ABOUT THE BOOKSTHE JACK MCMORROW MYSTERIESBRANDON BLAKE: A CRIME NOVEL

Posts Tagged ‘Maine mysteries’

February 22nd, 2012

On the Portland Turf of Brandon Blake

Le cover, c’est moi.

I’m talking about the Gerry Boyle cover photo of the February/March issue of Northern New England Journey magazine. I wondered if it would be noticeable.

0312 NNE Redux 188x250 On the Portland Turf of Brandon BlakeThe cover photo was taken on Custom House Wharf in Portland’s Old Port. I like it down there and so does my series protagonist Brandon Blake. I walk the city’s streets and docks. Brandon walks (and drives) the beat. He also lives on a vintage Chris Craft cabin cruiser in Portland Harbor.

When photographer Nance Trueworthy called to schedule the photo shoot, she asked me to take her to all of the places my detective (patrolman) hero goes. We wandered around the Old Port, where Brandon helps keep the drinking crowd under control. We explored the Parkside neighborhood, where Brandon searches for a missing baby (pre-Ayla Reynolds) and comes up empty for more than 300 pages. (More to come on the Ayla case). We tromped around Munjoy Hill, the Eastern Prom, where Brandon is given a hard time for being a cop. We walked Upper Congress Street in a blisteringly cold wind.

But we settled back into the waterfront because that’s where Brandon is most at home.

There’s nothing like the film noire feel of a working waterfront, especially at night. The photo was shot after we asked a guy working at The Comedy Club, which was closed, if he could do us a favor and turn on the outside light. He thought about it for a minute, then helped us out. Thanks, bud.

We shot in a brick-lined alley. On the edge of the wharf. With boats in the background. But it was the hollow-sounding boardwalk, the purple wall with the hole in the siding, the vintage signs that kept pulling us back. We wanted to get the half-wild wharf cats in the shot but they were too elusive.

So do I wander the wharves in a Sam Spade overcoat, my fedora pulled low? Well, maybe not. I prefer a baseball cap and leather jacket. But we were trying to capture the spirit of the nighttime city streets, the mystery of the darkened wharves. I hope that when you look at the photo you feel a little of that.

I sure did.

Catch you on the streets.

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December 20th, 2011

Ayla Reynolds, deja vu

I read all the news stories about Ayla Reynolds, the 20-month-old girl reported missing from her bed in Waterville, Maine, last Friday. I watch the TV news. I even watched CNN’s Nancy Grace: (“Tot snatched from bed—Exclusive”) as Nancy interviewed Trista Reynolds, the child’s mother. “All I want to know is where she is,” said Trista, who lost custody of the little girl a couple of months ago and has reportedly struggled with drug addiction.portland press herald 3600858 187x250 Ayla Reynolds, deja vu

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.

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October 31st, 2011

Crime, all around me

A while back Dave Kanell at Vermont’s amazing Kingdom Books asked if I’d write a bit about my influences, some favorite mysteries. I did but never posted it here. So, in case you missed it …

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.images 157x249 Crime, all around me
  • 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.images 1 Crime, all around me
  • 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?

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October 22nd, 2011

On gunshots and old friends

Hey all. November approaches. As I write this, I can hear shots from a high-powered  rifle. Deer season starts on Halloween and somebody is sighting a rifle in the fields behind the house. The sounds of autumn in Maine.

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.

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October 19th, 2011

Augusta bound

Thursday, Oct. 20, Lithgow Library, Augusta, Maine. Don’t be afraid of the poster. I promise I MysteryMonth2011GerryBoyle 193x250 Augusta boundwon’t talk you to death.

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October 12th, 2011

Swedish envy

Have you heard about my new book? It’s called The Girl Who Lived in Waldo County. Well, maybe not. But stop at Maine Crime Writers and read why I sometimes wish I were Swedish.

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October 5th, 2011

The Days Grow Darker

Maybe it’s the shotgun blasts that have taken the place of my alarm clock in the past week. No carnage, unless you’re a duck and the hunters on the marsh have shot you out of the air. But when you’re  jarred away by a 12-gauge, it does get your day off to an interesting start.MysteryMonth2011Final 193x250 The Days Grow Darker

But the days are growing shorter, and the mornings and evenings darker, and that’s a good thing for a crime novelist. Something about fog and rain and early dusk. I’m in the mood to write and McMorrow No. 10 is moving along. I’m liking it. I hope you will, too.

Of course, I’m also out and about talking about my young friend Brandon Blake and PORT CITY BLACK AND WHITE. This week I did a joint thing with New Hampshire writer Toby Ball at Water Street Bookstore, in Exeter, N.H. Great store, nice people, good crowd. I had a good time and I think everyone else did, as well.

Next up is Oct. 20 at Lithgow Library in Augusta, Maine. Lithgow is one of my regular stops, and one I look forward to. Hope you can stop by. And check out the poster. Some of my friends from Maine Crime Writers are on the slate. Stop by and say hello.

If not, stop by here when you can and I’ll have the latest news. E.G., Booklist really liked PC B&W. Some reviewers like the book and get it. Some even add to my understanding of Brandon. This is one of those.

Question of the week: a reader at the NH event asked if I had plans to bring McMorrow and Blake together in a future novel. I’ve considered it. What do you think?

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August 15th, 2011

And the winner of the PORT CITY SHAKEDOWN giveaway is …

… Pamela Oberg of Stone Coast Writers Conference. Her name was picked randomly (entries written on small pieces of paper, placed in a beat-up Red Sox hat ((Manny Ramirez special edition)), shuffled around, and voila!) Thanks for all who took the time to enter. Keep stopping by. We’ll be doing a PORT CITY BLACK AND WHITE giveaway very soon.

Lastly, a reminder that I’ll be at the Wells, Maine, Public Library tomorrow, Tuesday, Aug. 16. The event starts at 6:30 p.m. My plan is to have a good general chat and, because this is the first event for PORT CITY BLACK AND WHITE, I may read from that one a bit. Hope that if you’re in the area, you can stop by. It’s a handsome library with good people. More events are coming in. I’ll be posting them asap.

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August 2nd, 2011

Me and Emmy Lou

opryfeb1a 120x130 Me and Emmy LouA quick post today to catch up on a couple of things:

One, want to read how McMorrow No. 10 may be inspired by Emmy Lou Harris? Go to mainecrimewriters.com for the details. I kid you not. lt’s true.

Two, I’m going to let the PORT CITY SHAKEDOWN giveway go until Aug. 15. That gives the lucky recipient a month or to read Brandon Blake No. 1 before moving on to  PORT CITY BLACK AND WHITE, Brandon Blake No. 2. Just comment. Or send in your name and email and let me know you’d like to enter.

Three, I’m going to be at the Wells, Maine, Public Library Aug. 16 at 6:30 p.m. Rumor has it that we may have a few advanced copies of PC B&W on hand. I can’t wait to hold it in my hand.

Four, we’ve had some disturbing crime in my neck of the Maine woods of late. I’m still processing it. There are days when I wish I’d become a cop. More on that at the end of the week.

Take care and stay in touch.

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