James Garner: 1928 —2014

When I was a little kid, the barber called me “Hoppy.”  I often went to see Sam and his collection of long, skinny combs in soaking in a jar  filled with a green, smelly solution.  He called me Hoppy because I had white hair and often wore a two-gun holster and a Fanner 50 in each. I was an avid watcher of TV westerns.  In those early days, that consisted of my namesake, Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. Hoppy was my favorite, I think, because he didn’t sing. Even then, though, I wasn’t able to completely suspend disbelief. So much of the action was improbable. Just as I had avoided the impossible feats of the comic book super heroes, many of the TV cowboys seemed able to dodge bullets and could single-handedly beat up a room full of unshaven thugs  — the Jack Reachers of their day.

Then along came “Maverick.” Absolutely perfect.  He was a card shark who didn’t cheat and a con artist who used his skill for good. He was decent, but not perfect guy who would rather talk himself out of a jam than fight his way out of it, who occasionally got the worse end of the deal, who could be fooled, but who, in the end figured out a clever way to deal with the problem.  When Bret Maverick morphed into Jim Rockford, I followed happily. My interest was moving from westerns to private eyes as well.  It wasn’t too long ago that I watched every episode of the “Rockford Files” in binge mode.  It held up for me. Rockford was an ex-con who was pardoned, but never quite forgiven.  He was human, led by his heart into all sorts of trouble. I doubt very much I would have been drawn to writing about private eyes if it weren’t for the “Rockford Files.  And, though I liked Jack Kelly and Roger Moore, there would be no “Rockford Files” without Garner. And I might not have understood it was possible to make a very human guy a series hero.

Because Garner made it (acting) seem so easy some might dismiss his skill. For those who would like an interesting glimpse into his range, rent Twilight, coincidentally a P.I. film, where he, along with his peers, Paul Newman, Gene Hackman and Susan Sarandon, created a modern noir classic.

Blatant Self-Promotion —Mysteries, Thrillers, Suspense Are Not All The Same

Coming Soon

Not too long ago, people who wrote fictional pieces about crime were called “mystery writers.”  Many people still use that name and in many bookstores that’s the name of the section where you’ll find suspense, thrillers and, for lack of a better word, whodunits. Or perhaps a better word would be “mystery, if it weren’t confused with such notions as suspense or thrillers.”  In the last few years, there has been a general movement to use “crime fiction” as the general category, a trend I like because I think we should reserve “mystery” for books that encourage the reader to engage in the investigation and solve it before the protagonist does.

I’m not in any way ranking one kind of crime book over another, just calling for a more accurate way of identifying them.  I grew up with The Rockford Files and Columbo as top of the line crime shows.  I read every James Bond Ian Fleming wrote. Like everyone else, I didn’t mind knowing who the perpetrator was during the first five minutes. I also know that one book can be both a mystery and a thriller. And probably most crime fiction benefits from achieving the highest level of suspense possible. But they are not necessarily the same thing.

What I write – for better or worse — are mysteries.  All of them, whodunnits.  One of the things I do before submitting a manuscript to a publisher is ask a few people I know to read it.  I want them to tell me where in the book they stopped reading each time they stopped reading and when interest flagged. I welcome all comments and encourage them to be not to be bashful about criticism.  But the comment I look most forward to hearing is when the reader made his or her first guess about who did the deed.  And if they had a change of mind later, I want to know that too.  I truly want to stump the reader.  But I want a level playing field just as much.

With a mystery comes perhaps a stricter set of rules. I’d put them under the general heading of “fair play.” Here I’ll use an Amazon review of Death in the Haight from my late friend and writer, Randy Rohn.

E-Book Available Now

“I always look forward to Ron Tierney's books. His characters, although flawed, are real and in their very human way, heroic. This novella packs a wallop. Well-drawn characters, great plot and an interesting take on a social issue that's making headlines these days. The descriptions of San Francisco make the city come alive. The story is a genuine mystery in the finest sense of the word. There are no cheap tricks like leaving out details until the very end to make the "twist" more unexpected. In this one, you find all the clues just as the protagonist Private Investigator Noah Lang does. And as he muses on different scenarios, you are invited into his thinking process. I read this book in one sitting, because I just couldn't put it down. One caveat, this book might be bad for your diet. Ron's descriptions of San Francisco restaurants were so well conceived, it made me hungry.”

I couldn’t resist leaving in all the flattering remarks.  But the real point of it is his statement that “you find all the clues” just as the P.I. does.  Fair play.

By the way, all my books are mysteries in that sense.  Lately, I’ve been writing shorter tales, tailored to one-sitting reading.  I’m preparing three separate novellas for publication soon and the 11th full-length Deets Shanahan mystery for late next year to celebrate the series’ 25 years in print.