On Writing — Fiction As History

The Early Shanahan novels

Occasionally I receive comments from people who have read some of the early books in my Shanahan mystery series.   These notes usually come from people who live or have lived in Indianapolis. Rarely are the comments about the plot, though critics at the time were complimentary. Some are about the main characters – Deets Shanahan and his love, Maureen.  But most of the sentiment is about bringing back memories. The 11 novels in the series set in Indianapolis cover 25 years in the life of the Circle City beginning with The Stone Veil in 1980. History is an unforeseen, but happy consequence of fiction.

I haven’t been the only one.  In fact I wasn’t the first one or necessarily the most prolific.  The acclaimed Michael Z. Lewin not only originated the first series featuring a fictional Indianapolis P.I., but is also credited with popularizing the idea of a regional P.I. series. Many others followed.  My Deets Shanahan character also came after Lewin’s Albert Samson.

Michael Z. Lewin

Lewin and I are roughly the same vintage. However he began writing younger in his life.  Counting his Leroy Powder cop series, Lewin has used Indianapolis as a setting for 11 crime novels with a history going back to 1971 with his first Samson novel, Ask The Right Question, among those being re-released as I write.

Re-released

I have inadvertently been part of recording this city’s history when, as its first editor, I helped found NUVO Newsweekly, the longest serving alternative newspaper in the city’s history. Long after I was gone it continues to chronicle my hometown and is a powerful, on-going historical reference. However, I would suggest that fiction could go beyond the news as a historical document in many ways by creating the mood, the ambiance and an in-depth characterization of its neighborhoods, restaurants, transportation and particularly its inhabitants.

There are those, of course, who dismiss genre fiction, including the P.I. novel as something less than respectable. The Shanahan mysteries are definitely genre fiction, as are the Samson novels. We gain a sense of the place in time in a way that may not be academic, but in a fluid, experiential way.

Book Notes — Confessions Of A Discontented Deity, A Different Kind Of Mystery

I asked Michael Z. Lewin about his new book, which is a bit of a departure from his two critically well-received and popular mystery series. Here is Mr. Lewin’s response:

Confessions of a Discontented Deity is a different kind of book for me, for sure.  A novel, yes, but not obviously a mystery except in the mystery-of-life sense.  But that doesn’t mark a sea change in my oeuvre or my interests.  I’ve always been more interested in people than in poisons, more interested in why people do things than how they kill each other.  A writer friend of mine, Carter Wilson, responded to my previous book (Family Way) by saying that as a mystery writer I was like a surgeon who got into the slicing and dicing before he realized blood and guts were involved.

Nor is the God who narrates these Confessions much of a stickler for what one might call the genre of religious forms and practices.  The basic idea is that if God created man then to understand God all you need to do is look at man, men, and work backwards.  That reasoning offers you a geek who likes to play with His toys, get laid, and avoid hassle.

Yet men can change — well, some of them.  So God too can change.  And in Confessions He reconstructs the latest time when He discovered Himself to be changing.  And He tells what He did about it.  In the course of the reconstruction He explains about Life, on earth and elsewhere in the Universe.  And why men (and women) came to be created.  And what’s going to happen next.

There’s even a chapter in which God solves a crime.

Michael Z. Lewin

This is not my first book that has been “different,” and I’ve never been one to stick even to a single series.  In the late ‘90s I published Rover’s Tales.  In that book Rover narrates his adventures as an “independent” dog, but in many ways it’s really a book about humanity, looking up from ground level.  Well, now “dog” has reversed itself and become “god” and instead of looking at man and womankind from below, Confessions is a view looking down from the heavens.  So maybe it’s a new series.  Dog, God…  What’s next?  The Ogds?  Whatever they are.  Meanwhile Rover, though unnamed, does make an appearance in Confessions.

A long time ago it was a revelation to me that for the tax folks instead of being a writer I was a “small business.”  If I were a better businessman I would have been writing versions of the same book over and over, like many of the most successful crime folks seem to do.  But I’m not much of a businessman.  So here, instead of more Albert Samson, is God.  How good a writer I am is up to you to decide.

However, for those interested in Samson, just let me say that I’m just finishing a Samson short story.  It is the fourth in a series in which he has the same client.  The first of these stories, “Who I Am” is the one honored by the Private Eye Writers of America with the short story Shamus this year.  It was followed in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by “Good Intentions” with “Extra Fries” yet to be published.  And, I hope, the fourth and last in what amounts to a mini-series.  MZL

Michael Z. Lewin has written more than 20 novels and numerous short stories as well as stage and radio plays. A resident of Indianapolis for many years, he lives in Bath, England.

Blatant Sales Pitch 2 — Holiday Gifts Indy’s Own Fictional Private Eyes

Sam Spade worked out of San Francisco.  Marlowe was based in LA.  Spenser operated in Boston.  Mike Hammer and many other fictional private eyes went about their business in the nation’s largest metropolis, New York.   It wasn’t until Albert Samson came along that Indianapolis had a gumshoe of its own.  In fact, many credit Samson’s creator, long acclaimed novelist Michael Z. Lewin, as a pioneer in a movement that gave “regional private eyes” a national presence.

With no small amount of self-interest, I’m proposing that Indianpolitans who like detective novels explore the fictional sleuths who made their city home.  In addition to the story telling in a place that might be especially familiar to the reader, there is a bit of the city’s history embedded in each book.  While there are other writers who have set mysteries and thrillers in the Circle City, I believe there are only three of us who have created a series private eye protagonist in this setting.

Michael Z. Lewin’s Albert Samson series

Recent Private Eye Writers of America’s Shamus award winner Lewin’s first Samson novel, Ask the Right Question, was published in 1971.  I found my paperback copy of The Way We Die Now the other day as I went through a stack of books in a vain attempt to dematerialize.  The book was first released in 1973.  So, I’m able to visit my hometown in a way that my faulty memory won’t allow and see vividly, in some cases, the places Samson visits. One senses that Samson is the kind of P.I. who actually exists.  The stories and the characters are believable. There are eight novels in this highly acclaimed series, the most recent Eye Opener, which has been made available in e-book format.  Many of his earlier Samson novels are no doubt available at your local mystery bookstore and a few are, fortunately, becoming available in electronic formats. There is a great article on Samson on the Thrilling Detective web site, which also points out that Lewin has written other, standalone novels and has two other series. But the Samson novels are an especially great idea for a holiday gift for the reader in your family, especially if he or she has a special affection for the city. To find out more about the author and all of his work, click here and here.

“Michael Lewin has just about the best private detective who has been around in many a day…Lewin has brains and style.”  — Los Angeles Times

Ronald Tierney’s Deets Shanahans series

My first P.I. novel, Stone Veil was published in 1990. The book introduced a blue-collar, semi-retired, former Army intelligence sergeant turned P.I. After settling down in Indianapolis, Deets Shanahan meets the love of his life in a massage parlor and the two of them appear, along with a regular cast of characters, in ten novels so far, with the most recent being Bullet Beach in 2011, when in a time-defying fashion he finally turned 70.  He is not so much tough as he is stubborn.  To get a look at the city in the ‘90s, take a look at the early Shanahans, which have been reissued as trade paperbacks and ebooks.  Restaurants, neighborhoods, bars, some of which may be gone now, remain in spirit as ink on a page or light shining up from a screen.  A few are out of print, but many are still available.  You might find, for example, Nickel-Plated Soul and Asphalt Moon in the backroom of your favorite bookstore. All the early Shanahans are available as e-books and in trade paperback.  And your local bookstore can order the latest, Bullet Beach.

"A series packed with new angles and delights." — Booklist

David Levien’s Frank Behr series

The new guy in the city arrived with a bang as well as lots of blood.  Frank Behr is a super tough ex-cop, with a tragic past, who takes on the toughest of the tough on the darkest of the streets of Indianapolis.  Levien, a screenwriter with plenty of credentials, has four books so far in the Behr series, City of the Sun, Where the Dead Lay, The Contract, and The 13 Million Dollar Pop.  His books, which I think feature a kind of super-big, super-hero protagonist similar to the Jack Reacher model have received a number of award nominations and sell a lot of copies.

“Levien is the new must-read thriller writer. — Lee Child

Because we’re entering the last gasps of holiday shopping and there are many desperate folks seeking a quick solution.  How about a sampling of novels featuring fictional Indianapolis private eyes?  Pick one or two from each author.

Opinion — Indianapolis Places, My Own Personal Noir (Part Two)

Very personally and specifically, downtown Indianapolis was a rich resource for my early and later fascination with private detectives and the search for the truth tales we ascribe to these lone and imperfect heroes. My interest began when I was maybe ten years old.

This would be in the 1950s. I would often go downtown with my brother to attend the movies. If he had other things to do — he worked in the family restaurant business as I did from time to time after turning 12 — I would go by myself. There were several big movie houses, all within a few blocks of each other. A few still exist. The Indiana Theater houses the Indiana Repertory Company. The Circle hosts the symphony. Great uses. But some of the grand old theaters are gone. Loews, Keith's, and the Lyric no longer exist. I went to all of them. On those trips when my brother wasn't with me, I'd take the opportunity to watch Westerns, which he didn't appreciate all that much, as well as some of the low-budget black and white crime flicks, which always seemed to involve shadows and alleys and all sorts of people coming to a bad end.

Inspired by the films, no doubt, I would sometimes leave the theater imagining myself to be a private detective on a case. Downtown provided tall buildings, alleys and some great public buildings. The Indiana War Memorial with its long, narrow back stairways and the dark, eerie room with a tomb, was a perfect place to lurk, while I waited for a suspicious character to light up my imagination. There as also the Central Library, which figured hugely in my life well into adulthood. There were parks and all sorts of people I could imagine being part of my investigation. I followed several of them, unbeknownst to them (strange word, “unbeknownst”), ducking into doorways and pretending to look into store windows. One could wander around the big department stores too — Ayres and Blocks and Wassons. My grandmother introduced me to shopping and she had these big old stores figured out. One went to Ayres for women’s clothing, tea and ice cream sodas. One went to Blocks, or L. Strauss, for men’s clothing. But if you wanted sheets, linen and such, you went to Wassons. If you wanted shoes, you had to go several blocks to Stouts on Massachusetts Avenue, a wonderful few blocks of old and at that time, picaresquely dilapidated buildings.

But nothing in those very young days fascinated me as much as the movie theaters, where so much magic happened. Later I would check out the neighborhood theaters before they too began to disappear, fall into disrepair or converted to some unrelated use. The little Emerson theater was within walking distance of my grandmother's house, where I spent many a weekend. I went on my first high school dates at the very modern Arlington. This was after my creepy stalking phase. There were the older neighborhood theaters like the Rivoli and the Irving on the East Side. On the North Side was the Vogue. On the West, where I worked in a restaurant initially called The Canary Grill, as a busboy and dishwasher, were the Bell and the Belmont. I was scared out of my wits, watching The Thing at the Bell.

There were movie theaters on the South Side in Fountain Square, a kind of second downtown, where another writer of Indianapolis mysteries, Michael Z. Lewin, grew up. But Fountain Square seemed almost like another city to me then. I don’t remember going there as a kid, though the skeletons of these old movie-burlesque houses still exist. In addition to the grand old theaters in the heart of the city, there was the Fox Theater, once called the Empress and before that The Colonial. It was in a hotel building and was famous for burlesque. Later it became a porn house. In my mid-teens I snuck into the tawdry, run-down Fox Theater to see Nudist Colony on the Moon — a horrible movie no matter what standards you hold.

The other thing I remember is that Indianapolis, like many cities, went through phases. Some might like to think that this current bubbling life in the city’s center is something new. It isn’t. There was a time, before I was born, when it was a major railroad hub. It was a big city at that time, long before anyone even heard of Dallas or Phoenix. It had brick and cobblestone streets, gaslights, carriages, a bustling city with immigrants and travelers. The Magnificent Ambersons, the famous book and subsequent film, was set in this golden era in Woodruff Place, another area that needs to be preserved. Later, in the 1940s and 1950s, before the interstates and the flight to the suburbs, everyone went downtown for fine dining and not so fine dining, for live shows and movies and just to watch all sorts of people do what all sorts of people do. Though I don’t follow strangers around anymore, I still enjoy people watching them and I’m not cured of making up stories about folks I know absolutely nothing about.

Certainly I’m glad downtown Indianapolis is bustling again because it is my hometown and because I am still creating stories about crimes in this fine, old Midwestern city. I am happy that the energy is back and sad that those who had the power weren’t able to save more of its vibrant history.

On Monday, the super revelers will be gone; but I hope you’ll visit this blog that day for one more entry on Indianapolis. It’s time we think about transportation, then and now.

Opinion — E-Book Publishing, Small is Beautifull

There always seems to be a dark side to technical advances. Nuclear fission, pretty fantastic. Atom bomb, not so good. With the skyrocketing success of e-books we’re witnessing the downfall of big brick and mortar bookstores. Initially the technology also appears to be a threat to smaller independent and specialized bookshops and is causing a confused scrambling among those throughout the publishing business. Traditional publishing is still trying to find a little topsy in the midst of tumultuous turvy.

The absolute truth is that none of us really knows exactly how all of this will turn out and what it will mean to any of us — writers, readers, distributors or publishers. But many of us are encouraged in one area — ebooks not only allow writers to publish their own out-print books, but package their work in different ways and, in fact, manifest work that quite likely wouldn’t be welcomed by publishers forced to tailor products for mainstream markets. Bookstores too. It’s difficult to imagine any bookstore owner looking forward to selling short stories, one at a time— except maybe City Lights in San Francisco.

Recently, I published a novella-length prequel to my San Francisco series, Mascara, Death in the Tenderloin. This is a book most publishers would not even consider because of its length. The agent I had at the time I submitted the manuscript simply responded: “What am I supposed to do with this?” He had already found it worthwhile in screenplay form. But as a book? It was clear that 40,000 words fell short of the bar and therefore it wouldn’t make the rounds of Manhattan’s coterie of acquisition editors. However, because ebook technology exists and is (relatively*) easily accessible, writers are able to publish their writing in the manner and form they prefer. Short-story writers can publish their work, one story at a time, if they want. And they do. And novella writers can gamble that the public might find this length appealing, especially if it is priced accordingly. Putting it out in paper might be cost prohibitive for the writer as well. But ebooks? We’re seeing a bunch of 99-cent “books,” these days.

In August Michael Z. Lewin wrote a small piece for this blog’s Old Gold section about how he planned to use the new medium “I intend,” he said, “to put more than just the Samsons out there electronically. Other older books too, but also new work. The book I’m working on now will go straight to electronic formats without even being offered to conventional publishers.”

The “Samsons” referred to Lewin’s private detective series featuring Albert Samson. One book in the series, Eye Opener, set in Indianapolis, has been made available electronically and he has now made good on his promise to release a new book on his own, directly and electronically. Family Trio is a small book, three stories really, about the Lunghi family, who operate a private detective agency in Bath, England. And, as a side note, just as Lewin was a pioneer in the creation of regional American private detectives, he might be able to claim another first. Carol Harper, of Deadly Pleasures, said of the Lunghi stories, “I can think of no other series, anywhere, which features a family which owns and works from a private detection firm…. Highly recommended”

The beauty of Family Trio for this posting, though, is that Lewin uses the ebook format as a chance to offer readers a collection of short stories not just as part of his highly regarded series, but also as standalone tales. These are complete reads, just the right length when you’re not in the mood to commit to a 500-page blockbuster, perfect for a short flight, an afternoon at the beach or at bedtime when you don’t want to stay up all night to get closure. The fact that this brevity can be and often is proportionally priced as well — a mere $1.25 in this case — is another benefit that ebooks can offer the reader.

It’s important to note that many of us who are expanding our offerings in various ways aren’t abandoning conventional publishing. Family Way, Lewin’s third Lunghi novel in a series Booklist called “…mordantly funny, beguiling in the extreme” will be published by Five Star and released in December. It’s good to know that there will be more than one way to read a Lunghi mystery. Of course, there are many readers waiting for the next Albert Samson novel as well.

There are several other writers doing this, offering great writing in various lengths and various formats. If nothing else, the ebook revolution has been a boon to the reader and writer, both of whom want choices.

For other ebook choices, you might want to visit Top Suspense Group, a collective of 12 highly respected crime writers offering dozens of e-book titles.

*The word “relatively” is important. Ebook publishing is not as simple as some have suggested.

OLD GOLD — Michael Z. Lewin Brings Back Classic Indianapolis P.I. Albert Samson

Early works by some of our best, current crime writers have been out of print for years. But times are changing. Many of these highly praised novels are available again as e-books and or trade paperbacks. “Old Gold,” is a periodic blog feature that focuses on these reissued treasures. Here's the story in the author's words.

I find the new technologies that are transforming access to the written world really exciting. I love that electronic platforms make it possible for books — OK, my books — to come out again when, for so long, they’ve been staying in. For me this currently applies only to the most recent of my eight Samson novels, Eye Opener. But I have every intention of putting the other Samsons back into the realm of the available.

The first time Albert Samson plied his PI trade in Indianapolis was in 1971. That’s forty years ago. It’s amazing I’m still alive, don’t you think? And that he is — because at least a couple of new Samson stories will emerge in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, the first in December, 2011.

I intend to put more than just the Samsons out there electronically. Other older books too, but also new work. The book I’m working on now will go straight to electronic formats without even being offered to conventional publishers. Assuming I can work out the how-to part of the process….

I’ve been inspired to do this by a friend and neighbor, the brilliant Liza Cody — author of the Anna Lee PI books, the Eva Wylie trilogy and other novels. She’s just published Ballad of a Dead Nobody herself, not least because she could fix the price of the electronic edition at $2.99. And this point in my life and career I — like Liza — am far more interested in having new readers than in having better-filled pockets. — Michael Z. Lewin