“Novel Tetris” and What’s Hidden

Posted on March 23, 2024 by James McCrone

Killer Nashiville Literary magazine recently published my short story, “What’s Hidden,” a mystery about a (possibly) stolen map that a son uncovers while helping his aging mother get her house and affairs in order. The story is organized around a Voltaire quote, and the idea that “To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.”

It’s my most personal published work, and I’ve been very pleased by the responses it’s getting, not least because it’s something of a departure from much of what I’ve published so far. It has a first-person narrator (all of my novels are in third-person), and while it revolves around a crime, other forces compel the narrator.

You can check out the short story here: https://www.killernashville.com/short-stories/whats-hidden

It took almost two years for ‘What’s Hidden’ to find a home, and its publication came at just the right time for me, during a depressing crisis in faith.

My novel-in-progress, Witness Tree, has been painfully, maddeningly, embarrassingly slow in coming together. I wander the South Philly streets, mumbling about plot and character, crumpled papers full of cryptic (or indecipherable) scribbled notes sticking out of pockets like old, ragged Kleenex.

Finally, early in the week that I learned the short story was coming out, I had begun hacking away at parts of the book, a kind of “novel Tetris,” as my wife calls it, wherein I cut and moved scenes–sometimes whole chapters!–fitting them into different, more apt places in the story. Upon reflection, I might have called it “novel Jenga,” because every part that I moved either backwards or forwards in the story threatened some other part, or to destroy the whole thing.

I was genuinely worried over whether the novel would ever see the light of the day…or print. I also worried that it might not be crime-y enough, even as it starts with an execution-style murder. (That’s not a spoiler, it happens on page 2.) But as well as being about exposing the conspiracy that is the heart of the story, Witness Tree is again very personal–it deals with addiction, sobriety, failure of imagination, and issues of trust. And politics…because, yeah. I can’t help myself.

As I pulled apart and reconstituted the book, I found that certain ideas or passages just didn’t work. In the end, along with all the moving around, I cut 5,000 words and two characters. Now I have to construct a new bridge between some later chapters, but I feel like I’m on the right track, and having a short story “out there,” has helped my mood and confidence immeasurably.

I’m still worried, of course, but less so.

And in my world, “less worried” feels like a win.

# # #

James McCrone is the author of the Imogen Trager political suspense-thrillers Faithless Elector, Dark Network , and Emergency Powers–noir tales about a stolen presidency, a conspiracy, and a nation on edge. Bastard Verdict, his fourth novel, is about a conspiracy surrounding a second Scottish Independence referendum. All books are available on BookShop.org, IndyBound.org, Barnes & Noble, your local bookshop, and Amazon. eBooks are available in multiple formats including Apple, Kobo, Nook and Kindle.

He’s a member of Mystery Writers of America, Int’l Assoc. of Crime Writers, and he’s the current president of the Delaware Valley chapter of Sisters in Crime. He lives in Philadelphia. James has an MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle. His current, work-in-progress is a mystery-thriller set in Oregon’s wine country…A (pinot) Noir, called Witness Tree.

For a full list of appearances and readings, make sure to check out his Events/About page. And follow this blog!

You can also keep up with James and his work on social media:
Mastodon: @JMcCrone
Bluesky: @jmccrone.bsky.social
Facebook: James McCrone author (@FaithlessElector)
and Instagram/Threads “@james.mccrone”

The Big Lie is smart, surprising and beautifully rendered.

Posted on March 14, 2024 by James McCrone

The Big Lie, the latest Shane Cleary novel from Gabriel Valjan is smart, surprising and beautifully rendered. This is the fifth book in the series, and Valjan’s keen eye for detail, strong characters and narrative control, shine through this tale. Cleary, an ex-Boston cop, now a PI, is that rare person, an honest man in a world of shadows, lies and crime. Fans of Valjan’s Shane Cleary series (and I count myself as one!) know that things are complicated for Cleary. But as compelling as the unfolding plot is, there’s immense satisfaction in the way he does the job and finds his way through to something honorable.

The story begins when Southie’s most dangerous criminal hires Cleary to find his lost dog. Cleary is willing to refuse the job, except Jimmy says that he has information about Cleary’s father’s death years earlier. But only if he finds the dog.

Everything screams he shouldn’t take the job, but Shane can’t resist Jimmy’s added ‘incentive.’ Add in some other favors he’s asked to do, some rival gangsters, dirty cops and an overzealous DA, and you have the kind of tasty recipe only Valjan can bring to the table. The notion of “the big lie” looms throughout, touching on various aspects of the evolving case. And Shane can’t help but think his client just might kill him anyway after he finds the dog. To say much more would be to spoil the fun.

Highly recommended!

(I read an advance copy of The Big Lie via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review)

# # #

For a full list of appearances and readings, make sure to check out his Events/About page. And follow this blog!

Alyth and Hiding in Plain Sight

Posted on February 9, 2024 by James McCrone

I’ve had a lot of fun revisiting the places where I set scenes in Bastard Verdict, examining the ways in which setting drives narrative; and I have blogged about them here: U of Glasgow – Kelvingrove Park (Glasgow) – Glasgow and spare ground – Dundee . I wrote about a lovely (if wet) day and a half I passed in Alyth in Blairgowrie during my most recent trip to Scotland, and I was invited to contribute to the The Alyth Voice. So today, I’ll let the Alyth Voice do the talking!

<<I set a portion of my new thriller, Bastard Verdict, in Alyth, along David Street. While I’m not keen to admit it, I had not visited Alyth before that wet Sunday afternoon in mid-September. Writing the novel during Covid, I had been forced to rely on Google Streetview for some of my insights. But I had come back to Scotland for the Bloody Scotland crime writers’ conference in Stirling, my third such visit, resolved to see Alyth with my own eyes…>> Link to further reading on the Alyth Voice (p.21).

The best part of the trip there was running into the volunteers at the Alyth Family History Project, and particularly Irene Robertson, who has continued her correspondence with me and been an extravagant, valuable source of information.

One of the occasions for my visit was to look for, or at least references to, the poet James Young Geddes (“lover and lasher of Dundee”), and his poem “The Spectre Clock of Alyth.” It was because I wandered up to the church featured in the poem, that I happily ran into the Family History Project.

The poem is reprinted here, below, in its entirety, though not in the Voice piece. Apparently, starlings nested within its workings and fouled (fowled?) the mechanism…

THE SPECTRE CLOCK OF ALYTH
by James Young Geddes, 1885

Surveying fair and fertile lands,
‘Neath the shadowing hills the Old Church stands –
Calmly, holily, looking down
On the quiet streets of the country town –
With a far away look which seems to say,
“I belong to the things of yesterday.”

Founded and built on a broader base
Than the structures of our degenerate days,
It hath with its walls of old red stone,
And its tower, with the steeple raised thereon
Far into the blue of the bending sky,
A quaint sacerdotal dignity.

And the legend runs (whether false or true
I cannot vouch) that they once could view,
Just where the tower and steeple meet,
A clock, with dials and hands complete,
Which its pious builders with kindly thought
Into the edifice interwrought.

But the unregarding fowls of air
Came in their legions and roosted there;
The rains of heaven upon it beat,
It was cracked by frost and scorched by heat,
And time itself at its doom connived,
Though for time alone it worked and lived.

Till in the conflict bleached and worn,
Aged, bird-defiled, and tempest-worn,
With drooping hands and fading powers,
And the memory only of golden hours –
The clock, reduced to such a pass,
Became but the ghost of what it was.

But they say at times you may still descry,
Should you upward turn an inquiring eye,
On the tower and steeple obelisk,
Presenting four-square a gilded disk –
A spectre clock in spectral ways
Fulfilling the functions of former days;

When the vanished hours come trooping back
And station themselves by the beaten track,
Where the labourers twain unequally yoked,
From the mists of the shadowy past revoked,
Re-plod their path o’er the phantom face,
And strive in a “hare and tortoise” race;

When a subtle influence sets astir
The rust-worn wheels with a ghostly whir,
And a sound is heard which attracts, repels,
Like the tremulous tinkling of fairy bells,
Echoed back from the hollows of the hills
In faint and far mysterious trills;

And the lowly dwellers on the ground
Listen in awe to the gruesome sound,
For they feel in a measure that adverse fate,
By means and methods intricate,
Hath placed them beneath the influence
Of the symbols and shades of the things of sense.

For the power which retribution brings
To wait in the wake of neglected things,
And of murderous deeds, hath it ordered so
That it casts a blight on all below;
And they who listen this changeling’s chimes
Are for ever and aye behind the times.

Their eyes are dulled, their ears are clogged,
They know not they how time hath jogged,
And though in them there may seem to be
The symptoms and signs of vitality,
‘Tis but a delusion and a snare –
They, too, belong to the things that were.

For the power that the phantom hath is this –
To benumb with the clock paralysis;
And the minds which its spell hath barred complete
Are a-simmer with ideas obsolete;
They move in a phantasmagoric way
The gibbering ghosts of yesterday.

And the curse shall be lifted? Only when
There shall rise from among the sons of men –
He, the gifted One, who shall fully know
The cause of the blight on the folks below,
Who shall read the riddle and then unlock
The secret and strength of the spectre clock;

Who shall sweep and scatter the dirt and dust,
And rid the wheels of their blood-red rust;
Who shall smooth the wrinkles from Time’s old face,
And his withered hands in strength replace,
To set them agog with motion brisk
Anew on each renovated disk.

Then only then shall the stagnant blood
Pulsate and flow in a fuller flood
Through flaccid veins; and men shall wake,
Yawn, start, and off their stupor shake,
To look around and astonished cry –
“’Tis the end of the nineteenth century.”

Ah me! But the wheels have never whirred,
And the life in the village lies yet unstirred.
Alas and alack! He cometh not –
The Conqueror we long have sought;
The magic spell is yet unbroken;
It reigns supreme – the Spectre Clock.

# # #

James McCrone is the author of the Imogen Trager political suspense-thrillers Faithless Elector, Dark Network , and Emergency Powers–noir tales about a stolen presidency, a conspiracy, and a nation on edge. Bastard Verdict, his fourth novel, is about a conspiracy surrounding a second Scottish Independence referendum. To get the details right for the new thriller, he drew on his boyhood in Scotland and scouted locations for scenes in the book while attending the Bloody Scotland crime writers conference in Stirling.

All books are available on BookShop.org, IndyBound.org, Barnes & Noble, your local bookshop, and Amazon. eBooks are available in multiple formats including Apple, Kobo, Nook and Kindle.

He’s a member of Mystery Writers of America, Int’l Assoc. of Crime Writers, and he’s the new president of the Delaware Valley chapter of Sisters in Crime. He lives in Philadelphia. James has an MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle. His current, work-in-progress is a mystery-thriller set in Oregon’s wine country…A (pinot) Noir, called Witness Tree.

For a full list of appearances and readings, make sure to check out his Events/About page. And follow this blog!

Scenes from #BastardVerdict, part 4 – Dundee

Posted on January 24, 2024 by James McCrone

The photo above is from Dundee Law, a hill that is the highest point in Dundee. The iconic Tay Rail Bridge is in the middle of the photo, its predecessor immortalized (if that’s the word for it) by William McGonagall in his epically bad Tay Bridge Disaster.

Among other clinking stanzas, we get:

“…Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.”

Though I’d never been to Dundee until 2019, a close friend, Father Frank, grew up in nearby Monifieth, and through him I was already conversant in McGonagall from past Burns Nights where we interspersed Burns poetry with that of Dundee’s idjit poet laureate. The Sunderland Calamity was a particular favorite, and it’s particularly eye-watering. It begins:

’Twas in the town of Sunderland, and in the year of 1883,
That about 200 children were launch’d into eternity…

So, I came to Dundee knowing very little about the place except some of the works of its worst poet, and that its claim to fame was the “three J’s”: jam, jute and journalism. As a marmalade addict, I was eager to avail myself of what Dundee had to offer!

I came because Dundee, along with Glasgow, had been anomalies during the referendum on Scottish independence in 2014, which is the inciting event from which everything in the Bastard Verdict issues. In both cities, preference for independence was very high. Indeed, there had been a twenty percent increase in voter turnout for the referendum all across Scotland–except in the two places that early polling said would have both the highest turnout and the highest preference for Yes, for Independence.

As well as researching and studying the actual method of counting the ballots, I sought input from UK friends who had been tellers (‘poll watchers’ in the US), and those who supervised actual vote counts. But I needed places for these things to happen, and I needed them to seem real.

I stayed in a lovely B&B along Perth Road, west of the University of Dundee. Because I had been around the neigborhood so often (or out of laziness) I had Imogen stay in the same (unnamed) B&B I had used as my base. It had a lovely, commanding view of the rail bridge.

I was able to have Imogen eat at a pub near the university…

And up the hill along nearby Hyndford Road, seemed just posh enough for the character, the ARO, Donald Alban.

I found the courthouse, where I decided the attorney, Ewan Johnston, plied his trade, and I was pleased to find that there were a number of law offices nearby, along Ward Road. Once again, I didn’t use any of the nearby offices, but locating the fictional office along Ward Road had verisimilitude.

And a little bit along Ward Road, is The Howff, a cemetery, which the council maintains beautifully. The Howff and Ward Road would be the scene of…well, I should let you read that for yourself.

# # #

Bastard Verdict is available now in paperback, and eReader!

YOU DON’T NEED TO WIN, JUST DON’T LOSE
In politics, people cheat to win, or because they’re afraid to lose. The difference can be deadly.

Imogen will risk what’s left of her standing, her career–and maybe her life–to get at the truth.

James McCrone is the author of the Imogen Trager political suspense-thrillers Faithless Elector, Dark Network , and Emergency Powers–noir tales about a stolen presidency, a conspiracy, and a nation on edge. Bastard Verdict, his fourth novel, is about a conspiracy surrounding a second Scottish Independence referendum. To get the details right for the new thriller, he drew on his boyhood in Scotland and scouted locations for scenes in the book while attending Bloody Scotland.

All books are available on BookShop.org, IndyBound.org, Barnes & Noble, your local bookshop, and Amazon. eBooks are available in multiple formats including Apple, Kobo, Nook and Kindle.

He’s a member of MWA, Int’l Assoc. of Crime Writers, and he’s the new president of the Delaware Valley Sisters in Crime chapter. He lives in Philadelphia. James has an MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle. His current, work-in-progress is a mystery-thriller set in Oregon’s wine country…A (pinot) Noir, called Witness Tree.

For a full list of appearances and readings, make sure to check out his Events/About page. And follow this blog!

His most recent short fiction is below. The first is available for online reading.

“Eight O’Clock Sharp” in Retreats from Oblivion: the Journal of NoirCon. (free online)
Set in Philadelphia’s 9th Street Market, Thomas is a man outside of time, forgotten, but trying to do the right thing while contending with avaricious forces.

“Ultimatum Games” in Rock and Hard Place magazine issue #7
A rare book heist, bad decisions. The narrator and his partner-in-crime clash over evolving bourgeois norms.