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The Crime Cafe

By: Debbi Mack
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  • Summary

  • Interviews and entertainment for crime fiction, suspense and thriller fans.
    © 2015 - 2021 Debbi Mack
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Episodes
  • Interview with Charles Salzberg – S. 9, Ep. 27

    Interview with Charles Salzberg – S. 9, Ep. 27
    Apr 28 2024
    This week's episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer Charles Salzberg. Check out our final regular episode of Season Nine! Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so. We also have a shop now. Check it out! Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe The transcript can be downloaded here. Debbi: Hi everyone. This is the last regular episode of the ninth season of the Crime Café. I cannot believe that I've been doing this for nine years, honest to God. So, in any case, our guest tonight is a person who has worked as a journalist and he is a novelist, who has written for a variety of magazines, including Esquire, GQ, Elle and others. He's also written book reviews. He gets paid to do that. I have to find out about that. Charles: Not much. Not much. Debbi: Not much? Charles: Not much. Debbi: Well, you get paid something. That's nice. His series though is the Henry Swann Detective series, which is really cool, I think, at least based on what I've read. He has written true crime and a variety of nonfiction books, including a book about Soupy Sales, which I have to ask about. He's a writing teacher and mentor, as well as the founding member of the New York Writers' Workshop. It's my pleasure to have with me, Charles Salzberg. Charles: Thank you so much for having me. Debbi: Oh, sure. It is my pleasure, believe me. I just started actually your latest Man on the Run. Wow. What a great opening. You already have me hooked. I love your style. It has a kind of a chatty feel to it. Is this the way you write generally? Charles: Yes. Almost all the stuff I write is in first person from different people, and I just like that conversational style. Debbi: Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you there. Yeah. I like that. What inspired you to write the Henry Swann Series? Charles: It was inspired in the beginning by spite. I was in an MFA program at Columbia, and I had to have a manuscript to get in, and I chose this teacher who said he read the manuscript - I'm not sure he did. It got me into the program and he said to me, do you know how to tell a story? And I said, yes, I know how to tell a story. He said, well, you don't tell stories. This book is written like Nabokov and Philip Roth, in a style like that. You should read Chekhov. I was an English major. I had read Chekhov. Anyway, I quit after two weeks and I thought, well, this guy doesn't think I can write plot. I'm going to write a book that's very plotted, and those would be detective novels. So the first Swann book was called Swann's Last Song because I had no intention of writing crime novels after that, or revisit Swann. It had a very interesting history because I wrote it and I sent it to agents and editors, and they all said we love this, but we can't publish it with this ending. The problem with the ending for them was the detective follows all the clues, and in the end, the murder has nothing to do with any of the clues he followed. It was totally random. So the reader finds out what happened, but the detective who's really a skip tracer had nothing to do with solving the crime. And they said you're going to disappoint detective/crime lovers because they need the detective to solve the crime. And so I said, well, that's not what this book is about. I was much younger then, and so I said if you're not going to publish it this way, I'm going to put it away and forget about it and go onto the next thing. About 20 years later, I happened to stumble across the manuscript and I read it and I thought, this is pretty good.
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    Less than 1 minute
  • Interview with Len Joy – S. 9, Ep. 26

    Interview with Len Joy – S. 9, Ep. 26
    Apr 14 2024
    This week's episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer Len Joy. Get to know Len and his books, as well as his interest in athletics and how it has inspired his writing. Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so. We also have a shop now. Check it out! Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe The transcript can be downloaded here. Debbi: Hi everyone. My guest this week is the award-winning author of several novels, including one that I read called Dry Heat, which I really liked a lot. Like many authors, he started off in another career before he started writing. It's my pleasure to introduce my guest Len Joy. Len, hi. Len: Hi. Thank you very much for having me. I never thought of myself as a crime writer, but as I look at my work, I do have a lot of crime in there, so happy to be part of this. Debbi: Absolutely. Well, I am glad to have you on, that's for sure. Now I finally have you . Okay. I wanted to ask you particularly about Dry Heat, because I loved it so much. What was it that inspired you to write this novel? Len: Well, this was one of the few novels I think I wrote that was inspired by a specific incident. In my earlier career, I had an engine remanufacturing company in Phoenix with my brother-in-Law. We ran that for almost 20 years. It was a down and dirty, gritty, manufacturing operation. We had about 200 employees at any given time, and I had a very trusted employee, a woman and her husband that worked for me in the office. Their son, who I knew, I think he had just turned 18 and he was out hot rodding on the interstate on a Friday night, and not sure whatever happened, but they basically were dueling with another car and somebody in the vehicle he was in shot at the other car. Didn't hit anybody, but it turned out that the other vehicle was driven by an off-duty policeman, and he was arrested. He was the only adult -18 years old - and the other three were underage, and he was charged with attempted murder of a police officer, which is a serious crime. I mean, it's more serious penalties, and even though nobody was hurt, I don't believe he was the one shooting, but nevertheless, he was arrested. I followed this with obviously the parents as a father, and I had a kid about the same age as Tim, and instead of going to college, he's going to trial, and they have this lawyer, and they're going to a pretrial conference. They're going to fight this. I think they have a good case. They come back in the afternoon and they tell me that they basically presented him with the alternative of if you lose at trial, you could go to jail for 20 years, or you can take a deal and you go to prison for three, and they took the deal. But that just stuck with me, not just for the kid, but for the parents to have to make that decision in an instant, and it just changes the whole direction of your life. That was 20 years ago, and I started writing after that, and it was just something. I followed their story and he went to prison. He came out. I stayed in touch with his mother. My business ended in 2003, so I was no longer in Phoenix, but it was a story that interested me. And after I'd written a couple other novels, I decided not to use that story, per se. I mean, his story is his story, but that incident inspired me, I guess, in a way, to try to write about that kind of event where you're heading in one direction and something happens and your whole life changes. And I like sports, so I always make it somehow an athlete involved. But that was the inciting incident, I guess,
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    Less than 1 minute
  • Philip Marlowe in ‘The Black Halo’ – S. 9, Ep. 25

    Philip Marlowe in ‘The Black Halo’ – S. 9, Ep. 25
    Mar 31 2024
    This week’s episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features another great story from The Adventures of Philip Marlowe. Feel free to check out the video version, too. Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe Where ad-free episodes are a bi-weekly event! Here’s a copy of the transcript in PDF. Marlowe (01:17): Somewhere in the cold, persistent rain that made the city itself seem a thing of evil, a girl had disappeared and it was my job to find her, but before I did, I found death and a devil. Narrator (01:31): From the pen of Raymond Chandler, outstanding author of crime fiction, comes his most famous character as CBS presents The Adventures of Philip Marlowe, and now with Gerald Mohr starred as Philip Marlowe, we bring you tonight's exciting story, "The Black Halo". Marlowe (02:10): For three days, an ugly storm had lashed at the west coast from northern Oregon to the tip of lower California, and although it was only noon when I drove up to the sprawling red brick house just south of Santa Barbara to meet a new client of mine, the black that was in the sky and the driving rain that was everywhere left the day bleak and wet and cold. Left it the kind of day that made you feel that logs blazing in a fireplace and a warm dry robe were the only things that could matter to anyone. But when I got inside the house, Felix Drum, 350 uncomfortable pounds of executive in a wheelchair, who made his living importing perfumes, was very worried and not about the weather outside. Felix Drum (02:52): Marlowe. Julia Perry is gone. I want you to find her and bring her back, and the sooner you do that, the better. Marlowe (02:58): And the more I know, Mr. Drum, the easier it'll be. Exactly who is Julia Perry? Felix Drum (03:02): My assistant, very capable girl who in the past six months has practically taken over my entire business. She handles most of the work from her cottage here on the grounds where she lives. She also has some little cubbyhole in Los Angeles where she keeps her files and some sample stock. Marlowe (03:19): Do you have the address of that cubbyhole? Felix Drum (03:20): If I knew the answer to everything, I wouldn't have hired you and anyway, it isn't important. Hand me that little bottle. Marlowe (03:29): This one? Felix Drum (03:31): Yes. Thank you. Marlowe (03:43): When did you last see Julia, Mr. Drum? Felix Drum (03:45): Three days ago. It was three days ago when she left on one of her regular weekly trips down to Los Angeles to bid on perfumes. Usually she stayed away overnight at the Beachwood Plaza Hotel most of the time, and she was back here by noon the next day. Marlowe (04:02): I suppose you've already checked the Beachwood Plaza? Felix Drum (04:04): Yes, of course. My man, Ruby, the one who showed you in has called the place a dozen times, but they only know that Julia registered there three days ago and hasn't been seen since. Marlowe (04:14): Well, what about the girl herself, Mr. Drum? I mean her background, friends, family, that sort of thing? Felix Drum (04:18): Yeah, as far as I know Marlowe, Julia has no friends, no family either. She's just a sweet but smart little girl from someplace in Kansas. Marlowe (04:26): No beaus, not even nice ones, huh? Felix Drum (04:28): I don't think she had the time. You see, when Julia first came to work for me, she wanted to get ahead and I gave her the chance. She made good. Today, she's as much my right arm as Ruby is my leg. Marlowe (04:39): Mr. Drum, did you notice anything unusual about Julia's behavior lately? Felix Drum (04:42): Yes, and that's the reason I'm worried. About two weeks ago I saw changes in the girl, Marlowe. She seemed less spry, more preoccupied. I figured it was overwork myself. Since the end of the year always means detailed annual reports, so I made no comment at the time. Marlowe (05:00): I see. Tell me, Mr. Drum, what does she look like? Felix Drum (05:03): Well, I have no pictures,
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    32 mins
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