Killing a Friend - a rave first review!!!

Below you'll find the word for word review of my literary fiction novel, Killing a Friend. It doesn't get much better than this.... Thank you MJL in Florida!

It's available in both print and eBook format.

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful literary voice, May 10, 2011

By 

MJL (Florida, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Killing a Friend (Kindle Edition)

I found this gem mentioned in the literary fiction community on Amazon, read a sample and couldn't resist the purchase.

Briefly: The narrator, Jack McCormack, is an Irish writer living in Sweden who is befriended by a local artist named Wolf. Jack is slowly drawn into Wolf's inner circle and, eventually, into the depths of Wolf's private life. Jack is inspired by the creative success that Wolf is able to achieve. He professes to crave the intimacy of love and friendship that is available to him for the first time in his life.

That's the premise but - as with all good literary works - the real story takes place below the surface. Suffice it to say that the narrator - more of a casual observer of life than an actual participant - eventually achieves the emotional maturity that his past once kept him insulated from. And because T.S. O'Rourke is such a skilled writer, Jack takes the reader with him every step of the way.

O'Rourke claims that this is his first foray into literary fiction but it seems as if he was born to the medium. I was drawn into the story from the first sentence, read it in one day and it is still resonating. I suspect it will be for a long time to come - in my humble opinion, the true measure of a novel.

*For those to whom this matters: the ebook edition is well edited and formatted.*

Three Short Shots... for the price of one...

In order to provide a better bang for buck for the readers of my bestselling short story, Why I Kill (The Confession of a Serial Killer), I've added two more shots to the publication. The price, however, remains the same.

The main story is a first person confession of a killer, and it has done really well, being in the top 10 under the Forensic Psychology section of Amazon.com since it was published last year.

To this I've added Groucho Riley: (The Birth of a Serial Killer) and Mirror, Mirror (The Naked Truth of Being Alone).

When the Amazon.com cover resembles this one to the right, then you know you've got the bonus material included!

Why I Kill (The Confession of a Serial Killer)

If you like what you read, then take a gamble on my other recent publications: Candy Says Kill (A Shot of Modern Noir) and Killing a Friend.

Bukowski's Beat - a rhythm I love

Any of you idiots got a corkscrew?

It's not every day you find a wee gem on the Net - though Dog knows there's plenty of them. But I came across Bukowski's Basement and I just had to share it with you.

My first foray into writing was called Tax Office. It never saw the light of day, thankfully, but it was written based on the premise that if Hank could scribble about the Post Office I could find some degree of justification to chronicle my wasted years as a Tax Collector. The difference between my book and Hank's was quite stark. His was great. Mine sucked supreme.

So I was delighted to be reminded of my old drinking buddy Hank...(never met the guy, unfortunately) at this great site that not only reminds one of the style and sentiment that Hank brought to the page, but has a lot of writers aiming to stagger in a similar direction.

There's Flash Fiction and Poems galore. Great stuff! Please click here and enjoy....
Bukowski's Basement

Ken Bruen, synchronicity, and cosmic wellbeing stuff... and me...

I used to be a hippy. I was also a Tax Collector in King's Cross (London, not Sydney) in the late 1980s. But I've always been the kinda guy that reads signs. Take traffic lights for example. If you are at one with the world your traffic lights should be consistently green.

Anyway... before I ramble off on a tangent, as is my natural wont, I'd like to share with you a small incident of the above mentioned synchronicity that I was referring to.

Before I type another word I must tell you I'm currently re-reading Ken Bruen's 'Blitz' and loving his main character, Brant more with every utterance, every page...

Last night I was unable to sleep and doing a little recreational surfing and I Googled Ken Bruen, as I've loved everything he's written that I've so far read (and have no doubts that I'd like the rest either, truth be told), and I stumbled across a Blog call Murderati (the name of the blog spoke to me - and it wasn't the dark rum I was drinking).

So I click on the Ken Bruen Murderati link and start reading...

http://www.murderati.com/blog/2011/4/12/a-ken-bruen-tribute-to-murderati.html

Turns out Ken Bruen, 'the main man' of Irish crime writing recently celebrated his birthday and wrote a wee note to the editors of the Murderati blog... and lo and behold whose name should crop up in the first paragraph? You got it... none other than yours truly. Odd, eh? Gratifying? Most definitely.

I'm still not quite sure if I remember the grand old days that Ken refers to (living in a crummy bedsit and writing Big Issues articles on drug lords and junkies had its high points though between dole cheques).... but what grabbed me most in this post was the emotion, the flow, the honesty the 'feeling'. Kinda got me to wondering if Ken has ever written anything other than crime novels (though he best not stop doing that).

Anyhow... that's all... it felt all warm and fuzzy for a bit. I like that feeling. Excuse me now... must go and write some crime, some more modern noir....

I'd gladly share a fifth with Sir Ken.

Noir Fiction...

Check this out... for some cool Noir Fiction covers...
http://www.philsp.com/mags/black_mask.html

Future Noir?

I like the old stuff. I write the modern stuff - but what is 'Future Noir'? Well, take a dash of Dashiel, a bucket of Bruen, an egg-cup of Ellroy a shot of Vachss and a snifter of the Jetsons and you get creepily close. Blade Runner is modern popular 'Future Noir' at its best - as far as I'm aware.... but you try Googling Future Noir and see what turns up....

A wonderful mixture of rather risque femme fatale types, some Judge Dredd wannabes, Harrison Ford and that's more or less it.

Somewhat surprising from my perspective.

Where is the future of Future Noir? Who is the king or queen of this genre?
I'm looking for Sam Spade with a laser zip gun, electric knuckle dusters and a nuclear-powered car-trans whatzit that makes a cool sound as it glides through the city's ripped backside....

I suppose William Gibson fits the picture perfectly. I've read his Neuromancer and enjoyed it throughly, but I must have missed an entire sub-genre in this area... I'll have to do some more investigating... nothing like new things (even if they're old) to cheer one up...

But in the meantime some latex and superheros will have to suffice...

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