Crimespree Magazine #56
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CRIMESPREE MAGAZINE
Issue 56
Editors in Chief and Publishers:
Jon Jordan and Ruth Jordan
Special Features Editor:
Jennifer Jordan
Entertainment/Online Content Editor:
Jeremy Lynch
Short Fiction Editor:
Steven Torres
Comics Editors:
Joe Schmidt, Kate and Dan Malmon
Contributors:
Reed Farrel Coleman, Erica Ruth Neubauer,
Craig McDonald, Linda Brown,
Ayo Onatade and Jen Forbus
Crimespree Magazine (ISSN: 1551-5826) is published bi-monthly. Due to the irregularities of shipping we cannot guarantee when the issues will arrive.
For subscriptions and other correspondence:
Crimespree Magazine
536 South 5th Street
Milwaukee, WI 53204
Or jon@crimespreemag.com
For Advertising contact:
Jon Jordan at 414-278-5881
jon@crimespreemag.com
Subscriptions are $38 in US, $60 in Canada, and $60 overseas. All funds in US dollars.
The opinions expressed in some of the articles in this magazine do not necessarily reflect those of the publishers. We do however believe no voice should be censored. Information in the articles is to the best of our knowledge accurate and factual.
Contents Copyright©2014 Crimespree Magazine
http://www.crimespreemag.com
eBook published by Down & Out Books
http://www.downandoutbooks.com
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Editorial by Jon Jordan
Tales from the Blue Line by Rob Riley
Hanging with Ayo by Ayo Onatade
The Five List by Kristi Belcamino
FICTION: A Sealed Fate by Terry Sanville
COVER STORY: Reed Farrel Coleman Interview by Tom Schreck
Behind the Books by Merry Jones
Behind the Books by Jenny Milchman
The Funny Side of Gore by N.P. Simpson
Catching Up with Max Allan Collins by Jon Jordan
Owen Laukkanen Interview by Kate and Dan Malmon
Anthony Neil Smith Interview by Kent Gowran
Behind the Book by Kristin Belcamino
Erin’s Reading Roundup by Erin Mitchell
Quick Five with Alex Grecian by Jon Jordan
Author Workspaces by Robert Crais
The “F” Word by Frank De Blase
Yoga, Zen and the Art of Basketball by Reed Farrel Coleman
Mystery Town with Linda Brown
Amy Alessio’s Teen Beat
Dancer Daughter Traitor Spy by Erica Neubauer and Beth McIntyre
FICTION: Rockwell’s Cat by L.B. Thomas
Jake Hinkson Interview by Tim Hennessy
Five Movies by Jeff Crister
Five List by Ben H. Winters
Pet Spotlight by Steph Cha
Influences by Victoria Houston
Buzz Bin
Book Reviews
Crimespree on Comics
Cooking with Crimespree
Editorial
By Jon Jordan
Issue 56
As I type this we once again find Amazon in the midst of some controversy, this time with Hachette publishing and their imprints which include Little Brown and Mullholland. From what I understand it involves Amazon wanting to make more money and Hachette not wanting to give them more of the money.
I don’t really have a horse in this race when it comes down to it. I love what Hachette publishes. I also shop Amazon, though to be honest it’s almost nothing but DVDs that I buy. It’s really just two big companies with a lot of money flexing their muscles to see if they can make more money.
The downside is that a lot of readers have gotten used to just getting books from Amazon, especially if they use e-readers. This may have some impact on the authors we love like Michael Koryta and Megan Abbott and David Morrell to name a few.
This could lead into a conversation about the danger of consumers giving a store/supplier/retailer too much power by buying everything from them. But that is a long conversation and had many more aspects to it than I have ready at the moment.
But here’s the beautiful thing, there are still plenty of places to buy books, even e-books. If you bought this magazine in a bookstore I promise they will get you any title in print you are looking for. If you don’t have an indie store or even a Barnes and Noble near you. You can still use the internet to order books. Check out the http://www.indiebound.org/ website for an indie store that you can order from. We still have many options for getting books.
Personally I love going to a book store, I always have. I always discover books I want in a manner much more pleasant to me than just scrolling and clicking on some recommendation that was generated by an algorithm. Book stores have people working there, in person and their interaction is not generated by a computer. I’ve discovered countless books over the years because some fellow reader who works at a book store suggested I read it.
So there we go, another verse in my love song to indie bookstores.
In other news, we are putting together an event for this November, a form of Murder and Mayhem. It may be a bit smaller this year but we are working on plans for a bigger better one for 2015. We also just did our first Noir At The Bar in Milwaukee and are planning on more. There is something magic about hanging out with authors and even with all the signings we go to we feel the need for more, so we came up with a way to do it.
This year’s Bouchercon in Long Beach looks to be one not to miss. The crew heading this one up are doing some great work.
If you are putting together an event with authors and would like a little extra buzz reach out and let us know. Anything that helps bring authors and fans together is something we support.
I’m going to end this with a shot of Hilary Davidson who was here for our Noir at the Bar and took a walk through a local cemetery with me. We had a ball and got some great pictures.
On the Cover
These wonderful photos of Reed Coleman were taken by Adam Martin. I think the bleak look works well as Reeds ends his series with Moe Prager.
Back to TOC
Tales from the Blue Line
By Rob Riley
Issue 56
Some called him Le Roy, others called him Elroy. I called him both names, depending upon my mood and state of sobriety. But being called more than one name suited him: Le Roy/Elroy was a multiple kind of guy, who’d go anywhere and do anything
By the way, neither name was his real one.
But we settled on Le Roy and the bosses loved to give him assignments. He didn’t wait to get informants, he’d go out and hit on dopers and drug dealers wherever he found them. (There were times when we didn’t want to know.) And he made lots of cases. It was personality, not police work, but it didn’t matter. He locked ’em up.
He locked four of them up one time, and it made national news. It was one of the most amazing and unbelievable things I ever saw, and anyone who has spent significant time as a police officer—especially in a major city like Milwaukee, or New York, or Chicago, or Los Angeles—is a bona fide, certified observer of amazing and unbelievable things. It was a major pain for one of America’s top pop singers in the 1970s, but she had to stand back and watch it all unfold.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Without a doubt the most dangerous and
wild-assed assignment I ever had as a police officer was working undercover on narcotics at Milwaukee’s Summerfest celebration, which occurs every summer in July. I’m talking old-days Summerfests, when the festival was first being set up. There was a learning curve with all things, and controlling people who’d sneak illegal drugs into the eleven-day-long-party by the shores of Lake Michigan was among the first and largest headaches those in charge ever saw.
It should hereby be noted that I’m writing of a time more than thirty-five years ago. The problem has long since been addressed and resolved. Summerfest is a first class, beautiful and fun festival for the whole family. People come from across the nation to visit Milwaukee during its time each July. The biggest, most well-known musical bands in the country do concerts at Summerfest every year, and its reputation as a safe, clean place is second to none of its kind anywhere. I personally know that this is a fact.
But the day to which I’m referring was during the before time. A time when having a hairy, raggedy looking crew of free-spirited and basically fearless people (yes, women were involved also) at their disposal was a heaven send to the people most concerned, from the then-Mayor Henry Maier, to then-Police Chief Harold Breier, and the entire city council.
It was still light out, and festival goers were filing into the grounds, anticipating the performances of a number of rock ’n’ roll bands, from local groups to nationally known ones, with hit records on their resumes. Our “group,” facetiously nick-named “The Rat Patrol,” had spent the day in court processing arrests made for using and selling all manner of illegal inebriants the previous day. By early evening we’d check in to the command post at Summerfest, and had begun to walk the grounds; to get a feel of the crowd.
As always, we made a few arrests even during the quiet time of the fest, processed them, and returned to the grounds. We walked along the shore of Lake Michigan, which was fortified by huge, stone boulders, to protect people from the sometimes fierce waves that could pound the shore. Didn’t want the waves pounding on people, of course. In those days the main stage, where all the rock and pop big shots played their concerts, was on the north end of the grounds. The entire area, including the stage itself, the dressing trailers in the back, and the long rows of boards upon which the fortunate (and sometimes unfortunate people—a truly long story) sat.
The place was empty when we all walked together to the fenced in area at the back, where the trailers were. Starting time was nigh, and the place was filling up with audience members. We saw a couple of uniformed officers whom we knew at the rear gate, and walked over to say “hi.” We chatted amiably: The weather was nice, the band that night was nice (not like some of the hard core street bands, the names of which I shall not write), and everyone was in good spirits.
Except Le Roy. Le Roy trundled off on his own toward the lake shore’s edge. The high, sturdy fence stretched to the water line. No one could get past it. Except uniformed cops, and a scraggly gang of undercover cops who looked more drugged and rugged than some of the people who ended up being their targets for arrest.
“Hey,” Le Roy shouted, running back to the rest of the group. “Look behind those dressing room trailers.”
We looked. We saw nothing at first. Then a young, average looking man walked from one of the trailers to the line of boulders at the shoreline, and then down to the shoreline.
We all laughed. Heartily. The space between the water and the rocks was where we made the great majority of our arrests.
“See!” Le Roy yelled. “I been watching. Couple a guys been goin’ back and forth from the trailers to the rocks. What do ya think they’re doin’?” He laughed, bending at the waist for emphasis of his joy.
“Same place we’re going,” I remember saying.
The “rocks “were a cozy place for dopers at that time of night. No one could see them, and these particular guys were protected by a big, high fence. No one could get to them. Except a group of not-suspicious looking dudes who obviously had business back there—you know, because of the concert and all that—and we were welcomed to join them.
Well, Le Roy was welcomed, he was the first to approach, while we held back. Didn’t want to seem impolite while ganging up and asking if we could party with them. Le Roy went down among them after they gleefully invited him in, he being fellow beater of the “Buddha bush,” as marijuana was sometimes referred to by the hipsters. It was a forgone ritual among dopers to share a bowl with a well-mannered stranger.
We waited a few minutes. Another of our guys walked closer, to get a better look. He suddenly turned and waved to us. Le Roy had done it again! He’d ruined the drug party of a bunch of, well, druggies.
The young men quickly caught on that they were at least being shagged away, and they got up to leave. Le Roy grabbed a bag of pot from one of them, and another undercover officer placed a handcuff on his wrist. Whoops! The fun was really over with, and they began to run. We stormed them. They ran away. Trouble was, there was only one “way,” and that was toward the chilling blue waters of Lake Michigan.
As we later learned, they’d all been sharing pot with Le Roy, so they all knew they were being arrested. Le Roy’s head bobbed in the water, next to the other unfortunates, as they tried swimming.
“Help” Le Roy yelled, and a couple of our other guys (notably, not me!) jumped into the lake. One guy punched Le Roy in the face. Le Roy tried hitting him back. He could not, with the water interfering. He swan out a short distance and recovered a floating, almost-sinking bag of dope. All of the violators knew they could not escape, and they gave up.
All four of the men were summarily arrested. They’d all smoked the killer weed and they were all carrying more of it. Soaking wet doesn’t adequately describe them. It doesn’t adequately describe Le Roy and the two other undercovers who came out of the water.
By this time uniformed officers knew what was going on and a nearby police prisoner wagon drove up to the area.
“What about the concert?” one of them said.
They looked at each other and at us and one of them said, “Can we still play the concert?”
Uh-oh.
Before we could answer, a young-ish, attractive woman in a bath robe was descending the stairs of one of the trailers. She was screaming. At the top of her lungs, as the old saying goes.
“Where are you taking my drummer?” She shrieked. “And my guitar players! What the f*** is going on here?!”
She walked up to one officer who was holding the arm of her drummer and tried pulling the drummer away.
“Get your ass back up those stairs and into that goddamn trailer,” one of my partners said to her.
Well, he yelled it to her.
The woman turned and ran. She reached the stairs and stumbled more than once while running up to the trailer door, and disappearing within.
The lead officer of our group looked at the soaking wet, handcuffed prisoners, and said, “Don’t tell me.”
He told us. They were members of the band scheduled to go on in five minutes. Trust me, we laughed. I mean, we laughed long and heartily. Not the band members, just us scruffy, trouble making undercovers.
Needless to say, the concert was delayed. We all rode together in the van. Many fans knew who we were and shouted the most awful, unrepeatable things at us. We laughed all the harder..
The concert did finally go on, as the Captain on the grounds allowed the players to play their concert, and be processed afterward.
Every now and then the tune and the refrain, “I am woman!” tweets in my mind., and I picture an angry woman singing on the Summerfest stage, and a soaking wet group of band members behind her.
Every Tuesday we post a new column from Rob on http://crimespreemag.com/.
Back to TOC
Traditionally with Simon Brett
By Ayo Onatade
Issue 56
Initially when I used to think of Simon Brett it was not because of his crime writing but because of his involvement in r
adio and television programmes. Simon Brett produced the very first episode of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in 1978 for BBC Radio 4. He also produced a number of other radio programmes most notably Just a Minute the panel game where the object of the game is for panellists to talk for sixty seconds on a given subject, “without repetition, hesitation or deviation”. He was the producer for the programme between 1969 and 1975. In the mid-1990s he began to write and host Foul Play a radio panel game where real life crime writers are challenged to solve a dramatized mystery. The crime writers that have taken part include Val McDermid, Liza Cody, Susan Moody, Lindsey Davis, John Harvey, Margaret Yorke, H(arry) RF Keating, P D James, Antonia Fraser, Reginald Hill, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Simon Shaw, Jessica Mann, Francis Fyfield, Minette Walters, Sarah Dunant, Keith Miles, Paula Gosling, Robert Barnard, Caroline Graham, Gavin Lyle, Anthony Price, Robert Richardson, Ian Rankin and Stella Duffy to name a few. However by 1980 he became a full time mystery writer. He has also written episodes of the BBC radio detective drama Baldi (2000) which features a Franciscan priest on sabbatical, lecturing on semiotics at a university in contemporary Dublin. After helping the police as a translator for an Italian witness, he turns sleuth. Simon Brett wrote episodes 2 (Keepers of the Flame), 4 (The Emerald Style) and 5 (Death Cap) of series 1 of Baldi. He also went on to write episodes 7 (Three in One) and episode 10 (Not for Life) of series 2, episode 14 (The Book case) of series 3 and episode 19 of series 4 entitled Cross Purposes.
Simon Brett has written four different series of detective novels. The first series that he started featured Charles Paris an unhappily separated but not yet divorced actor who is moderately successful but who has a slight drinking problem. For some reason Paris finds himself investigating all sorts of crimes in the rather unwilling role of an amateur detective. The first book in the series Cast, In Order of Disappearance (1975) introduced readers to Charles Paris.