Crimespree Magazine #56

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “Change of plans…yeah, we’re out of gas…bring the Winnebago to the big cove south of the lighthouse…and no lights…see ya in a few minutes.”

  Travis scanned the shore with his binoculars. “It looks pretty easy. There’s a parking lot right next to the bluff. We just need to carry the load over those rocks.”

  “Here let me see?” Lenny asked.

  Travis handed over the field glasses and he studied the shoreline. “Yeah, it looks simple…just a few slippery boulders to cross.” He looked at Roach and grinned.

  Travis turned the panga shoreward. Lenny and Roach took up positions at the bow, each grasping one of the boat’s emergency oars. The remaining engine sputtered.

  “Does it really look easy?” Roach asked, his voice shaking. “You know I can’t swim for shit.”

  “Just follow my lead.”

  The panga bumped along, scraping against underwater rocks. They used the oars to help guide her through the shoals. With the last turns of her screw, their battered craft slid onto the wet sand.

  “Get the hell out and start unloading,” Travis ordered.

  Roach pulled the tarp back and he and Lenny began hauling the bales onto the beach. A pungent stench filled the air—a mixture of rotting bull kelp, the salty sea, and something else. Travis left them to their jobs and crept toward the bluff, his pistol drawn. The boulders at its base gave off a dull sheen. Lenny stopped working and he and Roach watched. Travis began to climb over the rocks. He stepped onto a massive boulder shaped like a fat yam. A loud rumbling, as if coming from a misfiring outboard, broke the silence. The rock beneath him gave a mighty heave and he sailed into the air, landing on his back in the sand. The boulder rolled, and Travis disappeared.

  ***

  Shortly after dawn, Eddie pulled the camper into the deserted bluff-top parking lot at the Piedras Blancas Rookery. His wife, Helen, boiled some water and the pair sat at the tiny table and sipped instant coffee, with a shot of brandy in Eddie’s cup to ward off the morning chill. In an hour, the sightseers began arriving. The retired couple donned their docents’ jackets and walked to the bluff top. A small crowd had already formed. A panga boat rested on the beach below, empty except for junk. The beach was free of litter and footprints. Eddie grabbed his cell phone and speed-dialed the Sheriff’s Department, telling them that the smugglers were at it again.

  The tide had come in and pushed the boat close to where the herd of elephant seals crowded against the bluff. They seemed more agitated that morning. A couple of young bulls faced off on the beach, blood-shot eyes glaring, their bulbous noses pointed skyward, roaring. Directly below the sightseers, a sedan-sized male lay with his harem. As the couple watched, the bull rolled to its left, revealing the flattened remains of a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and grasping a pistol. The crowd gasped. Eddie phoned the Sheriff one more time.

  Terry Sanville lives in San Luis Obispo, California with his artist-poet wife (his in-house editor) and one plump cat (his in-house critic). He writes full time, producing short stories, essays, poems, an occasional play, and novels. Since 2005, his short stories have been accepted by

  more than 180 literary and commercial journals, magazines, and anthologies including the Picayune Literary Review, Birmingham Arts Journal, Shenandoah, and The MacGuffin. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his story “The Sweeper.” Terry is a retired urban planner and an accomplished jazz and blues guitarist—who once played with a symphony orchestra backing up jazz legend George Shearing.

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  The Crimespree Interview with Reed Farrel Coleman

  By Tom Schreck

  Issue 56I

  Goodbye Brooklyn,

  Hello Paradise

  If you read this magazine you already know Reed Farrel Coleman. In fact, if you consider yourself a fan of crime fiction there’s little doubt that you’re acquainted with his work. There are the eighteen novels, the three novellas, the numerous short stories and then there are the awards. He’s won the MacAvity three times and also has an Anthony, a Barry and an Audie. He’s been nominated for the Edgar and at press time was waiting to hear on another Edgar decision.

  He’s not his protagonist, Moe Prager but he’s close. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, a location that figures heavily in his plot lines. Reed’s first person narration draws us readers in like friends we don’t have in real life. Moe is in touch with whom he is, his emotions and his feelings and the reader gets to know about all of it. Few real life people have that kind of grip on who they are and the rare breed that does doesn’t share it with others. Moe’s relationship with his readers is an intimate one and he shares his life page by page.

  Reed has always allowed Moe to do that with us. Now, with the release of Hollow Girl, Moe is finishing up. It wasn’t a decision that Reed came to lightly but, like his character, the author is committed, not to what is convenient and easy, but what is right. In this interview he tells us why the time was right for Moe to end.

  Almost simultaneously, Reed was approached by Putnam books and the Robert B. Parker Estate to continue on the Jesse Stone series. Parker, who died in 2010, of course needs no introduction. He was the quintessential mystery writer whose work will go down with Chandler, Marlow and Hammett, all of whom, not coincidently, are Reed’s heroes. Parker’s estate has decided to keep his characters alive with new writers and they reached out to Reed.

  Yes, Moe is moving aside and Jesse is moving in. It is a new direction and a new challenge for Reed and one that provoked a lot of questions. As you might expect, Reed’s answers were frank, direct and honest. Over the years if you’ve gotten to know Reed, in person, through Moe or in this magazine that tone won’t come as any surprise.

  We wouldn’t expect anything less.

  Tom Schreck: Why are you ending Moe now?

  Reed Farrel Coleman: I decided to end Moe long before I found out anything about Jesse Stone. That was a fortunate trick of the timing and it just happened that way. As far as Moe, I never envisioned the series going on forever or even as long as it has.

  The one thing that my literary heroes, Chandler and Hammet, did that I never wanted to do was have my protagonist remain static. In their books one satisfied client walks out of their office and an unhappy client walks in for a new story. I always felt the growth of their protagonists was the only missing element in their work. It’s what I love about Scudder and Bernie Gunther. They evolve with time.

  I wanted Moe to grow, develop and change. I wanted him to be different from book to book. By the time I got to about the sixth Moe book in the series I could see the end coming.

  TS: Why Is that?

  RFC: When I was writing Empty Ever After I realized that I was spending so much time writing back story, that I had so much baggage to tell, whether it was about Moe’s father-in-law or his missing brother-in-law, I felt the books were getting cluttered with back story and that I had taken the story arc as far as I could.

  I had to find a way to pare down the back story and that’s what Empty Ever After was about. It was a way for me to make a break from the old story arc and aim Moe in a new direction. It was a way to leave some old characters behind and introduce new ones.

  I’d taken Moe as far as I could and he had taken me as far as he could.

  I would like to believe Moe is a great character. He was a construct, a vehicle for me to say the things I wanted to say. He had reached a level where I had said what I wanted to say. Not knowing what lay ahead, I thought the time had come for me to say things through different characters who were at different stages of life, maybe less successful or more successful, or richer or poorer characters, but Moe had gone where I wanted him to go and I had nowhere else to take him.

  TS: What role does The Hollow Girl play in all of this?

  RFC: I think it wraps the series up nicely for me and it will leave the readers satisfied as well. I am a selfish writer. I write to entertain and inspire myself and I think if am successful at accomplishing that, t
he readers will also be entertained and inspired. When I was deciding to close out the series I was, for the first time, very conscious of not disappointing the readers. Finales, especially on television or movies, often disappoint me. Now, I’m not saying I changed anything in the plot because of the fans, but I was quite aware of the ending.

  TS: Is this closure for you?

  RFC: I don’t believe in the concept of closure and you know Moe doesn’t believe in it either. I didn’t want it hanging out there that there might be new books in the series, so I wanted it to be unambiguous. Some of the reasons behind my ending the series were just practical and dictated by Moe’s age and health. I didn’t want a 65-year old fragile, grieving, cancer surviving detective. It just wasn’t viable to me. And if it’s not viable for me, I didn’t think I could make the readers buy it. At the same, time I didn’t want to turn Moe in a cozy sleuth, solving crimes in the senior center.

  I didn’t want him to be Alte cocker (Yiddish for an old shitter) detective.

  TS: The Moe series has a long story arc. How did that evolve?

  RFC: That was organic. I didn’t plan that. When I finished one, I had no idea where the next one would take me. I didn’t even know what place or even era they’d be in. If you look at my books they jump all over the place in years. In four books I went from 1977 to 2000. The penultimate Moe book, Onion Street, takes place in 1967 and The Hollow Girl takes place in 2013.

  As Moe aged, time sped up because he was getting older and that was a bit more premeditated on my part.

  TS: Any regrets with the series?

  RFC: I don’t know if I’d say it was a regret, but if I wanted the series to be longer I didn’t leave myself a lot of room in terms of timing. That’s what happens when you write organically. If I had planned out the entire series ahead of time, I might have done things differently.

  In some ways I’ve always regretted Moe’s involvement in the wine stores. I love the relationship between Moe and his brother and it is largely based on my relationship with my brother, David, who is a wine expert. In some instances, readers make mistakes and assume that a crime novel where the protagonist owns a wine store must be a cozy. Then they’d pick up the book and be disappointed. Or, conversely, they assume that it can’t be hard-boiled or noir because the detective is involved with a high-end wine shop and therefore they didn’t pick up a Moe book.

  The wine store served several purposes, though. It showed that Moe wasn’t poor and I it helped to show that just because a character has money, it doesn’t make everything right in his world. In many ways, the wine store was like being in jail for him.

  TS: Will you miss Moe?

  RFC: Well, I don’t now and, because in the last few years I started to miss him less and less between the books, I think I’ll be okay. I don’t know if I’ll miss him five years from now.

  TS: Did Moe speak to you? Did the other characters?

  RFC: Moe was my internal voice and he did speak to me. But the character that spoke to me more than any other was Mr. Roth. He was originally intended to be a minor character in the second Moe book, Redemption Street. He was originally in the book to serve as a contrast to the antagonist. What I found was that he wouldn’t leave my mind. He was always insinuating himself into new Moe books. Moe, like any good PI character, has a code, but he needed a moral presence, a father figure, within the context of the books. Mr. Roth is Moe’s conscience, the guiding conscience for the series.

  There is no Mr. Roth in my life. I wish there was. By the end of the series, Moe has kind of evolved into Mr. Roth. It is no accident that the prologue for The Hollow Girl is the final conversation between Moe and Mr. Roth.

  TS: How did writing the Jesse Stone series come about?

  RFC: Last May, I got a call from my agent who said, “How would you like to be Robert B. Parker?” He had been approached by Putnam and said that they had had their eye on me for a while and were interested in me writing the Jesse Stone books.

  I was very glad it was Jesse and not Spenser. Jesse is a less perfect than Spenser. In fact I think of Jesse as perfectly flawed and there’s less mythology surrounding him. There’s more area for me to explore with Jesse. Spenser fans have a kind of religious fervor about how he should act so there’s less room for Ace to operate in.

  Ace has much more of a delicate balancing act. One of the great things about my editor at Putnam, Christine Pepe, is that she has never spelled out what they want me to do. It isn’t a reboot of the series nor did they want me to write just like Mr. Parker or Michael Brandman. She did ask me if I had a vision for Jesse and I definitely do. I love the first Stone novel, Night Passage, and I hope to get back to the tone and grit of that book.

  TS: What’s the difference between Moe and Jesse?

  RFC: Moe wears his heart on his sleeve and because he is written in the first person the readers have a very intimate relationship with him. Jesse is written in the third person and is always, at least emotionally, kept at an arm’s length from the reader.

  TS: Was it a challenge to change styles?

  RFC: It absolutely was a challenge, but it was what I wanted. The challenge is to reveal who Jesse is without writing in the first person. That’s not something I’ve done in the past, so it is a challenge I welcome as a writer.

  As a reader, it has always been very clear what Jesse’s moral code is, but I found it interesting and unclear why he has this code. For me, revealing the whys of Jesse’s moral code without being blatant or obvious is a great challenge.

  TS: Did Putnam or the estate put any limitations on what you could or could not do with Jesse?

  RFC: I didn’t want to write a new Jesse and I don’t think the readers wanted to read him as a new and different Jesse. Putnam did imply that they still wanted Jesse to be Jesse. Well, so do I. I wanted to keep the spirit of Jesse and I’ve never been told that I have to do “A”, “B” or “C.”

  TS: Have you gotten to the point where you had to stop and think where you were going with the character and make sure you weren’t mixing up Moe and Jesse?

  RFC: Yes, of course. In every plot there are things a character will do. If “A” happens then the character will do “B.” I had to remind myself that Moe would do “B” but Jesse would do “C.” I had to remind myself to not make Jesse too emotional or philosophical and have him just act and do “C.”

  I didn’t think they ever wanted me to do an imitation. They wouldn’t have hired me to do that. I wanted to be true to the spirit of Parker and Jesse but I don’t think they want me to write like Parker. Readers want the character to be the character but they don’t want an imitation.

  Maybe you could see it as the same camera to view Jesse but that we’ve changed lenses. The lens is less of a wide angle and more sharply focused.

  Jesse still struggles with alcohol and he still has a soft spot for fallen women, but maybe we have a closer view of the hows and whys.

  TS: You’ve talked about the differences between Moe and Jesse. Any similarities?

  RFC: One of things I’ve always loved about Jesse Stone is his weak spot for his ruined baseball career. He has always been haunted by the “What if” question. What if he hadn’t been injured? What if he had made it to the Dodgers? Moe is plagued by a very similar “What if” question. What if he had made detective and gotten his gold shield. It gave me confidence that Mr. Parker and I were on the same page in this way, that characters and people are shaped as much or more by their disappointments as their successes.

  In Blind Spot I wanted to explore what happened to Jesse in the aftermath of his injury. There’s a reunion of his old team and he’s forced to confront his past. The readers get to experience him as a baseball player and watch him deal with his complex and unresolved feelings, but in a way consistent with who Jesse is.

  TS: How many will you be doing in the series?

  RFC: I’ve been signed to do three more after Blind Spot and each will have its own flavor. Hopefully this will extend beyon
d the four books because this is a dream gig. I would love for it to go on from there but right now it is just my job to write the books. I hope to explore the town of Paradise and let some of the supporting characters like Molly and Suit step forward and play more in depth roles than they have in recent books.

  In addition, I have a signed a two book deal with Putnam for a my own new series featuring a retired Suffolk County cop named, Gus Murphy, whose world falls into disarray after the death of his only son.

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  Behind the Books: The Case of the Unreliable Narrator

  By Merry Jones

  Issue 56

  In most novels, the narrator serves as the readers’ guide. Whether in third person or first, the narrator’s voice takes us by the hand and leads us, phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence, page by page. The narrator grounds us, sets the tone, defines the setting, gives the facts, portrays the characters. As we move through the story, we trust the narrator. We rely on her.

  But what if we can’t trust or rely on her? What if the narrator is unsure, unsteady? Wrong? Confused? Deceitful? What if she’s suffering from a psychological disorder that taints her perceptions?

  A psychological disorder is exactly what afflicts the narrator in THE TROUBLE WITH CHARLIE and ELECTIVE PROCEDURES.

  The narrator of those books, Elle Harrison, isn’t trustworthy or reliable. Her voice doesn’t steadily lead readers along a path, tracing the footsteps of a criminal and revealing “whodunit.” No, Elle often drifts away from evidence, wanders from the moment, or spins in mental circles. She has difficulty figuring out not just who did it, but even what actually has been done. Often, she’s lost in a cloud, trying to separate what’s real from what’s just in her mind. And, because she’s the narrator, when she wanders, she takes readers with her.