elevated relationship.

Jan is working on a task force led by Sonny to catch the Thursday Night Slasher, who has been terrorizing women in Chicago for six months. It’s starting to wear on her.

Jan stood no more than a foot away from me. Impeccably dressed, as always. Nothing expensive. Money never sat idle in Jan Rusiewicz’s bank account. She got more mileage out of Filene’s Basement, consignment shops, and one special thrift store on Fullerton than a hybrid car going downhill with the wind at its back.

Getting called out of bed was nothing new to her, even before she got involved with the Slasher task force. She always had tomorrow’s clothes laid out the night before. Cleaned up and stepped right into them to hit the ground running. Said it gave her an advantage with a suspect, always looking ready to go even if she’d only had time to shower and change clothes in the Area Four station.

Today she showed wear. Blouse not tucked in evenly. A button missed. The suit wasn’t so rumpled anyone but I, and maybe Sonny Ng, could see it, but it didn’t meet Jan’s standards.

I touched her elbow. “Are you all right with this Slasher business?”

“No.” The finality of her answer combined with its tone to set my alarms off. “Do you know I’ve worked over a hundred homicides? I’ve seen shootings and stabbings, family crimes, gang executions, drive-bys, and a baby with its head forced between radiator grates. I worked midnights in a squad, and sat in alleys full of rats to decoy some asshole into robbing me. I’ve been shot at, almost stabbed, and called names I had to ask what they meant. I put up with it because it’s all part of the job.

“Not this guy. See, I’ve been thinking about it, and all my homicides fall into two groups. Either the killer needed to make someone dead, or things got out of hand. This one lives to make these women suffer. I wish something would happen and he’d leave a survivor. I wouldn’t even mind if she couldn’t identify him. I just want to know what he says, how he acts. Does he tell them anything. I really don’t think he does this to kill them. He just wants to see how much they can endure. And that makes it even worse.”

“Are you sleeping?”

“If you can call it that. I stay up reading and looking at photos until my eyes close in the middle of a sentence. Then I lay in bed and pretend to sleep. I dozed off at the kitchen table a couple of nights ago and thought if I just stayed like that, holding my head up with my hand, I might sleep. It wasn’t bad for about ten minutes. Then my arm got stiff and I got up to go to bed and a picture caught my attention like maybe I saw something I missed before and I was there for another hour.” She rubbed her hands together as she spoke. “I promise myself five more minutes, I’ll quit at midnight, then I look up and it’s twelve-twenty-five and I think twelve-thirty, then it’s one-fifteen and I say the hell with it and stay till three. Then I pass out more than sleep and still see the sun come up.”

“Do you want off the case?”

“Goddamn right I want off the case! This is ruining my life. My periods are even fucked up.”

“Then talk to Sonny. He’ll understand.”

“I almost did a couple of times. Then I look at a crime scene shot. I can’t imagine how horrible it must’ve been for them, and I’m feeling sorry for myself because I can’t sleep?” She chewed on her lower lip and I noticed how frayed it was. “This bastard owes me. I want the satisfaction of bringing him in. It doesn’t have to be me personally, but I want to be able to say I had a hand in it.”

“You do already. You know that.”

“And you know it’s not the same.”

Sure, I knew. A little piece of Jan died this morning when she saw what happened to Carol Blessing. A little piece of any cop dies when he sees something horrible, and every cop deals with it in his own way. Some act hard. Some drink hard. The pieces of Jan that died with each of the Slasher’s victims were getting bigger. She usually maintained her balance by talking with her father the retired cop. Mike Rusiewicz had never seen anything like this.

A Dangerous Lesson is available in both paperback and e-book at all finer Amazons. 

A Dangerous Lesson: Sharon Summers

Sharon Summers began her relationship with Nick Forte as his receptionist and secretary. Moved up to general manager of Forte Investigations with a private investigator’s license of her own. Now she’s a large part of Forte’s conscience, the person—along with his daughter, Caroline—most responsible for keeping him tethered to the man he was and not drifting away into the man he sometimes threatens to become. Forte once described their relationship as occupying “the places where the relationships of friends, lovers, and families left seams. In the few years I’d known her, we had become the mortar that held the bricks of our lives together.”

Here an abused wife has just left Forte’s office.

I stared at the open door like she might come back. Sharon paused at the threshold. She knew I’d tell her if I wanted to talk about it, and wouldn’t take it personally if I didn’t. I filled her in on the other night, and the relevant parts of today’s conversation.

“I don’t get it,” I said when she was caught up. “Why would she stay? It doesn’t matter how much she loves him, or he says he loves her. He’s going to beat her again, probably soon. Maybe even worse than he might have because I interrupted him last time. She knows that. I saw it in her face. But she’s not ready to leave. Have you ever known anyone in a situation like that?”

“Better than you think.” I rolled my eyes up to look at her. She stayed in the threshold between our offices. The infamous pile of summonses behind her partially obscured my view of her beloved ficus. Her voice sounded much farther away. “Pete used to get rough when he drank. I tried to stand up to him and hit him back a few times. That just made him madder, and he was too big for me to handle. All I did was make it worse.”

This was news to me. Sharon always struck me as the most bullshit-intolerant woman I’d ever known. Finding out she’d been through something like this was almost like finding out Henry Aaron corked his bat. Almost. Questions ran through my mind faster than I could ask them. What I said was, “How long?”

Sharon’s expression never changed. Her voice never wavered, maintained that far-away timbre. “Five hundred and forty-two days from the first time he hit me until I told him I’d kill him if he ever put a hand to me again. I told him as I was leaving to pick up the boys from daycare. I never went back.”

“Why?”

“Why didn’t I go back? Or why’d he hit me?”

“Why’d you wait so long?”

She gave me a look I couldn’t have identified if I hadn’t seen it twenty minutes earlier. “I guess I was embarrassed. I know how she feels.” Turned her head to indicate the door Josie had just left through. “Everyone says hitting a woman’s a terrible thing. No one wants to admit she married a man who’d do such a terrible thing, right? So I figured I must have driven him to do it.”

“So it’s your fault?”

“You don’t think that way for a while. You think it must be something you’re doing wrong, or something you should know about. Then you start thinking maybe you deserve it, because there’s something wrong with you. You know you should leave, but you’re afraid to trust your judgment because trusting your judgment’s what got you here in the first place.” The words ran out of her like blood from a picked scab. Just a little at first, then the momentum built like the early departures were sucking the others out to join them. “I heard more than you think. I never listen in with your visitors, but I knew why she was here.”

“How? I didn’t tell you about Sunday night until just now.”

“She had that look.”

“What look?”

Sharon shook her head. “You can’t see it. Only someone who’s been through it can recognize it. Junkies probably see it in other junkies. Gays, too, maybe.” She looked down and away from me and blushed. I’d known her seven years and couldn’t remember ever seeing her do that. “So I listened. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Tell me what you think.”

“Her parents are immigrants with crappy jobs, right? Her brothers and sisters do okay, but they’re worker bees. She gets her associate’s degree and this rich, practically famous doctor marries her. She lives in a great house, has all kinds of money to spend on her family, nice clothes, someone to clean her house for her. She must feel like a princess.

“So he beats up her sometimes. I think he probably does worse than that. It doesn’t matter, ’cause she’s thinking, ‘What do I have to complain about?’ She knows nothing’s free. Her parents worked two jobs each. Her brothers and sisters pitched in for all the weddings. She figures, this is what a nice house costs. She’ll put up with it even if she doesn’t care about the money and the car because she’s ashamed to go to her family and ruin their fantasy, too. She’s living a lie, and she’s Catholic and it’s a mortal sin to –”

 “Sharon.” She never got like this. Sharon didn’t cover things up; she handled them. The altercation after WhirlyBall had passed over her like a humid breeze: mildly uncomfortable, immediately forgotten. I honest to God didn’t know if she was about to get violent, hysterical, or calm down and walk away. And I didn’t want to find out. “It’s okay. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

“Is she a client?”

“Not yet.” Sharon cocked her head, brow furrowed with doubt. “I can’t spot some of things you can, but I can tell when someone’s about ready to do something. She’ll be back. And don’t worry. I’m not going to have two Eloise Marshalls on my conscience.”

A Dangerous Lesson, "Goose" Satterwhite

Timothy Alston “Goose” Satterwhite is my unapologetic homage to Robert B. Parker’s Hawk. Named by his father for the first major league manager to write Jackie Robinson’s name on a lineup card, Goose grew up in the late, unlamented Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago’s South Side. He makes a living collecting things for people who lack legal means to do so. Goose reads two or three books a week and is in the midst of an endless process of gutting and rehabilitation an old house; he worships Norm Abrams as a god. In another book he leaves dinner with Forte to walk an elderly neighbor’s dog, yet “menace rose off him like heat from a parking lot, even when he smiled. Sometimes especially when he smiled.”

(Editor’s note: Mr. Satterwhite meant well, but Clyde Sukeforth was actually Jackie Robinson’s original big league manager.)

Goose answered on the first ring. We arranged to meet at my house, it being more or less on the way to Romeoville.

He beat me there, even after stopping at Mrs. T’s on Boughton Road for a pizza. We sat at my kitchen table with our coats unbuttoned, narfing pizza and drinking caffeine-free Cokes while we made up the plan.

“Not going to be the easiest place to be inconspicuous in,” Goose said between bites.

“You know it?” Goose had information on places that weren’t even open yet.

He shook his head while he swallowed. “Think about it. You a face Ellison not likely to forget. That means I go in. We be at a place called Crazy Joe’s in Romeoville. How many brothers you think hang there?”

“I could call Eddie Riefsnyder. He’d come, but I don’t think there’s time for him to get here.”

“Eddie a good man, but he smell like three shades of cop. I’ll go in, look around. You don’t hear from me in five minutes, come in and look for a high sign. Like you don’t know me.”

“Close enough to a plan for me.” I stood and put my plate in the sink. “Let’s go. I want to get there in time to scope things out, see how many exits there are.”

“Don’t I get to finish my sumptuous repast?”

“We’re pressed for time. Eat in the car.”

Goose closed the pizza box. “You flunked history in school, didn’t you?”

“What makes you think so?”

“Lincoln freed the slaves, honky.”

“All the thugs in the world, and I work with the sensitive one.”

“If you prick us, do we not bleed?”

“When’s the last time anyone made you bleed?”

“Getting bled on count?”

“No. It has to be your own blood.”

“You got me there.” He paused to catch my eye. “This better not be the night.”

A Dangerous Lesson, "Goose" Satterwhite

Timothy Alston “Goose” Satterwhite is my unapologetic homage to Robert B. Parker’s Hawk. Named by his father for the first major league manager to write Jackie Robinson’s name on a lineup card, Goose grew up in the late, unlamented Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago’s South Side. He makes a living collecting things for people who lack legal means to do so. Goose reads two or three books a week and is in the midst of an endless process of gutting and rehabilitation an old house; he worships Norm Abrams as a god. In another book he leaves dinner with Forte to walk an elderly neighbor’s dog, yet “menace rose off him like heat from a parking lot, even when he smiled. Sometimes especially when he smiled.”

(Editor’s note: Mr. Satterwhite meant well, but Clyde Sukeforth was actually Jackie Robinson’s original big league manager.)

Goose answered on the first ring. We arranged to meet at my house, it being more or less on the way to Romeoville.

He beat me there, even after stopping at Mrs. T’s on Boughton Road for a pizza. We sat at my kitchen table with our coats unbuttoned, narfing pizza and drinking caffeine-free Cokes while we made up the plan.

“Not going to be the easiest place to be inconspicuous in,” Goose said between bites.

“You know it?” Goose had information on places that weren’t even open yet.

He shook his head while he swallowed. “Think about it. You a face Ellison not likely to forget. That means I go in. We be at a place called Crazy Joe’s in Romeoville. How many brothers you think hang there?”

“I could call Eddie Riefsnyder. He’d come, but I don’t think there’s time for him to get here.”

“Eddie a good man, but he smell like three shades of cop. I’ll go in, look around. You don’t hear from me in five minutes, come in and look for a high sign. Like you don’t know me.”

“Close enough to a plan for me.” I stood and put my plate in the sink. “Let’s go. I want to get there in time to scope things out, see how many exits there are.”

“Don’t I get to finish my sumptuous repast?”

“We’re pressed for time. Eat in the car.”

Goose closed the pizza box. “You flunked history in school, didn’t you?”

“What makes you think so?”

“Lincoln freed the slaves, honky.”

“All the thugs in the world, and I work with the sensitive one.”

“If you prick us, do we not bleed?”

“When’s the last time anyone made you bleed?”

“Getting bled on count?”

“No. It has to be your own blood.”

“You got me there.” He paused to catch my eye. “This better not be the night.”

A Dangerous Lesson, "Goose" Satterwhite

Timothy Alston “Goose” Satterwhite is my unapologetic homage to Robert B. Parker’s Hawk. Named by his father for the first major league manager to write Jackie Robinson’s name on a lineup card, Goose grew up in the late, unlamented Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago’s South Side. He makes a living collecting things for people who lack legal means to do so. Goose reads two or three books a week and is in the midst of an endless process of gutting and rehabilitation an old house; he worships Norm Abrams as a god. In another book he leaves dinner with Forte to walk an elderly neighbor’s dog, yet “menace rose off him like heat from a parking lot, even when he smiled. Sometimes especially when he smiled.”

(Editor’s note: Mr. Satterwhite meant well, but Clyde Sukeforth was actually Jackie Robinson’s original big league manager.)

Goose answered on the first ring. We arranged to meet at my house, it being more or less on the way to Romeoville.

He beat me there, even after stopping at Mrs. T’s on Boughton Road for a pizza. We sat at my kitchen table with our coats unbuttoned, narfing pizza and drinking caffeine-free Cokes while we made up the plan.

“Not going to be the easiest place to be inconspicuous in,” Goose said between bites.

“You know it?” Goose had information on places that weren’t even open yet.

He shook his head while he swallowed. “Think about it. You a face Ellison not likely to forget. That means I go in. We be at a place called Crazy Joe’s in Romeoville. How many brothers you think hang there?”

“I could call Eddie Riefsnyder. He’d come, but I don’t think there’s time for him to get here.”

“Eddie a good man, but he smell like three shades of cop. I’ll go in, look around. You don’t hear from me in five minutes, come in and look for a high sign. Like you don’t know me.”

“Close enough to a plan for me.” I stood and put my plate in the sink. “Let’s go. I want to get there in time to scope things out, see how many exits there are.”

“Don’t I get to finish my sumptuous repast?”

“We’re pressed for time. Eat in the car.”

Goose closed the pizza box. “You flunked history in school, didn’t you?”

“What makes you think so?”

“Lincoln freed the slaves, honky.”

“All the thugs in the world, and I work with the sensitive one.”

“If you prick us, do we not bleed?”

“When’s the last time anyone made you bleed?”

“Getting bled on count?”

“No. It has to be your own blood.”

“You got me there.” He paused to catch my eye. “This better not be the night.”

A Dangerous Lesson: Jeanne Archambeault

Regular reader of this blog—both of you—know I am not above stealing an idea from anyone, especially when the person from whom I am appropriating is smarter than I am. (Not that this limits my range of targets) Patti Abbott has been providing backstories of characters from her new book, Shot in Detroit, as a way of giving readers some insights into the book through them. Writing up backstories for key characters is too much like work; you should know me better than that by now. The idea of letting the character carry the promotional ball a little does appeal to me. With that in mind, today marks the first in a series of excerpts from my new book, A Dangerous Lesson. Each will feature a character from the book, with a brief into, and 500 – 800 words from the book where that character figures prominently. I hope you enjoy them. I also hope you buy the book. (Those two hopes compete for primacy in my Pantheon of Hopes™ on a regular basis.)

Today’s character is Jeanne Archambeault. Her family fled France ahead of the Nazis and came to America, where she married another refugee who became wealthy through the stock market. Jeanne has asked detective Nick Forte to look into her granddaughter’s new suitor, who Jeanne finds less than exemplary.

“I must explain something of my granddaughter to you. She is my only family left alive. Her mother was an only child, married to this horrible Bosch.”

“Her father is German?”

“American, but of German blood. Vandenbusch.” She said the name as though it pained her to hear it but tasted too bad to keep in her mouth.

“Vandenbusch actually sounds Dutch to me.”

“Dutch? Perhaps. Not as if there is such a difference.” Even I realized it would be impolitic to point out that the surviving residents of Rotterdam might disagree. At least not until I had a signed contract. “He was a small man. An uncultured man. He could not distinguish Monet from Picasso.”

Heathen. Even I knew Monet was French and Picasso was…not French. Italian, maybe. Or Spanish. I nodded like I understood what a burden Vandenbusch must have been to someone of Jeanne’s refinement.

“The man was a shopkeeper. He was the manager – not the owner, mind you – of what you Americans call a hardware store.” Jeanne made it sound as though marrying a crack whore would make him a social climber. “He defined bourgeois. My Chloe was not meant for such a life, to be taken so far from what Henri and I built for her.”

“Was she happy?”

“She had not time to be happy. This – Dutch, as you say – gave her a child before the sacrament. They were married in time to avoid the infamy of a bastard, but Henri and I made them know they were no longer welcome here.” A pause for tea and a visible stiffening of her resolve. “Chloe and he were killed in an automobile accident when the child was but an infant. I have raised her as my own since then. It will be twenty years in Septembre.”

An idea of why I was there sparked far enough back in my mind not to disturb the conversation. “Your granddaughter. Does she have a name?”

Jeanne almost spoke before remembering to glare at my insolence. “The child’s name is Jeannine.” Jeanne beat me to my next comment. “It was a bald attempt to win my favor. A boy would likely have been named Henry.”

Nothing in that for me. I nodded to concede the point.

Jeanne said, “Jeannine has become involved with a man.”

“James Smith, fortune-seeking gigolo, right?”

Jeanne paused until she remembered she had mentioned Smith’s name herself. “Yes, James Smith. I believe his interest in Jeannine to be purely financial.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Jeannine is not an attractive girl.” Looking at Jeanne, I was shocked – shocked! – to think any female descendent would be unattractive. I suppressed my amazement. “Also she is not intelligent. Do not misunderstand me. I do not say she is stupid. Only she does not recognize that men are attracted more to her inheritance than to her charms.”

All of my grandparents were dead. Just as well, if this was how they talked about me behind my back. “Love is unpredictable. Maybe he sees something you don’t.”

“He knows her for only three months. I have known her all her life. I love her as a grandmother and mother, as well. I have no illusions.”

“What do you want me to do, Ms. Archambeault? I won’t run him off for you.”

“Is that why you think you are here? To be the strong arm? Tres gauche. I am very capable of getting vermin from my own home.” She coughed liquidly from deep in her chest and dabbed at her mouth with a handkerchief to catch what I guessed were pieces of lung. “What I cannot do, what I need you for, is to tell me if he should be…run off, as you say.”

“Sounds like your mind is pretty well made up.”

“I am trying to keep my mind open. I must confess it will not take much to convince me this Smith is unsuitable. If that is so, I will take whatever action is necessary.”

“That’s not always as easy as it sounds. Has it occurred to you that trying to force them apart may only pull them together?”

Jeanne’s eyes focused on me, brows drawn together. “I am a woman. I will handle the affairs of the heart. You will find out for me if I must do any handling. You are the detective, no?”

A Door Closes, a Door Opens

We have good news and bad news today. Actually it’s good news and better news, but that doesn’t get anyone’s attention.

First the bad/better news: The Penns River books (Worst Enemies and Grind Joint) are no longer available. Anywhere. Well, maybe from some black market asshole, one of the guys who advertises copies of Grind Joint for a penny and up. Used bookstores. (Not that anyone would let such a deathless tome out of their hands.) I took the books down yesterday, because…

Ta-daaaa!!

Down & Out books will re-release both of them later this year. I’ve seen the covers and this is going to be a first-class operation. (Not that the original wasn’t, but D&OB are packaging the series as a series, and the unifying aspects of the covers are both creative and unmistakable.) Stay tuned for more news on their availability later this year, as well as the third book in the Penns River series, Resurrection Mall, scheduled to drop in the spring of 2017.

So what’s the other news?

The fourth Nick Forte novel, A Dangerous Lesson, became available in paper and electronic

versions yesterday on all finer Amazons everywhere. Forte’s had it tough lately and things are no better. Asked to look into the background of a young man to satisfy the fears of a grandmother, Forte finds the subject of the investigation is even more unsavory than Grandma feared, and that’s not the worst of it. Nick’s friends—Chicago cops Sonny Ng and Jan Rusiewicz—are working together on a task force charged with catching the Thursday Night Slasher, a sadistic killer who has been terrorizing Chicago for months. Forte becomes drawn in and doesn’t know why. Is his case connected? Has he stumbled onto something else? Is the Slasher someone with another connection to him taking an opportunity to make his life miserable? The story intermingles subplots of domestic abuse and memory manipulation and takes Forte to an even darker place than The Man in the Window.

A Dangerous Lesson is available in paper for $10.95 and Kindle for $2.99. (Or the equivalent in various currencies around the Amazon-serviced world.) Less than eleven (three) bucks, people. What other author looks out for his/her readers like that? You want a signed copy? I’ll sign it. Hell, I’ll sign another author’s name if that’s what you want. I’ll sign another author’s book with his name. Your choice. That’s how far I’m willing to go to give my readers a satisfying experience. See if that stick up his ass James Patterson will go that far.