Back at work....

"OK... enough messing around already.... What exactly are you doing O'Rourke? What's in the pipeline? You jiggling your giblets or frying your sausage all day long? You got some poor lady all doe-eyed and breathless? Perhaps you got some 'job' lined up and you need the time to plan your escape? Maybe that guy you dissed last week has finally shown up on your doorstep to teach you a thing or two about how to hammer a nail into a guy's hand with just the one blow?"
"I'm writing."
"Ahhh.. writing again you say? And what might you be writing this time?"
"A Gangland Tale."
"Ganglands? A follow-up to Ganglands? With the same characters and the same mayhem? With a dose of sex and murder, of the Russian mob, of drugs and deception of gay serial killers and black whores? Tell me more...."
"No. It's a secret."
"When will it be ready?"
"When it's ready...."
"But you promise lots of blood and guys and sex and stuff... steamy seamy stormy stuff?"
"I promise."
"Will I be scared or revolted? Aroused or ashamed?"
"Yes. All of the above. And more."
"What will this book be called - it is a book, isn't it?"
"Yes it is a book - a novel - a crime novel - another shot of Modern Noir. Two fingers of noir, if you like."
"I'm hungry...."
"Like a bit of sausage, lady?"
"You're disgusting."
"I know. So?"
"Okay then... you got any chilli sauce?"
"Hot-stuff baby"
"This is getting weird."
"I know."
"Best stop writing now before you end up exceeding my expectations."
"Not so much chilli sauce you insane witch!"
"You love it really...."

Nice review for Candy....

Just had a very nice review for my new novella/long short over on Amazon... so I thought I'd share it... :)

4.0 out of 5 stars Rusting quietly, March 29, 2011

By 

David H Fears - See all my reviews 
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Candy Says Kill: A Shot of Modern Noir (Kindle Edition)

This is a fast-paced, powerful short story that turns on a coincidence--a man who has killed before for money stops in a small Alabama town and the bartender's young and gorgeous wife takes him for the contract killer she ordered. His lust and experience lead him to take advantage of the situation, with some chilling and realistic dialog and action. They say every good short story could be a novel and every bad novel might be a short story. This is a good one, and God knows it's harder to write a good short story than a novel. I write hardboiled stuff and this one fits the bill nicely in a more modern setting. Well worth the price.


You can find Candy Says Kill by clicking here....

Ed McBain and the 87th Precinct

I remember scavenging through the detritus of secondhand bookstores for those priceless gems that meant so much to me in my late teens and early 20s.

At that time the gems were a mixture of dog-eared Donleavy titles from the 60s and 70s, Henry Miller, Hemingway and Ed McBain....


You might think this is an odd mixture. I don't. What you have here is wit, pathos, pace, prose and perfection. It suited my sensibilities back then. It still does.


Ed McBain's Steve Carella and his cohorts mean a lot to me. These books taught me about police procedurals, taught me how to keep the dialogue sharp and moving and how to profile my characters in a realistic manner. They were always one or two-sitting books - hard to put down, hard to forget.


I read over on the official Ed McBain site that the 87th Precinct novels might be turned into a TV series by Stanley Tucci and Steve Buscemi of Lion's Gate Productions. This would be great news. I had slightly higher hopes for the Blue Bloods series that just began recently. I'm hoping that Lion's Gate could do the right kind of magic with McBain's works - do his novels justice, for want of a better pun...


For a very interesting read on Ed's life and times, click here.


R.I.P. Salvatore Lombino, a.k.a. Evan Hunter, a.k.a. Ed McBain.

The Carroll & Grant Collection

The cover art for the Carroll & Grant Collection (two London-based police detective novels in one book) has just been updated.

Death Call, the first novel goes something like this:
It was all he could do to stop his hangover from spilling out onto the victim as he studied her neck and what he made out to be the initial puncture wound in her abdomen. From that point, he thought, she had been opened like an envelope with a paper knife, revealing a mess of entrails and blood.

With a deranged serial killer on the loose, Detective Sergeant Dan Carroll and his new partner Detective Constable Samuel Grant find themselves trawling the seedy side of London in search of a brutal killer that preys on prostitutes.

Declan Burke, over on Crime Always Pays, my favourite Crime Novel Blog, described the book like this:


"As blunt and effective as the average anvil, TS O'Rourke's prose in Death Call was hardboiled, pickled and left out to dry under a post-apocalyptic sun." --Crime Always Pays

The second novel, Damned Nation, follows the same two detectives on another case - this time in search of some crazy satanists intent on performing some ghastly rituals including human sacrifice.... It ends up as a race against time to find a missing person....

The collection is now available via Amazon.com

Candy Says Kill: A Shot of Modern Noir

My new novella, Candy Says Kill: A Shot of Modern Noir, is now available in eBook format.

It's a genre piece that includes all the best elements of a noir experience - mistaken identities, confusion, sex, deceit and of course, murder.

It's a long short story, or a short novella - which ever you prefer...around 7,000 words in length - perfect for the Kindle.

Here's the cover art...  a Beretta 92A1 being the metal in question, capable of holding a magazine with seventeen rounds... more than enough for any serious killer....

The earlier post with an excerpt from the work is still to be found below if you want an early sample...

Eight Ball Boogie

I've just learned that Eight Ball Boogie by Declan Burke is now also available in eBook format.

I read Declan's book The Big O recently and I have to say it was a wonderfully refreshing mix of crime and comedy with a dash of attitude. I haven't read Eight Ball Boogie yet, but if Ken Bruen likes (he gives it a big thumbs up) it then it must be good...
Here's a bit of the blurb from the book:
When the wife of a politician keeping the government in power is murdered, Sligo journalist Harry Rigby is one of the first on the scene. He very quickly discovers that he’s in out of his depth when it transpires that the woman’s murder is linked to an ex-paramilitary gang’s attempt to seize control of the burgeoning cocaine market in the Irish Northwest. Harry’s ongoing feud with his ex-partner Denise over their young son’s future doesn’t help matters; and then there’s Harry’s ex-con brother Gonzo, back on the streets and mean as a jilted shark .

Eight Ball Boogie is on sale for the ridiculously low price of US$0.99 cents at the moment - so strike while the proverbial iron is still hot... The print version would otherwise set you back £26.95...