Fiction, Reviews

‘Russian Roulette’ and ‘Mr. Swirlee,’ by Mike Faricy

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I’m inclined to support my local mystery writers, as you know, so when I got a Kindle deal on one of Mike Faricy’s Dev Haskell mysteries, I thought I’d try it out. Glad I did. These are not highbrow mysteries, nor are they world-weary meditations on existential dilemmas. They’re just fun private eye stories that poke gentle fun at the form. I liked them.

Dev Haskell is a private eye in St. Paul. He has no office, but does a marginal business out of a string of scruffy bars. At the beginning of Russian Roulette he’s approached in one of those bars by a drop dead gorgeous woman with an accent (she says it’s French and he goes along with it) who asks him to look for her missing sister. Thinking more with a lower organ than with his higher functions, he follows her into a plot involving prostitution and sex trafficking.

The big joke in Russian Roulette is the way Dev overworks the traditional private eye pastime of getting injured and not letting it stop him. Not only does he suffer the liturgical beatings and a bullet wound that any literary private eye expects, but he also gets poisoned and car bombed. It stretches credibility that he’s able to function at all, let alone defend himself, by the end of the story, but that’s all part of the joke. Continue reading ‘Russian Roulette’ and ‘Mr. Swirlee,’ by Mike Faricy →

Poetry

Haikus Superus

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This site delivers haiku found in the decisions written by Supreme Court justices. I love it.

Here, for example,

standard supplied gasoline

and oil to Signal.

(taken from Perkins v. Standard Oil Company of California (1969))

He, however, did

not obtain a warrant to

arrest respondent.

(from United States v. Johnson (1982))

The applicant must

pass the examination

prescribed by the Board.

(from Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc (1976))

For how long a time

have you known it to be used

for these purposes?

(from Peters v. Hanson (1889)) (via Books, Inq.)

Fiction

Non-Reviews of Two Books

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Loren Eaton refuses to review Megan Abbott’s Bury Me Deep. “Can’t talk about how Abbott walks a tightrope over the chasm between the literary and genre worlds, every sentence showing her knowledge of the writer’s craft while the subject matter stays committed to delighting the reader,” he says, leaving us to wonder what could possibly be in this book.

Jonathan Rogers talks about the origins of one of his books. “When I sat down to write The Charlatan’s Boy, the first sentence I wrote turned out to be the first sentence of the finished product: ‘I don’t remember one thing about the day I was born.'”

Bookselling, Fiction

‘Death’s Doors’: a snippet and an apologia

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CHAPTER I

The Lifestyle Services case worker seemed friendly and genuinely interested in him. Tom Galloway wasn’t entirely pleased about that. The case workers he’d dealt with in the Twin Cities had all seemed overworked and time-pinched. The desks in their cubicles had been piled with file folders and official bulletins, and they themselves had exhaled an institutional miasma that seemed to say, “Don’t show me any red flags and we won’t ask too many questions.”

But Megan Siegenthaler seemed to have all the time in the world, and was cordially curious about everything having to do with Tom and his family. Her small office had been painted a cheery mint green, and a tasteful landscape print hung on one wall. No family pictures though. He supposed those might be stressful for some of the case subjects. Or just as likely she had no family.

She herself was a honey-haired woman who must have been very attractive once and was still comfortably good-looking. Her green eyes were especially remarkable. She smoked a long thin cigarette, as was her right in all places except for hospital ICUs ever since the passage of the Smokers’ Re-enfranchisement Act. She’d offered Tom a breathing device, in accordance with the provisions of the Act, but he’d turned it down. Tobacco smoke had never bothered him much.

“I suppose it’s pretty dull here in Epsom compared to life in the Cities,” she said.

“I like it dull,” said Tom.

“Does Christine like it dull too?”

Tom adjusted his mouth in something like a smile. “No. She’d like to move back.”

“What do you think about that?”

“I don’t care what she’d like. I’m trying to keep her alive.”

Megan picked up the Galloway file and flipped through it. She had very long fingernails, enameled in red. Tom had always wondered why anyone who had to work with paper or keyboards would bother with such a self-inflicted handicap. “I think we ought to talk about this,” she said. “Your last case worker made a note about your attitude. You realize that, in the long run, you can’t keep your daughter alive, don’t you?”

Tom kicked himself in a mental shin. He should have learned to keep his mouth shut by now. He didn’t want to have this discussion again.

“I know what the law says,” he grunted.

“Then you know that if Christine decides to end her life, you have no legal power to stop her. The Constitution’s on her side. If she complains to us that you’re interfering, she can be taken from you and escorted to the Happy Endings Clinic by a Lifestyle Services worker. The law is very explicit.”

That’s just a snippet from Death’s Doors, my newly released e-book (by the way, Orie says it’s non-DRM, which means you can convert it to your e-reader’s format using the Calibre utility, even if you don’t have a Kindle). I thought I’d just take a few moments to talk about this book, and what I think it means (I could, of course, be wrong). Continue reading ‘Death’s Doors’: a snippet and an apologia →

Authors, Poetry

The Joys of W. H. Auden

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“One of the joys of reading late Auden is the pleasure he takes in rare words used correctly,” Patrick Kurp reminds us. “Like his friend Dr. Oliver Sacks, he loved trolling the Oxford English Dictionary for good catches.” Catches like dapatical, for which you’ll have to read his post for context.

Alexander McCall Smith wrote a piece last year about the importance of Auden with a few personal anecdotes. “When I started to write novels set in Edinburgh, the characters in these books – unsurprisingly, perhaps – began to show an interest in Auden. In particular, Isabel Dalhousie, the central character in my Sunday Philosophy Club series, thought about Auden rather a lot – and quoted him, too. A couple of years after the first of these novels was published, I received a letter from his literary executor, Edward Mendelson, who is a professor of English at Columbia University in New York. . . . I then wrote Professor Mendelson into an Isabel Dalhousie novel, creating a scene in which he comes to Edinburgh to deliver a public lecture on the sense of neurotic guilt in Auden’s verse.”

Fiction, Publishing

Death’s Doors

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Dateline: Minneapolis

My new novel, Death’s Doors, is now available for download for Amazon Kindle.

In the near future, suicide is a constitutional right. Tom Galloway is an ordinary single father, just trying to keep his rebellious and depressed daughter from going to the Happy Endings Clinic.

The last thing he needs is a ninth-century Viking time traveler dropping into his life.

But Tom is about to embark on the adventure of his life. One that will change the world.

Coffee, Tea, Drinks

Myrna Loy Serving Coffee

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Due to the immediate, overwhelming response to the photo in our last post, our executives have decided to post another one. Here we see the gorgeous Myrna Loy serving Navy sailors in an canteen during WWII. This wasn’t a one time stint for her. She stopped acting to support the war effort and worked closely with The Red Cross. Learn more about her in this review of her biography, Myrna Loy: The Only Good Girl In Hollywood.

Myrna Loy serving coffee to service men

Coffee, Tea, Drinks

Coffee Week Selections

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1. A Colorado coffee shop, located in an housing development for the homeless, is attempting to help the people around them as well as change their community’s perspective on the capabilities of homeless people.

“People don’t know who’s behind the counter when they stop here,” Kelly Kelley said. “It could be any one of us in that low-income or homeless category. We want to make a positive experience for people.”

2. 10 reason why fair-trade coffee doesn’t do what it claims, and plenty of pushback in the comments. “Fairtrade is not a one time, cure-all, it provides a framework. It’s a tool and if applied well, producers move up the value chain, negotiate better terms, and strengthen their communities.”

I remember a coffee roaster saying he saw little value in fair trade certification, because he knew a farm received certification on only half of its crop because they couldn’t afford the price. No difference in the coffee they grew. They just could not afford to pay for the fair trade label for the second half of what they produced.

3. Costa Coffee, United Kingdom’s largest coffee chain, has replaced its club card for an app.

4. Starbucks has gone to Colombia, and the Colombian national chain Juan Valdez is expanding in response. “In downtown Miami, a new Juan Valdez cafe feels like a slice of Colombia: traditional floor tiling, warm wood details, woven baskets, fresh arepas, and pictures of Colombia and its coffee. A poster of a smiling coffee farmer hangs near the entrance, greeting customers with the company’s key new message: ‘Carlos is one of the 500,000 coffee growers who owns this coffee shop.'” Leaning on their history has proven profitable so far.

5. A young Lauren Bacall with coffee. (I believe this photo would be rated PG-13 because it depicts smoking. Steel yourself.) Continue reading Coffee Week Selections →

Book Reviews, Creative Culture