The Big O, Resurrected

August of 2008 was a good month for me: I was asked to review Declan Burke’s The Big O. My first Burke, it will always hold a special place for me. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, and was treated to writing not quite like anyone else’s. Influences are evident—Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake come to mind—but no one had Burke’s unique voice and willingness to keep everyone unsure of what’s going to happen next.

I’ve since read all of Squire Burke’s novels. The promise shown in The Big O—and its predecessor, Eightball Boogie—has not gone to waste. Absolute Zero Cool and Slaughter’s Hound build upon his previous work to display a considerable and growing talent worthy of mention in the same breath as Ken Bruen and Declan Hughes.

The Big O did not receive the play it deserved in this country; it’s hard to believe Harcourt never even thought to release an e-book version. Burke has taken care of this oversight by releasing The Big O for e-book in the United States, United Kingdom and Ireland. ($4.99 / £4.99 / €4.99) Below is my original review, as it appeared in New Mystery Reader in September 2008.

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Irish author Declan Burke is regularly compared to Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake, even though The Big O is only his second novel. Anyone that new receiving that kind of praise has earned a skeptical eye, just as Leonard and Westlake have earned their legends. Burke and his cast of losers are up to it.

Karen King works days for a defrocked plastic surgeon named Frank Dolan; by night she pulls armed robberies for extra cash. Ray Brogan surprises her during a job and doesn't flinch when she draws down on him with a .44. They're a good match: Ray's also a two-career man, alternating between painting murals in children's bedrooms and his more lucrative gig as a kidnapper for insurance fraud scams. Karen's boss, Frank, can't operate anymore after several customers woke up looking like losing boxers. His ex-wife, Madge, is going through the female equivalent of mid-life crisis. Rossi Francis Assisi Callaghan just finished a five years jolt as a three-time loser. His idea of going straight is to open a co-op for cons, where they can fence their swag under the guise of a charity. His getaway driver, Sleeps, is narcoleptic. Detective Stephanie Doyle thinks she has a handle on an investigation, if only she could be sure what she's investigating. Then there's Anna, a true force of nature, Burke's version of Chekhov's gun over the mantel; once you get a full grasp of her, you know something has to happen.

The story launches—"starts" is too tame a word—with Frank's plan to have Madge kidnapped so he can defraud his insurance of half a million pounds. He doesn't want her hurt, though the half million would go a long way toward helping him get over it. He contacts Ray's "agent," to set the scheme in motion. Ray doesn't know Karen works for Frank when she points her gun at him; Karen doesn't know Ray's also working for Frank, in a manner of speaking. Rossi manages to touch them all, usually inadvertently. Everyone has an angle, and no one is as smart as he or she thinks they are.

Burke has a deft touch for keeping the reader only far enough ahead of the characters to build anticipation while still keeping the results a surprise. The characters and their plotlines are incestuously intertwined. Everyone knows, or gets to know, everyone else, whether as friends, lovers, or victims; sometimes more than one. This could be a failing in a book that takes itself too seriously; no worries here. The Big O is virtually a satire of noir fiction, cynically disdainful of everyone's plans. You know nothing will work out the way anyone wants it to.

It's the anticipation of how badly fouled up things will get that keeps the story moving. At times it's like reading a description of a Marx Brothers or Three Stooges short. People coming and going, no one sure what the others are up to, and not planning as if they'd care if they did know. Burke's voice and writing style are indebted to Elmore Leonard, as are the characters, but Leonard never plotted so intricately. That's where the Westlake influence comes out, as complicated and interconnected plot lines are kept moving with humor and improbability that never quite becomes implausible. Burke isn't one of those writers for whom humor is an abstract concept that tickles a small part of the back of your mind, and you think, "Oh. That was clever." The Big O is laugh out loud funny when he wants it to be, which is often.

A couple of things don't work as well as they might. One can hardly be helped: bits of terminology don't make their way across the Atlantic as seamlessly as others. There are times a Yank might fancy a glossary; it will pass as you get deeper into the book. Of a little more concern is the final scene, where the complications here are a little harder to follow, and the (appropriately) diminished humor can't cover a couple of bumps, and one twist too many. Still, he treats the ending with the respect it deserves, and doesn't the power of what's happening by keeping the laugh machine running full speed.

I came to The Big O with high expectations and had them exceeded. From the coolest cover of any book published this year (with the possible exception of Christa Faust's Money Shot), through the twists and turns of its cast of not-always-lovable losers, The Big O is big fun. It's just as well Harcourt couldn't get it out in time for beach season; too many people would be staring, wondering what the hell you were laughing at.

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I’ve read about three hundred books since then. Few have blended humor, violence, and suspense as well as The Big O. This is not Tarantino’s vision of comedic violence, laughing at things that make you feel squeamish about yourself later. This is a series of crimes undertaken by criminals who aren’t as smart as they think they are. They do stupid shit, and it’s funny. The Big O is still one of my favorite books, and I expect it will be for as long as I’m reading. Do yourself a favor and get over there.

Guest Blogger: Melanie Florence

Melanie Florence is a long-time friend, whom I met when we were both regular attendees at meetings of The Writers of Chantilly, a group that meets twice a month in the Chantilly VA library. Melanie and I had something in common right away: we were not there for purely recreational writing. While some had to be goaded into contributing to the annual anthology, Melanie was among a small cadre who wrote with no assurance of publication, honing her craft with an eye toward public release. That’s why it’s such a pleasure to welcome her as today’s guest blogger here at OBAAT, to tell us about her new book, Red Flag Warning.

How I Got to Red Flag Warning

As the bossy older sister of a large family, I was a born teacher. Throughout the years I’ve taught by demonstrating, lecturing and writing. But, to be able to teach effectively, I first must learn. My preferred methods of learning are doing it or hearing about it first, then reading about it. Once I came to a general understanding of the subject, my creative side would often find a twist to write about it.

I started writing when I was young. I had a diary that I named Daphne. I poured my heart out with each day’s entry until the day I found its lock broken. In embarrassment and anger, I burned it in the fireplace. Next, in my early teens, I began a novelette about my babysitting adventures. For several months I pecked it out on the typewriter, stacked page after page into a pile, and then lost interest. Years later I searched for it in our family home and came up empty. My dollhouse, china tea set, novelette, and stuffed animals were among the casualties from one of my mother’s purging binges. In my early twenties, I kept a journal of my eight month-long European trip. At least I still have that!

Although I have always been an avid reader and a writer to some degree, I pursued botany and plant ecology in college and in my career because I am awed by nature’s beauty and complexity. I set my writing aside until we moved to an isolated community that was so boring and confining that I had to escape by teaching myself how to write. I had always loved murder mysteries so I began two of my own. The first manuscript described my too real failure to obtain a high school teaching job—so I killed off the Superintendent (figuratively, of course). The second manuscript described the conservative politics that drove me crazy there—so I killed off one of the town councilmen. They remain in several versions as boxes on a closet shelf.

When we moved to Virginia, I joined the Chantilly Writers Group and learned how to write with an active voice. Dana King, especially, took the time to go through my first manuscript page by page and show me how to do it. In Virginia I also began writing a third murder mystery. With that mystery I had finally melded biology and writing—and found my calling. The result is Red Flag Warning, a murder mystery depicting the state of much of our western forests today—tinder-dry and ready to burn. Several people read my manuscript and urged me to get it published. So I did.

Meanwhile I’ve found the time to write short stories that lean more toward fantasy/science fiction, literary and young children. I wrote a poem (with my sister, Lynnette) that I later illustrated and published as a children’s book called The Animal Parade. I have plans to simplify and illustrate a short story I wrote a few years ago and turn that into another children’s book. With children’s books, I can draw and write in snatches. But not so with full-length books.

My main reason for writing is selfish. I totally enjoy being immersed in a story that runs through my thoughts day and night. It’s like living two lives at once. I don’t need to be famous or make a lot of money, although I do like to have readers that appreciate and enjoy the story.

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Thank you for the kind words, Melanie. The check is in the mail.

 Red Flag Warning is available in both paper and for Kindle at Amazon.

Band of Brothers

The Beloved Spouse and I watched Band of Brothers last weekend, cramming all ten episodes into three days. This is not recommended, watching as many as four episodes in a sitting; way too intense.

What I liked best about my initial viewing twelve years ago was the casting. Aside from David Schwimmer, I’d heard of none of them at the time. (That’s right, I didn’t catch Ron Livingston in Office Space until later.) Now that we know who a lot of the actors are from subsequent work, it’s fun to call out what we’ve seen them in since. (“The DOJ lawyer in Justified!” “Southland!” “That’s the guy who killed Phil Leotardi in The Sopranos!”) The first time, when everyone was new, the deaths of the characters were more affecting, as the viewer thought of them as the person, not the actor. The cumulative effect of feeling characters’ deaths more than actors’, along with not knowing who might be next, helped keep the suspense level high without resorting to melodrama.

On the other hand, it’s a war movie that doesn’t glorify war; a certain amount of melodrama is unavoidable. How it’s handled makes all the difference. A key scene takes place when Easy Company is returned to England for replacements and training after the Normandy invasion. Donald Malarkey stops by to pick up his laundry, and the English women who’s working there calls him back on his way out to ask if he can also take Lieutenant Meehan’s. We know Meehan’s plane was presumed lost over the English Channel. Rather than show some maudlin flashback, or look inside Malarkey’s mind, we see him pay her for the laundry, to spare her feelings. This leads to Malarkey picking up the laundry for half a dozen dead mates. The scene doesn’t linger any longer than necessary; the point has been made.

I haven’t seen The Pacific, but I can’t imagine the battle scenes can be done any better. Each scene is able to present a panorama that allows the viewer to know where he is, no matter the point of view. The rare exceptions are those times when the characters don’t know themselves. (TBS asked during the “Bastogne” episode, “How do they know where their own foxholes are?” Watching the soldiers’ reactions during an artillery attack, it’s clear they don’t, not precisely, and several are killed or badly wounded running around looking for a hole.) I didn’t hold the relative authenticity of the violence and its results against The Longest Day yesterday, but this ability to set place was available in 1962, as was shown by the wide shots of the attack on the Ouistreham casino.

The manner of conveying expository information is also far more seamless in Band of Brothers. Some of this is helped by the broader canvas afforded by an eleven-hour production. We pick up Easy Company in training, where scenes between recruits affords opportunities to show what’s going on, not tell. The writers also trust the intelligence of their audience more. This is a telling point, as most of their audience was not around for the Normandy invasion, while almost everyone who saw The Longest Day could tell you where they were when they heard about it.

Something else that struck me near the end of Band of Brothers occurred during Episode 9, when Easy Company discovers a concentration camp and I realized almost everyone with personal experience of the Holocaust is gone. This makes it more imperative than ever for their eyewitness accounts to remain in circulation. Holocaust deniers are bad enough now; they will only become emboldened when no one is left to directly refute their lies.

Watching Band of Brothers and The Longest Day back-to-back was an enlightening experience for me as a writer, though I’d recommend anyone who wants to try it watch The Longest Day first. The juxtaposition of different styles of storytelling and point of view will open your eyes to some things we may take for granted now. If you’ve seen neither, you owe it to yourself to do so. You’ll learn a lot more than just about writing.

The Longest Day

One of my proudest achievements as a father was introducing The Sole Heir to The Longest Day. It was Memorial Day weekend, 2003. She was twelve and I’d decided she needed to know a little more of what the holiday was about. She might like it, might not, but I thought it was important.

A year later was the sixtieth anniversary of the Normandy landings, and the American Film Institute Silver Theater showed The Longest Day on a big screen, one show only, Sunday afternoon, June 6. There were fewer than thirty people there. We were two of them; she’d asked me to take her. The ticket taker, an elderly gentleman of probably Korean War vintage, motioned me over when TSH went to the ladies’ room.

“This is a good thing you’re doing, bringing your daughter like this.”

“It’s better than you know, buddy,” I said. “She asked to come.”

HDNet movies is showing The Longest Day in February, so I watched it again. A bittersweet viewing, as I made the mistake of watching it a few days after The Beloved Spouse and I binge watched Band of brothers over the previous weekend. As powerful as it is, The Longest Day doesn’t hold up to a comparison.

Leave aside the special effects, bloodless violence, and sanitary language. Those are the state of what moviemakers could do, and get away with, in 1962, and aren’t the problem, anyway. What doesn’t hold up are the things that could have been done better and had been done better at the time.

The first hour is basically an exposition dump, characters talking to other characters about things both of them already know, or pretending to speak to another character when they’re really speaking to the audience to make damn sure we get it. I could almost understand it today, nearly seventy years after the event, but almost everyone who saw the movie when it came out would have been familiar with the circumstances. It had happened only eighteen years in the past, well within their personal experience. Several of the key characters worked on the filming. This was not ancient history. Even if it had been, it could have been handled in a less ham-handed fashion than to have John Wayne tell a junior officer, “I don't think I have to remind you that this war has been going on for almost 5 years. Over half of Europe has been overrun and occupied. We're comparative newcomers. England's gone through a blitz with a knife at her throat since 1940. I'm quite sure that they, too, are impatient and itching to go. Do I make myself clear?” followed by, “Three million men penned up on this island all over England in staging areas like this. We're on the threshold of the most crucial day of our times. Three million men out there, keyed up, just waiting for that big step-off. We aren't exactly alone.” Please.

The other issue should probably qualify as forgivable under the caveat two paragraphs above—sign of the times—but it’s still jarring to see the upbeat music and spirit at the end. Deaths are shown, but glossed over, forgotten as soon as the camera moves away. Yes, it’s only one day and time is of the essence, but the only sign anyone feels something for a dead comrade is when Robert Mitchum sees Jeffrey Hunter shot while trying to blow up a roadblock. Even then he moves directly on to encouraging the next man. He has to, it’s not a big deal, but at least Mitchum does it with a little melancholy. One can sense his eyes wanting to drift back in the direction of Hunter’s body.

Maybe I would not have noticed these things so much had we not seen Band of Brothers so recently. Next time we’ll examine the differences.

Meet Jim “Evil J.” Winter, creator of Cleveland Detective Nick Kepler

Jim Winter’s newest e-book, The Compleat Kepler, is a compilation of short PI stories he began writing around ten years ago.  It’s nice to see an author make available early work. First, it shows a degree of confidence, as a lot of writers (musicians, actors, politicians) like to walk away from their early accomplishments. It’s also nice to have these stories as reference points to see how the author has evolved and grown—or not—over time. My appreciation of the three most important early influences on me grew greatly after I read their earlier work. (Raymond Chandler’s Collected Stories, Ed McBain’s Learning to Kill, and Elmore Leonard’s The Complete Western Stories.)

The Compleat Kepler is an entertaining anthology, with a hero who finds himself in situations many fictional PIs have confronted, who devises other than expected ways to resolve them. Kepler is not an antihero; neither is he Chandler’s knight errant. The combination is intriguing, and should be enough to whet your appetite for more of Jim’s work. Road Rules made my Best Reads list for 2011; Northcoast Shakedown has been on my TBR list for too long; I need to get to it, as I know I’ll like it. How do I know? I’ve liked everything else Winter has done.

It’s my pleasure to give Jim Winter a little time to introduce himself personally to OBAAT readers.

Dana asked me, “What got you into crime fiction?” I suppose that goes to the heart of The Compleat Kepler, since all the stories served to flesh out the character of Nick Kepler. The earliest published story is “A Walk in the Rain.” The most recent is from 2009, “Love Don’t Mean a Thing.” There is another, a novella, in draft form that I’ll release in a later collection.

The first three stories in this collection were my introduction to crime fiction. I wrote “Race Card” some time in 1999, “Valentine’s Day” about a year later, and “A Walk in the Rain” in mid-2001. As you read them, you can tell I was learning. I’d written before this. What I’d written was science fiction with a fairly large cast. Many who read what I’d written expected that I would go professionally into SF.

But my SF roots are in film: Star Trek and Star Wars, Terminator and Independence Day. I didn’t want to just parrot what I’d seen on television and in the movies. I especially was disappointed with the Star Wars prequels. At the same time, I had this character of Nick Kepler around for several years. Occasionally, I would dust off an old manuscript and play around with him. By the time I decided to get serious about writing, I’d already burned out on SF.

But crime was different. Crime put people at their worst in the most dire circumstances. You don’t need a monster from the depths of the seas of Zanzibar 7. There are plenty of human monsters walking the Earth in your neighborhood today.

Also, one of my earliest influences was Robert B. Parker. Parker gets a lot of criticism leveled at him for his work from the mid-1980’s on, but those first eight or nine novels were a primer on style and plotting. Parker had a way of using minimal language for description, the way a he could find a key word describing a character and hanging it on that person until he or she had a name. From there, I went to The Maltese Falcon, and developed a deeper appreciation of the PI novel.

Even though I cut my teeth on SF, I wondered if I could handle crime fiction. Was this something I wanted a career at? Then, at the tail end of the nineties, someone brought to my attention Blue Murder, an electronic zine and press so pulpy you got splinters just typing in the URL. Blue Murder closed its doors not long after I discovered it, but there was more. There was Thrilling Detective. And there was Plots With Guns. And there was Judas. I saw these as an opportunity. So I began writing. And submitting. When I wrote “A Walk in the Rain” one rainy April night and submitted it later that week, I had no idea Neil Smith would jump on it.

That was almost twelve years ago. It’s been a helluva ride.

(Editor’s note: I agree completely with his assessment of Robert B. Parker. His early books are also on the TBR list, as a combination of pleasure and education.)

For your copies of Jim work cited here, follow the links:

The Compleat Kepler

Road Rules

Northcoast Shakedown

Perfect Hatred

Leighton Gage has carved a nice niche for himself with his Chief Inspector Mario Silva series of mysteries set in Brazil. Gage knows how to use Brazil’s exotic beauty to his benefit, deftly juxtaposing it with extremes of wealth and poverty and corruption at all levels. The public officials and politicians who aren’t corrupt are as venal as their peers anywhere else. Gage’s gift is an ability to expose and explore all Brazil has to offer to a writer of crime fiction, while allowing the love of his adopted country to live in every line.

The United States has no equivalent of the Brazilian Federal Police. Their jurisdiction is nation-wide, and supersedes local authority. This allows them to open investigations on their own initiative, and gives Gage carte blanche with his plots, as there is no crime in Brazil in which the federals may not take an interest.

His newest book, Perfect Hatred, allows Gage to take full advantage of the breadth of the Brazilian federal police, Silva’s skills, and the devotion his team has for each other. The book begins with a horrific terrorist bombing; the bomb in a baby carriage, its intent disguised by the bomber’s use of a real baby to cover the explosive. In a province hundreds of miles away, a popular political candidate is shot to death at a televised campaign appearance, on the eve of defeating the incumbent. Silva’s team is split between the two and he is tasked with focusing on the assassination when his instinct is to concentrate on the bombing, as there is reason to believe this was not an isolated incident.

As if Silva isn’t busy enough, a high-ranking criminal who is about to go away forever has sworn vengeance on the prosecutor and cop who put him there; the cop is Silva.

Laid out like that, the book sounds like a hare-brained modern thriller, where the stakes are continuously raised and bodies pile up. (“Now it’s personal.”) This would likely be the case in the hands of a lesser writer. Gage has bigger plans, and better chops. The situation teeters on the brink of becoming out of control; Silva never does. He may be frustrated, angry, and even scared, but he’s the right man at the right time. He has personal problems and ghosts that affect him, but he’s not the stereotypical tormented series protagonist. He’s a good man under intense pressure from multiple sides, and he handles the situation with grace and as much humanity as he can muster. Not perfect and not always on time to be a savior, he’s the glue that holds everything in Gage’s fictional universe together. If his squad is the Brazilian equivalent of Ed McBain’s 87^th Precinct (the analogy that comes most often to mind), Silva is Gage’s Steve Carella.

The writing is perfect for the story, as it always is. Gage is of the school where the writer’s goal is to be as unobtrusive as possible, where he scored highest marks. Nothing will jump out at a first time reader, though those who have several Silva stories under their belts will start to recognize subtle touches that are Gage’s own. He understands suspense is the building of tension and violence is the release of at least some of it. He also trusts his situation, characters, and talent not to beat you over the head with how bad things are. If you don’t feel it on your own, you’re reading the wrong books.

Perfect Hatred may well be the best of an excellent series that gets better book by book. It is not to be missed.

Wayne Gretzky on Writing

Filmmaker Kevin Smith (Clerks, Dogma, Chasing Amy) doesn’t get a lot of run in the crime fiction community. This makes sense, since Smith doesn’t do crime fiction. His book, Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good, in addition to being hilarious and wildly inappropriate, shows a level of introspection and self-awareness not expected someone whose most famous written line (after “I’m not even supposed to be here”) may be, “Hey, try not to suck any dick on the way through the parking lot!”

The reason Smith’s book receives mention here is for the advice he gives writers. Well, everybody. It’s highly relevant for writers, and this is a writing blog. (When it’s a blog at all; I really have to get better about this.) So, now it’s writing advice.

First, the seminal bit: The way to happiness is to figure out what you most love to do and find a way to make money at it. By this measurement, Smith is a very happy man. I took his advice before I ever heard of Kevin Smith, but wasn’t able to pull it off, in large part because, when figuring out what it is you most love to do, it really really really helps if you have a talent for it. The principle is sound. It’s what everyone who dreams of making a living as a writer wants to do, or else they wouldn’t be writers. There are easier, and less tenuous, ways to make a living.

How Smith made it work for him is where Tip Number Two comes in. It’s from hockey great Wayne Gretzky. His father taught him from an early age the secret to playing hockey: Don’t go where the puck is. Go where it’s going to be.

This does not require psychic powers. It does require paying attention. (In Gretzy’s case it also involves indescribable amounts of talent.) Writers know this intuitively. You can’t wade through the discussion forum in Crimespace and not trip over people trying to figure out what will be The Next Big Thing™, and how they can get there first.

Here’s the problem: no one knows. Don’t expand the analogy too far. Gretzky’s not talking about where the puck is going to be in half an hour. He’s concerned about when the puck will next be in a place where he can get to it, and goes there. It’s good to be the first one there—especially if you’re not any bigger than Gretzky—and it’s an even bigger help to have freakish peripheral vision, and know what to do with it.

My point is, too many writers try to create success by outguessing public taste and coming up with The Next Big Thing™. It doesn’t work that way. J.K. Rowling didn’t figure to do something no one had done before—essentially create her own niche—and have it lead to unimaginable wealth. She had a series of stories about a fairly dorky kid who’s also a wizard, and this whole shadow world of wizards that intersects with ours without becoming encumbered by it. In retrospect, it was brilliant. At the time, she just hoped to get off the dole.

The trick is to know how quickly you can move, and to know which places you can’t get to in time. Gretzky wasn’t looking to invent a whole new game; he wanted to do the same things everyone else in hockey wanted to do—get the puck in the net—and he had his own unique way of doing it. You don’t have to create a whole new genre like Rowling did; doing what you do well, in your own unique way, through incremental movements, is the way almost all successes are made. (Think of how many times you’ve heard people who seem to burst upon the scene say, “It took me twenty years to become an overnight success.”)

What really set Gretzky apart, and will work in any field, was his willingness to make others better. He scored 894 regular-season goals in his career; Number Two is Gordie Howe, with 801. Think about that: Gretzky scored 10% more goals than the second greatest goal scorer in the history of the game. It’s as if Barry Bonds had hit 831 home runs. (One look at Gretzky should put to rest any thoughts of chemical enhancement.)

With all those goals, it’s in assists where Gretzky made his greatest mark, with 1,963; second is Ron Francis, with 1,249, That’s a 36% difference between Gretzky and the second greatest assist man in history. (Bonds would have had to hit 1,027 homers to surpass Aaron by a similar percentage. His head would have exploded by 900.)

Help other writers. That doesn’t mean to become a selfless mensch who places the promotion of others above his own aspirations. The two are not mutually exclusive; it’s not a zero-sum game. Small kindnesses you do your peers—a favorable write-up in your blog, posting a (sincerely) good review in Amazon or Goodreads, linking to their stuff in Facebook, whatever—builds up goodwill not just with the direct beneficiary, but with those you helped enlighten. You’ll have more fun, learn a lot, and may well be in a position to receive some of the same when your book comes out. Pay it forward. It’s good for the career and it’s good for the soul. Nourish and enjoy others whenever you can, and in so doing you’ll nourish and enjoy yourself more than you expected.

It’s the right, and smart, thing to do. It’s not like you’re going to get rich.