Noir fiction for the modern reader.

This very moment, as I sit at my computer sipping wine in between righteous thoughts, people are arguing over whether or not the new trend toward online self-publishing is going to bring any tangible results (read: money) to the authors who indulge in it.

A lot has been written about a few who have become hugely successful. By now, a lot of us know about Joe Konrath and Boyd Morrison and their unlikely triumphs in the e-world. “Flashes in the pan,” some say. “They’re not typical of what an author can expect if he or she self-publishes online.”

“But it’s the coming thing,” others say. “If they can do it, I can do it, too. I just have to work hard at promoting myself and my book.”

Pardon me while I take another sip. This is good stuff.

I have to come down on the side of the true believers. There are some big changes coming, and they’re coming sooner than we think. It’s not happening in a vacuum, though. There’s some historical perspective that should be considered.

Just a very few years ago, if you wanted to buy a book, you got your ass off the couch, went out to your car, got in it, and drove to a bookstore, or somewhere else that offered books for sale, such as Wal-Mart. Maybe you knew the exact book you wanted, or maybe you didn’t. Either way, off your ass and out the door, or else no book.

Then: Amazon. As home computers spread across the land, Amazon proved that people would sit home and order books by the millions. Before you could say, “One-click ordering”, independent bookstores all over the country started closing down. Even big chains like Doubleday were gobbled up by bigger chains. And when Amazon started the clever come-on of “now that you bought this book, you’ll love these”, people were instantly exposed to more books in that genre. Many people obediently bought some of those books that they might otherwise never have known about.

Amazon’s bigshots were undoubtedly sitting around one day asking themselves, “Well, now that we’ve got everybody ordering books from us, what do we do for an encore?” And somebody around the table blurted out “Kindle!”

So here comes the e-reader. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony, and even Apple begin shoveling these devices out as fast as they can. Dad gives Mom one for Mother’s Day, they give Junior one for Christmas, boyfriend gives one to girlfriend, and on and on. Pretty soon, millions of people have them and they’re buying NY-published books at $9.99 apiece. What a deal! Right?

Whew! My heart is pumping here. Time for another sip of the vino.

Okay, now Amazon is making about fifty billion dollars a day and the heavyweights are sitting around saying, “How can we top this?” And somebody suggests, “How about letting people self-publish on Kindle?”

Well, this one probably spurred a little discussion, you know, about letting just anybody self-publish or restricting it only to “real” authors. Of course, the open-door faction won that one, and here we are.

Millions of self-pubbed books will clutter up the e-bookstores for sure. And most of them will be crap. But many will be very good, and some will be great, and most if not all of these would’ve had no shot whatsoever with the bloated New York publishing world, insatiably thirsting for blockbusters. These gems WILL find an audience. Maybe not in the same easy fashion as Stephen King finds his audience, but the readers out there will open themselves up to these new authors.

How, you might ask?  For starters, not everyone lives in LA (something that is hard for LA residents to grasp), and therefore most of us lack easy access to quality bookstores. Amazon has proven that people don’t really need a neighborhood bookstore, or even a big-box Barnes & Noble.

Secondly, through online reviews and recommendations (which are being read more and more), self-published online authors will get their noses above the waterline. Remember, people who own an e-reader will never tire of finding books to download into it, and they will search these books out through online book clubs and reviews.

Thirdly, and this is very important, with prices of self-published books generally ranging from $1-$3, they look awfully good to someone who’s been shelling out ten bucks a pop for his favorite digital bestsellers. At that price, they can afford a couple of missteps without being discouraged. This goes a long way toward exposing them to authors and books they might otherwise never consider.

Some say that authors will now have to go online and slap a lot of backs and come across as a gregarious social butterfly, when many of us are in fact born introverts. Why should being an extrovert be a requirement for a successful author, some ask. To which I reply: for the same reason that a successful author is required to be a marketer, salesman, blogger, and book tour promoter. You know, the same stuff that NY publishers pay people to do, but which they now insist that we must do.

Finally, authors are now able to draw a straight line from their computer screens directly to the readers, much the same as musicians before us, who can now sell their albums directly to their fans without having to wait for the one-in-a-million shot at a record deal.

By the way, did I mention I have a rock & roll novel up on Kindle? No? Well, let me say that Cadillac’s Comin’, a hard tale of a rockabilly one-hit wonder who recorded for Sun Records in the 1950s, is now available at your friendly neighborhood Kindle store.

I think I’m going to pour another glass of this wine. I really like it.

SHOOT by Douglas Fairbairn (1973)

Reviewed by Mike Dennis

Is there any such thing as “macho noir”? I’ve never heard of it, but if there were, Shoot would be one of its classic examples.

Written in 1973 by Douglas Fairbairn, it’s a testosterone-loaded novel, which has one of the best openings I’ve read in a long, long time. A group of middle-aged hunters, all buddies and veterans of various wars, are out traipsing through the woods one day in full hunting regalia. As they come to a riverbank, they spot another group of guys, very much like themselves, on the other side. Without any provocation whatsoever, one of the hunters on the other side raises his rifle and fires at our group, wounding one of them. Reflexively, one of our guys, an expert marksman, quickly returns fire, blowing the shooter’s head apart.

A frantic firefight ensues, and eventually, our guys retreat and get the hell out of there without any more casualties. What follows is a well-constructed tale of the nature of manhood and its entwining with pack mentality.

Rex Jeannette is the ultimate alpha male, leading his group of friends through an agonizing analysis of both the bloody event and what they should do about it. Call the police? Go back and confront the attackers again? Do nothing? And speaking of the attackers, what are they going to do? Will they seek revenge for their slain comrade? Will they call the police? Who knows? But Rex is firmly in charge and everyone knows it.

He owns a big department store in town, and when he’s not dealing with the aftermath of the shootout in the woods, he’s busy slugging whiskey and screwing girls who work in his store. He makes constant references to firearms, complete with manufacturer, caliber, and model number. He’s not afraid of anything and he has no patience for anyone who is. Those who step out of line will pay for it.

Fairbairn, the author of the excellent 1977 noir novel, Street 8, is definitely untainted by the world of political correctness and all its stifling restrictions. Understandable, since PC wasn’t really entrenched in 1973. However, you get the impression that through Rex Jeannette, Fairbairn is venting a lot of his own aggression, working out his own hangups, and perhaps searching for his own place in the world.

The climax, while not entirely unexpected, is still somewhat of a surprise, thanks to the tremendous suspense the author has created in the runup to it. The final few lines are a fitting end to an incisive, violent novel.

A few years ago, I wrote a rock & roll novel called Cadillac’s Comin’. Today, it went up on Kindle. It’s a hard tale of a rockabilly one-hit wonder who recorded for Sun Records back in the 1950s. For the uninitiated, Sun was a small company, but became the iconic label of that era, responsible for many of the great early rock & roll hits.

The book has the requisite sex, drugs, and rock & roll throughout, but the second half of the novel, which takes place in the 1980s, is noirish, so I feel it’s appropriate to talk about it in this space.

As I mention in a bio I wrote somewhere, thirty years of playing music isn’t exactly the best training for becoming an author. Thirty years of writing would be more like it. But playing music was what I did, so that’s what I had to work with. I say this because when I first sat down to write many years ago, the temptation was strong to “write what I know”, in other words, a rock & roll novel. Oh, was I tempted. Characters popped into my head from all sides, plots swirled around me…how could I resist?

But I had to resist, you know?  Because I didn’t want to shoot my wad with one music novel. I wanted to write a lot of books, and I knew that rock & roll was not exactly a beckoning genre for successful novelists. So after a couple of missteps, I got into crime.

After I’d written a couple of crime/noir novels, I had convinced myself that I could actually write, so I finally gave release to those rock & roll demons inside my head. Cadillac’s Comin’ was the result. Of course, no agent or publisher would touch it, so after a few years of languishing on my hard drive, it resurfaced and got my attention once more. I tightened it up, polished it, and today I put it up on Kindle.

For those of you who have considered self-publishing on Kindle, I strongly recommend you read every word of Joe Konrath’s blogs for the last six months before you take the step. He has…well, just read the blogs and you’ll see what I mean. Once you do, and IF you decide to go ahead with it, be ready to step into The Formatting Swamp of Doom. You’ll need to go over your novel line by line–I mean it–and in some spots, word by word in order to format it correctly for Kindle.

If you make it to the other side of the swamp, set your price, throw it up there and hope for the best. Of course, you’ll need to promote it heavily, which will occupy virtually every waking moment of your foreseeable future. So good luck!

Now here’s a brief synopsis of Cadillac’s Comin’.

***

It is June, 1958.  Elvis Presley has gone into the army, while Jerry Lee Lewis has just returned from a career-shattering trip to England with his 13-year-old wife.  Rock & roll music is under attack from all sides and is in real danger of disappearing, as its two most dynamic artists are effectively removed from the picture.  Sun Records, an independent Memphis label responsible for many of the seminal rock & roll hits, has chosen piano rocker Ike Thacker, native of Greenville, Mississippi, from its impressive stable of artists to assume the mantle of the “King of Rock & Roll”.

Ike is one of the most powerful performers on the American scene, combining an explosive stage presence with his natural talent for writing big songs.  This one-two punch makes him the prime candidate for the top rock & roll artist in the world, and he makes up to five thousand dollars a night, a fortune by 1958 standards.

Sam Phillips, Sun’s founder and president, sees an opportunity to push his company into the highest echelons of the record business, becoming, in trade parlance, a “major label”.  But first, the fledgling music called rock & roll must be firmly established with a hero, a leader at the top, who of course is under contract to Sun.  Sam’s got it all planned out:  Ike will do a starmaking tour, as his new record, Cadillac’s Comin’, shoots up the charts.  The record will become a smash hit, a movie deal will then be signed, and he’s even slated to make an appearance on the prestigious Ed Sullivan Show, following which he will be universally recognized as the king of rock & roll.  And of course, Sun will move into a controlling position in the music industry, selling millions of records in the process.  All very nice, but Ike proves difficult to control.

Set in Memphis in the turbulent early years of rock & roll, and later in New Orleans’ shadowy demimonde, Cadillac’s Comin’ is a valentine to the rockabilly pioneers of the 1950s, who operated in the dark, with no rules, no guidelines, no precedents, and virtually no adult supervision.  Against this chaotic backdrop, they nevertheless managed to solidify rock & roll’s place in American culture.

***

For those of you who have a Kindle, just download it. The price is a measly $2.99. If you don’t have a Kindle, you can go to Amazon.com, then Kindle, where you can download the Kindle app for free onto your computer. Then you can download the novel.

Yes, it can all be yours in mere moments! Buy it now!

BACKFLASH by Richard Stark (Donald E Westlake)

(Yes, the cover really does cut off the publisher’s name at the bottom)

Review by Mike Dennis, 2010

“We live and learn.” That’s what Parker says to an adversary immediately before shooting him point blank in the eye.

They don’t come much tougher than Parker, and he’s his usual hardass self in the muscular 1998 novel, Backflash, by Richard Stark.

After walking away from a heist with $140,000, he plans to take it easy for awhile, laying up with Claire, his longtime lover, in someone else’s summer cottage amid the woods of upstate New York. But of course, he can’t stay out of action for long, or there would be no series.

He’s approached by Hilliard Cathman, former state government employee turned consultant, to do a job. It seems a new gambling boat will soon be unveiled, slated to cruise along the Hudson River. Cathman has the blueprints of the boat, as well as security details, schedules, locations of the safes, and all the things a man would need to hijack a cash-bloated gambling ship. The only thing missing is the team to do it.

Problem is, Parker isn’t sure he wants to take this job. It seems the only way to rob the ship is to do so while it’s cruising. That means getting back to shore with the money, and that means too much exposure in the middle of the river. He’s also suspicious of Cathman himself. Why would this guy, an obscure lifelong bureaucrat, suddenly want to organize a major armed robbery?

Of course, Parker eventually agrees to the job, but not before he figures out an extremely devious solution to the money/exposure problem. He rounds up his usual assortment of criminal types and they set about plotting the robbery in a very matter-of-fact, professional manner. But he’s still plenty uneasy about Cathman.

Stark’s pacing in these Parker novels is always letter perfect, with the plot only slowing down long enough for the character to catch his breath or to contemplate his next move. These moments are usually tinged with suspense, as in a tense scene on the ship immediately before the robbery.

The entire novel takes place in Albany and other smaller towns along the Hudson, and Stark gives the reader an excellent sense of place. Although these locales aren’t that far away from New York City, they still feel like the middle of nowhere, worlds away, which is exactly how Parker wants it. Less of a problem with witnesses that way.

Backflash is an excellent entry in the long-running Parker series. Beneath all the planning and execution of the heist, there’s a convincing unapologetic defense of the code of criminal justice as meted out by criminals.