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Today, I’m enrolling Blind Man in Kindle Unlimited. If you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, you will be able to read Blind Man on your Kindle without additional charge.
I invite you all to join Fenton Herzman, Reggie Haskell, and Fellman Biggers in their fight for the residents of a mythical South Side of Chicago in their struggle to thrive in a society that respects wealth and corrupt power and disdains kindness and justice.
This week Vine Maple Farm Press published my latest mystery, Blind Man, on Amazon in both Kindle edition and paperback. You can obtain it here. I’m an over-productive and under-disciplined writer, starting projects without finishing them, finishing projects and forgetting about them. But over the past few months, I’ve set my jaw and whipped a segment of a sprawling manuscript into shape as the first book in the Blind Detective series.
It’s a comic crime story set in the 1930s through the 1970s. The main character is a blind detective. As the first book in the series, it includes the main character’s early life. The main story portrays the rescue of an illegal and corrupt—but socially beneficial—gambling scheme run by a notorious crook.
The story is indebted to the classic crime fiction, to Raymond Chandler’s cynical Marlowe and Rex Stout’s wise-cracking Archie. The victim in Blind Man is not a person; instead society is ruthlessly assaulted by forces drifting out of control. Nothing is clear in the dark world of the blind detective. No one, not even the blind man himself, can be trusted.
The story takes place in mythical Chicago, beginning before WWII. Julius “Julie” Parnak is the nephew of the head of the Chicago franchise of Murder Inc., which Julie’s uncle took over from the New York outfit. Julie inherits his uncle’s operation, but he lacks his uncle’s administrative cunning and wit. The blind man, Fenton Herzman, a cellist who lost his sight in Julie’s presence, is an adjunct professor at South Side University. He has established a private detective agency to fund his expensive tastes in antique cellos and baroque music manuscripts.
The skeptical narrator, Reggie Haskell, is from rural Minnesota. He becomes the blind man’s eyes and hands on the streets. Haskell has a rabbit pistol, a flair for baroque musical ornamentation, and a jaundiced eye. Reggie’s dark and looming sidekick, Fellman Biggers, is a former NFL tackle with a PhD. in astrophysics. Reggie and Fellman are heroes; Herzman’s willing pawns in a storm-tossed sea of deception, greed, and spite.
I have more fiction to offer in addition to the beginning of my Chicago detective novel. A while back, I wrote a short story that uses Rex Stout’s cast of characters and style from a Nero Wolfe mystery, although I could not help letting my personality slip in. And I admit, to impertinence in stealing from Grand Master Stout. If I did my job well, the readers will enjoy the story, although I would be gobsmacked if anyone mistook it for the real thing. Read it here.
Readers with a sharp ear will hear more than a little Rex Stout Nero Wolfe mystery in my Fenton Herzman and Reggie Haskell.
A little background for those who are interested. Rex Stout started writing the Nero Wolfe mysteries in the 1930s and he continued until he died in 1975. He created a repertoire of characters that appear in most of the novels: Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, of course, but also NPYD Homicide Division Inspector Fergus Cramer, chef Fritz Brenner, freelance operative Saul Panzer, tomboy femme fatale and ballroom dancer Lily Rowan, and more. Part of Stout’s charm is the comfortable familiarity of the setting and characters.
An old brownstone in midtown Manhattan is a much a part of the stories as any of the characters. The building has a penthouse greenhouse where Wolfe retreats morning and afternoon on a schedule that is not to be changed or interrupted. The globe in Wolfe’s office is the largest anyone has ever seen. Wolfe knows the precise location of every volume on his floor to ceiling book shelves and a peephole is hidden behind a trick painting.
I like to think of Stout’s characters as deep caricatures—more realistic than burlesques, but magnified beyond life; often comic, but facing profoundly serious issues. The putative main character, Nero Wolfe, is a genius detective who prefers eating and raising orchids to detecting. Archie Goodwin’s real job is to goad Wolfe into action. Archie is the true center of the stories, a wise-cracking innocent whom some critics compare to Huckleberry Finn. He does Wolfe’s leg work, and more.
A&E produced a Nero Wolfe television series in 2001 and 2002 starring Timothy Hutton and Maury Chaykin. There have been several radio, movie, and television productions based on Nero Wolfe, but I like the A&E series best. It’s as faithful as television ever is to an original and the sets are lavish chiaroscura that remind me of a Merchant Ivory film. I recommend seeing it if you have a chance. I have a DVD set of the entire series.
There was a Canadian CBC radio series that is good listening, but it is hard to find. The voice characterizations are superb, and, if you have the right kind of imagination, the sets are more vivid than A & E. Try here.
Like almost every Nero Wolfe mystery, my story begins with a potential client at the door. It’s close to lunch time. Archie tries to send him away, but the client is insistent and, in some way, disturbing. Archie relents and parks him into the front room to wait, locking the door so he can’t wander. Wolfe, of course, won’t see him. While Wolfe is on the phone, Archie checks on the client and finds him dead. Wolfe is annoyed but, uncharacteristically, he allows Archie to call 911 after a ten minute head-start on lunch instead of insisting on delaying until the meal is over. Archie gets a hunch that Wolfe has something up his sleeve. He’s right.
I wrote my Nero Wolfe mystery over five years ago for a few self-indulgent laughs. I reread it the other day. I had forgotten the story entirely. I was surprised that I enjoyed reading it, so maybe a few folks will enjoy it too. Wolfe’s lunch is heavy but the story is light.
I called it Lunchus Interuptus.