A “Lost” Dennis Novel Makes Its Debut

(Editor’s note: You have to admire the single-minded determination and industry of Calabasas, California, author Lee Goldberg. After being first introduced, in 2013, to the work of deceased and long-forgotten novelist Ralph Dennis—and finding that he loved it—Goldberg set out to resurrect Dennis’ literary output through his own independent publishing company, Brash Books. Over the past couple of years, Brash has reissued all 12 of Dennis’ crime novels starring Jim Hardman, an Atlanta, Georgia, cop turned private eye—with a previously unpublished 13th installment in the series, All Kinds of Ugly, due out in early February. In addition, Goldberg has brought back into circulation a handful of Dennis’ non-series novels; and drawing from “a suitcase full of unpublished manuscripts” the author left behind at his death more than 30 years ago, he has expanded Dennis’ oeuvre. One of those “new” novels was The Spy in a Box, published in December. The other is Dust in the Heart, a “disturbing” police procedural that’s finally being released today. In the essay below, Goldberg recalls the circuitous path Dust in the Heart followed to finally seeing print.)

Dust in the Heart was Ralph Dennis’ final manuscript. It was completed only a few months before his death in 1988. He was a writer no longer at the top of his game, beaten by his demons and his failures, and it showed in the typewritten manuscript.

I’ve now read most of Ralph’s published and unpublished work. So, for me, reading and editing this book was a revealing glimpse into Ralph’s personality and creative process. Dust in the Heart is a Frankenstein’s monster of sorts, made up of bits and pieces of his other unpublished manuscripts, primarily a book entitled Just Child’s Play, which itself was stitched together from his prior published and unpublished work.

The hero of Just Child’s Play is Phil Hannah, an ex-Atlanta police detective who moves to a small-town force after the long, grueling death of his wife from cancer (a relationship that is lifted from the back story of a key character in his 1975 novel Atlanta, which Brash Books republished last year as The Broken Fixer). The detective investigates the rape and murder of a teenage girl and has a very rushed romance, the substance of which is lifted almost entirely from Ralph’s 1979 novel MacTaggart’s War (and that I largely omitted from our revised edition of the book, entitled The War Heist). The hero is aided in his detecting by a young deputy, who is almost identical to the young deputy in Dust in the Heart.

Many of the relationships and politics of the town in Just Child’s Play are replicated in Dust in the Heart, which also borrows a key plot point from Kane #2, an unpublished sequel to Ralph’s 1976 novel Deadman’s Game (both of which I combined and republished as A Talent for Killing). In Kane #2, the hero pursues the man who raped and murdered two young boys, and who is being protected by the government. Ralph lifted the same situation for Dust in the Heart.

Just Child’s Play is a deeply flawed and often incoherent book that justifiably never attracted a publisher. But there must have been something about the central concept—the heart-broken, small-town police detective seeking redemption and love while pursuing a child-murder investigation—that intrigued Ralph, because he ultimately gave it a second shot.

(Left) Author Ralph Dennis

For Dust in the Heart, Ralph recast the Atlanta detective as Wilt Drake, an injured war hero who is abandoned by his wife. And Ralph swapped out the romance for a new one that he seemingly lifted from Gunsmoke. But that wasn’t the only thing Ralph may have lifted from that long-running TV western series. In Gunsmoke, Marshal Matt Dillon enforces the law in Dodge City, Kansas, with the help of his eager young deputy, Chester Goode … and is romantically involved with Miss Kitty, the local madam and saloon owner. He also often seeks the wise counsel of ornery old Doc Adams, the town’s physician.

In Dust in the Heart, Wilt is Matt Dillon, Deputy Joe is Chester, stripper Diane is Miss Kitty, and Doc is, well, Doc. Ralph even gave Wilt the limp that actor James Arness, who played Dillon, had as a result of a real-life war injury.

And perhaps there’s also a message in the hero’s name. The hero of Ralph’s first novel (1974’s Atlanta Deathwatch) was Jim Hardman. The hero of his last book is Wilton “Wilt” Drake. From a Hard man, to a Wilted man. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

I struggled over whether to publish Dust in the Heart or to keep it in a drawer. The original manuscript was nearly 100,000 words and it was a mess … and yet, there was still something haunting, melancholy, and powerful about the book that wouldn’t let me go. I knew that Ralph was passionate about this novel. He told a newspaper reporter, and several people who were close to him, that he’d put a lot of work into it and had high hopes that it would be his comeback. It was also his final novel. Given all of those factors, I felt we had to release it to complete the full arc of his literary career.

So I dove into the manuscript, found the essence of the characters and the spine of the story … and began reshaping the book around that. I cut more than 30,000 words, including many long, irrelevant asides unrelated to the characters or the story, as well as several gratuitous, explicit sex scenes between a deputy and his rich, older lover, and other scenes with secondary characters that took place outside of the hero’s point of view, or that were repetitive, didn’t further the plot, or slowed the pace. I also fixed some tracking errors and other common mistakes that all writers make in their initial drafts.

I believe that the final, published draft of Dust in the Heart is a strong police procedural, dark and haunting, and a worthy capstone to Ralph’s career. But what really makes it special, at least for scholars and admirers of this author’s work, is the fascinating insight it offers into Ralph Dennis himself, an alcoholic who never found a woman to love him, who was reduced to working as a clerk in a used bookstore after a decade of being rejected by publishers, and who would soon die without achieving the recognition that he deserved.

The Story Behind the Story: “Koreatown Blues,” by Mark Rogers

(Editor’s note: This is the 68th installment in The Rap Sheet’s “Story Behind the Story” series. Today’s guest contributor is Mark Rogers, who lives most of each year in Baja California, Mexico, with his Sinaloa-born wife, Sophy. His work has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, The Village Voice, and other publications, and his travel journalism has taken him on assignment to 54 countries. While Endeavour Press beat Brash Books to market with Rogers’ mystery novel Red Thread, the author considers Koreatown Blues—due out on February 1, from Brash—to be his debut novel. In addition to penning fiction, Rogers blogs at Pissing on My Pistols.)

* * *

The warm rain fell on a tin awning in Mexico. I waited, up against the building’s wall, staying dry. The pieces of my crime novel Koreatown Blues were all there. Waiting to be remembered and imagined …

Back in 2005, a screenplay of mine had been optioned by a major player, and I’d been signed to a hip literary management company. At age 55, I knew I was way past my sell-by date. Even so, nothing was going to stop me from making the move from New Jersey to Los Angeles and giving screenwriting a shot.

I told my wife, “If I don’t take this chance, you’ll end up with a bitter old man. I don’t want to be him, and believe me, you don’t want to be married to him.”

I drove cross-country and sublet a dark studio apartment in L.A.’s Koreatown. The apartment had only one window that looked out on a brick wall close enough to touch. It was ugly as hell but in reality, perfect conditions for a writer, fulfilling Henry Miller’s dictum: “Writers should be put in a prison cell and given only bread and water.”

The plan was for my family to join me in three months (in a bigger apartment). Instead, they refused to make the move. And I was too stubborn to return to New Jersey.

Divorce followed.

Every three days or so the loneliness of my apartment would get to me. On one of those nights I wandered into a Korean nightclub a few blocks from my apartment. When I ordered a Hite, the beer arrived with a cordless microphone and the request to sing “Yesterday.”

“As usual, I was the only white guy in the place.”

That’s the first line of my crime novel Koreatown Blues. And that’s the way it was. The Koreans accepted me at once, and it wasn’t long before I developed a crush on the barmaid, Sung. Her husband was in South Korea, having refused to make the move to the States, which mirrored my own situation. Sung worked full-time and took care of her two teenage kids. She told me that once a year she liked to go to the beach and stare at the horizon line.

Part of my affection for Sung was driven by my respect for her. When she arrived in L.A. from Seoul, she first worked as a taxi driver, which had to be daunting for a newcomer who didn’t speak English.


(Above) Author Mark Rogers

During my hopeful nights sitting at the bar, trying to connect with Sung, the life of the nightclub went on around me, a mix of B-girls, Korean gangsters, and ordinary Joes Korean-style.

One night, a dude at the bar got tired of eating his rice and started playing the drums on my head with his chopsticks, like a deranged Gene Krupa. When he wouldn’t stop, I told him, “You’re fuckin’ with John Wayne.” A fight was only averted when he sped out the door and disappeared into the night.

A middle-aged Korean man sat beside me at the bar and told me about his son who had died in infancy. Then, when the mike was passed to him, he sang “Tears in Heaven,” by Eric Clapton.

Another young Korean was in love with Sung and challenged me to a bout of arm wrestling. I beat him easily and he insisted we try it left-handed. I beat him again and he complained, “You should have let me win one.” My response was, “You’ve heard of ‘When in Rome do as the Romans do?’ Well, I’m from New Jersey.”

One cadaverous-looking Korean got up in the middle of the floor and sang an impassioned version of Celine Dion’s “Power of Love.” At song’s end he sat down beside me and pulled out an envelope from inside his shirt: X-rays showing his inoperable lung cancer.

While I loved every minute of this, I was also developing much more than a crush on Sung. I’d ask myself, “If L.A. is filled with women, why did you have to go and fall for a married, non-English-speaking Korean woman with two kids?”

All during this time, I had the feeling of being surrounded by a culture that would ultimately and always be alien to me.

The romance with Sung never ignited and the optioned screenplay sputtered out, even though the production company had invested $400,000. I eventually drifted out of L.A., all the way down to Mexico.

A few years later, standing under an awning in Baja California, waiting out the rain, a stray remark from those L.A. days bounced around in my head: “There are many ghost stories in Koreatown.” I pulled out my notebook and in a half-hour had the main story beats for Koreatown Blues, although my ghosts would be flesh and blood.

Koreatown Blues is the story of Wes—whose purchase of a car wash in L.A.’s Koreatown comes complete with a young Korean wife he’s never met. Wes soon learns her five previous husbands were murdered before the honeymoon and finds himself with a ring on his finger and a target on his back. Will he become the next victim of this centuries-old blood feud—or will he emerge as the last husband standing?

Some of my favorite writers are Elmore Leonard, Raymond Chandler, David Goodis, Jim Thompson, John D. MacDonald, James Lee Burke, and James Sallis. While I admire all of them, the truth is they didn’t provide the inspiration for my Koreatown Blues protagonist, Wes Norgaard, who I describe as having no reverse gear. Instead, I was inspired by a simple exchange between two characters in Lights in the Dusk, a film by Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki:

The heroine comes upon the badly beaten hero: “What will you do?”

Blood trickles down the edge of the hero’s mouth and his eye is bruised. He says, “I’ll open a garage.”

She says, “It’s good you haven’t lost hope.”

Once I started writing Koreatown Blues, the words flowed, 1,000 a day. This is how I like to work, making my thousand and stringing together as many writing days as I can—at least six a week.

When I was 22 years old, I used to explain away my lack of success by telling myself that Ernest Hemingway didn’t publish his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, until he was 26. Well, my 26th birthday came and went, along with a bunch of other milestones. Now, here I was at 64, still plugging away at the novel. People I’d grown up with were planning their retirement, while I was still trying to put even one run on the scoreboard.

Then, in one six-week period last year, the floodgates opened. Brash Books contracted for Koreatown Blues; Endeavour Press took an early mystery novel of mine, Red Thread (written in 1990), and will publish an ’80s noir novella of mine titled Night Within Night (written in 1986). Common Deer Press picked up a middle-grade novel titled Rex, co-written with Cody B. Stewart and Adam Rocke. And Tapas Media contracted to distribute a self-published novel of mine titled Basement, for download on iOS devices. (Basement was written in 1988).

What changed? Why is my work suddenly worthy of publication? Whatever the reason, I’m now a guy in his 60s who feels like he’s 26. I have a lot of catching up to do. Presently I have four other novels making the rounds, and I plan to write three more this year.

One of them is a novel based on that screenplay optioned years ago, the one that sputtered out. Who knows? If my book is a success, maybe I’ll see a film made from it after all.

Moving toward publication has been a charmed process, with an amazing cover design; great editing and support from my publishers at Brash Books, Lee Goldberg and Joel Goldman; and lots of enthusiastic pre-publication buzz. Publishers Weekly called Koreatown Blues “an entertaining, fast-paced first novel, with an unexpected, up-to-date solution,” while Edgar Award-winning author Bruce DeSilva (The Dread Line) had this to say: “Koreatown Blues is a cleverly-plotted hard-boiled novel with crisp, muscular prose, a feverish pace, a vividly-drawn urban setting, and characters so real that Rudy Giuliani would stop and frisk them.”

Burcell Revives Weston’s Mismatched Cops

As British author Martin Edwards observed the other day, “there’s nothing new” in today’s fictionists penning fresh works about long-established detectives. “People other than [Arthur] Conan Doyle started writing about Sherlock Holmes a very long time ago,” Edwards said in his blog. “But it's fair to say that continuation novels have become much more popular, and common, in recent years. So we have new James Bond stories, written by a variety of very distinguished writers, new Hercule Poirot stories from Sophie [Hannah], new [Lord Peter] Wimsey stories from Jill Paton Walsh, new Albert Campion stories by Mike Ripley, and so on.”

Now add to that inventory of continuation novels The Last Good Place (Brash), a brand-new, fourth Al Krug/Casey Kellog tale by Robin Burcell--who I interviewed for my new Kirkus Reviews column. You don’t remember Krug and Kellog? They were the seemingly mismatched Santa Monica, California, police detectives created by Carolyn Weston in Poor, Poor Ophelia (1972), who went on to appear in two additional police procedurals, Susannah Screaming (1975) and Rouse the Demon (1976). More memorably, Krug and Kellog were the models for Lieutenant Michael Stone and Assistant Inspector Steve Keller in the 1970s TV crime drama The Streets of San Francisco, played by Karl Malden and Michael Douglas, respectively. The 1972 pilot film for that ABC-TV series closely follows the plot of Poor, Poor Ophelia.

Weston died back in 2001 at age 80, and long before then her novels had fallen out of print and into obscurity. But they weren’t wholly forgotten. In fact, they remained much on the mind of author-screenwriter Lee Goldberg, who in the fall of 2014 launched independent publishing house Brash Books with his friend and fellow novelist, Joel Goldman. “I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and my father was an anchorman on KPIX [TV],” Goldberg recalled during an interview I did with him last year. “So, naturally, as a kid, I was a big fan of The Streets of San Francisco. And when I saw that the TV series was based on three books by Carolyn Weston, I snapped those up and devoured them. They’ve been on my shelf ever since. They are great police procedurals that won acclaim in the 1970s--a time when there weren’t a lot of female crime writers out there, certainly not many getting the kind of attention that she was or inspiring a hit TV series. And yet, even though everybody knows about The Streets of San Francisco, nobody remembers Carolyn Weston’s books, perhaps because she never wrote any more books after those three procedurals. … They were at the top of my list when we launched Brash. We acquired all the rights to Carolyn’s books from her heirs and decided to continue the series. Joel and I both knew the perfect writer for the job: our old friend Robin Burcell. We had no one else in mind (which also shows how much Joel and I think alike). Not only is Robin an acclaimed crime novelist, but she’s a cop in Northern California, too. Who could possibly be a better choice?”

Indeed, Burcell--who worked with the police department in the wine country town of Lodi, California, before becoming a criminal investigator for the County of Sacramento (a job from which she retired in January 2010)--has always brought a cop’s sensibilities and knowledge to her fiction, as well as a talent for suspense-building. That’s been true whether she was writing about San Francisco homicide investigator Kate Gillespie (Cold Case, 2004) or FBI Special Agent and forensic artist Sydney Fitzpatrick (The Kill Order, 2013). And it’s no less true in The Last Good Place, which is due for official release in the States next week. Synopsizing the plot of this new Krug/Kellog novel, I write in Kirkus that it

finds its two protagonists--now working for the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD), in tribute to the TV show--digging into the case of a woman whose murder might be part of a string of strangulations occurring around Bay Area landmarks. Complicating matters, the deceased may have been engaged in an affair with her neighbor, and she volunteered at the local office of a U.S. congressman who wants to stay clear of the whole sordid business. The publicity surrounding this inquiry puts pressure on Krug and Kellog both, but it’s the latter who seems to struggle most, due partly to the distraction of his trying to win a promotion in rank. While Burcell’s efforts to meld the protagonists from Streets with Weston’s counterparts can jar at times, The Last Good Place is a craftily constructed procedural that bears the tone of Weston’s fiction without slavishly imitating it.

Earlier this month I sent Burcell a number of questions via e-mail, not only about her law-enforcement and writing history, but about the lessons she’s learned as a novelist. Most of our discussion about The Last Good Place can be found in today’s Kirkus column, but the remainder of our exchange is presented below.

(Left) Robin Burcell, photographed by Peter Rozovsky.

J. Kingston Pierce: Do you live in San Francisco proper, or somewhere else in that area?

Robin Burcell: I live just east. Actually, I’m located near Sacramento. But way back when, I used to live in South San Francisco (actually attended South San Francisco High School) and still visit the city regularly, as it’s less than a two-hour drive away.

JKP: How many years did you spend working in California law enforcement, not only as a police officer but as a detective, a hostage negotiator, and an FBI-trained forensic artist?

RB: Just shy of 27 years total. (I think my retirement papers showed 26.85 years or something.)

JKP: Where and when did you begin your police career?

RB: I started out as the first female officer for the Lodi Police Department in 1983. I spent 18 years there before leaving to work for the County of Sacramento as a criminal investigator. (This title would be equivalent to an investigator for the district attorney.) I retired from Sacramento County.

JKP: And how did you become a cop in the first place? Was it something you had long dreamed of doing, or was it a more unexpected choice of career?

RB: Ha! I definitely fell into it. I was a bookkeeper for a large chain hardware store, full-time (while I dreamed of writing books one day--and not really knowing what I was going to be when I grew up). I also worked part-time at an ice-skating rink so that I could skate for free. (I loved ice skating!) One of the parents who brought her children in for lessons was married to a sheriff’s deputy, and she seemed to think I would make a good cop. When she found out Lodi was hiring, she not only told me to apply, but bugged me every day, asking me if I had applied yet. I finally did just to get some peace. Honestly, I never thought I’d be hired. And I have it on good authority that the powers that be in Lodi never thought they’d be hiring me. They didn’t want any women on the force back then. But that’s a different story (and a bit too long for this interview). Let’s just say when push came to shove, they couldn’t come up with a reason not to hire me. I passed the written [exam], the physical (thanks to ice skating!), and the oral interview.

JKP: Did you develop an interest in writing fiction when you were young, or was that something that came to you later in life?

RB: I can’t remember a time I didn’t want to write. I just wasn’t sure how to go about it in order to be published. I started my “writing career” in elementary school, drawing postage-size pictures on my desk and imagining a story that went with them. (Yes, I was that girl. The one always day-dreaming. Lucky for my academic record, I was a quick study and managed to skate by in most lessons.) I was already learning about destroying evidence back then. Writing on the desk was a huge violation of school rules, so I became very adept at learning how to erase my tiny pictures with a little spit and a good swipe of my thumb.

JKP: I find it interesting that your first novel, When Midnight Comes (1995), was basically a work of romance fiction, featuring a Miami detective who--while investigating a series of homicides--“suffers a freak accident that sends her back to the middle of 19th-century London and into the arms of Captain Brice Montgomery.” At the time, were you intending to make a career of writing romance novels? If so, what turned you toward crime fiction, instead?

RB: Somewhere along the way I had switched from reading mysteries to reading romance and really thought it might be a good way to break into the writing field. I sold that first book, Midnight, in 1994, and told my husband that I have my foot in the publishing world door and we can have that second child now. I became pregnant fairly quickly and gave birth to twins in 1995 (a few months before Midnight was released). I really tried to write more romances, but had no success. Undoubtedly a few factors came into play, the first being there was far more murder than romance in the following books. Not sure if it had to do with the lack of sleep in my life (two babies?), but at the time, romance was the last thing I was thinking about. In fact, it was a couple of years before I was able to even get back to writing. By the time I did start, books on murder and mayhem seemed to be a better fit. (I like to think it’s because of my job description, as opposed to my children or home life that made me switch genres.)

JKP: After Midnight you published Every Move She Makes (1999), the opening installment in your series starring a San Francisco Police homicide investigator, Inspector Kate Gillespie. What was it about Gillespie that made you want to follow her through three more books?

RB: While researching Midnight (which originally started off in San Francisco, before the editor had me change it to Miami), I discovered that San Francisco PD had never had a woman working homicide. I was surprised, mostly because SFPD seemed such a progressive department. And because I was the first female officer to work for my department, and knew how difficult it was to break those barriers, I thought I could write a book about what it might be like for the first woman to work homicide in San Francisco. Having spent the last several years before that reading romance, however, I wasn’t aware that Laurie R. King had already written a book about the first female homicide investigator for SFPD. (Coincidentally, both our characters are named Kate. My character started off as Fran, but my editor didn’t like it and asked for a stronger name. I submitted a list, one of which was Kate. Wouldn’t you know, that’s the one she picked.)

I knew from experience it would take a while for Kate to feel comfortable working in this males-only club. Based on my experiences as the only woman on the [Lodi] force (and later, the only female detective), I knew there would be men who didn’t want Kate there, and who would go out of their way to make sure she knew it. I figured it would take Kate at least that long to wade through the growing pains of this new position.

JKP: What relationship did you maintain between your real-life police career and your crime fiction? Did some of the things you saw on the job bleed into your stories?

RB: I was constantly running into people who, for various reasons, struck me as the types who would make wonderful characters in a book. (If they only knew what I was thinking, as I stood there, listening to their statements! Not that they had cause to worry. I never stole someone outright. Nor did I ever take a case and use it specifically.) My M.O. for making someone a character was to take the physical characteristics of one person and the personality quirks of another. Kate’s partner in later books, Rocky Markowski, was based on a crime reporter who used to come into our office (his physical appearance; I drew his personality from someone else). I found that if I used this combo approach to my characters, they were more rounded (and sometimes took on a life of their own--always a good thing when writing).

As for events in the books [being] rooted in truth? I know I’m not the only author who has thought that if I put something real in a book, no one’s going to believe it, because it’s too far-fetched. My goal has always been to give an entertaining but realistic portrayal of police work. But when I do use real-life events (and I’ve used several), I always change the details for the books. One that comes to mind is the explosion in Deadly Legacy [2003]. That was based on a similar occurrence in our city, one that landed a couple of our officers in the hospital. There was [also] that time I was in a car accident (the lieutenant was driving and we were broadsided--on my side, of course) and I started passing out, thinking, I’ve got to remember this for the book. Everything’s fair game.

JKP: The Gillespie novels won you two back-to-back Anthony Awards (for Fatal Truth [2002] and Deadly Legacy), along with Barry and Macavity award nominations. Why did you give up that series after Cold Case saw print in 2004?

RB: I’d completed the story arc for Kate. I wanted to write what it was like for her to gain acceptance in this male-dominated field, and maybe get a handle on her personal life. And the real clincher was that I really, really wanted to go to Europe and write it off on my taxes. I couldn’t figure out a way to get a San Francisco cop to investigate a bunch of cases that were rooted in other countries. Maybe one book, but a series? It seemed highly unlikely. I knew I needed to move from a local police department to the FBI. They, at least, had more latitude to hop on a plane and follow a lead into another country.

JKP: So four years passed between your last Gillespie novel and the release of Face of a Killer (2008), your first book starring FBI forensic artist Sydney Fitzpatrick. Did you spend that time dealing with your three daughters, or were you trying to figure out what direction to take next with your fiction writing?

RB: Kids, life, work, it all seemed to happen at once. Since I wanted to start a new series, I wanted to take the time to do it right. But I also realized I wanted to spend a few months to finish a portrait of my children. (Mind you, I was still a full-time law-enforcement officer, so that “few months” translates into how I spent my evenings and weekends, which I normally spent writing.) As a forensic artist, I’d sketched hundreds of suspects over the years for any number of violent crimes and just felt the need to do something that was completely opposite of anything crime-related. Once that portrait was finished, I got to work on Face of a Killer and turned that in to my editor.

Everything was moving right along track. Until … I attended my first ThrillerFest (the annual International Thriller Writers conference), not with any intention of penning a thriller, but because it was the first-ever ThrillerFest [held in June 2006], and a friend had convinced me that I needed to go. In preparation, I read James Rollins’ Map of Bones, which had just been released in paperback. That book inspired me to try my hand at thrillers, and as luck would have it, on the way home from the conference, he and I were on the same plane and he helped me with an intriguing plot that would end up becoming the second in my FBI forensic artist series, The Bone Chamber [2009]. Only problem was that it was a far, far different book than Face of a Killer, which I had recently finished and turned in to my editor (who is also Rollins’ editor). About midway through writing The Bone Chamber, I thought I’d better let her know what was going on, since it wasn’t the book she’d been expecting. She loved the idea and told me to finish it, even though it was a thriller (whereas Face of a Killer was a police procedural similar to the Gillespie books). The gap between the two series came about because after I turned in The Bone Chamber, they liked the larger scope and international thriller aspect of it so much that they asked if I wouldn’t mind bumping up Face of a Killer to thriller status. (It was originally written in first-person, like the Kate Gillespie books. I rewrote the entire book in third-person, then made it more of an international thriller. I like to think I did something write in the changes, because Face of a Killer received a starred review from Library Journal.)

JKP: What’s the most important lesson you learned over the course of composing the Gillespie series that helped you when you started work on your Fitzpatrick tales?

RB: First, how to write a series so that each book can be read as a standalone--out of order, or from the beginning. It’s a balancing act. You want to make sure that the new reader isn’t left behind, but you also want to ensure that the reader who has read the previous books isn’t bored by all the explanations needed for that new reader. One reviewer made mention of this aspect of my books, saying something to the effect of, don’t worry if you don’t know what’s going on, hang in there for the ride, you’ll eventually catch up. (Or words to that effect.)

The other lesson was avoiding the spoiler factor, which is always a danger in reading a series out of order. In the second Gillespie book, I didn’t give much thought to spoilers until a couple of my co-workers were asking me how the book writing was going. I mentioned some scene I was working on and named a couple of characters in it. Another cop happened to overhear the conversation and was upset, because he was reading the first Gillespie book, and now knew that none of the mentioned characters were the killer. That was a big eye-opener for me. When I started the Fitzpatrick series, I was very careful that if I had suspects, red herrings, or big secrets, I needed to take that into consideration as I penned the next novel. (And also not to reveal anything while giving talks at book clubs!) A good example is that the central plot of The Dark Hour [2012, No. 3 in the Fitzpatrick series] happens to solve the mystery of a death first brought up in The Bone Chamber (No. 2). But what if someone picks up the series with books 4 or 5? I didn’t want that to spoil what happened in The Dark Hour. And since it was such a big secret, I had to write it in such a way that no matter what order the books were read in, the revelation/conclusion in The Dark Hour is not answered or even hinted at in earlier or later books.

JKP: Just a few quick questions about The Last Good Place. How did you come to write more books in Carolyn Weston’s renowned Al Krug and Casey Kellog series of police procedurals?

RB: Lee Goldberg and Joel Goldman, the founders of Brash Books, had acquired the rights to the Weston novels to bring them back into print. They realized the series was still relevant and wanted to see it continue. Because I’d already written a number of police procedurals, they called and asked if I might be interested in writing the next in the series. I thought it would be fun to try my hand at updating the Weston characters.

JKP: Do you have a favorite among Weston’s Krug/Kellog novels?

RB: Poor, Poor Ophelia. It was this emerging relationship between Krug and Kellog. I’m sure what I saw is the same thing the developers of the TV show saw that made them want to take the novels and make a series for television.

JKP: Something that struck me as odd while reading The Last Good Place was Sergeant Krug’s widower status. My memory is that his wife was still alive at the end of Rouse the Demon. Was this change in marital status a concession you made in order to bring the books into line with the TV series?

RB: It was. In our reboot, we ignored some things that wouldn’t fly (Krug’s typical actions that would have gotten him fired in present-day times), and added others that seemed more fitting (the mentorship relationship between [Krug and Kellog], and in this case, yes, that Krug is now a widower). One way to look at it is that somewhere between book 3 of Weston’s series, and [this one] of mine, his wife died. And the reboot is why we moved it to San Francisco (where I had more knowledge and background) and brought it into the 21st century. Much has changed since then!

JKP: What’s your commitment to Brash Books? How long would you like to continue writing the Krug/Kellog series?

RB: For as long as the series is successful!

JKP: Can you give readers any hints about what they might expect from your next entry in this series?

RB: No, none as of yet. I’ve thought of a few cases, but I’m not sure if they’re right for the series.

JKP: Do you intend to continue writing your own novels at the same time as you pen more Krug and Kellog novels? If so, how do you intend to balance the two endeavors?

RB: I’m actually working on another project right now. I wish I could work on more than one book at a time--that would be a true balancing act. (I’ve thought about how to do it. Write one book in the morning, the other in the evening. But I’ve never actually succeeded--or even tried.) Right now I’m contracted for a book that I’m co-writing with Clive Cussler (in the Fargo series). I need to finish that before I even contemplate what’s next in store for Krug/Kellog.

JKP: Finally, do you think you’re where you really ought to be in your writing career now, or are there things you would like to have done that you’ve not yet accomplished?

RB: There will always be things I haven’t done that I still want to accomplish. That’s a good thing, I believe. But am I where I think I ought to be? Put it this way. I’m doing what I’ve always dreamed about doing: writing books. And I even get paid for it. I don’t think it gets much better than that!

READ MORE: “Robin Burcell Continues Others’ Series” (Mystery Scene).

Believe It: Ripley Comes Storme-ing Back

How is it that I made it all the way through the 1990s without ever once picking up a Wyatt Storme thriller? The protagonist--a Vietnam War veteran, former wide receiver with the Dallas Cowboys, and occasional troubleshooter--and his more dangerous sidekick, screw-loose ex-CIA operative Chick Easton, are not only engaging and supremely resourceful, but guaranteed to bring a smile to your face now and then. Here, for instance, is a late passage from the new novel Storme Warning (Brash Books), in which Storme is “invited” into the company of a mobster named Gus Giovanni:

“We know a lot about you, Storme,” said Giovanni. “War hero. Silver Star, Bronze Star. Even understand you might’ve been a candidate for the Medal of Honor, but you don’t take orders so good. Is that right?”

“I was also a hall monitor in the third grade.”

If you’re thinking that last line could just as easily have been delivered by a certain fictional Boston private eye … well, you’re not the first person to make the connection between Storme and Robert B. Parker’s Spenser. In its review of the third Storme novel, Electric Country Roulette (1996), Kirkus Reviews opined that “Storme has acquired some of the catlike moves of the early Spenser, before he got to be such a prig.” And in a promotional video for Storme Warning, Brash Books co-founder Lee Goldberg says the novel’s author, W.L. Ripley, “is, in a way, the second coming of Robert Parker.”

That’s a heap of praise to live up to, but Pleasant Hill, Missouri, author Ripley (whose first initials stand for “Warren Lee”) does a pretty good job of it with Storme Warning. As I explain in my column this week for Kirkus, this novel finds Storme and Easton

providing protection to Cameron Fogarty, a charismatic but indomitably irresponsible young Hollywood hotshot who’s portraying 19th-century outlaw Jesse James in a big-budget Western film being shot on Storme’s Missouri acreage (much to the retired NFL star’s displeasure). Fogarty has reportedly received death threats, yet he’s not the only one at risk here. A racist, conscience-deprived former mob enforcer, “Glory Rory” Marchibroda, has recently been freed from prison and wants vengeance on Storme for what he sees as a past injustice. Trying to keep Fogarty safe from would-be killers--not to mention his own poor judgment--while steering clear of confrontations with Marchibroda will be a full-time job for Storme and Easton, one that may bring them down before they get anywhere near this tale’s end zone.

Storme Warning is the fourth entry in Ripley’s series--but the first new one to be published in 19 years. After putting Storme and Easton through their paces in Dreamsicle (1993), Storme Front (1994), and the aforementioned Electric Country Roulette, Ripley began a new series, that one starring an “enigmatic ex-Secret Service agent” named Cole Springer (introduced in Springer’s Gambit, 2001). He feared the market for Storme and Easton had dried up and blown away--at least until Brash Books came calling. While preparing last year’s launch of that ambitious, independent print/e-book venture, Goldberg and his publishing partner, Joel Goldman, asked Ripley whether he’d like to give his original series a second lease on life. Having taken retirement not long before then, after more than three dozen years as an educator in the Show Me State, Ripley suddenly had more of the free time he’d always wanted to write fiction, so was ready for the challenge. The results of their deal will be seen not only in Storme Warning (which is officially due out on February 2), but more entries in both the Storme and Springer series, and maybe even some different sorts of crime novels to follow. Ripley calls his association with Brash “a partnership that works for me. The publishers treat my books as if they authored them. Worth a million bucks and an autographed photo of Julius Caesar.”

I recently e-mailed Ripley (now 62 years old, though he claims to “have the body of a man 59”) more than a few questions about his teaching career, his publishing struggles, his crime-fiction tastes, his oft-stated interest in cigars, Storme’s reclusiveness, and myriad other subjects. Part of our exchange went into this week’s Kirkus column, but the rest--really, the larger portion--can be enjoyed below.

J. Kingston Pierce: Information about your work history seems to be rather thin on the Web. Did you start out as a sportswriter and then become an educator, or was it the other way around? Where did you teach, and what subjects were your specialties?

W.L. Ripley: I was a sportswriter while in college, even while I was playing basketball. I wrote for my college paper and the editor/sponsor liked my writing and helped me get a job with a daily newspaper, the Sedalia Democrat. After graduation I began teaching and coaching basketball at the high-school level. I still did some spot reporting for the Democrat and over the years I have served as an interim reporter/editor for some local newspapers.

I was a physical education teacher, but I also taught and held degrees in Social Studies, Driver Education, and Special Services (behavior disorders/emotionally disturbed). I taught and coached for 10 years, first at the high-school level and then at the NCAA Division II level, where we were fortunate to win over 200 games. I loved basketball, both coaching and playing, but I had bad knees and four young children, so I left the coaching profession. I have an advanced degree in Secondary School Administration and served as a school principal/administrator for 27 years. I also taught at two universities--Southwest Baptist University and Missouri University of Science and Technology--teaching education courses at both places and physical education courses at SBU.

I once wrote a research paper in a post-graduate class [on which] the professor wrote, “You’re either a tremendous writer or you plagiarized this entire paper.” I confronted him and asked him if he was prejudiced because I was a basketball coach. He admitted he was, and then asked why I coached when I could write like that? I told him, “Because right now I’m not through coaching.” I got an “A.”

JKP: And are you still teaching? If not, how long ago did you retire from that noble profession?

WLR: I am in my third year of retirement. I loved it, but I had done the education thing for 37 years and wanted to have more time for my wife, my kids, my grandchildren, and my writing. My knees were ruined from playing basketball many decades ago and required knee replacement. I couldn’t get around as much as I needed and I was unable to climb or go down stairs without pain.

JKP: Your first published novel, Dreamsicle, reached bookstores in 1993. But was that actually the first novel you wrote? Or are there other, unpublished novels of yours secreted in a drawer someplace, never again to see the light of day?

WLR: I started out wanting to be a young-adult author, and when I submitted manuscripts I received critiques from editors such as, “This is the best teen sports novel I’ve ever read” and “This is far too intelligent for the teen audience. The writer is slumming.” Or, “High-school kids don’t talk like this” (they hadn’t met my four kids or they wouldn’t have said that). “This is an excellent young-adult book. But too much testosterone for … (I won’t name the well-known publishing house).” I got that last critique by accident, and the female editor was embarrassed and a little frightened I got it. I asked what she would’ve done if a male editor said that a female authored a book with “too much estrogen.” I put her at ease, because I just want to know what they think. I also heard that “boys don’t buy books,” but I always felt publishing houses didn’t care to give boys anything to read. It was very frustrating, so I wrote Dreamsicle, and wrote in it in one fine long flash. I should’ve been writing mysteries all the while.

I do have one of those YA novels, and will publish it in the near future.

JKP: Are you a longtime reader of crime fiction?

WLR: I’ve always read a lot and still do. I’ve read the entire Sherlock Holmes canon, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and many other mystery/thriller authors. It was John D. McDonald’s Travis McGee books that really lit a fuse under me. I’ve read all of the McGee books more than once. Rex Stout was another favorite, and I was greatly influenced by Robert B. Parker and Elmore Leonard, my two all-time favorites. I was saddened by the passing of these two giants, but fortunately, Ace Atkins has continued the Spenser saga in excellent fashion, so right now I look forward to that [as well as his] Quinn Colson novels. James Lee Burke is a huge favorite and I always look forward to reading his work. Burke is the best stylist in the genre and a Faulknerian. Burke makes the setting a living part of his stories; as much a character as Dave Robicheaux. I’ve read most of Raymond Chandler’s novels and enjoy C.J. Box, Tom Kakonis, and Jack Lynch. Presently I’m working on the Fox and O’Hare trilogy [by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg]. There is so much good stuff out there right now, and I’m enjoying myself.

I have also read many of the classics, including Dumas, Dickens, Shakespeare, Poe, all of Tokien’s Middle Earth saga, and pretty much anything I can get my hands on. I’ve read Norman Mailer and many other writers outside the genre. I’ve read Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye three times and will probably read it again. I’m influenced by Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway and, oddly, Hunter S. Thompson (go figure that one).

Ironically, I’ve read very few Western novels, though I have read Louis L’Amour.

Two others are Dan Jenkins (Semi-Tough) and the late Pete Gent (North Dallas Forty and The Franchise). These were sports novels that influenced me when I was developing Wyatt Storme. Jenkins’ brand of humor is just marvelous and I had phone conversations with Gent, who once worked to set up a meeting [for me] with Hunter S. Thompson for a book blurb through mutual friends--[but it] fell through when Thompson didn’t show and was incoherent when my publicity guy got hold of him via the phone. Would’ve liked to have met him, as he was kind of a hero of mine.

JKP: Storme Warning is your fourth novel starring Wyatt Storme and his rather unpredictable cohort, Chick Easton. How do you think those two characters have evolved since their early days together?

WLR: When they first met, Storme found Easton’s heavy drinking off-putting. He also thought Easton was full of it, until he saw him in action. Easton quickly learned that Storme is slow to involve himself in things that require his involvement. They have come to be fast friends, closer than brothers, and Storme is the only man to whom Chick Easton will confide his fears and his doubts. They have an unspoken bond whereby Storme knows Easton will be there, and Easton intuits when Storme will zig and when he will zag. Storme has become the first person in many years of Easton’s dark life who always does what he says and says what he means. Storme is a throwback; Easton typifies the modern action hero. Storme is thinking more and more about how to resolve his relationship with Sandra Collingsworth [a FOX-TV personality 10 years his junior], and Easton is getting a better handle on his alcoholism. Easton admires Storme’s values and the length to which Storme will go to protect his integrity. Storme admires Easton’s devil-may-care attitude and is touched by Easton’s fierce loyalty.

JKP: What are the most important things about Wyatt Storme that most people in his world don’t understand about him?

WLR: Why would he walk away from all the adulation and money [of professional football]? Why did he not enjoy his celebrity? Additionally, when and where did he acquire his unique skills? What causes a man to move away from civilization?

JKP: So, why does Wyatt Storme choose to be such a recluse?

WLR: Storme was tired of being in the limelight. He liked playing football and the satisfying ballet-like action of plucking a football out of space. He loved the rhythm and atmosphere of the game, but thought it silly that people ascribed importance to it. To Storme, the game was everything and the rest of it, merely the annoyance he had to endure that allowed him to do the thing he loved. I felt the same way playing and coaching basketball. I didn’t care if anyone came to the games, as long as we got to play. Coaches are the last cowboys, the greatest people I know. I was coaching a game once when the lobby caught on fire. Smoke was billowing out into the arena, people were up in their seats, rushing to the lobby, and I was unaware of it until I noticed my assistant coaches were gone. I asked where they went and one of my players said, “Coach, the lobby’s on fire.” I looked across the floor and said, “Well, that’s none of their business.” The official scorer heard me, put his head down on the table and laughed uncontrollably saying, “Coaches are crazy.”

When I coached, as soon as the game was over I wanted to see my kids and get away so I could savor the moments I had just enjoyed with other coaches or in the privacy of my home.

Storme is like that.

JKP: I asked how Storme has evolved since Dreamsicle saw print. Now let me ask how you have evolved as a writer since then. And what do you now know about the novel-writing biz or your characters that you wish you’d understood from the outset?

WLR: I’ve learned how hard it is to compete against oneself. Each new work carries the expectations of the previous novel and the desire to exceed it and improve upon it. [Developing] character arcs in series novels is a more difficult task than I had first imagined, as you must maintain your character for fans of the series while still having the characters go through some changes before the novel’s denouement in order to create a fresh novel for first-time readers. Yet, you still have to keep your character’s basic attributes and outlook intact.

I wish someone had clued me in about how much work is involved. This is where beginning writers fall back. It is damned hard work and you’re in it alone. They think it’s going to be easy and then they quickly learn that it is [all about] knowing literature, research, writing every day, editing, rewriting, studying the writing task, and worst of all, rejection. Too often I talk to beginning writers who quit after their first rejection.

It’s a truism that I could paper the walls of my office with rejection letters. Writers don’t quit, wannabes do.

One of the most frustrating aspects is when people think I don’t do anything because they don’t see me writing. It’s not a spectator sport. I’m in my office every morning banging away at the keyboard, trying to chip away at a book that will sell and that readers will enjoy. I know the next book is in my keyboard somewhere and I just have to figure out the code under my fingers.

I have also learned that there is no bad criticism. I value the critique of my colleagues, critics, and readers. Sometimes the criticism is valid and I correct in the next book. And sometimes the criticism makes me laugh, especially at those times when critics get all ticked off at the “macho” antics of my characters. I note that the greats get nasty reviews of books that I truly enjoyed. Tastes vary.

I was a basketball coach and a high-school principal. I’m immune to slanderous criticism.

I wrote Storme (and my earlier unpublished attempts) in first-person point of view. First-person is fun, but the writer’s movement is restricted, as you can only detail those things that the protagonist (Storme) sees, thinks, feels, or witnesses. For the Cole Springer novels I wanted to have more freedom of movement in my novel, so I went with a third-person point of view.

For Storme Warning, I did something new. I interspersed Storme’s singular point of view with a smattering of the first-person viewpoint of the revenge-minded button man, Rory Marchibroda. In Storme Warning the reader will learn what motivates Rory and also why he hates Storme. It adds a horror flavor to the thriller, as Rory is a nasty piece of work.

JKP: What have you still not mastered as a fiction writer?

WLR: Self-promotion. I’m not comfortable with it. It probably stems from my career as a coach/teacher/principal, where you don’t want to take credit away from your players, students, and teachers. I accomplished nothing without the efforts of those people, but now I’m in this alone and it’s different. I must learn to self-promote and I’m still learning.

I also have an Archie Goodwin/Jiminy Cricket of my own in my son Jared. Jared does the promo on my Amazon and Facebook pages. He is churlish when I make a wrong step. His favorite phrase is “(insert profanity) old people and technology.” He does an amazing job behind the scenes. My wife, Penny, is also sharp about promotion and set up the best signing I have had to date with Barnes & Noble bookstores. So, I have help but remain promotionally challenged.

I’ll never master this craft. I’m constantly learning things about the writing task. My coaching background is a plus, as every coach has to continue to learn, or die. If you think you know everything about writing you’ll never realize how dumb you are, and your books will fizzle.

JKP: I must admit that Storme Warning is the first entry I’ve read in your series, so I am a little confused about the settings of these books. At least the first couple seem to have been set in Colorado, rather than Missouri. Did you decide later on to move Storme and Chick, or will their adventures take them back and forth between the two locales?

WLR: From the beginning I wanted Storme in both places. He is a hunter and loves the scenery of the Missouri Ozarks and the Colorado Rockies. Storme played college football at Colorado State in Fort Collins, Colorado, and he likes the Missouri Ozarks for its fall weather and bird hunting. I likewise love both places as they are still unspoiled and away from the concrete and neon.

JKP: In Storme Warning you have Storme and Chick trying to provide protection for the thoroughly obnoxious young star of a Western picture that’s being shot on Storme’s property. What made you want to write this particular story?

WLR: I love old Westerns. My novels are all set west of the Mississippi and are modern-day Westerns. Storme and Easton ride into town, dispatch the bad guys, and then disappear into the sunset.

JKP: Do you have favorite Western films?

WLR: There is nothing so uniquely Americana as the Western. I love John Wayne and Clint Eastwood films, but there are many other Westerns I’ve watched over the years. Wayne established the classic Western hero and Clint nailed the anti-hero protagonist. [I love] My Darling Clementine and High Noon, along with Randolph Scott and Jimmy Stewart’s ’50s horse operas. I also loved the old Saturday cinema oaters: The Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy, and Roy Rogers. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a favorite and has a lot to do with who Storme and Easton are in my books. The best Western of the last 20 years, Tombstone, was so good that it has been hard for Hollywood to come close since that time, and I can watch it over and over because it’s like a good song.

The trailer for Tombstone (1993).

JKP: Storme Warning is often serious, but also packs in a lot of humor. Do you set out to be funny, or do your characters just lead you there? And are you as funny in real life as your players are on the page?

WLR: I don’t set out to be humorous. It doesn’t work if I force it. It has to evolve organically under your hands. I usually have to go back and eliminate some of it. My sons will tell you, “Dad’s not funny, but he can write funny stuff.” I allow the situation to dictate the humor. Chick Easton is a humor machine, as he has such a sideways outlook. Cole Springer’s humor is ironic and meant to goad his adversaries into anger. Storme’s humor runs to amusing himself and Easton. Humor also works to take the reader’s mind off subtle clues, breaks tension, and sometimes foreshadows coming events.

Am I ever as funny in real life? Sporadically. A lot of things that Storme, Easton, and Springer say are things I’ve said many times in the past. As an educator I had to deal with many pompous individuals, and my favorite form of retaliation was to say something that they wouldn’t realize was an insult until several hours or days later.

My other personal use of humor and wit was to make teachers, students, and players laugh or get them to relax in pressure situations. Sometimes it backfired on me. I was placed on the Homecoming Committee at Southwest Baptist University, a place that is still dear to me. Everyone else on the committee was a pastor or a Theology professor. When I was asked if I had any ideas for Homecoming activities, I said, “We could have a dance.”

It wasn’t well-received. Nobody laughed.

I had to follow up with, “It’s a joke.” Still, no laughter. Baptists don’t dance, you know.

When I related the incident to my fellow coaches in the athletic department they cracked up. “See, that’s funny isn’t it?” I said. “Well, nobody laughed and it was uncomfortable.” The guys loved the fact that it made me ill at ease.

When I have a good line, I just can’t resist.

JKP: How was it that you hooked up with Joel Goldman and Lee Goldberg from Brash Books and found new life for Storme? Had you already lost hope by then that he would ever appear again?

WLR: I had given up on Storme and was committed to Springer as well as writing a couple of standalone novels with new characters that will be published in the next two years. Ace Atkins was the guy who told Goldberg and Goldman how to locate me.

JKP: I know you’re hard at work on a fifth Storme novel for Brash, to be titled Wind Storme. But are you already thinking ahead to the series’ sixth installment? Do you think the series has legs again?

WLR: I do. If not I’ll write something else. I write novels I would buy and read myself. I cannot conceive of not writing. I have to write. It is the next best thing to playing basketball for me. My audience and best critics are my sons and daughter, all highly educated individuals who are creative and love books and film. I write the books with my kids in mind, and it pays off. They are brutal critics and always dead on.

There will be more Storme and Springer. I long to do an Elmore Leonard thing by breaking away once in a while to write whatever books and characters interest me, rather than just series characters, but until now the time demands of my job kept me from doing that. With that in mind, I’ve written two other novels with two new characters, one of which could become a series character (I already have a sequel in mind for that one).

I like Storme and Springer. They’re friends, guys I’d hang out with. I know them, hear their voices in my head. And I love Chick Easton and have friends very much like him--not that violent, but truly that funny.

JKP: You mentioned a fourth Cole Springer book. Can you tell me more about what that might offer readers?

WLR: Springer is fun to write and I have so many ideas for future Springer novels. Constantly, people tell me they have an idea for a book. My problem is, I have dozens of ideas for books. My problem is picking just one I want to write. My agent, Donald Maass, once told me that “Springer is smarter than everyone.” I told him, “However, I’m not smarter than everyone,” and I now know how Doyle felt about Sherlock. It makes it sometimes problematic to write a character like Springer, but I like him and, besides, I have time and the research tools to “be smarter than anyone” when Springer does something.

Springer is a moveable feast, who I can use to hit the hot spots Storme would be loath to go. Springer lives in Aspen [Colorado] but also hits places like Las Vegas and San Francisco, as well as Hawaii, Cancun, and other exotic spots. Springer would be comfortable in Washington, D.C., or Malibu and still enjoys the outdoor atmosphere the Rocky Mountains and the New American West provide. Like Storme, Springer is an unusual man to set up housekeeping in Aspen. I’ve been to Aspen three times and it is just the place to put deadly characters. It is culture shock for both.

Springer is a bigger wise-ass than Storme and has skills reminiscent of Easton, but is less deadly, even less likely to use those skills and more likely to use his wits to overcome obstacles. Springer is a genial con man much like characters James Garner often played, such as [Bret] Maverick, only far tougher. Springer’s books are more caper novels than the Storme books, but it’s all in good clean fun …

I have developed a fourth novel, wherein Springer comes to the aid of an old girlfriend. [It’s] set in either Hawaii, Playa Del Carmen, or San Diego; I like all three locations. I also have plans to bring back Max Shapiro (a neurotic, complaining mob money-launderer Springer saved from the mob in Springer’s Gambit). So far, the new Springer novels exist in development as novellas/synopses, but they are very much alive and ready to be written. However, right now I’m all in on the fifth Storme novel, Wind Storme, and as my son tells me, “Just focus on one at a time.” How’d he get so smart with me as his dad?

JKP: You’re writing novels primarily for Brash Books now?

WLR: I’m writing Wind Storme for Brash. … The new Springer will also be written with Brash Books in mind. [Goldberg and Goldman] are, right now, the best publishers in the industry for mysteries and thrillers. They understand these books, they love them, and they are successful mystery authors in their own right. They treat writers like they themselves would like to be treated. They have a vision about the electronic revolution in books and are on the cutting edge.

Of my non-Storme/Springer books, Goldberg and I have a difference of opinion in style and execution of the one he’s seen, Home Fires, which we may resolve, or I may go elsewhere. Goldberg is a brilliant editor and I value his opinion and will take another look at Home Fires when I finish Wind Storme. Brash has not seen the other novel, McBride: Double Down (working title), but they might in the near future.

One thing I’ve learned is you must trust your own instincts. My agent, Donald Maass, didn’t like Springer’s Gambit, so I submitted it [to a publisher] myself. It sold right away and when it did, I went back and asked [Maass] to negotiate the contract. Don was surprised I would go back to him, but I like his honesty and he was able to exploit the subsidiary rights, including film options that I would not otherwise have realized.

As an observation, not a criticism, I will posit that if editors and agents always knew what made a good novel, they’d be writing them instead of publishing and selling them.

Home Fires is set in the Midwest and is a you-can’t-go-home-again type of mystery, and more of a police procedural than I have done in the past. It concerns a suspended Texas Ranger returning to his hometown upon the death of his father and best friend under suspicious circumstances. When he returns to the scene of his adolescence, he finds his past and his mistakes rising up to smack him in the face.

McBride: Double Down is about Vegas, dirty dealings, and a small-time convenience-store robbery which nets the hapless robbers a fortune in diamonds and perfect counterfeit plates for a small Central American country’s currency. Unfortunately for the robbers, the plates belong to Red Cavanaugh, the biggest kingpin in Vegas, and Cavanaugh wants the plates back and the robbers dead. He also wants McBride to locate them. McBride, who runs a small, barely profitable Vegas security company, has a gambling debt owed to Cavanaugh and has to find the robbers, but McBride intends to double-cross Cavanaugh and spare the crooks. Cavanaugh also appeared in Pressing the Bet (Cole Springer No. 2). Look for the introduction of Chick Easton’s nephew (honest!), Trey Easton, as well as the return of sexy Vegas Metro Detective Tara St. John (also from Pressing the Bet).

JKP: And when are the original three entries in your Storme series--Hail Storme (the retitled Dreamsicle), Storme Front, and Eye of the Storme (previously Electric Country Roulette)--due out from Brash?

WLR: Hail Storme will be released this May, followed by Storme Front and Eye of the Storme at intervals during 2015. They will all be available before the end of the year. Brash Books has a definite schedule in mind for the Storme series.

JKP: OK, as a fellow cigar smoker, I just have to ask you what cigar(s) you prefer. And how long have you been a cigar fan?

WLR: I’ve been smoking cigars since I was 19 years old. I started out smoking Swisher Sweets (the Boone’s Farm wine of cigars) and Dutch Masters. Since that time I’ve graduated to hand-rolled cigars, and it opened up a new experience for me. I’ve smoked about all of them, including Cuban cigars. Macanudos, Partagas, H. Upmann, Monte Cristo, Acid cigars, Romeo y Juliet, Arturo Fuente, and even smaller cigars like Parodi, Schimmelpenninck (whatever happened to those? Can’t find them anymore), and about anything that is well put together. I used to be able to smoke the powerful sticks, but as I’ve aged I’ve found I have to stay with the milder blends like Macanudo, Don Diego, Griffins, and Excalibur. My usual smoke is the Macanudo Hyde Park, but I like them all. The beauty of the leaf well-rolled is that I can smoke cigars every day for a month and then not smoke one for weeks. That is the difference between cigarettes and cigars.

I am a time-and-place cigar smoker. I want the conditions to be ideal. Right temperature and atmosphere so I can enjoy the cigar. When I’m smoking a cigar I relax and think over what I’m going to write next. At those times it’s hard to get my attention. My wife will not allow me to smoke in the house (she’s a volleyball coach with a mean left), so I’m relegated to our back deck and smoking rooms. I always pack a cigar or two when I golf and it is the reason I play the game so well … well, maybe not so well, yet it takes the edge off my frustration with my short game.

I love getting cigars as gifts or as a surprise. A non-smoker friend once brought me a cigar after a visit to the Swiss Embassy in D.C. The Cuban diplomats were there and they gave him a Cuban Cohiba, which was perhaps the best cigar I’ve ever smoked. My daughter gave me one of the new Macanudo Estate Reserve Jamaican cigars for Christmas and I’m looking forward to enjoying it. It came in this beautiful cedar presentation box and is aging happily in my humidor for the proper moment for me to light it up.

Right now, I’d say that moment is February 2, when Storme Warning is released by Brash Books.

JKP: Finally, if you could lay claim to having penned any book that doesn’t already appear under your byline, what would it be?

WLR: Either Pronto or Freaky Deaky, both by Elmore Leonard. Both have everything you’d want in a novel. There’s danger, death, tension, great characters, plot, pacing, and the humor is intelligent and smile-inducing. Pronto is the novel which introduced Raylan Givens, Leonard’s best and most famous character. Leonard is the master of inner dialogue as well as some of the best spoken dialogue in fiction. Leonard realizes people often think and speak in broken sentences rather than in perfect grammar. It looks breezy and simplistic until you try to figure out how he did it or why it fits so perfectly with what is going on in the novel. He is the standard for all mystery-thriller writers in my opinion.

Pronto possesses my favorite opening chapter of all time. Every writer should read it, study it, and re-read it. It is a gem.

(Photo of author W.L. Ripley by Lon Campbell/LC Images Studio.)

Brash Talking

What happens when you turn a couple of friendly but ambitious crime-fiction writers loose to create their own publishing company? Something like Brash Books, the independent enterprise developed over the last year by author-screenwriter Lee Goldberg and trial attorney-turned-novelist Joel Goldman. As I explain in my new column for Kirkus Reviews, Brash will make a big splash in September, when it rolls out its first 30 titles (in paperback and e-book versions). Those include private-eye yarns, espionage adventures, Old West justice tales, and even a couple of vigilante-for-hire thrillers. Tom Kakonis, Maxine O’Callaghan, Gar Anthony Haywood, Bob Forward, Jack Lynch, Barbara Neely, and Dallas Murphy are among those represented by the company’s initial offerings, but other familiar names, such as Geoffrey Miller, Mark Smith, and Robin Burcell, will join them on Brash’s release roster over the next 12 months.

Not long ago, I contacted Goldberg and Goldman, via e-mail, with a long list of questions about their new publishing endeavor. They responded quickly--and in more than 4,300 words. I was able to use part of what they told me in Kirkus, but certainly not all of it. So below, I am presenting most of the rest of our exchange. (The covers featured in this post, by the way, all come from soon-forthcoming Brash releases.)

J. Kingston Pierce: How do the two of you know each other?

Joel Goldman: I met Lee at some long-ago mystery conference, probably Left Coast Crime or Bouchercon, not long after my first book was published in 2002. We kept running into each other and people kept mistaking us for brothers.

Lee Goldberg: We met at a mystery conference somewhere 10 or 12 years ago. We became fast friends and ended up working closely together on the Mystery Writers of America’s board of directors for many years. During that time, I developed enormous respect for his intelligence, business savvy, and his ability to negotiate complex disputes (I guess that comes from his background as a lawyer). So, in some ways, it feels like we’ve been in business together for a very long time. When we’re together, people constantly mistake him for my brother, Tod, who is a crime writer, too.

JKP: Why did you decide to republish only books that have originally seen print since 1970? Is it simply a way of distinguishing Brash from other companies that are also bringing back out-of-print crime fiction?

JG: As a startup, we knew we couldn’t do it all. We had to stake out our ground without taking on too much. 1970 seemed like a good jumping-off point, but that’s not how we’re distinguishing ourselves. We’re doing that by publishing the best crime novels in existence, a carefully curated list of award-winning and critically acclaimed novels plus a select list of new titles. Sorry, I know that sounds really corporate but it’s the best way of saying who we are.

LG: I don’t want to give the impression that all of our republished books are from the 1970s. That’s definitely not the case. Our reprints go as far back as the mid-1970s, but are also as recent as the early 2000s. Most probably fall in the late ’80s, early ’90s. But the pub date of the books or time period that the books are set in aren’t what’s important to us. It’s the storytelling. A great crime story that is well-told is timeless, regardless of when it was published or what year the stories take place.

JKP: Is it correct that you’re launching your first 30 books, all in early September? How many authors do those 30 represent?

JG: Yep. Thirty books from 12 fantastic authors.

JKP: Do you worry that with such a huge single-month rollout, some of the individual works you’re publishing might get lost?

JG: We’d be crazy if we didn’t worry about that, because we don’t want to publish more books than we can support.

LG: But we also wanted to make a big splash, to launch with a list of books that truly announces who we are, that represents the range of work that we’re publishing, and that demonstrates the high quality that sets us apart from our competitors.

JG: Our marketing plan is a solid mix of old-school and new-school promotion, including magazine and convention ads, online ads, social media, and our killer Web site. We’ve hired an ad agency and a PR firm to help us, and we’re going to as many conventions as we can to get the word out.

LG: The best advertisements we have are our books and our authors. People are blown away by how gorgeous our books are and are very enthusiastic about the authors we’re publishing. Those readers are spreading the word for us better than any tweet or Google ad can.

JKP: Who was the first author who signed with Brash Books?

JG: The first author Dick Lochte. He was at Bouchercon. We told him what we’re thinking about doing and asked him if he was interested, and he said yes. We knew that if someone as well-respected as Dick would join us, that we were really on to something.

LG: Dick Lochte was the first author to say he’d sign on with us, and that gave us the boost we needed to know we were on to something. But I think the first author who actually signed a contract with us was Tom Kakonis. I’d been a fan of his for years. Back in the early ’90s, I nervously approached him at a conference to ask if he’d blurb for my book My Gun Has Bullets [1995]. I was stunned and enormously flattered when he actually gave me one. Over the years that followed, it broke my heart to see his books gradually fall out of print. So when Joel and I decided to launch Brash, he was at the top of my list of authors we had to republish. Not only did we get his backlist, but he offered us a brand-new novel, too [Treasure Hunt]. That was an unexpected gift, one I took as a positive omen of our success.

JKP: How do the two of you split your responsibilities with Brash? Do you both acquire and edit the works, or is the company structure more complicated than that?

JG: It’s hard to have a complicated structure when it’s just the two of us--plus someone who coordinates the preparation of the books. One of the great things about working together is how easily and naturally we’ve divided things up. I take the lead on the business side, finances, legal, things like that. Lee takes the lead on the Web site, social media, and scouting for authors and books. We’re both involved in acquisitions. We give notes to authors on new manuscripts but we also work with a freelance developmental editor to do the heavy lifting.

LG: It’s amazing how naturally we’ve fallen into our roles. We do almost everything together, but Joel ultimately handles the nitty-gritty business side of things. I have complete faith in Joel’s sound judgment. He’s an amazing negotiator and has a great head for business and numbers. Me? I need a calculator to count my fingers and toes. I tend to be the book scout and the person who makes the initial contact with authors and estates. We’re basically mining my collection of mysteries and thrillers for the backlist titles that we’re publishing. I also solicit recommendations from writers and readers that I know who have a deep appreciation and knowledge of the field. People like you, Bill Crider, Dick Lochte, Johnny Shaw, Paul Bishop, and Jan Burke.

JKP: Which authors are you most excited to see back in print?

LG: I’m equally excited about all of them, and I’m not just saying that. It goes to the core of our business model. Each and every book has to excite us. It’s what sets us apart from most of our competitors, who are vacuuming up backlists just to build their content libraries. We are publishing the books that we love, books that our fellow authors love, and books that have earned incredible praise. Keep in mind, we’re paying for all of this out of our own pockets, so every book we publish is personal for us.

JG: This is a little bit like asking which of my kids do I like best. The answer can depend on the day! But I love all my kids and I’m thrilled to introduce all of our authors to a new audience. That’s why we’re doing this.

JKP: So far, who have been the authors you’ve had the hardest time convincing to join the Brash “family”? Have there been many who have turned down your offers? And what reasons did those holdouts give for their refusal?

LG: We’ve been lucky. I’d say 95 percent of the people or estates that we’ve approached have enthusiastically jumped on board. They can tell how much we love the books, that we are genuinely enthusiastic, and they can see we are the real deal, not a couple of hucksters. It really helps, I think, that we are successful authors ourselves. We’ve lost a couple of authors because they couldn’t get the reversions of rights back from their publishers on their out-of-print books. And there have been a few estates where there are a number of heirs or parties who have to agree in order to make the deal … and we haven’t always succeeded in making that happen.

JKP: Are there other living authors you simply can’t find? Or authors whose descendents have proved elusive so far? Please name names.

JG: Some people are hard to find. We’ve even hired a P.I. from Boston to help us, and she’s done a great job. I’d love to name names but we don’t want to give the competition any ideas.

LG: Hunting down some of these authors or their heirs has been a challenge … but it’s also been fascinating, too. We lucked into this terrific, tenacious P.I. who is really enjoying these cases and has taught us a lot.

JKP: In addition to republishing existing novels, you’re commissioning new works from authors who are still alive. Can you tell me the names of some authors you have convinced to deliver fresh books to Brash?

JG: Discovering great new books has been one of the real perks. Tom Kakonis had one sitting in his drawer called Treasure Coast. It’s one of the best crime novels I’ve read in a long time and we’re releasing it in September.

LG: We’re also publishing a thriller from Philip Reed, a new “Wyatt Storme” novel from W.L Ripley, a kick-ass action-adventure from debut authors James Bruner and Elizabeth Stevens, and a crime novel from Robin Burcell, based on the novels by Carolyn Weston that inspired the TV series The Streets of San Francisco. All those books, still yet-to-be-titled, will be out in 2015. We’ve also got a couple of other original novels we’re currently negotiating to acquire that came in as unsolicited submissions.

JKP: How many Brash Books releases would you like to put out every year? And how many of those would you like to be new books, rather than reprints?

LG: We’re publishing at least one original novel per quarter, and eight or nine reprints of previously published work. So, at this point, we’re planning on publishing 35 to 40 books a year. That’s not counting the two or three collections we’ll be releasing between quarters. For instance, we’ll be releasing all four of Michael Stone’s Streeter books in one volume and all four of Barbara Neely’s Blanche White books in one volume, after we’ve released them all individually.

JKP: I saw, in the front of Treasure Coast, that author Kakonis credits Lee with “rescuing” him. Is he referring there to Brash having extended his writing career?

LG: The last thing Tom ever expected was for me to call him up out of the blue and ask if we could republish his out-of-print thrillers. I was surprised that he remembered who I was, but he hadn’t forgotten me any more than I had forgotten him. When I told him how much I wanted to bring his books back, he was touched and excited. He figured that he had had his time in the publishing limelight and that it had passed. I asked him if he’d stopped writing novels. He mentioned that he had a novel that he wrote some years ago, but had stuck in a drawer because he’d been so badly burned by the publishing business. I asked if I could read it … and he sent it to me. I was blown away by it. I couldn’t believe that a book this good, that was every bit as great as his most-acclaimed work, had gone unpublished. It was a gift for us to be able to publish it.

I can’t speak for Tom, but I think what he means by his kind dedication is that Brash Books has saved his past work from being forgotten … and reinvigorated his desire to write books. We may have rescued him, but he launched Brash Books with Treasure Coast.


Lee Goldberg and Joel Goldman discuss the line-up of private-eye novels Brash will release in September.

Goldman and Goldberg talk about some of the unconventional heroes featured in their Brash Books line.

JKP: One of the more interesting moves you’re making--and which you mentioned briefly before--is to, first, pick up the late Carolyn Weston’s three Sergeant Al Krug/Detective Casey Kellog novels, including 1972’s Poor, Poor Ophelia, which inspired The Streets of San Francisco; and then you’re planning to continue that series with a new author. What’s the status of those negotiations? And have you decided to keep the story setting in 1970s Santa Monica, or move it to San Francisco, perhaps in the present day?

JG: We’re really fortunate that the fabulous Robin Burcell, who’s won a shelf-full of awards, has agreed to continue Carolyn’s series. We’re bringing it into the present-day and moving it to San Francisco.

LG: I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and my father was an anchorman on KPIX [TV]. So, naturally, as a kid, I was a big fan of The Streets of San Francisco. And when I saw that the TV series was based on three books by Carolyn Weston, I snapped those up and devoured them. They’ve been on my shelf ever since. They are great police procedurals that won acclaim in the 1970s--a time when there weren’t a lot of female crime writers out there, certainly not many getting the kind of attention that she was or inspiring a hit TV series. And yet, even though everybody knows about The Streets of San Francisco, nobody remembers Carolyn Weston’s books, perhaps because she never wrote any more books after those three procedurals. They fell out of print and into oblivion. Not with me. They were at the top of my list when we launched Brash. We acquired all the rights to Carolyn’s books from her heirs and decided to continue the series. Joel and I both knew the perfect writer for the job: our old friend Robin Burcell. We had no one else in mind (which also shows how much Joel and I think alike). Not only is Robin an acclaimed crime novelist, but she’s a cop in Northern California, too. Who could possibly be a better choice? We can’t wait to read her book.

JKP: Brash Books seems to put a great deal of emphasis on handsome book covers. How important is it to put out novels that look good in addition to reading well?

JG: We know from self-publishing our backlists that a dynamite cover is essential to a book’s success, because that’s how a reader first encounters a book. The cover has to grab the reader and tell her enough about the book to make her want to buy it. Just as important, the production quality of the print books--from the cover, to the binding, to the interior layout--has to be indistinguishable from any book put out by the Big Five [publishers], and ours meet and exceed those standards. We’re proud to say that CreateSpace is responsible for producing these beautiful books. They’ve amazed us with their incredible work.

LG: Joel and I are very, very involved in the design of each and every cover, working very closely with CreateSpace’s excellent team of artists. We know exactly what we want and aren’t satisfied until our expectations are met … though these artists exceed them on a daily basis. I’m sure they would tell you that we’ve been very tough on them and, as a result, have brought out their A-game. They are as proud of these covers as we are. Perhaps even more so. We also felt strongly that our trade paperbacks had to look indistinguishable from those from the Big Five … not just to wow customers, but to show brick-and-mortar booksellers and the mystery-writing community at large that we are serious about putting out quality work. And I think our books do that.

JKP: Joel mentioned before that you guys are fronting the money for Brash yourselves. Is that correct? This venture can’t be cheap.

LG: It hasn’t been cheap, and I think that shows in the books themselves and in our Web site. I was a TV producer for many years, and I made sure that you could see every penny we spent on-screen. Well, every penny we’re spending [here] is on the page. We’ve invested a considerable amount of our own money in this … which goes back to one of your earlier questions. We wouldn’t be investing this much of our money into Brash if we didn’t love each and every book we are publishing. This publishing company is a reflection of our shared passion for crime fiction--as authors and readers.

JKP: You say you want to treat authors the way you would prefer to be treated. The upside of that seems obvious: You presumably go out of your way to help writers bring the finest products they can to market, and compensate them as best you can. But is there a downside to that, too? Can you be sympathetic and also profitable?

JG: We’re publishers but because we’re also authors, we know what kind of relationship authors want to have with their publishers. That’s not about having sympathy. It’s about having respect. Authors understand that writing and publishing are separate businesses and that neither can be successful unless both are successful, and if we aren’t profitable, no one will have any sympathy for us.

JKP: Speaking of your both being authors, how do you balance your Brash responsibilities against your own interests as writers? Have you had to take a step back from composing and publishing your own books, in order to get Brash Books up and running?

JG: I’m pretty certain that Lee has found a way to make his days last around 27 hours. I’m still scrounging for the elusive extra time to keep up with writing my own books. It’s a daily challenge.

JKP: That said, what book(s) are you writing at the moment?

JG: I’m working on two new co-authored series, one with Lisa Klink and one with James Daniels. And, I’m working on the next book in my Alex Stone thriller series--at least in my head.

LG: I’m writing the fourth “Fox & O’Hare” novel with Janet Evanovich, which will be out next year. But at this moment, Janet and I are signing a few thousand copies of The Job, the third novel in the series, which will be out in November.