Author R&R with Trey R. Barker

Trey R. Barker spent nearly two decades as an on-again/off-again journalist before moving into law enforcement in North-Central Illinois, at the Bureau County Sheriff’s Office. He is currently a sergeant of patrol with a specialty in crisis negotiations and on-line child sexual exploitation and an investigator for the Illinois Attorney General’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

He's also the author of more than 200 short stories, as well as the Barefield trilogy – 2000 Miles to Open Road, Exit Blood, Death is Not Forever – published by Down & Out Books. The first two books in his Jace Salome novels were published by Five Star (which has since dropped its crime fiction line), but the third installment in the series, When the Lonesome Dog Barks, is being published by Down & Out.

Trey stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing the book and how his day job influenced and inspired the work:

In The Eyes…The Words

By Trey R. Barker

By the time I knocked on his door, I had the evidence.

As always, I’d been gathering it for months.  Peer-to-peer software, his computer constantly sharing specific files with my task force computer; back and forth, request and answer, a digital, forensic version of the call and response liturgy.

By the time I knocked on his door, I knew the man. I knew his public habits, his employment and wife’s name.  I knew his child’s name and where he lived.

I knew, when I knocked on his door, exactly what I would see. I knew exactly the look I would see in his eyes when he saw me and my team. He would know, instantly, why we were there.  I would see tears and anger, eyes darting and looking for a way out, hyperventilating, self-loathing, slivers of relief that it was now over. He would stammer but nod thoughtfully when I told him his IP came up in an internet investigation.  He would offer to help any way he could, but he would give signals that he wanted to talk to us privately, rather than in front of his family.

And when we were talking privately, when I showed him the evidence his computer had already sent me, he would admit to trading child pornography. He would tell me everything and it would be awful for everyone in that house.

It always was and by that time, I had done scores of these cases.

I knew, when I knocked on his door, that I would see him, his wife, his child.

Yet when I actually knocked, I did not see what I expected.  Instead, I saw the nine neighborhood children who attended his wife’s on-site day care.

My heart broke.

* * *

Ultimately, every child who looked at me that day was forensically interviewed and there was exactly zero evidence the man had ever touched a child.  He pleaded guilty and took a lengthy prison sentence.  It played out how it always had in those investigations. I did those investigations for almost five years before I had to stop and with every investigation, my heart broke. Regardless of the outcome—plea or trial—my heart broke for those children in the pictures that my suspects so blithely traded.  There was never a thought for those children by the men who traded, in spite of what those men would eventually tell me (and I promise you the justifications can make you stop breathing). Even if the pictures and videos were decades old, the children long since grown up to be their own monsters or to save others from the monsters or dead from their own hand because they couldn’t fight the monsters anymore, my heart constantly shattered.

That is what I used in When The Lonesome Dog Barks, the third Jace Salome novel (Down and Out Books, November, 2017).

While there is no child pornography in Lonesome Dog, what I learned working on two child sexual exploitation task forces (one state-level and one Federal-level) came to bear. I was basically researching by reaching into my own memory. I took what I had worked with on the task forces, the way files were shared and spread and viewed, and then bent and shaped that knowledge into something I could use to help craft this story.

In terms of the technical end of things, I did tap into the brain of my team’s uber-computer-guru to make sure I hadn’t screwed it up, but for the emotional things, I tapped into the horrors that each and every officer who’s done these kinds of cases can easily dredge up. What I described at the beginning of this piece—everything packed so deeply and tightly into the suspects’ eyes, and their justifications afterward—were what I tried to unpack for When The Lonesome Dog Barks.

Yet the thing I tried the hardest to recreate, the thing that still haunts me the most, were the interviews and the justifications.  Not the words, those were predictable enough (like the man who told me it was the fault of the four-year old girl in the forced-sex videos “…because look how she was dressed!” or the man who told me he and his male cousin were just fooling around trading pictures of their own cocks back and forth and “…it got a little crazy.”), but the utter lack of remorse.

Once caught, they were all remorseful, but it was window dressing—cheap blinds covering the fact that they had not an ounce of actual remorse.  To them, the pictures were fantasy and make-believe; no one really got hurt making those pictures, no one was truly molested, no one was truly damaged to the point of killing themselves.  To those men, the pictures with full color and the videos with stereo sound were nothing more than a means to an end, and as long as that end was pleasure, then who the hell cared about the means?

And yes, it was exactly the same for those men who had been molested themselves.  They had felt the terror in the most visceral way possible and now, years later, cared not at all about that same terror being visited upon someone else.

An odd fact for you…in every single one of my cases that involved the suspect having been molested as a child, the age group the suspects looked at was always the age they themselves had been molested.

 So the research for Lonesome Dog was not geography or cultural norms or street dialect.  It was reaction and emotion, usage of another human being; it was trying to convey to my readers exactly what I heard my suspects say when I looked in their eyes after I had knocked on their doors.

 

You can find out more about Trey R. Barker and his writing via his website and follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads. His book When the Lonesome Dog Barks is now available via all major online and print booksellers.

Author R&R with Michael Mayo

Michael Mayo has written about film for the Washington Post and the Roanoke Times. He was the host of the nationally syndicated radio programs Movie Show on Radio and Max and Mike on the Movies. He is the author of American Murder: Criminals, Crime, and the Media, as well as VideoHound’s Video Premieres, Horror Show, and War Movies.

His first novel, Jimmy the Stick, which was published in 2012, initiated the Jimmy Quinn series set in the bloody days of Prohibition. From the bar of his quiet little speakeasy, this limping tough guy serves drinks to every hood in Manhattan—at least until the bullets start to fly. Publishers Weekly said of the series, "Mayo persuasively portrays such real-life mobsters as Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano in a tale sure to appeal to fans of Max Allan Collins’s gangster historicals."

The latest installment of Jimmy Quinn's adventures is Jimmy and Fay, set right as King Kong is premiering at Radio City Music Hall, and Fay Wray is about to become the most famous actress on earth. So what’s she doing hanging around a rundown Manhattan speakeasy? This Hollywood scream queen has come to see Jimmy Quinn after a blackmailer has pictures of a Fay Wray lookalike engaged in conduct that would make King Kong blush. Jimmy tries to settle the matter quietly, but stopping the extortion will cut just as deeply as Fay’s famous scream, ringing from Broadway all the way to Chinatown.

Michael Mayo stops by In Reference to Murder today to talk about writing a Prohibition-era setting:

 

Prohibition New York – Greatest. Setting. Ever.

Prohibition really was the Golden Age for American crime. With the passage of the Volstead Act which in 1920 prohibited the possession, sale and transportation of beer, wine and spirits, bad guys became good guys to anyone who simply wanted to buy a drink. Big city cops and elected officials certainly didn’t believe in the new law. They saw it as something forced on them by appleknockers from the sticks. Sure, all the saloons closed down, but speakeasies opened right up, and the Twenties were ready to roar.

New York was already undergoing a massive transformation. The economic boom just beginning to power up Wall Street. Thousands of young men were returning from World War I, and thousands of young women were moving from the hinterlands to work in offices. All of them wanted to have some fun.

That’s the city that I write about in the Jimmy Quinn novels. It’s equal parts Warner Bros. movies, Dashiell Hammett and Damon Runyon stories, the photographs of Berenice Abbott and Margaret Bourke White, and the paintings of Reginald Marsh and John Sloan. During those years, America became the country we recognize today. Men quit wearing high stiff collars and long coats. Their tailored suits are essentially unchanged. Young women had just thrown off the heavy drapery of Victorian clothes and were experimenting with fashion. The cars may never have been so cool.

 At the center of everything was money.

As the famous madam Polly Adler put it, “In the world of the Twenties, as I saw it, the only unforgiveable sin was to be poor—Money was what counted… Everybody had an angle, everybody was raking in the chips, there was no excuse not to have money—and along with everybody else, I was right there, with my feet planted firmly in the trough.”

New York was (and is) a city that ran on money, alcohol and sex, and Prohibition brought those three together in an important new way. The saloon had been an all-male enterprise. A woman who was not a prostitute or a temperance crusader wouldn’t think of setting foot inside one. Speakeasies, however, were open to everyone. And Prohibition added another exotic element; it made alcohol forbidden fruit to the newly liberated “flappers,” a generation of young women who were eager to break old rules and to try new things. Collectively these guys and dolls were referred to by their disapproving elders as “flaming youth.” Hubba-hubba.

And it wasn’t only the patrons of speakeasies who were young. Many of the mobsters who made their fortunes in bootlegging were surprisingly youthful. When Prohibition began, “Lucky” Luciano was the old man of his group at 23. Meyer Lansky was 18; their friend Ben “Bugsy” Siegel was 14. These guys had grown up on the streets and were experienced beyond their years. By the time Prohibition was repealed, they were millionaires.

Of course, there was considerable violence, too, as there is with any extremely profitable, extremely competitive illegal enterprise. Particularly in the early days, Luciano, Lansky and Siegel were ambitious and ruthless. But as long as gangsters were shooting gangsters, nobody got too upset about it.

In short, Prohibition-era New York was young, stylish, sinful and unrepentant. Could a crime writer ask for anything more?

 

You read learn more about Mike, his books, and Jimmy and Fay via his website or check out a recent interview with Mystery Scene Magazine. His books are available via most online and brick-and-mortar bookstores.

 

Author R&R with Lawrence Kelter

Lawrence Kelter is a resident New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn and residing on Long Island, and often uses Manhattan and Long Island as backdrops for his stories. Early in his career, he received direction from bestselling novelist Nelson DeMille, who put pencil to paper to assist in the editing of his first book, and Kelter was also a member of a private writing workshop led by the late soap opera legend and AFTRA president, Ann Loring. Since then, he's authored three novels featuring street savvy NYPD detective, Stephanie Chalice:  Don't Close Your Eyes, Ransom Beach, and The Brain Vault.

Most recently, he's been tapped to write Back to Brooklyn, the literary sequel to Dale Launer's classic legal comedy film My Cousin Vinny. Kelter answered some burning questions about how that project came to pass:

How did the chance to write BACK TO BROOKLYN come about?

Lawrence Kelter: There was one specific project I always wanted to be involved in, but like the rock star dream and the Super Bowl victory, I thought it was not to be. You might think this silly or lame. And maybe it is. There was a film I enjoyed so much that every time it popped up on TV, it made me late for an appointment because I just couldn’t pull myself away. I knew the script verbatim and often incorporated the better-known lines into my everyday conversation. That movie is My Cousin Vinny.

It popped up on the tube about two years ago, and I decided to email the screenwriter/producer to tell him how much I loved his film, thinking, Hollywood screenwriter—I’m dirt beneath his boot—He’ll never reply.

But he did.

And somehow we forged a connection. Emails led to conversations. He discussed his upcoming projects with me, and I with him. One day he called up and said, “Hey, I read one of your books and you’re pretty f_ _king funny.”

“So how about you let me turn My Cousin Vinny into a book series?”

“Make me an offer.”

Four attorneys and fourteen months later, BACK TO BROOKLYN was delivered to Eric Campbell, publisher of Down & Out Books.

What was the most rewarding part of writing established characters like Lisa and Vincent? The most challenging part?

Lawrence Kelter: Writing BACK TO BROOKLYN was the most fun I’ve ever had sitting in front of a keyboard. I have high hopes for this book. After all, I love the characters and the backstory—not to mention the two years I have invested in the project. But where it goes from here… I've received a great deal of feedback from readers. Almost universally they tell me that that they can hear Lisa and Vinny in their heads playing that cat and mouse game--they visualize Marisa Tomei and Joe Pesci as they're reading. Nothing could be more rewarding than that.

At the onset there were two big challenges that gave me pause. 1) I had to get the voices just right--my Vinny and Lisa had to sound exactly like Vinny and Lisa from the film with the same type of smart Alec rhetoric and the same colloquialisms. They had to think alike and  react alike. In the words of Beechum County DA Jim Trotter III, they had to be, "IDENTICAL!" 2) The movie reveal was just so damn clever and startling that it was a real challenge to develop a plot that felt like the original but was completely different, and at the end ... well, it was a serious undertaking to reveal the true villain and his MO without relying on "magic grits" and "Positraction."

Why should fans of My Cousin Vinny read BACK TO BROOKLYN?

 

Lawrence Kelter: Fans of the film will instantly fall back in love with Vinny and Lisa and hopefully laugh just as hard as they did the first time they saw the film. In the words of New York Times bestselling author William Landay: "Like visiting with old friends, BACK TO BROOKLYN captures the fun and spontaneity of every lawyer's favorite legal comedy, My Cousin Vinny. As surefooted as a '63 Pontiac with Positraction." 

 

Have you heard feedback on BACK TO BROOKLYN from the original movie cast?

Lawrence Kelter: Both Ralph Macchio and his wife have both read the novel and reported that they really enjoyed it. I tried to get in touch with Joe and Marisa but was unsuccessful. On a lighter note, Nelson DeMille gave his copy of the book to his mother after he read it and she reported, "Nelson, this guy knows Brooklyn a hell of a lot better than you do!"

What are you working on now? Will we see further adventures with Vinny and Lisa?

Lawrence Kelter: I'm working on four or five new books at once. OMG, it's scary that I can't remember how many books I'm working on. They're all in different states of completion. Next up is (insert drumroll) the novelization of My Cousin Vinny. Why you ask? Because it's bigger, and fresher, with additional scenes, lots of new humor, and sneak peeks into Vinny and Lisa's history that was not revealed in the film. It's due for release in March of next year.

 
You can learn more about Lawrence Kelter on his official website and follow him on Facebook and Twitter.  Back to Brooklyn is available via Down & Out Books and from all major online and brick-and-mortar booksellers.

 

The 'Zine Scene

It's been a while since I had a roundup of the latest offerings of crime fiction and news in magazines (both print and digital), but I hope to rectify that with today's blog post - and another next week focusing on anthologies. So, without further ado, here they are (with a hat tip to Peter DiChellis, Sandra Seamans, and Martin Edwards):

The November/December issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine features some familiar characters: Special operative cum high-school principal Anne DeWitt returns in “Small Signs” by Charlaine Harris; Elizabeth Zelvin’s sleuth Bruce Kohler is back in a Central Park/Strawberry Fields whodunit (“Death Will Help You Imagine”); Lou Manfredo’s Detective Rizzo takes on a case with a bit of nostalgia (“Rizzo’s Monkey Store”); writer-sleuth Antonia Darcy again stumbles upon a body in “Murder at The Mongoose” by R.T. Raichev; and detectives Hennessey and Yellich return in Peter Turnbull’s procedural “Bad Bargain Lane.” The newcomers include Jim Fusilli, who has his Black Mask debut with the mob story “Precision Thinking,” and John Gastineau’s suspenseful Department of First Stories entry, “A Coon Dog and Love," plus there's much, much more from Dominic Russ-Combs, Tim L. Williams, Tom Tolnay, Penny Hancock, Frankie Y. Bailey, Richard Chizmar, Bill Pronzini, T. J. MacGregor, Zoë Z. Dean, and Doug Allyn.

The new issue of EQMM's sister publication Alfred Hithcock Mystery Magazine includes post-war Manhattan private investigator Memphis Red, who confronts shifting motivations, political alliances, and even identities in L. A. Wilson Jr.’s “Harlem Nocturne; a young woman tries to escape the consequences of a one-time lapse in judgment but finds she can’t escape those determined to find her in S. L. Franklin’s “Damsels in Distress"; and the shadow of calamity, in the form of drought, leaves a western town vulnerable to a charismatic, and dangerous, itinerant preacher in Gilbert Stack’s “Pandora’s Hoax.” There are also plenty of other stories that fit the issue's theme of a landscape of shadows offering many opportunities for both deception and misperception, including those from Eve Fisher, Robert S. Levinson, William Dylan Powell, Susan Oleksiw, Tara Laskowski, Robert Lopresti, R. T. Lawton, Carol Cail, and Anna Castle.The edition also features the second installment of the new feature The Case Files as Steve Hockensmith brings to light some cutting-edge mystery-related podcasts.

I announced this earlier in a Mystery Melange, but it's worth repeating here: Spinetingler Magazine announced it will begin regular publication of a print magazine with the first issue due November 2017 by Down & Out Books. "As is true in life, the events of the past have a tendency to influence our actions in the future," said Sandra Ruttan, co-editor of Spinetingler. "It is the support of our readers that has enabled us to return with this print edition. With their continued support we hope to be able to continue to bring exceptional short fiction and features to you for years to come." The Fall 2017 edition will feature original stories by Tracy Falenwolfe, Karen Montin, Jennifer Soosar, Nick Kolakowski, David Rachels, and yours truly. There are also author snapshots of Con Lehane, Rusty Barnes, Mindy Tarquini, as well as book features and reviews.

Spinetingler is not the only foray into the crime magazine field from Down and Out Books, which also publishes Crimespree, as it just recently launched a new digest, Down & Out, The Magazine, edited by Rick Ollerman. Reed Farrel Coleman contributed an original Moe Prager story, and the editors promise that each issue will feature a story based on a series character. There are also new tales by established and well-known writers including Eric Beetner, Michael A. Black, Jen Conley, Terrence McCauley, Rick Ollerman, and Thomas Pluck. J. Kingston Pierce, fresh off his former beat from Kirkus Reviews, also introduces “Placed in Evidence,” his non-fiction column, and the zine will answer the question of what happened to crime fiction after Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler moved on from the pulps in the essay “A Few Cents a Word.”

The latest issue of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine (#23) from Wildside Press includes new stories and features by Dan Andriacco, Henry W. Enberg, Steve Liskow, Laird Long, Robert Lopresti, Gary Lovisi, David Marcum, Kim Newman, and a classic tale from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, himself. SHMM is a go-to favorite for tales in the more traditional, Holmesian vein.

The latest Mystery Weekly Magazine features the cover story, “The Sugar Witch” by R.S. Morgan, as well as new short fiction from Joseph D’Agnese, Peter DiChellis, Stef Donati, Debra H. Goldstein, R.S. Morgan, Edward Palumbo, Tom Tolnay, and David Vardeman. Mystery Weekly bills itself as offering up every imaginable subgenre, including cozy, police procedural, noir, whodunit, supernatural, hardboiled, humor, and historical mysteries.

Flash Bang Mysteries, edited by BJ Bourg, publishes mystery and crime flash fiction quarterly online, in January, April, July, and October, with a mission to showcase "stories that feature believable characters who speak naturally, realistic situations that bleed conflict, and surprise endings that stay with us long after we reach the final period." The latest issue includes new work by Michael Bracken, Larry W. Chavis, Herschel Cozine, John M. Floyd, and Earl Staggs.

The only American scholarly journal for crime fiction, Clues, has published its latest issues (35.2) in both print form, which can be ordered from McFarland, and digital, available on Kindle and Google Play. As noted in the introduction by executive editor Janice M. Allan, this edition includes analyses of works by E. C. Bentley, Benjamin Black, Andrea Camilleri, Leslie Charteris, Agatha Christie, Tana French, Dashiell Hammett, and Herman Melville, and the TV series True Detective. There are also reviews of nonfiction works in the genre, including Out of Deadlock: Female Emancipation in Sara Paretsky's V. I. Warshawski Novels and Her Influence on Contemporary Crime Fiction (Enrico Minardi and Jennifer Byron, eds.) and Susanna Lee's Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Decline of Moral Authority.

The latest issue of CADS (Crime and Detective Stories), Geoff Bradley's "irregular magazine of comment and criticism about crime and detective fiction," includes an article on "Serendip’s Detections XVI: Disjecta Membra by Tony Medawar," the first attempt to provide a definitive and accurate overview of all the unpublished material featuring Lord Peter Wimsey; a look at "Two and Nearly Three, Crime Classics by Andrew Garve" by Pete Johnson; and "Women Detectives in Fiction: The Early Period" by Philip L. Scowcroft, who explores Sayers’ comments on female detectives. (HT to Cross Examining Crime and Martin Edwards)

The third issue of Crime Syndicate Magazine is out with ten fantastic crime fiction short stories from some of the top crime writers on the market today. Guest-edited by Eryk Pruitt, this issue follows its mission of publishing hard-hitting crime fiction of stories "about violence, greed, lust, debauchery, and any combination," from drugged-outmarital problems in the East Texas countryside (Eryk Pruitt's own "The Deplorables") to helping a new college bestie murder a New Orleans local "god" (Nina Mansfield's "Gods and Virgins in the Big Easy"). There are additional offerings from Kevin Z. Garvey, Max Booth, Dennis Day, S.A. Cosby, Travis Richardson, Paul Heatley, Allen Griffin, and David A. Anthony.

Noir Nation No. 6 continues the crime noir tradition by circling back to its 20th Century jazz roots. This issue includes contributions from 14 writers, including "oldtimer" Gary Phillips, and Tatiana Eva-Marie, who is publishing her first story, who use their stories to address "jazz and crime, jazz and temptation, and the startling impulses that give them life and genius." Other stories in the issue hail from JC Hopkins, Tigre Galindo, Tatiana Eva Marie, John Goldbach, Brendan DuBois, Geronimo Horowitz, Gary Phillips, Jonas Kyle, Andrey Henkin, Alfredo Meridee, Jackie Goodwin, and Ted Berg, and Bill Moody.

In case you missed it, the first issue of Black Cat Mystery Magazine was launched into the crime fiction universe. The brainchild of Wildside Press publisher John Betancourt and Wildside editor Carla Coupe, the magazine is expected to come out quarterly. The inaugural issue features new stories from Alan Orloff, Art Taylor, Josh Pachter, Barb Goffman, Meg Opperman, Dan Andriacco, John M. Floyd, Jack Halliday, Michael Bracken, Kaye George, James Holding, and Fletcher Flora.

The most recent issue of Mysterical-E features new short fiction by Rosemary and Larry Mild, Rafe McGregor, Leslie Budewitz, Sam Wiebe, Robert Watts Lamon, Justin A. McWhirter, Peter W. J. Hayes, Rita A. Popp, Summer Theron , Andrew Miller, Bern Sy Moss, J. R. Lindermuth, and Leroy B. Vaughn. Plus, Gerald So has his latest "Mysterical-Eye on TV and FIlm" column, Christine Verstraete talks up characters, and Frances G. Thorsen looks at classic crime novels. And there are the usual interviews and reviews.

July/August issue of Suspense Magazine has interviews with Peter James, Tess Gerritsen, Linda Fairstein, Sandra Brown, Brenda Novak, and Jeff Menapace. There's also a new section by bestselling author Alan Jacobson, with “The Writer’s Toolkit," and Dennis Palumbo writes a great article about "Rejection." Plus, Anthony Franze and Barry Lancet's "Rules of Writing with J.A Jance"; D.P. Lyle's Forensic Files; and pages of book reviews and short stories.


The most recent Mystery Readers Journal, "Big City Cops I" has "Author Author" features from Max Allan Collins, J.T. Ellison, Margaret Maron and more, including three that are available online: "Cops These Days Aren’t What They Used To Be" by Rennie Airth; "Chinatown Crime Time" by Henry Chang; and "Are You Feeling Safe?" by Lyndsay Faye. There are also new reviews from Lesa Holstine, Michael Mayo, L.J. Roberts, and Craig Sisterson, and more.