It’s all pretty horrible. And familiar.

I say this, not because I’ve seen other kids snatched from their beds, but because I’ve written about one. A lot. His name was Lincoln and he was almost a year old. He disappeared from the bedroom of his mother’s apartment in Portland. Mom was a drug addict and for several hours didn’t notice he was gone. When it sank in, she freaked.

This was in my last crime novel, PORT CITY BLACK AND WHITE. My fictional cops converge on the neighborhood. They bring in tracking dogs. They interrogate the mom, her boyfriend, the child’s father, all of the neighbors, a homeless woman who roams the neighborhood.

Nothing.

Days go by. The mom and her family accuse the police of dragging their feet. The dad beats the boyfriend to a pulp. The neighbors say they’ve seen nothing, heard nothing, know nothing. The child has simply vanished.

Of course, he hadn’t. And some of the people in the book know where he was. Even as the cops speculate that little Lincoln has been snatched to leverage a drug debt, or maybe has been sold on the street. I knew what had really happened. I’d made up the story.

I had someone tell me just last week that they couldn’t read my book because it involved a crime against a child and they didn’t have the stomach for it. I was surprised because as the author, I hadn’t found the story terribly disturbing. But then again, I knew how it would end.

That’s not the case with Ayla Reynolds. I walk out to the mailbox to get the paper every morning and, with trepidation, open the front page. (Today was a $30,000 reward). I don’t want to see bad news. Like everyone else, I want to see the story that says the blonde, smiling innocent toddler has been located and she’s live and well.

As I write this, I’m still hopeful. As a crime writer, I can come up with any number of scenarios that involve all sorts of deception—and no violence. I can envision any number of ways this all could play out, and end with the child safe and sound. I know the tangled webs that people weave, how one lie leads to another and before you know it, every investigator in the state is at your house. I know that because I’ve invented those stories. I can invent one with a happy ending for Ayla Reynolds—but I can’t write it.

It’s an odd feeling, seeing things happen that are right out of my book, but knowing that this case has a life of its own. Something happened to this little girl last week and the dominoes continue to fall, day after day, cold night after cold night.

It’s made me wonder why I invented such a story—a child snatched from his crib, his mother distraught, racked with guilt—but  in the end, it’s just that—a story. And just as I have the power to imagine such a mess, I have the power to clean it up. I can put little Lincoln in harm’s way, but I can also save him.

Not with Ayla. I just follow this story like everyone else, with the hope that she is fine and the guilty parties in the case will be brought to justice. It happens in books. Let it happen one more time.

Digging up the past in the back forty

I digress, but there’s been a lot of that in the past few days, thoughts and conversation leading us rather than the other way around. Good fun but it ends this weekend, with trips to the airport, Portland, etc. And then it’s back to the writing desk for a good long stretch with ONCE BURNED, McMorrow No. 10. Very different from PORT CITY BLACK AND WHITE, which was a strap-yourself-in-and-hang-on kind of book. McMorrow, Roxanne, daughter Sophie and “Uncle” Clair are in deep in this one. The danger is simmering, smoldering and suffocating.

More to come … In the meantime, all the best to you and yours from my neck of the snowy Maine woods.

And in book-related news, I’ll be making a couple of pre-holiday stops:

On Dec. 3, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., I’ll be at the Mr. Paperback store at Elm Plaza in Waterville. Signing and general chit chat.

On Dec. 9, 4-7 p.m., I’ll be at the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine. A book signing and a great museum for all things nautical and historical. I guess they thought my boat bum Brandon Blake was the right fit. This is a big day in Searsport. Tree lighting and related festivities, so come and check it out.

And lastly, if you’re headed for the New England Crime Bake in Dedham, Mass. this weekend, I’ll see you there. Should be a good time.

And truly lastly, don’t forget to check out the Maine Crime Writers blog. Me and a bunch of other mystery writers sounding off on all sorts of things.

Take care,

Gerry

I swiveled my study chair, reached for the shelf. Books and writers I really like—they get to stay in the study. Others are vanquished to bookshelves elsewhere in this rambling old house.

So what did I come up with? It’s an eclectic mix:

• The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. First published in 1968 by the husband-wife team from Sweden. Their Martin Beck mysteries are solid police procedurals. You can’t go wrong with any of them.
• Just a Corpse at Twilight by Janwillem van de Wetering. The Zen master of mysteries, van de Wetering wrote mysteries set in Amsterdam. They have a dreamy quality to them that I find beguiling. A brilliant guy, van de Wetering lived all around the world before settling on the Maine coast. He died in 2008.
• Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler. Enough said. I turn to these from time to time to witness wonderful writing. Every page has a sentence you feel you should remember. This one, picked because that’s where the book fell open. “He lay smeared on the ground, on his back, at the base of a bush, in that bag-of-clothes position that always means the same thing.” Nice.
• God Save the Child by Robert B. Parker. Chandler’s only true heir. I read the last Spenser, then reread some of this one, his second, published in 1974. I like the early books best. Parker was a gifted writer, known for his dialogue, but his descriptive stuff, which fell away over the years, was very good.
• Blitz by Ken Bruen. The UK’s master of dark and gritty crime novels set in South London and Galway. Inspector Brant, his amoral London detective, is a masterful creation.
• The Deep Blue Good-By by John D. MacDonald. I’ve read everything MacDonald wrote and have a collection of his Travis McGee paperbacks with their quaintly lurid covers. A great storyteller, skilled at narrative, powerfully descriptive. “She was a tall and slender woman, possibly in her early thirties. Her skin had the extraordinary fineness of grain, and the translucence you seen in small children and fashion models. In her fine long hands, delicacy of wrists, floating texture of dark hair, and in the mobility of the long narrow sensitive structuring of her face there was the look of something almost too well made, too highly bred, too finely drawn for all the natural crudities of human existence.” Is that good or what?

So these are a few of the influences. Reading the work of writers like these, and spending more than a decade as a newspaper reporter, landed me in this chair. Today I continue with PORT CITY UNDERGROUND, the second Brandon Blake mystery. I’m pondering a character whose biggest flaw is a highly developed sense of right and wrong. Could that flaw be fatal?

I won’t keep you, but I have something to report. One, I had a good time at Lithgow Library in Augusta earlier this week. Very nice people, most of whom had read several of my books. It’s interesting how after you do this for a while, you have people who show up at the same place. Year after year. They bring faded paperbacks for you to sign. Sometimes they bring their kids–the next generation of readers.

It was really fun, more so than usual. A woman named Fran sat in the front row. She had a copy of Port City Black and White for me to sign.

Many years ago, Fran invited me to speak to a fraternal organization, the women’s branch. I don’t recall the name of it but I remember we met at their hall, on the second floor of an old brick building on Water Street in Augusta. Fran’s husband was in the men’s side of the group. I remember that before I talked, we ate. It may have been spaghetti. Homemade. The ladies made me feel at home.

Fran is a widow now, her husband passed. She’s had cancer but she’s of tough Maine stock and she came through it. She gets along pretty well now, and she isn’t the type to complain. She’s the type to make the best of things. She calls me, “dear.”

Fran said she had read Port City Black and White and liked it. She did say, “Jack McMorrow will always be my favorite.” She asked me when the next one would be out. I said probably not until late next year. Fran looked disappointed. When you’re older, the end of next year can seem a long way away.

It made me want to write faster. In fact, this week  as I sat in my study, moving McMorrow and friends through their paces, I thought of Fran and while I didn’t write faster, I did spend an extra hour or two in the writing chair. It’s the least I can do.

http://crimealwayspays.blogspot.com/

And a last note. I’ll be talking about PORT CITY BLACK AND WHITE at Water Street Bookstore, Exeter, N.H., Oct. 4, 7 p.m., with Toby Ball (SCORCH CITY). I think this is going to be a lot of fun.

Otherwise, all is well. Getting in the last boat outings of the season. Writing steadily (McMorrow No. 10). Blessed with good health, good friends, good times.

Enjoy the day,

Gerry

PS Enjoy PORT CITY BLACK AND WHITE? Please drop a quick review on Amazon. I’m told this is important. I know it will be appreciated.

PSS Don’t forget to check out the group mystery writers blog, mainecrimewriters.com. Ten Maine mystery writers, blogging all the time.