LOS ANGELES TIME FESTIVAL OF BOOKS -- USC

Join me and several other fine mystery-thriller authors at the Murder We Wrote booth at the LA Times Festival of Books at USC.  Saturday and Sunday, April 20-21.  I will be there Saturday afternoon.

Terry Ambrose

Joan Blacher

Teresa Burrell

Gayle Carline

Anne Carter

Susan Griscom / Regan Walsh

Jenny Hilborne

Paul D. Marks

Jim Stevens

"WHITE HEAT" CHOSEN AS ONE OF THE BEST FICTION BOOKS OF 2012

Rosa St. Claire at Examiner.com just named my novel White Heat one of the best fiction books of 2012, along with Megan Abbott's Dare Me, Blind Night by Michael W. Sherer, Merry Christmas, Alex Cross by James Patterson, The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling and a handful of others. I'm honored to be included with these great writers.  http://www.examiner.com/review/best-fiction-books-of-2012-and-new-titles-for-2013

51-50 -- NEW NOIR SHORT STORY AVAILABLE NOW

Available on Amazon now: 51-50 -- click the title

Cleaver is a cop who just can't take it anymore. He knows he's going to step over the line, it's just a question of when. It's the smirk that blows him away in this stripped down psycho noir short story.

An excerpt:

It was the smirk that blew me away. A half grin in the eyes and mouth, mocking, laughing. Maybe at me - maybe at the badge. They were leaning against a grimy cinder block wall under a sooty sky. Thumbs hooked into pockets of baggy lowrider pants, fingers, long and lean, twisting into coded signals. Eyes hollow. Eyes I don't even want to meet in the darkest dream. Hollow men. Hollow boys. Nothing behind those eyes. Nothing. They don't care. Don't give a damn.

It was that smirk that blew them away.

~~~

Cops aren't supposed to have feelings. We do a good job of hiding them. Burying them. But we're just like everybody else. We hide them in bravado or work. We hide them in a bottle or in "inexplicable" rages. But they're there, like the molten lava in a volcano just waiting to burst through to the surface.

*****************

Reviews of "51-50":

"Hat's off Mr. Marks - noir is your playground and you do it better than any other current writer."

--Kat Yares, Amazon Vine^TM-Voice Reviewer

"Writer Paul D. Marks can get inside a character's head and walk around better than anybody. His latest short story, 51-50, does just that…"

--G.B. Pool, author of "The Johnny Casino Casebook 1 - Past Imperfect"

Available on Amazon now: 51-50 -- click the title

THE NEXT BIG THING: BROKEN WINDOWS (P.I. Duke Rogers Series – Book 2)

I was tagged last Wednesday by my friend and fellow mystery-thriller-suspense author, Dave Zeltserman for this.

What is the working title of your next book?

Broken Windows. It's the second installment in the Duke Rogers series that started with White Heat.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

My then-agent wanted me to do a sequel to White Heat. At that time it wasn't a series, I wanted to do something else. But she talked me into it.  As the first book, White Heat, was set in 1992 during the time of the Rodney King riots, I needed to set it around that time.  So it's set a couple years later when Proposition 187, which dealt with illegal immigration, was a big thing in California.  It seemed like a logical progression, as White Heat dealt with racial issues stemming from the Rodney King riots. That said, both novels are noir-thrillers, with some topical overtones.

What genre does your book fall under?

Mystery-thriller. Noir.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

If Nick Nolte were twenty years younger he'd be perfect for Jack.  For Marisol, Penelope Cruz or Salma Hayek.  And for Duke Jeremy Renner.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Investigating the murder of an undocumented Mexican worker, P.I. Duke Rogers finds himself sucked into the political turmoil of 1990s Los Angeles.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I don't like to outline, so my "outlines" are generally screenplays – I write the early draft/s in screenplay format for a variety of reasons, but one is that I can work faster that way.  I'd say the first drafts of the ms to work out the plot and characters took about two months and then I moved onto the prose drafts.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Some readers or critics have compared White Heat to Elmore Leonard, Lawrence Block and Michael Connelly. Chandler and Hammett.  So I guess you could do that for Broken Windows too since it's in the same vein and continues Duke's and Jack's story.

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

In the form of a mystery-thriller, White Heat, the first Duke Rogers book, explores racial tensions after the Rodney King trial verdict came in in 1992. I wanted the sequel to deal with another topical subject that could also stand in for today.  California's 1994 Proposition 187 and the "illegal alien" controversy seemed to fit the bill for another thriller that worked on more than simply that level and is certainly a hot topic now.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

I like to deal with various issues in my writing.  In White Heat it was racial tensions, which are still evident today.  But sometimes it helps to look at things in the past to get perspective.  In Broken Windows it's the immigration issue.  And I hope, in both, that I tackle it from all sides.  Different characters have varying opinions on the various issues – meanwhile the roller coaster of the plot keeps moving forward.


And now the hand off to Elizabeth Barone, author of Sade on the Wall, Outlaw Love Story and others:

Elizabeth Barone

Look for her post next week and consider trying...her Next Big Thing!

Mystery, Murder & Mayhem in Palmdale

I'll be speaking to the Palmdale City Library's Mystery Book Discussion Group tonight about my novel "White Heat."  It's at 7 p.m. at the Larry Chimbole Cultural Center, 38350 Sierra Highway, Palmdale, CA.  For more info, please call the Palmdale City Library at 661-267-5600. 

Bogie, Bacall, David Goodis & a Return to ‘Dark Passage’

Technorati Tags: Bogie,Bacall,Humphrey Bogart,Lauren Bacall,Dark Passage,film noir,noir,hardboiled,mystery,fiction,books,movies,Paul D. Marks,Paul Marks,White Heat novel

Dark Passage (1947) with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, screened on Los Angeles station KCET over Labor Day weekend and on Turner Classics on Wednesday of this week. The screenplay, by Delmer Daves (who also directed), is based on a novel by David Goodis. This is a movie that I like to see at least once a year, both for the story and the terrific San Francisco locations, some of which you can still see today.
Vincent Parry, an innocent man, is thrown into San Quentin for the murder of his wife. For a Goodis story it has what might be considered a happy ending. And I think, in this case, the movie improves on the book. It takes what's good about the novel and fleshes it out in ways that work.
Historian and critic Geoffrey O'Brien said "[Goodis] wrote of winos and  barroom piano players and smalltime thieves in a vein of tortured lyricism all his own, whose very excesses seemed uniquely appropriate to the subject matter. As his titles announce—Street of the Lost, Street of No Return, The Wounded and the Slain, Down There—he was the poet of the losers…" *  
It is through the movie version of Dark Passage that I discovered Goodis many years ago. And he is now one of my favorite writers – truly the King of Noir. His stories often deal with people who were once riding high and who've fallen on hard times, to say the least.
Goodis did a stint as a Hollywood screenwriter, eventually leaving Hollywood to return to his native Philadelphia, where he led an "interesting" life to say the least.
If I had to pick a favorite Goodis novel it would be Down There, upon which Truffaut's movie Shoot the Piano Player is based. And I know what I'm going to say is heretical to some, but I like the book a lot more than the movie in a lot of ways and, in fact, I don't like the movie much at all, though it's still worth watching. That said, Dark Passage, both the book and the movie are definitely worth checking out.
 
*Hardboiled America, Lurid Paperbacks and the Masters of Noir; Geoffrey O'Brien; Da Capo Press

Noir Music from The Clash

 SOMEBODY GOT MURDERED – THE CLASH

 Somebody got murdered,

His name cannot be found,

A small stain on the pavement,

They'll scrub it off the ground.

GUNS OF BRIXTON – THE CLASH

 

When they kick at your front door,

How you gonna come?

With your hands on your head,

Or on the trigger of your gun.

LONDON CALLING -- THE CLASH

London calling to the imitation zone,

Forget it, brother, you can go it alone,

London calling to the zombies of death,

Quit holding out, and draw another breath,

London calling, and I don’t wanna shout,

But while we were talking, I saw you nodding out,

London calling, see we ain’t got no high,

Except for that one with the yellowy eyes.

The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming in,

Engines stop running, the wheat is growing thin,

A nuclear error, but I have no fear,

‘Cause London is drowning, and I live by the river.


From: http://pauldmarks.tumblr.com/ 
Facebook: www.facebook.com/paul.d.marks