Off The Books

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OFF THE BOOKS

Dana King

 

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GENRE:  Hard-boiled Private Investigator

 

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BLURB:

 

Nick Forte has lost his detective agency and makes ends meet doing background checks and other paperwork. He pays for everything else through jobs he takes for cash and without any written contract. What starts out as a simple investigation into a traffic accident exposes Forte to people who have truly lost everything and have no viable hope of reclaiming their lives. That doesn’t sit well with Forte, leading him and his friend Goose Satterwhite to take action that ends more violently than anyone expected.

 

“The return of Chicago private detective Nick Forte, the tough protagonist of two Shamus Award nominated novels, is well worth the wait. Nick’s latest escapade Off The Books—the first in nearly six years—will surely earn additional praise for the acclaimed series.”

-J.L .Abramo, Shamus Award-winning author of Chasing Charlie Chan.

 

"Nick Forte reminds me of Robert B. Parker's Spenser: a PI with a finely tuned sense of justice who doesn't take anyone's s***. Any fan of hardboiled detective fiction is in for a helluva ride."

--Chris Rhatigan, former publisher of All Due Respect Books

 

 

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EXCERPT

 

I told Jason Worthington I’d find his daughter in a week. I surfed the internet and searched flophouses, cathouses, bar rooms, pool rooms, jails, hospitals, morgues, and SRO hotels. Found her in a pay-by-the-hour motel at 10:48 p.m. two days after her father and I spoke.

 

Worthington would have preferred me to find her alive.

 

Cindy’s body was warm, the spike still in her arm. She looked as if she’d fallen asleep waiting and didn’t hold my tardiness against me.

 

I did what any real-life professional investigator would do, and what no fictional private eye would even consider. 

 

I called the police.

 

The cops kept me at the scene half the night, at the station until dawn. They asked the same questions both places and got the same answers.

 

“Why were you there?”

 

“Her father asked me to find her.”

 

“Why was the father looking for her?”

 

“My guess would be to keep what happened from happening. You’ll have to ask him yourself to be sure.”

 

The usual bullshit.

 

I called Worthington on my way out of the police station. Told him I had news but would prefer to deliver it in person. I didn’t suppose I needed to tell him anything after that, but it wouldn’t hurt to allow him time to prepare before I scarred the rest of his life.

 

He answered the door already dressed for work. Navy suit, white shirt with French cuffs, gold links. His tie was blue with small designs, maybe horses, gathered in a perfect four-square knot. Red suspenders. A suit coat hung from the newel post behind him. His forehead gleamed beneath a silvery hairline. His teeth were as white and straight as a Klan meeting.

A Word With the Author

1.Did you always want to be an author?

Nope, and there are days even now when I’m not sure I want to be, but they pass quickly. All kidding aside, my original ambition was to play trumpet professionally, and I did for over ten years. Eventually family responsibilities required a steadier income and I drifted into teaching, then computers. Writing was something I dabbled in, but it captured more of my interest when I no longer spent at least two hours a day practicing. I wrote a few short stories for friends that were well received, and with every effort I stepped a little deeper into the pool. Now there’s rarely a day I’m not working on a novel or a short story or my blog – sometimes all three -  and there’s never a day goes by when I’m not at least noodling something out in my head.

2. Tell us about the publication of your first book.

Now that’s a story. I could do a few thousand words on this, but I’ll spare you and stick to the Readers’ Digest version. (Yes, I am old enough to remember Readers’ Digest condensed books.) I struck up a friends ship with noted mob fiction author Charlie Stella, who enjoyed my book Wild Bill, the story of an FBI agent caught up in a mob power struggle. Charlie asked what I was working on now, so I sent him a draft of the second Penns River novel, Grind Joint. I heard back a couple of days later.

Charlie: What are you gonna do with this?

Me: it needs another couple of drafts and then I’ll self-publish it.

Charlie: It’s done now. What are you going to do with it?

What followed was a three-way e-mail thread between Charlie, me, and Rick Ollerman, his editor at Stark House. At the time Stark House only did reprints, except for Charlie’s stuff; they weren’t looking for a new author. Charlie worked Rick and me until Rick agreed to read it and I agreed to send it, if only to get Charlie off our backs. (Charlie Stella is a force of nature.) Rick liked the book, and a few weeks later I had a contract.

3. Besides yourself, who is your favorite author in the genre you write in?

Just one? Really? Honest to God? The problem with picking just one is there are many authors who appeal to different aspects of my taste and interests. Dashiell Hammett for his direct writing. Robert Crais for combining quirky humor with intense stories. James D.F. Hannah for taking the private eye out of the city and putting him into the hollers where you expect a Daniel Woodrell character to come by at any time. Sam Wiebe for his Vancouver setting and Canadian sensibilities. Which is my favorite? Depends on which day you ask me, and I didn’t even get to Lawrence Block, Ken Bruen, Reed Farrel Coleman, Dennis Lehane, or half a dozen other guys.

4.What's the best part of being an author? The worst?

The best part is spending time with other writers talking about craft. I love doing book events and being on conference panels, but even that is less about me getting screen time than it is about the conversation. Pick a conference and you can find me at the bar as late into the evening as I can find someone willing to talk about the craft of writing. Not the business. The craft.

 

My least favorite? The business. Others may disagree, but I consider the publishing process, including marketing, to be as soul-sucking an enterprise as any I have been involved with, and I was in the Army.

5.What are you working on now?

I’m about a week into what I hope is the final polishing draft of a Western. I’ve never done a Western I was willing to release before but I’m happy with how this one has gone. It’s written as though I found notes that were to be used in a memoir ninety years ago and I have picked up the project to complete the book. The supposed memoirist, a former United States deputy marshal named Walter Ferguson, knew quite a few famous, and infamous, people and was peripherally involved in a few historic events. At least that’s the way I’m telling it.

 

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

Off the Books is Dana King’s sixth Nick Forte private investigator novel. Two of the earlier books (A Small Sacrifice and The Man in the Window) received Shamus Award nominations from the Private Eye Writers of America. Dana also writes the Penns River series of police procedurals set in a small Western Pennsylvania town, as well as one standalone novel, Wild Bill, which is not a Western. His short fiction appears in numerous anthologies and web sites. He is a frequent panelist at conferences and reads at Noirs at Bars from New York to North Carolina. 

 

WEBSITE

https://danakingauthor.com

 

BLOG

One Bite at a Time https://danaking.blogspot.com

 

TWITTER

@DanaKingAuthor

 

FACEBOOK

https://www.facebook.com/dana.king.735/

 

BUY LINKS 

http://tinyurl.com/4w2avye3

 

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION 

 

Dana King will award a $20 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner.

 

 

 

 

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