Noir fiction for the modern reader.

THE COLDEST MILE by Tom Piccirilli

Review Copyright 2009 by Mike Dennis

How would you like to take a job where your employer cuts your predecessor’s stomach open before your very eyes?  Well, that’s what’s offered to the central character in the opening of this blow-‘em-out hardboiled tale by Tom Piccirilli.

He’s called Chase, and we learn that he was raised as a grifter by his grandfather, Jonah, who pulled him out of a foster home and straight into a life of crime.  Now, as a twentysomething adult, he’s on his own.  Jonah, now in his sixties, and who is one hardass dude, has plenty of blood on his hands.  But he’s still deep inside Chase’s head, for more reasons than one.

Immediately after Chase takes the job as chauffeur for a disintegrating New Jersey crime family, he runs into problems, all of his own making.  He’s not given to following orders too closely, he talks back, shows no respect, and pushes the family’s gunmen around.  The reader can’t help but think he’s going to get whacked any second.

Referring to a previous Piccirilli novel, The Cold Spot, a dense backstory is cleverly revealed in bits and pieces, letting the reader in on the complex relationship between Chase and Jonah.  In The Coldest Mile, Chase wants to find him again, but for very different reasons.

Piccirilli, an award-winning author of some twenty novels, knows how to write this stuff.  He keeps the reader’s eyes on the page with lots of stinging prose and tough dialogue.  He takes us with Chase to Florida, where the criminals are decidedly minor league, and gives us a finely-tuned feel of the messiness of their organizations.

He also draws a clear connection between Chase and Jonah.  It’s an ambivalent one, filled with both resentment and respect, but most of all, it is riveting, and forms the emotional core of the novel.

Through Chase’s memories, Jonah’s character is well-drawn before he ever actually walks onto the page.  When he finally does appear, he steals every scene he’s in, whether Piccirilli wants him to or not, and he very nearly steals the entire novel.  By then, however, the reader is totally ready for one of the most hardened, uncompromising characters he will ever encounter.

Plots.  You can’t live without ‘em.  And I’ve got to say plotting is the toughest part of the writing process for me.

Okay, that’s not a shocking revelation, and I’m sure not a single jaw is dropping right now, but I keep reading about authors who dash off outlines so complete, the actual writing of the book is easy. I don’t remember which author said this, but he said that his outlines are longer than the novels they spawn!  I am so envious of those who can come up with fully-formed stories before ever writing a single word. What’s worse, these people seem to be everywhere, especially in the stables of major publishers.

Meanwhile, I seem to be congenitally incapable of creating an outline, or even of envisioning a story from start to finish. Instead, I slog along from line to line, not knowing what’s coming next. I may or may not have a hazy image of an ending, but that’s about it.  I wrote my last novel from an opening line, without having the slightest clue as to what the next line would be, or what the story would be about.

I know, I know, there are no rules. That if writing without an outline works for me, or for anyone else, then that’s what we should do. Okay, I accept that. But here I am whining about not being able to outline or to even come up with a semblance of a story up front, and I’ll just bet my little old bottom dollar that there isn’t one single outliner out there who envies me. I once read a piece Harry Whittington wrote about his own writing career, and he said, “I could plot, baby. I could plot.” I’m quite sure he spent no time wishing he couldn’t plot, and had to instead rely upon limping from one line to the next. In fact, Harry Whittington aside, I’ll bet that no one who uses an outline wishes they could do it the other way.

How about it? Am I really doomed, or am I wasting energy wishing I could fabricate plots in advance?

Russel D McLean put up a thoughtful post on today’s Do Some Damage blogspot. It concerned the length of novels, with a side conversation about pricing relative to length. The length part was what caught my eye, though. I’ve had all kinds of problems with this.

My first published novel, The Take, will be coming out in 2010, but that was not the first novel I had written. There were several others, the first two of which exceeded 100,000 words. One of those weighed in at 180,000 words before I called it a day, although subsequent drafts eventually “slimmed” it down to about 130,000.

After those two efforts, I never again came close to those numbers. Probably because they weren’t crime novels, and everything I’ve written after that has been in the crime genre. The Take, mentioned above, topped out at 51,000 words. My others are in the same ballpark, only one of them exceeding 60,000 words, and that just barely. My latest one, which I’ve just finished, limped across the finish line at 39,000! A second going-over added about another 2000 words, but it still sits at a paltry 41,000.

I don’t know what my problem is. These stories play themselves out in a natural fashion, and in my opinion, they don’t feel at all rushed. The 41,000-word novel is even a slightly bigger story than the others and fairly begs for more words (like twice as many), but I just can’t find them to put in there. I don’t plan it this way. It’s just that when the story is about to wind up, the word count is pathetically low.

Adding clunky subplots just for the sake of piling on the words is not an option for me. I hate books that do that. These novels of mine are not overblown short stories, either. They’re fully-developed novels in every sense of the word. Every sense, that is, except length.

Anybody got any ideas? Anything I can grab onto?

I read an interesting blog today by Mike Knowles on the Do Some Damage blogspot. Mike is a successful Canadian crime fiction author, and he hit on a subject which I suspect has troubled many authors from time to time. Without putting any pink ribbons on it, it’s writer’s block.

He writes “without a net”, that is, with no organized outline or detailed plan. He pretty much wings it, and it works well for him. Every once in a while, though, he finds himself and his characters with their backs against the wall, plotwise. With no outs.

Eventually, Mike hacks his way out of the thicket, usually in an unlikely place–the shower, while walking his dog, etc–and goes on to finish the novel. But I wondered if he ever had to really put a novel completely aside because he just couldn’t find the escape hatch from his writer’s block dungeon.

Well, like Mike, I also “write without a net”. I don’t use an outline, because I can’t plan the story that far in advance, so I begin writing on the slimmest of premises. I have a novel coming out next year, a noir tale called The Take, which was inspired by two lines of a song. That’s all I had to go on when I started writing it. Another one began when I saw a guy in a bar one night trying in vain to impress a girl. The one I’m working on now started from an opening line. As soon as I wrote it, I had no idea what the second line would be.

But in every case, I soldiered on, transforming these fragile ideas into full-blown novels. Well, in almost every case.

There was one project which started off as a slam-bang idea. I sat down to write it fifteen years ago. A guy is killed by people who want the contents of a small box he is hiding. His widow takes her son and the box and immediately splits town, fearing she and her son will be the next to die. Many years later, she dies, and the son, who is now an adult, finally learns the terrible secret of what’s in the box. He also learns the killers haven’t given up and have located him. He then begins the dual task of trying to deal with the contents of the box and avoiding his pursuers.

Sounds good, right? Well, I got about 100 pages in and I just broke apart like a bug hitting a windshield. Suddenly, nothing came to me, I was completely stalled out, unable to write even one more line. Weeks went by. Nothing. I was so discouraged, because I loved the idea. But after endless hours of staring at a blank screen, I got nowhere. Then, I got some flimsy idea for another book, so I started that one, putting this one aside.

Years went by. Every so often, I would dig around in boxes, and on two or three occasions, I actually saw the 100-page printout of that aborted novel. A twinge of remorse shot through me every time I saw it, as I realized that such a good idea had gone down the drain.

Okay, so now I’m working on my current novel, you know, the one I started from just an opening line. I’m rolling along, but when I get 20,000 words in, I start to run out of gas. I feel the sputtering and I know that I will be at a complete standstill in very short order. I beg the characters to guide me out of this corner I’ve painted myself into, until…until…

Until I think, why not have the girl who was killed be the granddaughter of a guy who was killed in the same fashion many years ago? And they were both killed because…the killers wanted the contents of a small box the grandfather was guarding at the time of his murder. Bingo! His widow takes her son and splits town. Her son has two daughters, one is killed, the other teams up with a central character who has been dragged into this and…and…

Well, you get the idea. The fifteen-year-old idea was resuscitated, and is now kicking ass! And the end is in sight.

Say hallelujah!