In a small corner of Philadelphia, a funeral director steals a man’s car as payment on a debt.

My latest short story, “Coffin Corner” [story link] came out on Tough/Redneck Press last week. I’ve already had some feedback from readers–for which I am grateful, and even an exchange regarding where the story had come from. Check out the story (link above), and make sure to look at the other great things Redneck Press is putting out.

One reader wrote to me:

“Very enjoyable & a nice twist at the end. They say you should write what you know. Which makes me wonder what kind of world you live in – wise guys, seedy funeral homes etc.”

My “world” probably isn’t so different from anyone else’s. Imagination, openness and curiosity are the main ingredients to my writer’s life. I write stories about dirty politics, and desperate people making bad decisions; and I’m fascinated by the pettiness of the petty crime that results.

Years ago, I worked for a guy who had been a mortician. We were walking past a house, and he pointed it out, saying that the person who lived there was someone who had once “stiffed” him on funeral arrangements .

He said, “I thought about taking his car as collateral until he paid up, but what’re ya gonna do?” (He really did use the term stiffed)

A story was born in my mind.

Later, I thought to myself, “what if he’d been really hard up, and what if desperation had made him take the man’s car? And, what if seizing the car opened up a whole new can of worms?” When I finally sat down to work on it, the story came quickly. Obviously, the story has nothing to do with real people, the situation is what lodged in my mind and finally came out as “Coffin Corner.”

I made the main character old enough to remember the precarity of the mob days here in Philadelphia, and how difficult they were. I’m fascinated by the difference of opinion about what the old, mob days were like, and what they meant. Some seem willing to remember those past days as good somehow, ordered and orderly, whereas others remember only violence and the way honest people were preyed upon.

I’ve written about it before, as in my story contribution to Low Down Dirty Vote, vol. 3, “Nostalgia,” in which a young, career criminal finds himself–dismayingly–in amongst a gang playing at being mobsters. As the narrator notes: “People in the neighborhood treated Mr. Johnny like a big shot—but only because it flattered their vanity, like they were all living together in some movie where the world still made sense.”

And working in the 9th Street Market helped too. My story “Eight O’Clock Sharp,” also available for free online, is published by Retreats from Oblivion (the journal of NoirCon), and it is about a new/old predator. As I wrote about the villain that story, I found myself singing lines from “Teenage Wildlife,” by David Bowie: “Same old thing, in brand new drag, comes sweeping into view…”

I don’t consciously use short stories as a means of working out ideas or themes I explore in my longer work, but it does seem to happen. “Nostalgia” put together drug-running and corrupt politics, allowing me to examine it and return to it in my novel-in-progress, Witness Tree, about a secret power play for a white supremacist organization that erupts into the open. “Coffin Corner” allowed me to think about what the mob meant, and what it might have been like to live with the threat of Wise Guys everywhere.

A similar corrupt, thuggish coercion seems to have taken hold of the country, too. Maybe that’s my world. The source is different, but the stinking fear it creates is the same. And it’s worth exploring and writing about.

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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. His novel-in-progress is called Witness Tree, a (pinot) noir tale of murder and corruption set in Oregon’s wine country. Coming soon!

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.

James is 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.

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:
Bluesky: @jmccrone.bsky.social
Facebook: James McCrone author (@FaithlessElector)
and Instagram/Threads “@james.mccrone”