C.S. O’Cinneide's Blog, page 2

Facebook Live with Author C.S. O’Cinneide & friend

With all in-person author events cancelled for the near (and sometimes rather distant) future, it was so much fun to do this live “broadcast” from the Dundurn Press FB page. Find out about The Starr Sting Scale, barnacle boyfriends and how it feels to have your teenage daughter drop an f-bomb online.

Just click on the link below.

FB Live with author C.S. O’Cinneide

 

 

Darling Rose Gold By Stephanie Wrobel

Rose Gold and her mother, Patty, have a complicated relationship in the dark domestic thriller, Darling Rose Gold. This is in part due to Patty being in prison for the last five years. Incarceration tends to put a damper on most family get-togethers, particularly birthdays when everybody expects cakes with a file in them. But Patty is in jail for tampering with food in a different way. To be specific, for lacing her daughter, Rose Gold’s meals with ipecac syrup for most of her young life. Ipecac you might remember, is that vile little brown vial that your mom had on hand in the medicine cabinet back in the day, just in case you were a complete dope and swallowed rat poison or some such. It induces vomiting of such epic proportions that your dry heaves will have dry heaves. I’m serious folks, this stuff is nasty. When I was a teenager, I swallowed some on a dare and it felt like my stomach was being pulled out through my esophagus by velociraptors. Given this stunt, I can see now why my mother thought me dumb enough to swallow rat poison.

But was Patty guilty of poisoning Rose Gold for all those years? Even now, she still protests her innocence, claiming she was a devoted and loving mother trying to take care of a chronically ill child, and not a Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy nutter that got off on the attention. But why then did her daughter “mysteriously” get better after Patty was arrested and seventeen-year-old Rose Gold started eating other people’s pot roasts for dinner? It’s hard to know for sure, but when Rose Gold rekindles her relationship with her mom and brings her home to live with her and her infant son after Patty’s release, we start to wonder. Although like I said, we don’t know anything for sure, except if asked, we would probably decline an invitation to brunch.

Wrobel does a wonderful job of describing this very intimate, yet (forgive the pun) poisoned mother-daughter relationship. I was impressed by the author’s ability to delve into an atrocious crime without subscribing to stereotypical depiction of either victims or villains. The story is told from both Rose Gold and Patty’s perspective, and being both a mother and a daughter, I am glad we got a chance to see out of both those set of eyes. Although don’t think this will give you a better view of the truth. Rose Gold and her mother are unreliable narrators. You won’t know who the victim or the villain really are until the end, and even then, you might come to find that many people are a mixture of the two.

To find out more about Stephanie Wrobel and her debut novel, Darling Rose Gold go to https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/617821/darling-rose-gold-by-stephanie-wrobel/

Diary of a SARS Quarantine

In 2003, I was quarantined for SARS, and wrote a funny story about it.  I’m thinking we could all use a laugh right now, so I am publishing my short memoir on this blog. Each day for the next week I will add a new installment until you have the whole story, unedited from the original entries in my Diary of a SARS Quarantine.

Day 1 The Phone Call

Have had hectic day. With four children between the ages of 2 and 16 years, every day is hectic. Am particularly crabby because lecture series at Roy Thompson Hall tonight has been cancelled, giving stay-at home mom no excuse to abandon husband and children for evening. All possible speakers for lecture have backed out. Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher, Fran Drescher , even Janet Reno reneged, and all because of SARS. Can’t believe they couldn’t find someone to speak. Would go to see a stick of furniture lecture if it meant a night out of the house.

Have just finished collection of outraged emails to various friends calling proposed speakers “scaredy-cats” and “sucky babies.” Speakers have more chance of winning the lottery than contracting SARS on Roy Thompson Hall stage. Phone rings.

I’ve won the lottery.

“Hello, is this Carole O’Cinneide?”

“Yes”

“Did you attend a Power Yoga/Pilates class last Thursday?”

Now, this is question self was not expecting. Feel like suspect in Law and Order rerun being interrogated by Briscoe. Think. Have no motive. Have not murdered anyone. Decide to answer without lawyer present.

“Yes” I reply.

“This is Toronto Public Health. I’m sorry, I’m afraid I have some bad news….”

Someone in my Yoga class has suspected SARS. I am officially in quarantine. Do not assume the lotus position. Do not collect $200.

“Your quarantine will only last for 7 days, as 3 days have already elapsed since your exposure”

“But, what about the other three days?” I ask.

“Well, if you develop symptoms then we will have to do a contact list of all the places you were during those initial three days and act accordingly” replies sunny dispositioned public health person.

I don’t feel so sunny. Think of all places self has been since yoga class. List includes daughter’s playschool, Coleman Folding Trailer Showroom and Toronto Gay/Lesbian Film Festival. Am already anticipating giggling Public Health personnel placing self on speaker phone while contact list is made. Further anticipate entire gay/lesbian community being put in quarantine because of one stupid straight woman who went to see Spanish subtitle film called “My Mother Likes Women.”

Sunny Public Health begins the 10 Commandments of Quarantine.

Thou shalt not leave the house or thy backyard.

Thou shalt not receive visitors.

Thou shalt avoid direct contact with family members.

Thou shalt wear a mask when in the room with said family members.

Thou shalt wash hands till skin threatens to rub off.

Thou shalt take temperature twice daily.

Thou shalt not share cutlery, towels or cups.

Thou shalt sleep alone.

Thou shalt report any symptoms.

Thou shalt not freak out.

Put down phone and immediately break tenth commandment. Recover in time for totally unsuspecting husband coming through the door.

“Honey, we’ve got a problem.”

Go to bed without kissing children or husband goodnight. Can hear two-year-old crying piteously outside bedroom for mommy, but masks have not arrived yet, so can’t open door.

Want to go back in time and not go to yoga class.

Want to take back calling Janet Reno a “sucky baby.”

Want a hug more than any time in my whole life.

CHECK IN TOMORROW AFTER 9 AM EST FOR THE NEXT INSTALLMENT OF DIARY OF A SARS QUARANTINE!

 

 

River of Lies By R.M. Greenaway

The dead bodies are dropping fast and furious in this latest novel in the B.C.  Blues Crime series by the talented R.M. Greenaway. If you are looking for dull moments, pick up another book. In the first few pages of River of Lies, a young woman is murdered in a parking lot on her way to a supper date. Right after, a baby gets kidnapped while her parents sip pre-dinner Chardonnay at home with friends. It’s enough for a person to give up entertaining all together.

Constable Cal Dion returns in this fifth book as our guilt-ridden anti-hero, still trying to outrun his secrets. He is teamed with Constable Dave Lieth to work the kidnapping case, but of course Lieth is secretly working Dion, assigned to the task by his superior. Constable JD Temple handles the murdered woman in the parking lot. She’s also concerned about Dion, and perhaps covering up for him. This is certainly enough crime and intrigue to keep our cast of detectives busy and hard at the job, despite it being February with Valentine’s Day to think about and all the associated Hallmark-hyped expectations of romance. Even the dead woman has a red and gold card covered with glitter in her purse, which I understand is killing plankton, fish and birds. The glitter, not the purse.

But romance must take a back seat when more people start dying under suspicious circumstances, all of them in some way connected with the two cases at hand. Soon, it becomes apparent that the initial murder and kidnap are themselves linked. This keeps our group of constables hopping, and also hoping that at least one of the people they interview will start telling them the truth. River of Lies is aptly named, since we must wade through a deep stream of unreliable characters through most of the book.  Everyone seems to have something to hide and is talking shite, as my Irish husband would say. You’d think the story took place in Washington, D.C. rather than British Columbia.

As with all R.M. Greenaway’s books, the characters are a wonderful strong point. They are so authentically rendered and complex, and none of them get old for me, even after five books in the series. Dion has always been my favorite. I love a good messed-up everyman, but this time around I found myself drawn to the female cop, JD Temple. JD can at one moment be terribly self-conscious and the next as confident as hell.  In this way she embodies the contradiction in self-esteem that plagues many successful women, where even Nobel prize winners ask their friends stupid questions like, “Do I look fat in this?”  I like strong and savvy characters that don’t have everything in life figured out, mostly because I don’t.

River of Lies surges with a powerful and unpredictable flow of suspense, with writing and character development indicative of a calmly practiced hand. Don’t miss your chance to get caught up in the current.

For more information on River of Lies, and other books by R.M. Greenaway, go to https://www.dundurn.com/authors/RM-Greenaway-0

The Starr Sting Scale – Book Launch

What a great party last Thursday launching my new novel, The Starr Sting Scale, first in the Candace Starr crime series. Guest readers, Killer Cupcakes and an awesome crowd at the eBar in Guelph. Thanks to all for coming out on a cold winter night for a hot new read.

A tough, deadly type who just might surprise you – Kirkus Reviews

Murderous fun – Publishers Weekly

We find ourselves all in with Candace, whatever she’s up to. – Booklist

 

Searching for a Hitwoman

When I set out to write an article about famous hitwomen from history, I didn’t think I’d have such a hard time finding any. When I googled it, I ended up with a lot of grainy black and white photos of dour women who poisoned people they didn’t like.  Legend has it that Lucrezia of the infamous Borgias clan used a hollow ring containing fatal toxins for the purpose, dispatching guests who disagreed with her at dinner parties. While this may seem like a useful tool when faced with an alt-right buffoon over crab puffs, it still doesn’t qualify as murder for hire.

Wikipedia, of course, has a “Contract Killer” entry. The famous assassins on the list are all male, such as “Mad Dog” Coll, Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. Either women of this vocation are rare, or they are just good at avoiding lists, along with unattractive nicknames.

But since my novel, The Starr Sting Scale (due to drop this month) features a sassy six -foot-three hitwoman named Candace Starr, I felt compelled to write on the subject of lethal women for hire. There had to be some ladies out there that offed people for more than a poisonous thrill or to avoid the discussion of politics?

So, I did some more digging.  And as is often the case with crime writers, this is when the bodies turn up. The following women were responsible for more than a few of them.

Mata Hari

Perhaps one of the most well-known of the female spies, this Dutch faux-Middle Eastern temptress never actually killed anyone by her own hand. But the intel she passed to the Germans did, leading to the demise of 50,000 French soldiers in WWI. Famous across Europe for her “dance of the seven veils” where the seventh left nothing to the imagination, rumour has it she flashed her naked body at her firing squad in a bid to distract. They shot her anyway.

Đoàn Thị Hương

This Vietnamese national was one of two women charged in 2017 with the assassination of Kim Jong-nam, after using the deadly nerve agent, Ricin. The women claimed they’d only been participating in what they thought was a TV show prank. One in which they were required to spray the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un with an unknown substance and then hold a handkerchief over his face. To this day, “Just for Laughs-North Korea” does not appear to have aired the special.

Marie Sukloff

Marie was a Russian peasant in the early 20th century, which was a particularly lousy gig, emphasis on the louse.  When a bomb thrown at Governor General Fyodor Dubasov by her compatriot failed to go off in the heavy snow, she retrieved the explosive and tossed it into Dubasov’s carriage to complete the hit.  This shows that women have been relied on to pick things up and put them in their proper place from at least the Edwardian era.

Charlotte Corday

Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday d’Armont, a French aristocrat, was executed for assassinating the radical journalist, Jean-Paul Marat, who she felt was turning up the heat on the trash fire that was the French Revolution at the time. Blaming him for the September Massacres that saw 1200- 1400 prisoners killed, Charlotte stabbed Marat to death while he partook of his medicinal bath. This, to my mind, is about as bourgeoisie a death as you can get.

Claudia, The Empress of Antrax

Claudia Ochoa Félix, was known as the “Kim Kardashian of Organized Crime” due to her propensity for taking belfies alongside AK-47’s and posting them on the internet. Before her death, she was thought to be the head honcha of Los Ántrax, a deadly enforcement wing of the Sinaloa drug cartel, responsible for more than one pair of concrete huaraches. Women like Claudia are becoming increasingly more common, as the cartels run out of men to hire who they haven’t killed yet.

For more information, go to my sources for this article. And if you were truly “searching for a hitwoman” I’m sorry, I can’t help you. I only write about them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_killing

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/7-deadliest-female-assassins-history/

https://www.ranker.com/list/historical-female-slayers/melissa-brinks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Corday

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9954708/el-chapo-kim-k-female-assassins-mexico-drugs/

https://nypost.com/2019/09/20/el-chapos-kim-kardashian-of-organized-crime-died-from-drug-overdose/

I Choose You by Gayle Curtis

“Mental illness is sickness of the mind caused by the constant overwhelming battle one has with one’s essence, beliefs and purpose.” (I Choose You, p. 235)

If this is the definition of mental illness, then the only sane person in the novel, I Choose You, is the serial killer (ironically the one responsible for this quote). All the rest of the characters seem at odds with their true selves, and quite frankly with one another.  Elise has decided her latest child, Buddy, is a changeling and tries to steal another couple’s baby. She and her husband, Nathaniel are at each other’s throats, even as their teenage daughter lies comatose in a hospital bed. Elise’s father entertains violent schizophrenics at the house while the grandkids are visiting. And to top it all off, the number one cause of death in the family appears to be a self-administered gunshot wound to the head. This group is so dysfunctional they make the Osbornes look like the Osmonds.  And yet, in so many ways, they are like any other family who have seen their share of conflict and tragedy. I was impressed by how Curtis pulled the many story and character threads along without ever getting tangled. That being said, not all of the characters rang true for me.  I often felt a bit confused by character motivations.  But I LOVED the killer, who we hear from throughout the book. Perhaps this says something about me, and you are welcome to imagine what that is.

Between lying to themselves and each other though, there really isn’t one reliable narrator in the lot. This makes for some fascinating reading. We are often told partial truths, that cause us to make assumptions, that later get blown out of the water like so many dynamited fish.  A lot of writers make you wait until the end to rain down those shiny reveals, but Gayle Curtis chums the waters with epiphanies throughout the chapters, keeping the reader on the hook. I never felt like I knew quite for sure what was going on. But I have seen the future, in the form of my elderly nana who would hide the ranch dressing for fear of being chopped up for salad, so I figure this is a state with which I must become familiar. In fact, looking at the number of fish metaphors in this review, perhaps I am not far from having my condiment privileges revoked.

A lovely dark piece of domestic noir with multiple plot twists and characters to keep you busy. As I said, the killer was my favourite, and you’d be surprised how often evil characters make or break a good piece of fiction.  Remember, whether someone is a villain or a hero, really depends on who’s telling the story.

To find out more about Gayle Curtis and her books go to https://www.fantasticfiction.com/c/gayle-curtis/

 

Last Request by Liz Mistry

Liz Mistry has a new fan.

I was already a hard-core devotee of Tartan Noir via Denise Mina (interviewed here at She Kills Lit), but after reading Liz Mistry’s Last Request set in West Yorkshire, I have a whole new geographic subgenre to savour. I’m going to call it Tweed Noir, crime fiction guaranteed to blow your flat cap off.

Last Request is the first in a series featuring Detective Sergeant Nikita Parekh, who lives in Bradford and most definitely never wears tweed, or a flat cap. Nikki is tough, yet intrinsically flawed, sort of like that “diamond in the rough” we keep hearing about. But I wouldn’t want to see anyone polishing her up. As a mother of three, she is damn good at a job she loves, but like many women in this situation she finds her kids often get the wrong end of the career-life balance stick.  I saw a couple of reviews where people had a problem with this. In the words of my Scottish nana, “Quit your wingein’,’” – we need more working mother characters like this where the woman hasn’t figured everything out.  I’m sick to death of the supermom motif, and besides it’s so last millennium.

We also need more characters of colour, or ethnicity or whatever you want to call not writing books about a whole bunch of white people of privilege. Nikki Parekh is neither white nor privileged.  She’s of dual heritage and lives on a housing estate where sleazy punks try to get her nephew to deal molly.  Throughout the book she comes into contact with people of varying cultural backgrounds, sexual preference, and social standing. That makes for a rich human landscape in a novel. But here’s the best part — there’s not one cliché across that panorama. This is what makes this gritty noir particularly scenic, it’s realist painting of a life mosaic that includes more than one view.

Okay, enough of my over-intellectualized musings on sociocultural motifs in crime fiction. If DS Parekh read the last paragraph (or the previous sentence) she would probably deliver a swift backhand while telling me to get to the damn point. And the damn fine point here is that this is a terrific story, exciting and enticing, with well-crafted writing and wonderful characters, including the killer, who we get to hear from periodically in a first-person narrative. Despite having all the clues required, I didn’t guess the identity of the murderer until revealed at the end, and that usually means I was having too much of a rousing romp reading the book.

Tweed Noir. I like the sound of it. Don’t forget to give me credit for this term if it ever catches on. As I’m sure the DS Nikita Parekh series will for Liz Mistry.

To find out more about Last Request and other books by the same author, go to https://lizmistrycrimewriter.wordpress.com/

The Starr Sting Scale – Official Book Trailer

It’s book trailer time!

Hard to believe that the first book in the Candace Starr series is due out in only a few months. One of my favourite reviews so far calls it “Witty, irreverent, nasty, unrelenting dark crime fiction… At six foot three, Candace Starr is more woman than most men can handle.”

I agree!

Enjoy the trailer. Look forward to the book. And get ready to “Get in the game.”

 

 

Darlington by Tripsy South

“Sometimes it was just best to shut the f*** up and let the wisdom flow over you.” – (p. 217)

Such was the approach I attempted to take while reading Darlington. This novel is a sort of Kerouac-like stream of consciousness that follows a few months in the life of Tommy Darlington – a part-time Florida cab driver and full-time hit-man, who makes such an astronomical amount of money in the latter profession that I am considering a change in career. Really, I don’t know if people realize they would probably make more money busking for change than working as a professional author. The idea of making millions for “offing” people, rather than writing about it, has its appeal for me.

Darlington does not follow a traditional story arc, so be prepared. It leads down some blind alleys, and the chapters are more a linked series of vignettes of Tommy’s violent life contrasted with his romantic one. But the gleaming pearls of wisdom that are interspersed within the deep darkness of this gritty noir are worth the brief moments of disorientation. I found myself continually highlighting one insightful, poignant and brilliant line after the other. Tripsy South can coin a phrase in the flick of a Florida gator’s tale, using the same seductive grace and threatening beauty as that dangerous reptile.

I’ve been challenged lately with finding well-written noir. Too many of the supposedly dark thrillers I pick up these days seem to have a vocabulary reminiscent of a pre-pubescent teen and sensibilities to match. I’d like to think that readers demand more than that from their genre fiction in this modern age.  I mean, I’m not looking for Tolstoy or anything, but I’m not looking for The Hardy Boys & The Tower Treasure either. Darlington proves that genre and literary fiction are not mutually exclusive categories. Well done, Ms. South.

Rest assured, Tommy is no Joe Hardy. Although he does pine for his girlfriend Rachel, giving him a humanizing touch. Rachel is a writer, so she could really use some of those millions Tommy earns, as I explained earlier. But almost getting herself killed because of Tommy’s associations sort of puts a damper on their relationship. Nothing screws up date night like a nasty abduction.  Although, I would be more put off by some of the racial slurs Tommy uses than his dangerous profession, although they are there I suspect to convey the overall amorality of the character.  I don’t know why this should offend me more than the fact that the man kills dozens of people in cold blood for a living, but it does. If we are meant to see Tommy Darlington as one of the “warriors with a heart (p. 228),” these type of comments are not really in keeping with my image of what that means.

I look forward to reading more from this author, and allowing her wisdom to flow over me like a warm but dark Sarasota Bay wave.

To find out more about this book and the author, Tripsy South go here https://tripsysouth.com/

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.