Books
The Martin Fender Novels
My first three novels were published by Viking: Rock Critic Murders, Tough Baby, and Boiled in Concrete. These novels feature an Austin, Texas blues musician named Martin Fender who moonlights as a skiptracer for a collection agency. He lives in Austin, Texas and on the road, playing bass in blues and rock 'n roll bands in Austin and on the road. Out there is a smoky and neon lit world of nightclubs, bars, American Legion Halls, backstage corridors, funky rented halls, places where the acoustics are so bad the sound bounces around like a jittery cat but the light is just right, and someone you’d never look at twice becomes a confidante, a friend in need, a lover for the night. Sometimes in that kind of light, a dangerous person can take on a sainted glow, a fragile soul on the edge might slip a knife in your neck. There are weird people, dishonest people, desperate lovers, thieves, losers, flakes, no hope heroes who know their way around the neck of a Fender Stratocaster. There are promoters who can’t do anything right but steal from musicians with fine intentions. There are managers desperate for one last chance to grab some glory with a bunch of innocent, slack eyed tone magicians. Some are criminals, some just don't see the point in making things too black and white. There are guys who dwell a grey area, where no one bothers telling the truth when a lie will do almost as well every time. There are guys who like the fact that a 45 automatic with a full clip on the table always makes negotiating a deal go a little smoother.
My fans should know that as of 1996, the first three Martin Fender
novels are, out of print. So you'll have to scour the finer used bookstores
and libraries for those. I’ll have some new novels and I’ll get
the old ones back in print – someday, I just can’t say exactly
when. I hope it’s soon.
Some of you may have run across titles I’ve written which were published by the tiny but dedicated Gryphon Publishing. These are digest-sized books, often being double-novelettes, with a novelette by me and another by another writer on the reverse half of the book. The novelettes include "The Teflon Babe" and "Deader Than Hell", and there are some short stories in digest magazines from Gryphon as well. My favorite is “Gore Galore.” These stories, which feature a hardboiled detective named Clapton who lives a bleak existence in North Hollywood, were written by me when I was in my Black Mask period. I wanted to see how hardboiled I could write. I also dashed these stories off quickly, in between other projects, with very little rewriting, and to be honest, no one is going to read one and trumpet me as the next Dashiell Hammett, or even the next Roger Torrey. But they are fun, and they’re collectible, if you’re into that sort of thing.
OTHER BOOK NEWS
JOHNNY HEARTBREAK: A NEW SERIES PROTAGONIST?
October 2002 saw the publication of Measures of Poison, an anthology
that collects short crime fiction stories by 24 authors, including such hardboiled
luminaries as James Crumley, Michael
Connelly, George Pelecanos , Jon
Jackson, and even Jesse Sublett! I contributed a brand new long short story
titled "Johnny Heartbreak". Set during Prohibition, the title character
is a private eye who is also a smuggler who manages lounge singers on the side.
The collection is published by Dennis
McMillan Publications. Dennis is a good friend who happens to publish deluxe
edition books by some of my very favorite authors.
Read an excerpt.
NEW HOPE FOR THE DEAD
I’m a book collector. Around the time we moved to LA in ’87, I
was going crazy for old Fawcett Gold Medal paperback originals. This is the
house that published John D. MacDonald, Donald Westlake’s Richard Stark
novels (Point Blank, The Score, The Sour Lemon Score, etc.), David
Goodis, and other hardboiled classics. This addiction led more or less directly
to my discovery of a “lost” novel by the late, great Charles
Willeford, author of great novels such as Miami Blues, The
Cockfighter, New Hope for the Dead, Off the Wall, and others. The novel Deliver
Me From Dallas, which was written by Willeford and an Air Force buddy,
W. Franklin Sanders, around 1952, was finally published in 1960 as The
Whip Hand. The only author credited was Sanders, and no one, not Willeford
or his wife Betsy, knew until I compared the book with Willeford and Sanders
original manuscript in 1992. I tell the whole story in the introduction I wrote
to the new edition, published by Dennis McMillan Publications in 2000. I wrote
another version of this story for the Chronicle in 1998, "One
of the Great Ones". The book can be ordered directly from Dennis
McMillan’s website.