I hear that true crime is hot. Newsweek did a story. Walter Mosely, one of the living masters of crime fiction, said we love fictional crime stories because they supply justice that real life cannot, or too often doesn’t. Mosely got that right.
I say this as I follow the case of Holly Boutilier, the slip of a 19-year-old who was killed in a homeless camp in Bangor, Maine. The murder was a pretty close replica of a book I wrote a while back, Home Body. (see post below)
The alleged killer, a general screw-up named Colin Koehler, is in the pictures now in jailhouse orange. Cops say he confessed to stabbing Holly, a feisty waif of a young woman, then slitting her throat. He’s having psychological evaluations. You can presume he’ll be found to be messed up. Oh, reallly? If he did it, he’ll get 25 to life. After a week, he’ll be gone from the news. In a year, he’ll only be remembered by his family and a few friends.
Where’s the justice in that? Hard to find. And that, in the real world, is as good as it gets. It doesn’t get any sadder than this.
Not to diminish good police work (the cops who worked this one deserve citations), but sometimes we need something more, even if it’s made up. Heroes who rise above the chaos, people who serve a mean kind of justice to the bad guys among us. That exists in books, movies, our imaginations. Some call it escape reading, escape movies, but it’s an escape we need. And we also need to feel that, in a better world, more justice would be done.
In PORT CITY SHAKEDOWN, the first Brandon Blake novel, Brandon gets a full dose of bad guys. A brawl in a funeral home introduces him to Joel Fuller, a sociopathic hustler. Fuller is fresh out of jail and determined to take Brandon out—after Fuller and his sidekick Kelvin shake him down.
Rocky isn’t a tough guy. He’s a skinny little kid with crooked glasses, and he shouldn’t be homeless in Portland, Maine. When McMorrow and Roxanne pluck him from under the stomping feet of a gang of street kids, Rocky latches onto McMorrow–and drags him into a world of murder, both old and new. Why is McMorrow protecting Rocky? The cops want to know. Why is Rocky on the run? McMorrow wants to know. Why does death follow in Rocky’s wake? Jack and Roxanne need to find out before they’re added to the list. 
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