Posts Tagged: crime writing

WRITING OLD ANGER: The Heart of the Matter in a Southern Crime Story

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Phillip Thompson's crime novel Outside the Law scored wide acclaim from critics and major league authors like David Morrell, Linwood Barclay and Reed Farrel Coleman. Now the long-awaited sequel, Old Anger, is now available and is already scoring raves from Publishers Weekly, and authors like Joe R. Lansdale and S.A. Cosby. Phillip stopped by to share with us the story behind the story.... Writing about race in the Deep South is never easy. Especially during the tumult of 2020. I am white. Born and raised in Mississippi. I was a youngster growing up when the state was going through the painful ending of the American apartheid called “segregation” or “separate but equal.” And... more

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Uncovering the “DUST IN THE HEART”

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We've just published Ralph Dennis' crime novel DUST IN THE HEART , a haunting police procedural set in a small, North Carolina town  It was the final, typewritten manuscript that Ralph wrote before his death and was discovered by Brash co-founder Lee Goldberg, who took on the task of editing the novel for publication. Lee talked about the editing process this week with The Rap Sheet, one of our favorite blogs and sources of information on the crime fiction scene. Here is an excerpt: I struggled over whether to publish Dust in the Heart or to keep it in a drawer. The original manuscript was nearly 100,000 words and it was a mess … and yet, there was still something... more

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The Wit and Wisdom of Shell Scott

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Here are some of my favorite lines from Richard S. Prather's immensely entertaining Shell Scott novels, the bestselling detective series from the 1960s... which are all but forgotten today, even though, at one point, there were over 10 million copies in print.   “He lay there with his face on the cement, in his own blood and wastes. Lesson for would be killers: Either don’t miss with your first shot, or else eat light, go to the john, take an enema, and be ready to die neat.” Kill Him Twice   “She had short mouse-brown hair, rather nice full lips and gray eyes. But they weren’t pretty eyes. Not dawn gray, slate gray or even muddy gray. They were sort of... more

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BLACKBALL is Back!

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Here's Robert Randisi's full, 1987 review of Jimmy Sangster's hardboiled classic BLACKBALL, which Brash Books has just re-released in new ebook & trade paperback editions. Randisi is the founder of the Private Eye Writers of America.   Jimmy Sangster first made a name for himself in film and television. He wrote horror films for Hammer in England and then did a lot of episodic television in the United States, including scripts for S.W.A.T., Ironside, The Six Million Dollar Man, McCloud and Wonder Woman. His first novel, Private I (aka The Spy Killer), was published in 1967, and both it and its sequel, Foreign Exchange, were produced for TV with Robert Horton in the role of... more

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Real People Don’t Talk Like That

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There are times I get the odd review from readers and critics that my characters are too glib or too articulate to be tough guys.  Or, “real people don’t talk like that”.  Early in my writing career, I wrote a Young Adult novel that was rejected because, “young people aren’t this articulate or humorous” (now you know why more teens don’t read). If you met my four kids and their friends you would find that some people (those with intellect and a sense of humor) do talk like that.  Why? Because they are well-read, articulate and intelligent and each possess a well-developed sense of humor. Second, if you met my friends, you would likewise acknowledge... more

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Ralph

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Today we're publishing  The Buy Back Blues, the 12th and final book in the Hardman series by Ralph Dennis. To mark the occasion, we're sharing the revealing, deeply personal essay that author Cynthia Williams wrote about Ralph as an afterword for Murder is Not an Odd Job, the 6th book in the series. I knew Ralph Dennis first as a teacher, and later as a friend and mentor. Eventually, he asked me to marry him, but I refused, and our friendship ended. Obviously, I will remember Ralph differently from the men who knew him, because he was, in some ways, a different person with me. I met Ralph Dennis in 1966. I was in my junior year at UNC- Chapel Hill, majoring in... more

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