The Longue Goodbye

In honor of author Richard Stark, reader Joe Barrett, and their correct rendering of chaise longue in the audiobook version of Stark's novel Butcher's Moon, here's a story I wrote a few years back.
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Rick Ollerman enjoys a
moment of nail-biting
suspense. Photos by
Peter Rozovsky for
Detectives Beyond
Borders.

Here are more photos from Sunday's Noir at the Bar in New York along with the other story I read there. I've included a face from earlier in the day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that would not have been out of place at the reading. (See if you can spot the interloper.)  See my other story and the first batch of photos on the previous post here at Detectives Beyond Borders.)

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The Longue Goodbye

Nick Kolakowski, Suzanne Solomon.

I pushed open the door to the pool deck and inhaled chlorine and death. Fen slumped in the chase lounge. He looked smaller and sicker than he had when I'd seen him three days before.

Hellenistic dramatic mask

Spit and blood caked around his broken mouth, and for a moment I thought he was dead. "Got anything to tell me, Fen?" I knelt by the chair.

Jeff Markowitz

His lips cracked when he tried to talk, and I knew Fen was more than halfway to where he was going. I leaned closer.

"It's chaise longue, not chase lounge, you illiterate fuck," he said. "It means long chair."

Jen Conley

He died happy.

— Peter Rozovsky

Albert Tucher, Jen Conley, Suzanne Solomon, Terrence McCauley

© Peter Rozovsky 2016

Noir at the Bar NYC with a (new) story by me

Juliet Fletcher, Charlie Stella, Rory Costello
(Photos by Peter Rozovsky for Detectives
Beyond Borders)

Even more fun than usual was had at Sunday evening's Noir at the Bar at Shade Bar in New York. Why? Because I:

1) Met a couple of folks whom I had previously known only through social media and e-mail, notably Charlie Stella.

2) Met some new folks from the United States and elsewhere.

3) Had enjoyable reunions with all kinds of crime fiction folks and my favorite bartender in New York.

4) Stayed late, by Noir at the Bar standards, and still managed to make my bus back to Philadelphia.

and

Scott Adlerberg and Jen Conley,
the evening's hosts.

5) Read a story that I had assembled for the occasion, because Jen Conley invited me to read, and it would not have done to show up with an old story, would it?

The story—the opening section of a story, really—is a distillation of some fragments that I wrote years ago and that finally may come together as a coherent whole. Here we meet the characters and set the stage for the  main action.

Before we go, thanks to Jen for inviting me to read and to Scott Adlerberg for MCing the event with her.

Oh, the story's title. West Fourth Street is the nearest subway stop to Shade. Beyond that, if you don't recognize the allusion, you've got a a lot of nerve to say you are my friend.

===============

 Negatively Fourth Street

by Peter Rozovsky 

Fifteen miles outside NEWark, Delaware, the woman next to me started crying into her phone. I commiserated, I kept silent. Then I slammed my book down and headed for the café car.

On my way back, the train took a curve. I bobbled my coffee and sandwich, and the heavy metal doors between the cars clanked open. From in front came the last voice I wanted to hear. From behind, a voice I wanted to hear even less.

Suzanne Solomon

The train pulled out of NEWark with a long, shrill whistle. I rolled down the grass embankment, mopped the coffee stains and tuna flecks from my shirt, and watched the train disappear.

*

Blake wore a red T-shirt and blue jeans. He hunched forward, hands jammed in his pockets, and he moved fast. Fetch held a rolled-up Rangers jacket in the crook of one elbow, a Tim Horton's bag half falling out of one pocket. He ambled and shambled, but he still kept up with his friend somehow. He put a hand on Blake's shoulder, and they stopped.

Fetch indicated a door, and Blake shook his head. Fetch held up one finger and ducked into the doorway. Blake shrugged, leaned against a pillar, and lit a cigarette.

*

Terrence McCauley

Kasey Thompson's voice told a smoky tale of cigarettes and whiskey, but it lied. She never touched either.

"Think I'd be able to do this if I wasted my time in bars?"  She whacked the speed bag and made me feel sorry for the leather. Chin tucked, knees flexed, back straight. Elbows in, her back heel lifting slightly each time she struck. Her two fists became four, then six. Her breath came in short, spitting wheezes with each punch. I got tired watching her.

But she did waste time in bars, and I wanted to know why. "What's with the gym stuff?" I said. "You don't fight."

She stopped punching, and she smiled as she blew a wisp of platinum hair from her left eye. "Would you want to be whipped by a fat dominatrix?"

*

I jabbed the .45 at the base of Fetch's skull, and I cackled as his eyes grew wide.

"Out of the car. And leave the boxes."

I jerked the gun to the right as Blake went for his jacket. "Hold it right there, Tiger."

"The fuck?"

"What am I going to call you? Paddy? Mick? Now, out of the car, Celtic, and keep your hands away from your — "

"From my Marlboros, you gobshite. All right, I'm getting out."

I waved out the window of Fetch's black 2008 Lexus as I pulled away.

"See you later, gents. Put this in your books."

*

Albert Tucher

Two nights later I'm shouting to be heard over the crowd at the Grand Hyatt.  We're hooting and cheering as a small, curvy woman dressed in black lifts her blouse to reveal her tattoos: Kasey Thompson. The crowd pushes in around her, all except two guys looking the other way, toward the door.

The snake tattoo is flicking its tongue at Kasey Thompson's scapula, but I've got one eye on the two guys.

One of them says: "I'M OUT OF HERE FOR SOME CIGARETTES."

His friend, a husky, saltish-pepperish dude with a Rangers jacket and a Tim Horton's bag, shrugs, and they head my way.  Shit. Fetch and Blake.

============================

© Peter Rozovsky 2016

A schmuck in New York

Last night I bought a crime novel called Schmuck.  It's a cozy.

But seriously, folks.  I was a great audience.

The Schmuck writer is Ross Klavan, and he read at New York's Beach Cafe, as did Charles Salzberg, Richie Narvaez, my old Bouchercon panel mate Terrence McCauley, Tim O'Mara, and Suzanne Solomon.

Not only was the pizza free, but the writing was good, and the readings began at 10 p.m., a more sensible hour for crime fiction than all those genteel 7 and 7:30 p.m. starts. I liked the evening's format, too: two authors reading, then a short break before the next two. This allowed socializing, blogging, and unobtrusive bathroom breaks, and organizers of future events would do well to follow the format.

*

Narvaez is president of the New York chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, which is bringing a daylong crime-writing workshop called MWA University to Philadelphia June 28. Manhattanites are an insular lot, and they get nervous when they have to leave their skinny island. Come on out to the workshop (whose cost is surprisingly low), and make them feel at home.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Welcome to Gerard Brennan's Belfast octagon

Back in September, Eric Beetner and Terrence McCauley took part in a panel I moderated at Bouchercon 2013, and talk turned to novellas they had written for the Fight Card line, a series of boxing stories by new pulp and hard-boiled authors under the house name Jack Tunney.

What is the appeal to younger authors in the 21st century, I asked them, of writing stories set in the 1930's, '40s, and '50s, using a byline fashioned from the names of two athletes of the 1920s, about a sport that has not loomed large on the American scene since the 1970s?

Beetner dismissed the widespread belief that boxing is no longer popular, citing the rise of mixed martial arts (MMA). And lo, it was one of Fight Card's two MMA novellas that not only opened my eyes to the nuances of a sport that took shape only in 1993, but also demonstrated in its purest form the appeal of those old-style boxing stories.

The novella in question is Welcome to the Octagon, and the author is Gerard Brennan, a  longtime friend of Detectives Beyond Borders and an author with a growing list of credits for the stage and the page. That he sets Welcome to the Octagon in contemporary Belfast only emphasizes his fidelity to the old-time conventions of pulp boxing stories: the good guy, the gangster, the girl, the temptation, the tug of war between old and young.

The story has wry, self-deprecating humor:

"My heart wasn’t in it, but I had to live up to my nickname. The Rage! That was a joke. There and then I felt like The Disappointment. But I roared at the crowd and they roared back."

It has sharp social observation that reminds the reader he or she is no longer in New York or Los Angeles or a tumble-down precinct of some other American city:

"The Troubles had gone away. Except for the new age scum that was rising to the top. Maybe TapouT didn’t typify the real gangsters pulling the strings in Northern Ireland — we’d get to them quicker by looking at our politicians first — but he was a wannabe villain that slipped through the cracks of a mostly law-abiding society. A wannabe villain that would have been crushed by the RUC or the paramilitaries of old."

Brennan knows how to keep a story moving, planting narrative hooks toward the ends of his chapters and throwing in at least one character wrinkle unlikely to have shown up in an old-time boxing story. But what may have impressed me most is his engagement with MMA, a sport until now shoved somewhere back in my consciousness next to street luge, half-pipe, and bicycle motocross. MMA is compounded of styles and techniques taken from many fighting sports, and Welcome to the Octagon is full of observations about the resulting complexity and the demands it places on the fighters.

Welcome to the Octagon has heart, humor, and respectful engagement with its subject. What's not to like?

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

A Bouchercon moderator at work, plus why Johnny Shaw is righteous

For anyone who wonders what a Bouchercon panel moderator looks like in action, that's me at right, calmly steering my "Goodnight, My Angel: Hard-Boiled, Noir, and the Reader's Love Affair With Both" panel at Bouchercon 2013 in Albany two weeks ago (seems like years ago already. I'm just about ready for Bouchercon 2014.)

The gentleman to my right is Jonathan "Bad Juju" Woods, who was part of the panel. The photo is courtesy of Rita McCauley, whose husband, Terrence, was also a panel member. Thanks, Rita.

*

I've just finished reading Johnny Shaw's Big Maria, and I admit I teared up a bit at Shaw's resolution of his three screw-up protagonists' fates. The old-fashioned virtues of faith, determination, loyalty, and staying true to one's friends and family and self are much manipulated and abused by governments, corporations, the media, and a thousand people we all meet every day to the point that's easy to mock them or to grow cynical. But irony is easy. Shaw gets a reader believing in this stuff even as that reader laughs.

Furthermore, I suspect Shaw does this deliberately. Here's a bit from near the book's end, XXX substituted for a character's name to avoid a spoiler:

"The same pit that (XXX) had imagined as his grave had become just that. Some might have found it funny, but the irony would have pissed (XXX) off. Irony is only amusing when it happens to someone else. Death isn't funny to the dead."

I'm not entirely sentimental about this book, though. Among the many things to like are Shaw's subordination. His supporting characters are just as memorable and wacky as its three protagonists, but Shaw knows when to pull them back and let the main characters take center stage. He brings those subsidiary characters part way toward resolving obstacles he had put in their way, but he avoids the monotony-inducing trap of resolving their problems as thoroughly as he does the main characters'.  Shaw has chops, and he also knows how to build a story.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

My Bouchercon 2013 panels: Noir, hard-boiled, fantasy, and reality

My noir and hard-boiled panel at Bouchercon 2013 in Albany, N.Y., next month will also be a reality and fantasy panel, fantasy meaning nostalgia, pulp, and other forms of retreat from the everyday.

In this corner, representing reality, Dana King's Grind Joint, with its utter lack of illusion about the supposed benefits of a casino for an economically ravaged Pennsylvania town. In that corner, Terrence McCauley's violent Prohibition-era novel Prohibition and Eric Beetner's post-apocalyptic cannibal/survivor tale Stripper Pole at the End of the World.  Somewhere between these extremes, showing affinities at times with one, at times with the other, are Mike Dennis and Jonathan Woods, who join King, McCauley, and Beetner on the panel.

McCauley harks back to Dashiell Hammett and Paul Cain (and to writers and movie makers who harked back to Hammett and Cain). While his book's themes of loyalty, doubt, and betrayal are confined to no one era, the cover of the novel, at upper left, quite accurately reflects the early- and mid-twentieth-century gats 'n' gloves mythos to which McCauley makes a modern-day contribution. He and Beetner are acutely aware of periods in American popular culture that preceded their own.

King, on the other hand, writes about a world where beaten-down cities are desperate for the next big thing, where governments happily throw cash at companies to relocate to (or remain in) their state, and a lot more money seems to circulate among corporations and politicians than among the relocated workers. For all King's affinities with Elmore Leonard, George V. Higgins or King's amico Charlie Stella, it's a world you can find lurking behind today's headlines.

Fantasy? Reality? Pulp? Bad juju? You'll find it all at Bouchercon ... and here, at Detectives Beyond Borders.

How about you, lovers of noir and hard-boiled? Is your favorite reading reality? Fantasy? Or some mix of both?

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Eric Beetner, Mike Dennis, Dana King, Terrence McCauley, and Jonathan Woods will be part of the "Goodnight, My Angel: Hard-Boiled, Noir, and the Reader's Love Affair With Both" panel, with your humble blogkeeper as moderator, at Bouchercon 2013 on Friday, Sept. 20, at 10:20 a.m.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Bouchercon 2013 and what I'll do there

I'll be moderating two panels at Bouchercon 2013, which begins Thursday, Sept. 19, in Albany, New York.

First up, on Thursday at 4 p.m., is "World War II and Sons," in which I whip authors James R. Benn, J. Robert Janes, John Lawton, Martin Limón, and Susan Elia MacNeal into fighting shape with a discussion of crime fiction set in wartime and its run-up and aftermath.

Then, after a quiet evening with a good book followed by a solid eight hours of sleep and a frugal yet nutritious breakfast, it's "Goodnight, My Angel: Hard-Boiled, Noir, and the Reader's Love Affair With Both" on Friday at 10:20 a.m., with Eric Beetner, Mike Dennis, Dana King, Terrence McCauley, and Jonathan Woods.

That's a nice mix of authors I've read and admired, authors I'd heard about but not read until now, and a couple whose names were new to me. And that means I should be in for a stimulating and entertaining Bouchercon, and I hope you will be, too.

Here's the complete Bouchercon schedule. See you in Albany.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013