Tierney’s Time Had Come

I just read in Mystery Fanfare that Ronald Tierney, a mystery novelist recently relocated from San Francisco to Palm Springs, passed away on September 2 at age 72. His death is blamed on what one friend describes as “a great battle with cancer for multiple years.”

Ron was most generous with me and supportive of my blogging efforts. He sent his books my way, made comments about the things I wrote in The Rap Sheet, and backed me up on those occasions when my condemnations of Donald Trump on Facebook attracted the wrath of fire-breathing right-wingers. Ron penned two pieces for The Rap Sheet over the years—a “forgotten books” post about Diva, by the pseudonymous Delacorta; and an article about his own 2011 novella, Mascara. By inadequate way of exchange, I included his 2015 Deets Shanahan novel, Killing Frost, in a piece about gumshoe fiction I contributed to the Kirkus Reviews Web site.

Below is Mystery Fanfare’s brief recap of the author’s life:

Ronald Tierney's The Stone Veil [1990] introduced semi-retired, Indianapolis-based private investigator “Deets” Shanahan and the love of his life, Maureen. The book was a finalist in St. Martin Press’ “Best First Private Eye Novel” competition, and [was] nominated for the Private Eye Writers of America’s Shamus Award for “Best First Novel.” Killing Frost is the eleventh in the highly regarded series Booklist said was “packed with new angles and delights.” San Francisco is the setting for his lighter series the Library Journal calls a “winner.” The four [Carly] Paladino/[Noah] Lang books feature an eclectic collection of investigators in the equally eclectic neighborhoods of one of the world’s most exciting cities. Good to the Last Kiss [2011] is a dark mystery that captures the insane world a serial killer creates.

Ron Tierney was founding editor of NUVO Newsweekly, an Indianapolis alternative newspaper, and the editor of a San Francisco monthly. After living 25 years in the “City by the Bay,” he moved to Palm Springs, where he was working on several writing projects.

Also worth reading is Ron’s Web site biography page.

Like the late blogger Randy Johnson, Ronald Tierney was someone I never actually had occasion to meet, but who I came to know and like through our electronic correspondence and because of our mutual interest in the delights of crime and mystery fiction. My world—and I’m sure that of others—is poorer for his departure from it.

Life Imitates Fiction — Damn!

(Editor’s note: San Francisco author and blogger Ronald Tierney has written one previous post for The Rap Sheet, a “forgotten books” piece about Diva, by the pseudonymous Delacorta. Today he offers readers of this page a much different, more personal sort of tale relating to his latest release, a novella called Mascara: Death in the Tenderloin [Life, Death and Fog Books], which serves as a prequel of sorts to his Noah Lang private-eye series.)

I wrote a book in which a man is shot as he sat in an outdoor café on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco’s legendary North Beach neighborhood.

In April, on my way to North Beach for an appointment with the book’s designers, I stepped off the bus at a stop in Chinatown and walked up the same street my characters walked to witness the assassination. As I walked, I remembered what I’d written about it. Instead of touristy Grant Avenue, the characters picked the more crowded Stockton Street, where Chinese from all over the city come to shop for produce. Nary a Caucasian face among the thousands of people buying fruit and vegetables in the marketplace. The characters chose this path to be able to spot a Caucasian who might be tailing them. As I walked, little bits of the book narrative floated in and out of my mind.

I was in good spirits. I was early enough for my appointment that I could stop for lunch and had just the place in mind. A glass of wine and some pasta at an outside table--a leisurely meal while I sat back and watched the pedestrians go about their business. The other reason I was in a good mood was that while I’ve had 14 published mystery novels, this was one I was doing myself. The very talented designers had sent me a mock-up of new book’s cover. I liked it. They created a sense of drama, of urgency. They used a striking photograph of the San Francisco Fire Department at work. The fire department figures twice in my story--once at a murderous fire in the Tenderloin and again on a medical emergency run on Columbus Avenue, when and where the aforementioned fictional character is shot.

My Sangiovese arrived with a salad and some bread. The front wall of the restaurant sheltered me from the wind and the temperature was just cool enough for me to be perfectly comfortable in my jacket. I was waiting on the Pasta Putanesca, which this restaurant does particularly well.

I took a sip of wine, but had trouble holding a slice of bread. My left hand had gone numb. I was sure it was nothing. My hand had simply gone to sleep. It had happened a few times lately when I tried to type and the sensation always, after a few moments, went away. I waited. But instead of recovering, my hand decided to tap on the table without my willing it to do so. It became clear something was wrong. Even so, whatever it was didn’t seem serious. There was no pain. The strange, independent hand movement would subside, I was sure. It didn’t. In a few moments, I had trouble catching my breath. My body began to shake. Darkness began to seep in from behind me. I tried to call out. I thought I was speaking, but I couldn’t hear my voice. I was being swallowed by darkness. I tried to fight my way out of it, pull myself forward where I thought the light would be. I was losing the battle.

I heard a voice say, “call 9-1-1.” I had no idea who said it.

There was only darkness.

The next time I saw anything there were red fire trucks in front of me and people in uniforms, firefighters in hats--people moving about with a sense of urgency. The paramedics hooked me up to oxygen and were pulling at my jacket, hovering over me and asking questions. The same kind of intense fervor that was on the cover of my new book jacket was happening in front of me.

I could now see and hear the commotion, understand the questions, but my answers came out gibberish. The EMTs were cool, calm, and focused. I was loaded into a red ambulance that bounced and rolled and shuddered like the large tin can it was. The attendants were taking all sorts of measurements, asking questions, trying to figure it out. Left hand. Blood pressure through the roof. Stroke. Nope. There were other indications that didn’t fit. I could raise my arms, turn my palms, do things that stroke victims apparently couldn’t.

Once in Emergency, I was wheeled to different floors of the hospital and my body went through various flickering, humming futuristic contraptions. Pictures were being taken in one fashion or another. One set of films showed blood in my brain. Another located the tumor, which was removed the next day. I was home the day after that with anti-seizure pills and a bottle of Tylenol, feeling nearly normal.

The thing is, I can imagine that the sensations the imaginary character in my book felt when the bullet hit him were at least comparable to the sensations I felt sitting at a similar table at a similar restaurant on the same street when an impenetrable darkness swallowed my consciousness--as it must have for my character, had he actually existed.

Usually, writers try to write about what we know, draw from our real-life experience in order to create fiction. Somehow, I managed to do this in reverse. That is an uncomfortable, chilling thought, especially for a writer who plays around with murder.

The Book You Have to Read: “Diva,” by Delacorta

(Editor’s note: This is the 101st installment of our ongoing Friday blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. Today’s pick comes from San Francisco author Ronald Tierney, a past finalist in the St. Martin’s Press First Private Eye Novel Contest, and a Shamus Award nominee. Tierney has penned 10 books--including the soon-to-be-published Bullet Beach--featuring semi-retired Indianapolis gumshoe Dietrich “Deets” Shanahan, plus two others starring Bay Area P.I.s Carly Paladino and Noah Lang, the newest of which is Death in North Beach [2010]).

Perhaps the famous Swiss novelist, poet, and expert tantric practitioner was genre slumming. Or maybe he was just having some fun, writing what he wanted without worrying about threats of academic retribution. Whatever the reason, Daniel Odier, who chose to write crime fiction under the pseudonym “Delacorta,” made a brief but very bright and light foray into the genre with a series featuring an underage, precocious heroine, Alba, and a 30-ish artist musician, Gorodish. Together they solved crimes and lived dangerous, perverse, eccentric, and stylish lives.

The most famous of the half-dozen books in this series, Diva, was written in French in 1979 and, following the international success of the movie based on Delacorta’s tale, was translated into English in 1983. That novel arrived in the United States amid rave reviews from both the French and American press.

In Diva, a young motorbike messenger, quite capable of getting into trouble as a result of a pirated recording of an opera performance, finds himself fending off police and gangsters in a situation not of his own making and beyond his expertise. The only people he can trust are Alba and Gorodish, the slightly amoral couple who had agreed to fence his illegal tape for millions, but now must save his life.

The cynicism, double crosses, and elaborate chase sequences found in Diva show the kinship between American and French crime fiction. There are also the international staples of prostitution and illegal drugs so common to U.S. crime novels. And more than a few American authors have written with the kind of humor Delacorta possesses. But I think--and being far from an expert in such matters, I invite comment here--that’s where the similarities are likely to end. It is doubtful that characters, behaving as Delacorta’s characters do, would ever appear in an American work of fiction.

No doubt engaging in some form of centrism here, I’m suggesting that only the French would create such series protagonists as Delacorta did, one being a sophisticated man, Gorodish, whose principles are patently for sale. Loose as they are, though, those principles apparently prevent him from being seduced by the other protagonist, his decidedly Lolita-esque and even more criminally inspired partner. And it’s likely that the “inappropriate” association between the two would not sit well with many American readers, as physically unrequited as their relationship is.

Diva is a story quickly told, despite the stylish overlay. And like all but the last and weakest book in Delacorta’s series, Alba, it comes in at well under 200 pages. (The other books are playfully and confusingly called Nana, Luna, Lola, and Vida.) The reader, at least this one, may have the impression of the story unfolding in a lushly detailed setting. But when examined carefully, it is clear that the sentences are short, spare, and simple. In terms of moving the plot along, Delacorta is all business. That’s obvious in this passage:

As soon as a figure appeared in the shadowy rectangle, she emptied her gun into it. Expecting to take her by surprise, Boulanger didn’t have time to aim. One of his bullets went over her head, then he was thrown back against the banister. She stepped toward him. He was dead, with a look of amazement on his face.

And again, here when we are given the bad guy’s response to a tough-talking Gorodish:

Saporta crushed his cigar in the ashtray. Not many people ever talked to him like that, and those who had done it before were all dead.

In this sense, Delacorta’s work is not so far removed from familiar American tough-guy crime fiction.

But then there are entries in Diva such as this:

Cynthia’s coat dropped to the floor and Jules found himself lying on it with her, as if it had pulled them down in its fall. Then, her face briefly disappeared behind her white silk dress as it unfurled like a breaking wave, leaving her dark body stranded on the fur of her coat.

If one were to say that Dashiell Hammet was a rib-eye steak with fries and Agatha Christie a cucumber sandwich, then Delacorta seems to be a tasty lemon tart. He created a reality we don’t see much of these days--as Nordic winters seem to dominate the crime-fiction landscape, to mix a metaphor--a world that is only briefly scary, often funny, sexually edgy, perhaps a bit too stylish, and often outright silly. Didier, commenting on his alter ego, Delacorta, reportedly called his crime-writing series “fairy tales for adults.”

Delacorta’s novels also mirror the times in which they were written, not just in mood, but also in subject. In the other books as well, the reader will get a chance to tour the highlights of the 1980s--LSD, punk rock, cults--as well as sample a book or books not on many must-read lists.

It may be that Delacorta vanished from the publishing scene because the novelty of his vision wore off. The style, unique as it was and is, is passé--pop fiction going the same way as pop art. Perhaps, when its time comes around again, a new generation might embrace it and revive it, or it might inspire a new vision. Whatever the reader concludes, Diva and its cousins have carved, at minimum, a distinctive niche in crime fiction.

READ MORE: “The Video Shelf: Diva,” by Vagrarian (Dust & Corruption).