August New Releases, Short Stories and More
August 2024
Back again with more crime fiction and news for your consideration.
Let’s start with …
Excerpts from New Releases
The Bachelorette Party
CHAPTER ONE
NOW
I yank off the crown.
Embossed with the finest plastic diamonds reading Bougie Bachelorette, the thing not only looks ridiculous, it’s giving me a headache.
“Come on, Alex.” Melody turns from the front seat with an exaggerated pout. “You’re the bachelorette. You have to wear it.”
“Maybe later,” I lie, since she took the time to buy the monstrosity.
Lainey turns the car key a few times, and the engine putters precariously before finally catching. “Gotta look at that starter,” she says, with a grimace.
This does not bode well.
We’re in Lainey’s used Kia, which is about as sexy as it sounds. But Melody doesn’t know how to drive and Jay needed his car, so we didn’t have much choice in the matter. Pulling out of my parking ramp, we make a few turns, then start crawling down the streets of Manhattan.
Tourists crowd the Sack’s Fifth Avenue Christmas windows, a kitschy throwback in this CGI-dominated world. A block later, a line snakes around the American Girl store, moms and daughters holding hands, dolls dangling everywhere. The soft snow has thickened into soggy flakes, clogging the air, making the city look like a postcard.
“This car sucks in the snow,” Lainey says, frowning at the windshield.
“Come on,” Melody trills. She’s an actress—she trills a lot. “It’s an adventure.”
Lainey snorts, and I commiserate with her lack of excitement. It’s only a month before the wedding, and I’m way behind on my 666 Killer profile. But Melody guilt tripped me, saying this would be our last hurrah as single ladies, and Lainey didn’t have many free weekends with basketball.
Oddly enough, it was Jay who made the final push. He’s from Australia, where “hen parties” are more of a thing. “You’ve known them forever,” he said. “They’re your best friends. Go crazy. Do it up. Get the policeman strippers or whatever.”
I had to laugh at that one. Melody would possibly allow male strippers in the name of female empowerment, but Lainey has zero interest in men, let alone naked men.
At least it’s just the three of us. A blowout at some random bar would have been worse. I am not, and have never been, a party girl.
“Can you please just tell me where we’re going?” I ask, leaning forward closer to their seats.
“Then it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?” Lainey answers.
I look to Melody, who answers with a zipped-lips motion. With a resigned sigh, I lean back again, fiddling with my seatbelt before remembering it doesn’t work.
In the front seats, my friends look comical, Lainey’s head well above the headrest and Melody’s well below. Melody and Lainey are opposites. Lainey is white, skinny, boyish, and proudly six feet. Melody is Chinese-American, buxom with a Betty Boop quality, and proudly four feet eleven. Lainey has a low, gruff voice; Melody a high-pitched, incessantly cheerful one. Lainey would be Grumpy (if Grumpy were six feet), and Melody would be Happy (if Happy harped on intersectional feminism).
I don’t think there’s a suitable dwarf for me, since I’m not dopey or bashful, and sneezy and sleepy are hardly personality traits. I suppose I’m the median, in height and hair color, at least. I’ve always been the middle child, the peacemaker, ever since our first days as roommates at UConn.
Jay is right, I’ve known them forever.
“A hint,” I say, butting my head in between their seats. “Just give me a little hint.”
They exchange glances. “It involves your internship,” Melody says. “Primary research.”
“Primary research?” I ask, baffled. I drum my fingers on the cold velour seat. “For the 666 Killer?” I rest my elbows on the back of their seats. “Are we visiting him?”
“Um. No, Alex.” Melody throws me a look. “We are not visiting your serial killer.”
“He’s not my serial killer,” I correct her.
They answer with silence, which speaks volumes.
So, okay.
Ever since I took on the project, the tenth anniversary of the 666 Killings, I’ll admit to being a tad obsessed with Eric Myers. Jay complained about the “disturbing” pictures covering our bedroom floor during my investigation phase. But I was just gathering clues from the murder scene, clues that were possibly (unlikely) missed by the detectives. Stab wounds, defensive wounds, a torn necklace, the butterfly pendant stained in blood.
I was hoping to uncover something new to springboard me from forever-intern to actual reporter on Crimeline. The pay would only be marginally less crappy, but reporter would be the next rung on the perilously long ladder up to TV journalist.
Melody finally settles on a pop station as the snow builds around us. We drive for a while, past the landmarks of the city, the skyscrapers, honking taxis, bodegas, and throngs of tourists. I love New York City, I do. But I always feel a sense of relief, somehow, leaving the city. I shouldn’t complain. I have a great job. I have a great apartment (due to a great fiancé, who can afford it). Still, I was raised in Vermont. I yearn for wide open spaces. When I come back from visiting my mom, I sometimes feel an invisible net sucking me back into the city. I could never explain that to Jay. And they certainly don’t have Crimeline reporter jobs in Vermont.
We crawl ahead, the wheels slipping in the snow. Lainey drives cautiously, hunched over the steering wheel. She turns the wipers up a notch, and the rubber squeaks and thumps with every swipe.
Squeak, squeak, thump. Squeak, squeak, thump.
“So, where was Jay, by the way?” Melody asks. She pops a stick of cinnamon gum in her mouth. “I’d thought he’d be here to give you a big send-off.”
“He had Greg this weekend.”
A family of deer trots by on the side of the highway, and one by one, they dart into the forest.
“Did you finally meet him?” Lainey looks at me from the rearview mirror, appearing fish-eyed in the reflection.
“Yeah,” I say, but I don’t elaborate.
Jay wanted to wait until the time was right, basically until after we got engaged. We had the cliché “whirlwind romance,” so it didn’t take long. We only dated a few months before I moved in with him.
“How did it go?” Melody asks, playing with the radio again.
“Fine,” I say, lightly.
I really don’t want to get into it. I just want to enjoy our weekend and not ruminate over Greg. On the first “date” with his son, we went for sushi, followed by ice cream sundaes, and Greg barely said a word. Though I had no idea what to say to a twelve-year-old anyway. Jay assured me that I did fine. Afterward, I couldn’t really tell if he liked me or hated me. Now I know it was definitely the latter.
“He’s shy,” I say. “Jay says it’ll take time.”
They both answer with noncommittal nods, taking my hint and dropping the subject. An hour or so passes, with Melody toying with the radio and Lainey white-knuckling the steering wheel, the wipers keeping up their hypnotic rhythm.
After another thirty minutes, Lainey leans over to peek at Melody’s phone map. “Wasn’t I supposed to turn left at some point?”
“Another mile,” Melody says.
But the phone disagrees.
Left turn up ahead, the feminine voice informs us, sounding authoritative yet docile. Melody once skewered the Google Maps voice as “annoyingly subordinate.” And don’t get her started on Alexa.
“Up ahead where?” Lainey says. “You said a mile.”
“Wait, no. I’m sorry.” Melody peers through the blowing snow. “Here, right here,” she says, pointing ahead.
“Right here? Or left here?” Lainey asks.
“Left, left!” Melody yells.
Lainey yanks the wheel, and a horn blasts at us from a passing truck. As the wheels spin, she overcorrects, then undercorrects, the back of the car fishtailing. Melody swings into the console and back against the window, possibly overplaying it, but then again, she is kind of small. Lainey keeps braking, gripping the steering wheel with her long fingers, the car juddering toward the curb before it finally stops.
We all sit there in silent shock, catching our breath like we just ran a marathon. Lainey looks even paler than usual, her hands trembling, while the wipers keep up their noxious rhythm.
Squeak, squeak, thump. Squeak, squeak, thump.
“I swear I thought it was another mile,” Melody says in apology.
Lainey holds up her palm, indicating she should be quiet, and Melody answers with a subdued nod.
Squeak, squeak, thump.
Squeak, squeak, thump.
The defrost churns away, expanding the circle of clear glass in the foggy windshield.
“Listen,” I say. “We don’t have to go to . . . wherever we’re going.” I climb forward between the seats again. “We could just turn around and go back. Netflix. Wine. All good. We’ll have a very wonderfully relaxed bachelorette party.”
Melody turns to me. “With Jay and Greg?”
I shrug. “At one of your apartments, then.”
In the ensuing pause, Lainey seems to consider this. I know she’d love to see Ruby, who happens to be in town to see her folks. Playing for the New York Liberty, Lainey’s always on the road.
Suddenly, she smacks the steering wheel, making us all jump. “No. We’ve come this far. We’re going all the way.”
Melody claps her hands together. “Okay then,” she says, pulling her seatbelt back on. “We go down this road for another ten miles before the next turn.” She holds up three fingers. “Girl Scout promise.” This seals the deal. Melody is twenty-six but mentions her Girl Scout days not infrequently.
Lainey puts the car back in drive, and I settle into the back seat again, yanking my seatbelt, before remembering it doesn’t work. “Now can you tell me where we’re going?” I ask.
“No,” they both answer, sounding like annoyed parents, their toddler in the back seat playing with her crown.
*****
Reprinted with permission from the publicist, Sparkpoint Studio.
Sandra A. Block graduated from college at Harvard, then returned to her native land of Buffalo, New York for medical training and never left. She is a practicing neurologist and proud Sabres fan, and lives at home with her husband, two children, and impetuous yellow lab. Her work has been published in the Washington Post. Little Black Lies is her debut, a finalist in the International Thriller Awards, and The Girl Without a Name and The Secret Room are the other books in the Zoe Goldman series. What Happened That Night is her stand-a-lone novel, and Girl Overboard a Young Adult thriller. The Bachelorette Party is her newest novel.
Pre-order the book The Bachelorette Party here. Release scheduled for September 3, 2024.
The Reluctant Reckoner
It was 4:07 on a sunny Friday afternoon in Chicago when the e-mail appeared in his inbox. The cloudless May blue skies and 75-degree temperature begged for an early escape, but Mark Richter knew then it wouldn’t happen.
Mark:
Don’t be alarmed. The discrepancy will be cleared up soon.
Tom
He ignored the flashing Outlook meeting reminder telling him it was time for his daily reorganization and stared harder at the memo. The OCD that compelled him to align all his desktop items at right angles to the furniture surface would have to wait.
The FROM field was empty and the subject line was blank. None of the 26 employees at Lafferty & Sons Accounting Firm was named Tom, and despite the somewhat common name, he couldn’t think of anyone he knew personally with it either.
He leaned back in his chair and sipped lukewarm coffee from the same white porcelain cup he used every day, repeatedly clicking his blue-ink Bic pen, the only type he’d trusted since college. A quick reply e-mail was promptly returned as an undeliverable message by the system administrator. Right-clicking on the memo led to a dead end of un-highlighted menu options.
He briefly glanced at the only personal item on his nearly empty desk: a picture of Katherine in her mother’s arms, three weeks after she was born, two years before Mary Ann died. His deceased wife’s beautiful blue eyes stared right back. That picture was eight years old, yet those eyes always made him smile and tear up simultaneously, his constant reminder of how bittersweet life is.
Focus, Mark. Get back to the e-mail.
Maybe it was a prank. While this example would be a bit extreme, it’d be just like Bruce, his coworker two offices down, to toy with him right before the weekend. Bruce was always testing the limits of his “excessive planning and scheduling,” trying to inject variety and surprise, often at Mark’s expense, whenever possible. Mark hated it, which only encouraged Bruce. The problem with the Bruce-Prank-Theory, though, was that Bruce took off early to beat the traffic. It seemed a stretch to think that he’d set up a delayed message.
Just then his phone began to ring.
“Mark, Larry needs to see you.”
“Okay, give me a minute to—”
“Right now, Mark. He told me you need to drop what you’re doing and meet him in his office. Immediately.”
His boss’s secretary didn’t even try to hide her uneasiness.
“I’ll be right there, Jean.”
Very odd, he thought. Jean seldom sounded tense. And Larry was never in a hurry.
*****
Reprinted with permission from the rights holder.
I was born and raised in the Midwest, between the Chicago suburbs and rural Southern Illinois. Through high school, I spent most of my time playing basketball and baseball in a farming community of 2,000 people with no stoplights. So, going from there to Duke University was a life-changing experience for me. I met many brilliant, talented people from all over the world and forged some friendships I’m confident will last for life. As much as I learned in the classroom in those four years, I learned even more outside of it.
After graduating with dual degrees in Engineering & Sociology with a minor in Business.Over the course of my career, I’ve worked in Engineering, Marketing, Product Management, Program Management, Supply Chain and Operations, but writing in my spare time has been the one constant. It started as a hobby, a creative outlet that helped me balance the stress of a day spent in numbers; I never imagined at the time I’d seek publication. Then at some point, it morphed into a passion. The rest is history.
On the personal front, I like to think of myself as down-to-earth and relatively simple. My wife is my biggest fan, and she rigorously edits (and improves) every page I write. In my spare time, I like to be with my family, play golf and ride my bike.
J. Lee’s debut novel, The Hubley Case, won the New York City Big Book Award® and The Best Book Award for Best Thriller. His third book, The Deadly Deal, won Medical Thriller of The Year for Best Thrillers, as well as, being a finalist for Global Thriller Award 2023 for Chanticleer Book Reviews. J. Lee’s four book will be released on October 8, 2024.
You can pre-order The Reluctant Reckoner from a number of different online stores. All the available options are here: https://www.jleethrillers.com/order-the-reluctant-reckoner
Winner’s Curse
Chapter 1
Midland, Texas
November Morning
She was glad to be the only passenger boarding a company plane for Midland, Texas in chilly pre-dawn darkness. Lynn Dayton was tall and Texas-blond with gravitas matching her position in charge of hundreds of engineers. She had just accepted a new, senior position at TriCoast after her predecessor had been murdered by a jealous ex-lover.
Last week, her boss’s instructions had been both sympathetic and blunt. “I understand your transition to David’s job is difficult. You’ve been on another side of the business. It’s hard to feel close to a new group of people,” Mike Emerson said.
“Just remember, when you talk to the boy wonder at Bradshaw Energy—no matter what he says the terms were before, with David—don’t get deal fever. We can always walk away.”
“No winner’s curse. Got it,” Lynn replied. The phrase winner’s curse traced to a study of Gulf of Mexico lease sales. The winning bid often was too high—a geologist or engineer was too optimistic about invisible reserves under thousands of feet of water and rock. The company was stuck with paying for a lease that would never make money.
But that was last week, before Mike was stricken with a heart attack. The board tapped the CEO of a small private oilfield service company. In a surprise, Rowan Daine was recommended as the temporary fill-in for Mike both by the board’s most ardent environmentalist as well as its most conservative member, another oilfield service CEO, Burl Travis. Despite the board’s approval of a six-month contract for Daine, Lynn was uncertain about the man. Other women she asked described him as hard to read or else as a typical man-about-town.
At Lynn’s first meeting with Rowan Daine, she found it startling to see his angular figure in place of fireplug-sized Mike Emerson. Daine noticed and was soothing. “Yes, a shock for all of us. But Mike has told me about you. He thinks highly of you. Clearly champions you with the board. You can count on the same from me.”
“That’s good to hear.” Lynn relaxed.
“Mike and Burl told me you’ve led the refining division to billions in profits.”
“And I expect to do the same as EVP of the drilling division. Which reminds me, will you have the regular weekly executive meeting?” Lynn asked. She almost said, Like Mike did.
“No. I prefer informal conversations. Less confining than a schedule.” Then Daine’s tone cooled slightly. “Now what about this acquisition of Bradshaw Energy? That was one of David’s pet projects. You still pursuing it?”
“Yes, if Joost Bradshaw and I can agree on a price.”
“I’m the new guy here, so you’ll have to convince me that’s a good idea.”
As he ushered her to the door, Rowan Daine smiled broadly. Despite how little she knew him, Lynn was charmed.
Mike had reliably had her back. Lynn felt reassured Rowan Daine would, too.
Soon, the private jet jolted to a stop in a line of other private jets and spun down. Fast Gulfstreams were the preferred mode of transport for companies whose drilling sites could be hundreds of miles remote from any big airport.
Beau Decatur, a bodyguard who worked for several TriCoast executives, met her in the private plane terminal and guided her to a white truck. Lynn climbed into the F-350, one of many the company owned. Beau was as square as a tight end and still hard-muscled from his prior military service. Unlike other urban locations, Lynn was not expecting Molotov-throwing cocktails from environmental protesters in Midland. But there’s always a first time here, too, she thought.
The dry, flat landscape was more Phoenix desert than east Texas verdure. Mesquite and four-wing saltbush ringed countless drill sites that shaped West Texas into an unending factory floor of oil and gas production. Midland and neighboring Odessa exuded neither southern charm nor western cool, but instead the endless anxiety of fierce competition from companies next door and countries across the ocean. Outsiders who traveled to Midland in Southwest airplanes—packed with men in the seats and hardhats in the overhead—missed the hardboiled natives’ shrewdness until their egos were smeared into the dirt.
Soon, Beau parked at the TriCoast headquarters. They went inside and were directed to the office of short, chipper Roy Bastrop, the Midland district head.
Lynn steeled herself. Her predecessor, David Jenkins, had been a classically warm, friendly, and uber-competent engineer and executive. But that didn’t stop him from making bad choices, Lynn reminded herself. One of those bad choices had been a secret affair with Dena Tarleton, a TriCoast cyber whiz. When David ended the affair, Dena killed him. As part of her revenge against David, Dena had also become involved with a shadowy international conspiracy group led from China trying to take down TriCoast and other companies from the inside.
Sure enough, it didn’t take long for Bastrop to ask the inevitable question. After a few pleasantries, he leaned in. “What was it like to find Jenkins?”
She shuddered. Lynn and Beau had been the ones to discover David’s bloody, cooling body in the kitchen of a closed restaurant. Dena Tarleton, the woman who had murdered David, had tried to kill them, too.
“Somehow everyone in Midland has heard both the official and real versions of the story.” She shook her head. “Beau and I were the only ones in that room who survived. We’ve kept our mouths shut. It’s one of the few things we can do for David’s family.”
“I hear you adopted David’s pet project—talking to Vandervoost’s kid about buying his little company. Stupid idea.”
Makes sense he would feel threatened, although it’s more obvious why, compared to Daine’s objections. “Sound him out when you and I talk to him this afternoon. Beau will drive us since the truck he rented doesn’t have the TriCoast name splashed all over it.”
“Fair enough,” Roy said. His next words were chilling. “And since you and Beau aren’t from around here, be careful driving. Traffic’s always terrible in Midland, especially in the dark. Those dirt haulers can get awfully up close and personal.”
“We’ll keep it in mind tonight. But right now, let’s go see ‘Vandervoost’s kid,’ as you call Joost.”
“We’re meeting him at lunch?” Roy asked.
Every steak house, barbeque joint, and taco stand in Midland was a familiar hunting ground. Executives ate the same scrambled eggs and told the same secrets as truck drivers, field operators, and technicians. In other cases, no one talked because everyone was listening and observing. Who are you with? What are they selling?
She shook her head. “After lunch. People will identify us at any diner or restaurant.”
“Still very few companies here with female execs.” He nodded. “They’re usually doing human relations or putting a pretty face on the environmental stuff. That’s if they’re not the ones on the other side of the table nailing our balls to the wall for not doing enough environmental stuff.”
Yet another vote of confidence. “I have just the place for us to meet with Joost.”
#
After lunch, Lynn and Roy reviewed information on Joost Bradshaw and his company. Joost was the son of obnoxious Henry Vandervoost, once a European TriCoast VP who had been gunning to take over Lynn’s prior job while she was still in it. Until last year. After he’d turned in five years of losses, at the TriCoast board’s request, Lynn had bumped Henry upstairs to a non-job and installed the omni-competent Bart Colby in his place running European refining.
When Henry didn’t get the signal after six months, Lynn had to tell him to find another job. Her ears still rang with his angry shouts. But soon afterward he had moved on to become a partner at a London private equity firm.
On the personal-but-still-business side, Henry’s wife and Joost’s mother had divorced Henry years ago. Patsy Bradshaw raised Joost in Midland in her family’s Bradshaw oil business when Henry returned to Europe.
Even from across the Atlantic Ocean, Henry had made sure Joost gravitated to the right college and business school. He helped Joost find jobs with an investment bank and the same private equity firm in which Henry was now a partner. The lure of family, friends, and running the powerful Bradshaw oil business had brought Joost back to Midland.
But today Joost wanted to sell Bradshaw Energy for reasons he had told no one, except maybe the now-deceased David, Lynn’s predecessor.
When David died, he had been leading a three-billion-dollar bid for Bradshaw Energy. And despite the reputation of the West Texas oil zones around Midland as being safer, can’t-lose propositions than the Gulf of Mexico, Lynn knew the Permian, too, held many traps.
As they settled into Beau’s anonymous white truck, Lynn asked Roy, “What do you think of Joost and his company?”
“You can’t negotiate with rock, and his company does have great rock. A fair price for good rock beats a cheap price for crappy rock. Great rock only gets better. Maybe his company is worth buying,” Roy said.
“Seems like everyone here knows everyone else. You know Joost?” Beau asked.
“We all live together, serve together, work together in Midland,” Roy said as if he had recited it many times to new hires, as he no doubt had. “Joost and I go to the same church, but there’s not as much camaraderie as you might expect since we’re all competitors. I know more about when he’s on the schedule to usher the late service than I do how much oil Bradshaw Energy is producing.”
“What about Terry Gomez, the CFO he’s bringing along?” Lynn asked.
“Seen him around, but I don’t know much about him.”
Beau stopped in a flat, sandy parking lot east of town. The three of them walked around to the front of a long, low building labeled Sibley Nature Center, and Lynn again hoped they were the only ones with this idea for keeping their meeting secret. They paid for entry and a tall, beefy man motioned them into a small room stuffed with informational posters.
“Joost?”
“The same. You didn’t see Terry out there? Terry’s not just my CFO, he’s my hunting partner on these deals. I shoot ‘em; he skins ‘em.”
Lynn and Roy shook hands with a man who looked more like a slightly overweight, well-bred golfer than a scion of Henry Vandervoost with his Euro-floppy haircut.
“Good to meet you, Lynn. So sorry to hear about David’s death.”
“We miss David,” she said, wanting to head off further questions.
“I always gave him credit for meeting us halfway.” In Joost’s Midland-raised dialect, credit became craydeet.
“David was a good man.”
“How about you? You blest with any kee-uds?”
Everyone always gets around to that question. “Two step-kids. They’re amazing,” Lynn responded.
Joost could not have been more different from his European father. Still, the son had his own set of affectations, having completely adopted West Texas mannerisms and patois.
“Let’s get to the point,” Joost said. “Is TriCoast still interested in acquiring my family’s company?”
“Yes, but not at the price David agreed to.” Lynn looked around the small room. It felt claustrophobic.
Joost stared at her. “You one of them pathologically honest folks who thinks honesty always wins the deal?”
“I’m honest, yes.” Lynn shrugged.
Joost wiped sweat from his forehead, seeming to echo Lynn’s thoughts about the small size of the room. “Let’s find Terry first before we get to numbers. He’s onree sometimes.”
Ornery, Lynn mentally translated as Joost rolled up his shirtsleeves, displaying a tattoo on his elbow in the shape of Texas. He’s taking this Texan thing pretty far.
“He may have gone outside already. He really likes this place.” Joost’s brow furrowed.
Lynn, Joost, and Roy put on their coats and walked through two sets of doors, then veered right along a path.
“Feels like a maze, but if we head counterclockwise toward the outside, we won’t get lost,” Joost said.
Finally, above a six-foot shrub, they saw a cowboy hat suspended in the air. As they cleared the shrub, Lynn could see the large, full-featured man appeared to also be looking for them.
Joost made introductions.
Lynn jumped in, eyeing Terry. “Joost. I can’t support the three-billion-dollar price now that oil is half what it was a few months ago.”
“We have other offers, from companies as big or bigger than yours. So, what kind of price and timing did you have in mind?” Joost chewed his lips.
If he’s already asking for a new number, he must be anxious, Lynn thought. I wonder if he really has other offers.
“We have to get a better handle on your assets, especially this technical breakthrough you’re describing,” Roy said.
“Many of my people have equity in the company. Would you be able to offer them a kicker?” Joost’s tone was querulous.
“My team needs to look everything over and make their projections.” Referring to a team gave her a way to delay.
“David told us something different,” Terry said.
Oh, here we go, Lynn thought. “But I’m not David, and I’m the one you’re dealing with. We wanted to see if you are interested in continuing to talk to us about TriCoast acquiring Bradshaw Energy.”
“You’re as chicken as my father.” Joost’s boot scraped in the path. He swung around and stared at Lynn and Roy. “You’re wasting my time if you’re not ready to make an offer. David was less afraid than you.”
“I’m not David,” Lynn repeated.
#
Lynn and Beau’s next and final destination was a long-stay hotel on the northwest side of town at which Lynn’s company kept a small block of rooms at a fixed price. It was cheaper and easier than trying to book rooms whose price could escalate three hundred percent from one night to the next, depending on how many tool pushers and vendors were in town.
The cluster of hotels and the giant HEB grocery store with its multi-pump gas station catered to tractor-trailer drivers and workers heading to Andrews, Pecos, or scrubby outposts further west. In a nod to the fieldworker clientele staying at the hotel to which they were headed, a hard-bristled brush was mounted about a foot off the ground near each entrance—a reminder to scrape off anything caked onto shoes or boots.
Midland was a microcosm of Texas—big, aggressive, fast, riding the boom, banking for the bust sure to follow. Natives were alert to events in South America, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. It was like, Lynn reflected, dry parts of Oklahoma where she’d grown up, but without cement curbs and neatly trimmed lawns.
Beau drove them past streets named for companies past and present: Sinclair, Shell, Gulf, Stanolink. They went by the boneyards of dropped rigs, now spares. Once onto Highway 250, he steered their truck carefully among the other ubiquitous white four-door heavy-duty trucks hurtling along the bypass. Despite the dimming light, everyone drove fast, with a loose aggressiveness.
Exits onto two-way access roads were especially precarious. Lynn hoped the oncoming trucks—many at least twice their size—would stop, as they were supposed to do.
Truckers worked 100-hour weeks with the support of cocaine and meth but then sought to break their expensive habits. Many drove for thirty-six or forty-eight hours at a stretch, caravanning their 35-ton vehicles in single file, blowing their horns to keep one another awake.
To be successful here, she thought, you had to know how to assess risks and which ones to take. And to drive here you have to know where the hell you’re going because road signs and highway exits don’t exist. Mergers of two lanes into one were sudden and unmarked. Every vehicle was a big, or bigger, truck. The Scylla and Charybdis of giant trucks could cut off the rare exit or worse, an escape from the accident occurring in front of you.
Even with the windows up in their F-350, Lynn could smell sulfur from the wells. She’d looked forward to this visit to what was really her open-air factory, a factory manufacturing barrels of oil from underground—ancient carbon capture—instead of widgets above ground.
The landscape around them faded into dusty camouflage: brown and green, yellow-brown sand. Sandy shoulders, scrub, and cacti-lined asphalt roads. The sun was setting, but streetlights were not yet illuminated. Beau kept to the middle lane of the road, but trucks whizzed by on both sides.
She looked at her phone to disguise her tension. “You didn’t ask but it’s called Midland because it’s the midpoint between Fort Worth and El Paso—"
Suddenly, from Lynn’s right, a massive sand hauler swerved toward them. She had just a moment to see the driver pull a gun and aim it toward her. “He’s got a gun! Watch out!”
But a dump truck on their left boxed them in.
“Jesus!” Beau slammed the brakes. “No place to go!”
Lynn braced herself against the dashboard as she pitched forward. Pain slammed up both arms. She held her breath, waited for a crash from behind that didn’t occur. Other drivers had seen what was happening and slowed, too.
Angry and shocked, Lynn shouted through her window at the sand hauler’s driver as he shot ahead into the space Beau had been forced to leave open.
She could see the driver of the sand hauler waving his gun in his rearview mirror. Lynn pulled out a phone to get a picture of the license plate, but the truck had no plates. It disappeared ahead of them within seconds.
“Damn. Too close,” Beau said. His knuckles were white.
“Thank God for your reflexes.” Lynn tightened her seat belt. “He could have killed us with his truck. Or his gun.”
*****
Reprinted with permission from the rights holder.
L. A. Starks is an energy investor and author of the award-winning Lynn Dayton thriller series. Starks was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She grew up in Oklahoma, went to school in New Orleans and Chicago, and now lives in Texas. Her experience—as varied as working in New Orleans’ French Quarter and being locked in a refinery cooling tower—informs her thrillers. Her novels also draw on her travel to favorite international destinations like the Swiss and French Alps, Spain, and Japan. Visit her at www.lastarksbooks.com.
Pre-order a copy of Winner’s Curse here. To be published on August 20, 2024.
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Book Review Archives
The Ivory Grin: A Hardboiled Treat
(review originally posted on August 25, 2008)
Ross Macdonald was nothing if not a gifted stylist when it came to writing prose. THE IVORY GRIN starts off with a tension-filled meeting between the protagonist, private eye Lew Archer, and an unpleasant (in attitude and looks), but well-dressed, woman who wants to hire him.
You know the kind of person Archer’s dealing with when he says that she “looked up at me with the air of an early bird surveying an outsize worm,” then goes on to state that after giving him a handshake “as hard as a man’s . . . she placed [her hand] behind my elbow, ushered me into my own office, and closed the door behind her.” She then “seated herself in an armchair by the door and looked around the waiting-room. It was neither large nor expensively furnished, and she seemed to be registering those circumstances.”
Right away, with a few short lines and a modicum of humor, we know quite a bit about this woman. And Archer. And we know any business between them won’t go easily.
The woman wants Archer to find her former maid, who she says has stolen jewelry from her. The woman gives a name (Una — no last name, just Una), but won’t give her address. Archer doesn’t like Una or believe her story (right down to her name). However, (to paraphrase The Maltese Falcon) he does believe the hundred dollar bill she tosses his way to do the job. Archer sticks the bill in his wallet, “where it looked rather lonely.” Despite his low cash flow, he almost returns it to Una as he gets to know and dislike her further.
He does, of course, take the case. But what Archer is hired to do and what he actually ends up doing are quite different.
The story mainly takes place in two small Southern California towns and involves such a tangle of characters and plot lines, I sometimes felt like I needed a score card (better yet, a flowchart) to follow what was going on.
But that’s okay, because Macdonald was such a superb writer. He could deliver a wicked (often funny) turn of phrase that summed up character, situation, mood and/or viewpoint in a few well-chosen words. He had a flair for great dialogue, as well as for writing about dark issues from people’s pasts, and a way with metaphors that rivaled Raymond Chandler.
Besides, at one point in the story, Archer describes his client being “in a spiteful rage, less than half a woman now, a mean little mannish doll raving ventriloquially.”
Now “ventriloquially” is a real word (I looked it up in Webster’s online dictionary), but how many writers would have the gumption to actually use it?
Addendum: I’d like to thank the people at Vintage Crime/Black Lizard for reissuing this and several of Macdonald’s other Lew Archer novels, which had previously been out of print. They are classics and it’s great to see them back in circulation.
‘They Shoot Horses Don’t They’ — Before the Movie
Review of THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY? (Midnight Classics 1995)
Author, Horace McCoy
(review originally posted on August 6, 2008)
Sydney Pollack and friends turned it into one heck of a great movie, but THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY? started out as a book — I’d call it a novella, though one blurb on the back described it as a “short novel” — not sure what the difference is or if there is a difference, but I can tell you the book is excellent.
THEY SHOOT HORSES is written in what could best be described as lean prose. Total economy of description, with an emphasis on dialogue and the thoughts of the main character, Robert Syverten. Robert is an aspiring director in Depression Era Hollywood — he comes on all humble, saying he wants to start out making two-, maybe three-reel shorts, but in the back of his mind he pictures himself becoming greater than Eisenstein. He accidentally meets up with Gloria Beatty, a woman from West Texas who has had a rough life and looks a bit too worn around the edges to make it into Central Casting, where most aspiring actors at the time tried to get noticed (which is to say, she doesn’t look a thing like Jane Fonda, though I still love Fonda’s portrayal, even if she is too pretty for the part by far and sounds like she learned to swear in prep school).
They wind up entering a dance marathon, not only for the $1,000 they could win, but to get the attention of Hollywood big shots who come to watch. Much like Romans watching the gladiators, as it turns out. Or maybe more like Christians getting thrown to the lions.
Robert describes the horror of the marathon — especially the grueling derby race scenes, the couple-by-couple attrition as the hours drag on — with the kind of matter-of-fact detail that seems appropriate for one who is telling the story in flashback after being found guilty of murdering Gloria. (And this is not a spoiler. This is revealed on the first page.)
The narrative goes back and forth between what the judge is saying to Robert while passing sentence and the events that led up to Robert’s plight. Events, I might add, that differ significantly from the movie. Further, Robert’s peculiar friendship with Gloria — one in which he sympathizes with her, despite her flaws and her not being the best of all people — is more fully explored in the book than the movie. And better explains the ending, which is shocking but more perplexing in the film because you’re given less information about why he did it.
‘The Things They Carried’: More Than I Expected
Review of THE THINGS THEY CARRIED (Houghton Mifflin 1990)
Author, Tim O’Brien
(review originally posted on August 3, 2008)
Someone recommended Tim O’Brien to me, and when I decided to read THE THINGS THEY CARRIED, I checked it out first and discovered it was about Vietnam. I almost didn’t read it. After all, I’d seen the movies — Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket — the horror, the horror, okay, I got it. But because he was so highly recommended by someone who seemed to share my tastes, I figured I’d give it 50 pages. (I always give a book 50 pages.) So I read 50 pages. And I kept going.
I kept going because it was so hard to put the book down. I’d never read a book about Vietnam, and while some of the scenes reminded me of parts of various movies, reading the book was a completely different experience. It covered so much more than the movies.
For instance, O’Brien tells us how he felt and how he thought about running to Canada after he got his draft notice. I never saw that in a movie. He also paints incredible pictures of his experiences during the war — scenes in which, right off, someone gets shot and killed and “dropped like so much concrete. Boom-down . . . like cement.” How he remembered the face of the VC soldier he killed who looked like a young scholar, but whose jaw was in his throat and whose eye was replaced with a star-shaped hole. And how, under mortar fire in a flooded field of exploding human waste (where his company had mistakenly bivouacked), he saw a buddy get killed by being sucked under the shit and drowned and, with the field exploding all around him, he made a half-hearted attempt to save him, but ultimately ran away to save himself, breathing and swallowing shit in the process.
And there are funny parts, too. O’Brien has a great sense of humor and irony that leavens his stories in all the right ways and places. (Maybe it’s an Irish thing.) He writes about courage, honor, cowardice, friendship, loss, guilt — and his stories tell you something about the awesomeness, waste, absurdity and lasting effect on the individual of war. They even say something universal about the human condition. But they told me something more.
O’Brien does what James Frey should have done when he wrote A MILLION LITTLE PIECES. He explains that he’s making some of it up. And he tells you why, with a statement that I’ve always believed. O’Brien says he made stuff up because: “I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.”
And when I read that, I started to understand that I could never really feel what Tim O’Brien felt. That I would have to actually go to Vietnam and fight in a war there to completely understand the experience (no thanks, I’ll pass). But Tim O’Brien was bringing me as close as I would ever get to that understanding.
And that, folks, is what I shoot for when I write. To tell other people about things I find significant (whether tragic, comic or absurd) as I have experienced them and do so in a way that brings them closer to understanding. And if I’m good — if I’m really, really good — to bring them as close as they can get to experiencing it without actually being there.
That’s why I write. And, whether Tim O’Brien intended it or not, I know that now from reading this book.
Habeus Corpus
Starting from where we left off last month.
Episode Eight
There was no question that Carla was in the wrong room. But why did the killer, or killers, move the bodies there? The room choice might have been calculated or random. No way to know for sure without a witness. Rinaldo could have been that witness. Then again, he might have been in on the whole thing if he really was at the hotel’s operational hub. So, he could have been a witness to the murder or one of Wayne’s killers.
After Rinaldo was killed, someone likely brought in a pro to clean up the mess. Whoever disposed of Wayne’s body hadn’t done a good job. Leaving a body close enough to the hotel to eventually lead the cops back there wasn’t the brightest move. More like a panicked move.
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