Ed Gorman's Blog, page 74

Gravetapping: A MAMMOTH MURDER by Bill Crider

Gravetapping by Ben Boulden
With that opening, the very essence of both A Mammoth Murder and Bill Crider’s character Sheriff Dan Rhodes is laid bare: humorous, witty and entertaining. A Mammoth Murder was originally published in 2006 by St. Martin’s Press, and it is the 13th mystery to feature Blacklin County Sheriff Dan Rhodes.   
Bud Turley found the tooth in Blacklin County’s version of the Bermuda Triangle. A patch of dark timbered country called “Big Woods,” which is home to a mean-spirited pack of wild hogs, rattle snakes, copperheads, cottonmouths, and rumors of Bigfoot. Turley is certain the tooth he found belongs to the later and he wants Sheriff Rhodes to protect it until an expert—a local community college teacher—can look at it the next day.
A report of a dead body in Big Woods interrupts Rhodes’s enjoyment of the tooth. The dead man is Bud Turley’s best (and only) friend Larry Colley whose body is discovered alarmingly close to where Bigfoot’s tooth was found. The death toll rises when an elderly shopkeeper is found dead in her store. Rhodes is certain the murders are connected, but he is continually bothered by a feeling of missing something both important and obvious.
A Mammoth Murder is a charming, sly, and entertaining novel. The mystery is quirky and sincere. The dialogue is sharp and genuinely funny; most of it coming from the mouths of Rhodes’s dispatcher and jailer, Hack and Lawton. The two jab at each ferociously and enjoy, more than just a little, playing with Rhodes’s patience.
The story is bolstered by a colorful cast—Bigfoot hunters, amateur crime writers, a local newspaper reporter better at her job than Rhodes would like, and Rhodes’s wife Ivy, who put him on a low fat diet and knows nothing about his daily Blizzard from Dairy Queen. Not to mention Hack and Lawton.        
The mystery is great, too. There are enough red herrings to keep the reader interested, and just enough action to make it exciting. Even better, there is something of a cold case thrown in—a young boy was killed in Big Woods ten years earlier, and Sheriff Rhodes is certain it is connected with the two recent killings—and the resolution is very satisfying. You are subscribed to email updates from Gravetapping 

Headlines that shouldn't be true but are

Stephen Colbert’s slam on Fox’s Brit Hume last night was too off-color
for this headline

Cops fatally shoot Utah man carrying a sword, but they won’t say why

Sarah Palin: ‘I owe America a global apology because John McCain should
be our president’

Ben Carson tells Bill O’Reilly: ‘I’m not sure’ that domestic violence
is widespread

Hannity guest: Rice’s wife ‘knocked herself out’ on elevator railing so
he’s the ‘bigger victim’

Mass. woman arrested after three dead babies discovered in filthy
condemned home

Fox’s ‘liberal’ Bob Beckel tells female colleague her legs are why she
has a job

Sarah Palin: ‘I owe America a global apology because John McCain should
be our president’

Stephen Colbert’s slam on Fox’s Brit Hume last night was too off-color
for this headline

Cops fatally shoot Utah man carrying a sword, but they won’t say why

If you’ve had sushi in California in the last four years, you probably
ate tainted ‘flush rice’

After the riots, Ferguson businesses long for normal: ‘People are too
scared to come down’

Texas teen Tyler Holder sentenced to life in prison for rape, murder of
6-year-old neighbor

Michael Dunn will be retried on murder charges for killing 17-year-old
over loud music

Anchorage police confirm Palin family involved in heated Saturday night
brawl

 Witchcraft-obsessed townsfolk try to drive out teen who opened Naughty
Girls Donut Shop

Texas textbooks once again pushing exaggerated claims about religion’s
role in US history

Hannity guest: Rice’s wife ‘knocked herself out’ on elevator railing so
he’s the ‘bigger victim’

ESPN: Ray Rice told NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in June that he hit
his fiancee

Michael Dunn will be retried on murder charges for killing 17-year-old
over loud music

Watch warrantless police raid onKY dive bar: ‘If you’re clean, you get
to go out the front door’

Ben Carson tells Bill O’Reilly: ‘I’m not sure’ that domestic violence
is widespread

STANDING HER GROUND
Colorado woman pointed rifle at kids over boy practicing the clarinet
in yard

SAD
NC deputy won’t be charged after leaving K-9 overnight in hot patrol
car, where the dog died

James Foley’s mother ‘embarrassed and appalled’ by US government actions

Mass. woman arrested after three dead babies discovered in filthy
condemned home


AZ GOP vice-chair calls for sterilizing poor women: If you want a baby,
get a job

Maryland GOP candidate: ‘Women want equality,’ Ray Rice just gave ‘some
of it’ to wife

Road-raging George Zimmerman faces no charges after threatening to
shoot another driver

MICHAEL STONE ON WRITING THE STREETER NOVELS Brash Books

09.10.14 MICHAEL STONE ON WRITING THE STREETER NOVELSWritten byMichael StoneShare on facebookShare on twitterShare on emailShare on pinterest_shareI’ve always loved the write. I was a newspaper reporter for twelve years before I started my private investigations business. I also took a whack at writing a mystery/crime fiction novel back in the mid 1980s. I really liked noir crime movies so I tried to write a novel along those lines. I got some interest from a fairly well-known New York agent. She liked my writing but not the book I wrote. Go figure. She asked me what crime fiction authors I read. I thought about and realized I never actually read any crime fiction or mystery novels.The agent was surprised. She made two suggestions. One, keep writing and, two, start reading novels in the genre. Get the feel for what makes a good novel like this. I took her advice. Or at least half her advice. I started reading the greats of the genre: Elmore Leonard, James Crumley, Raymond Chandler, etc. Reading was more fun than writing and a lot easier. Eight years went by and I hadn’t written a word. All the while, I felt guilty because I knew I should write another novel. It finally dawned on me that I was putting off the inevitable.It really hit home when I went to a book signing by Walter Mosley, author of the Easy Rawlins series. I asked him to sign the book to me, “the best PI in Denver.” He got a kick out of that and he asked me about my background. When I told him I had been a newspaper reporter and then a PI he just shook his head and said I should be writing crime fiction. I had the perfect background for it.Within a couple of weeks I began writing  The Low End of Nowhere.  Eleven months later I had a two-book deal with Viking/Penguin. Apparently it was the right time for me to get writing. All my experiences in both the newspapers and the PI game went into my books. I didn’t get my stories from those experiences, but I got my characters from them. In my writing I would start with a couple of characters, put them in a difficult situation and see how they got out of it. I heard Elmore Leonard give a talk once and that’s basically what he said he did. It made sense to me.I really believe if you don’t have interesting characters that people care about, all the action and plot twists in the world don’t matter. Create interesting characters, good guys and bad guys, and bring them to life. They’ll think of something interesting to do. The best compliment I received from readers was that they could clearly picture the characters in my books. Almost all my characters were all based on someone I knew or had met at least briefly. I didn’t try to recreate those people but rather they were a starting point for a character. I’d take something about a person that appealed to me or interested me or maybe even repulsed me and just run with it. They became real to me and behaved the way I imagined they would under the circumstances I put them in.I’m not saying plot isn’t important. Of course it is. We read stories not character profiles. But when the characters become real enough and alive enough to the writer they almost start doing and saying things on their own. That’s what makes writing not just interesting but compelling and a butt load of fun.My main character, Streeter, was based loosely on a childhood friend of mine. Also, he had certain traits I had or wished I had. Once he and I got in sync everything else fell into place. I hope you like him as much as I do.


Tags: crime writing, Easy Rawlins, Elmore Leonard, James Crumley, Michael Stone, Raymond Chandler, Streeter,thriller writing, Walter Mosely, writing mysteries

Headlines that shouldn't be true but are with a Sarah Palin Bonus

Teacher’s job threatened after he compares his school to
lesbian-creating concentration camp

Woman sues Costco for telling her to ‘be friendly’ to the customer
stalking her

Man who called 911 in Ohio Walmart shooting changes his story after
viewing video

Bill Maher: If Hillary gets the 2016 nomination, I’ll vote for Rand Paul

Texas man shoots at Frisbee golfer, barricades himself in home because
disc lands in his yard

IOWA SHOOTING
Ex-city manager killed after shooting at official in public meeting to
protest property taxes

Bryan Fischer: Ban atheists from the military because ‘genuine
Americans’ will die for God

Judge who ordered shock for disruptive ‘sovereign citizen’ banned from
hearing cases

Truthers commemorate 9/11 with Times Square ad showing WTC 7 imploding
on infinite loop

Ohio woman raped after bus driver boots her onto street at 1 a.m. over
a broken flip-flop

Trial begins for mother who fatally poisoned her autistic son in posh
hotel room

Florida official guns down wife, then himself in locked bedroom as
10-year-old daughter listens

Home Intruder Caught Cooking Corn Cob: Cops

Thieves Steal 100 Onions That 5th Graders Grew For Charity

Who Erected This Anatomically Complete Naked Satan Statue?...

BONUS  she coulda been vp or maybe even--my God--prez
Anchorage police confirm Palin family involved in heated Saturday night
brawl


The Palin family was reportedly involved in a messy fistfight on
Saturday night that involved at least 20 people in Anchorage, Alaska at
an event sponsored by the annual Iron Dog snowmobile race.
Details are still sketchy, but Wonkette.com reported Thursday morning
that a spokesperson for the Anchorage Police Department confirmed that
members of the Palin family were involved in a public fight in
Anchorage on Saturday night, but that no arrests were made because no
one pressed charges.
“Well, look who is doing some journamalism,” quipped Wonkette editor
and owner Rebecca Schoenkopf, “it is us, yr Wonkette.”
“Anita in the Anchorage Police Department’s communications office is
sitting at her desk at 7:15 a.m. on a Thursday, so probs they are
waiting for a whole mess of calls from Jake Tapper or whatever,”
Schoenkopf continued, “and Anita confirms that a huge bloody mess of a
brawl between multiple subjects took place Saturday night, and that the
Palins were ‘present.’”
Local blogger Jessie Griffin at the Immoral Minority wrote on
Wednesday, “According to the grapevine Track had some altercation with
a person who may or may not have once dated one of the Palin girls.
That led to some pushing and shoving, which escalated somehow to the
family being asked to leave the premises.”
“However before that could happen a certain former abstinence
spokesperson unleashed a flurry of blows at some as of yet identified
individual before being pulled off by by another partygoer, after which
Todd apparently puffed up his chest and made some threatening remarks.
(The “C’ word may have been uttered at one point,)” said the blog.
Alaskan political blogger Amanda Coyne said she was able to piece
together a version of events from sources who witnessed the
out-of-control brawl.
“There’s some sort of unofficial birthday/Iron Dog-type/snowmachine
party in Anchorage. A nice, mellow party, until the Palins show up,”
Coyne wrote. “There’s beer, of course, and maybe other things. Which is
all fine, but just about the time when some people might have had one
too many, a Track Palin stumbles out of a stretch Hummer, and
immediately spots an ex-boyfriend of Willow’s. Track isn’t happy with
this guy, the story goes. There’s words, and more.”
“The owner of the house gets involved, and he probably wished he
hadn’t,” Coyne continued. “At this point, he’s up against nearly the
whole Palin tribe: Palin women screaming. Palin men thumping their
chests. Word is that Bristol has a particularly strong right hook,
which she employed repeatedly, and it’s something to hear when Sarah
screams, ‘Don’t you know who I am!’ And it was particularly wonderful
when someone in the crowd screamed back, ‘This isn’t some damned
Hillbilly reality show!’”
“No, it’s what happens when the former First Family of Alaska comes
knocking. As people were leaving in a cab, Track was seen on the
street, shirtless, flipping people off, with Sarah right behind him,
and Todd somewhere in the foreground, tending to his bloody nose,” she
concluded.
It’s difficult to say how much of this is true, based as it is on what
witnesses claim to have seen and heard.
In an update posted Thursday, Griffin said she spoke to homeowner Chris
Olds, who confirmed that the melee took place in his residence and that
he was repeatedly struck by Bristol Palin.
Anchorage Police confirmed to Griffin that at least 20 people were
involved in the fight, but reports differ as to who started the brawl
and why.

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Sara Paretsky: By the Book

SEPT. 11, 2014        From The New York TimesThe author of the V. I. Warshawski novels, most recently “Critical Mass,” was hugely influenced by “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”: “I felt as though I’d fallen into words and wanted to drown in them.”What books are currently on your night stand?I’m trying hard to read Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” but keep returning to fiction. Right now: John Williams’s “Stoner,” Claude Izner’s “Strangled in Paris.”Who is your favorite novelist of all time? And your favorite novelist writing today? I don’t have an all-time favorite. There are books I reread or wish I’d written. I love the Victorians: Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, in that order. I loved “Gilead” and “Wolf Hall,” which is a staggering achievement. I reread Barbara Pym and Jane Austen and my old detective favorites when I’m stressed out.Who are your favorite writers of detective fiction?Margery Allingham among the classics. Peter Dickinson, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Dorothy Hughes.Which do you consider the best detective stories of all time, and why?Anna Katharine Green, for defining the consulting detective for the 19th century; Wilkie Collins, for playing with the form and transforming it; Dashiell Hammett, for reinventing the form for the 20th century; the Holmes oeuvre, for making detective fiction popular in both Great Britain and America; Amanda Cross and Lillian O’Donnell, for opening the door that enabled Marcia Muller, Linda Barnes, Sue Grafton and me to challenge the form in new ways.What makes a good detective novel?Believable characters first, a good story, an understanding of how to pace dramatic action. I like commitment by a writer, to the form, to the story — there are lots of slick writers of crime fiction who aren’t writing out of passion, but for the market. They write good English sentences, but for me, the lack of commitment makes them uninteresting.for the rest go here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/boo...

Ray Bradbury Writes Noir: Death Is a Lonely Business

Ray Bradbury Writes Noir: Death Is a Lonely BusinessEDWARD A. GRAINGER  FROM CRIMINAL ELEMENT












Ed here: This is one of my favorite Ray Bradbury collections. Plenty of used copies available.I suspect most people think of science fiction and fantasy when they hear the name Ray Bradbury, who—along withIsaac Asimov, Phillip K. Dick, Robert A. Heinlein, andArthur C. Clarke—represented the very best of modern thought-provoking and socially-conscious escapism. His Fahrenheit 451,The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, to name a few, are required reading for any serious student of sci-fi/fantasy. But apart from his legions of dedicated fans, many may not be aware that Mr. Bradbury took a stab at several noir novels rather late in his career, the first of which was 1985’s Death Is a Lonely Business, his first full-length novel in over a decade. The book is dedicated to several notables of crime fiction including Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Ross Macdonald. To their noir hardboiled legacy, he writes in his own Bradbury-ian elegance, fusing the well-worn (and, frankly, by then, tired) detective novel with a great deal of his distinct lyrical flair. Examples: “books clustered like vultures with their black feathers and dusty golden stares” and “Venice was and is full of lost places where people put up for sale the last worn bits of their souls, hoping no one will buy.” To his credit, Mr. Bradbury never borders on parody or pastiche (a problem I’ve noticed with other writers when attempting to emulate the golden era masters) and instead paves his own path down those shadowed mean streets cluttered with desperate and longing characters.The novel opens with an unnamed twenty-seven-year old protagonist—a writer very much like the young Ray Bradbury—who irreverently calls himself the Great American Novelist, traveling on a lonely railcar with only one other man on the train. The fellow passenger begins eerily moaning and wandering about, which is enough to creep out the writer, but the chill culminates when the eccentric rider whispers to the writer’s back, “Death is a lonely business.” Bradbury had me wondering in this scene, is this other passenger flesh and blood or a spectral presence?After the writer quickly disembarks, attempting to forget the dreadful voice “exhaling vapors of fear,” he retires to his barren room where he stares at the blank page of an unfinished book. He lives a meagre existence, with his only source of income being an occasional sale to a detective or science fiction pulp magazine, and those are few and far between. Adding to his despair, he’s missing his girlfriend, Peg, who is studying far away in Mexico City.

for the rest go here:
http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/...

Headlines that shouldn't be true but are

'Hail Hitler' spray-painted in NY...

Swastikas across Miami...

TEXAS TO KILL WITH EXPIRED DRUG?

U2 Releases New Album FREE on iTunes...
No Money in CD Sales...

Ted Cruz: SNL’s Lorne Michaels could be thrown in jail if Dems undo
‘Citizens United’
(huh?)

Louie Gohmert: Refugees steal ‘dreams’ of Americans, and are ‘a threat
to our existence’


Runaway goats invade train station in Spain

Colbert: GOP’s attempt at female outreach leaves women ‘confused and
embarrassed’

Jon Stewart: Al Qaeda vs. ISIS is the new Coke vs. Pepsi

Military Eyewitness Captures 'Transparent UFO' On Night Vision

Woman Suspected Of Masturbating In Public On Motorcycle

Man Stabs Coworker Who Ate His Meatball: Cops
(he had it comin')

Police Searching For Prowler Uncover Incest Instead

Church Leader Suspected Of Attempted Dog Sex

Sex Toy Stuck In Woman's Vagina For 10 YEARS

Man Puts Girlfriend's Toddler Son In Dryer, Turns It On: Cops

Bible College Founder Pleads Guilty To Using Foreign Students As Slave
Labor, Even Though Slavery Is In The Bible

Two Reviews by Bill Crider

Riders on the Storm -- Ed Gorman  from Bill Crider's Popular Culture















Ed here: I paid a lot of money for this review so please read it.
Bill Crider:If you want to read about what life was like in the late 1950s to the early '70s, you could go to books written during that time (you need search no further than John D. MacDonald).  Or you could read Ed Gorman's Sam McCain series.  Gorman has something that that MacDonald didn't: perspective.  Gorman's had time to think about what happened and to reflect on it for a good many  years.  And that's just one thing that makes this series so interesting.   There are plenty of other things, too.

Riders on the Storm (all the books except the first in the series take their titles from songs popular at the time) is set in 1971.  At the end of the previous book (Bad Moon Rising), McCain has been drafted and appears likely to be shipped off to Vietnam.  That doesn't happen.  He's in a terrible car crash in boot camp and then is hospitalized for a long time.  He's mostly recovered now, and sure enough, he gets involved in another murder investigation.  His friend Will Cullen, a returned vet, is accused of the murder of a political candidate, Steve Donovan, another vet.   Donovan's a war hawk; Cullen's a member of an anti-war veteran's group and has been severely beaten by Donovan for that reason.  It's no surprise that Cullen is the primary suspect.  He's just about catatonic, however, and isn't any help in the investigation that McCain undertakes.

Pretty much the whole city of Black River Falls believes that Cullen is guilty.  The police chief surely seems to.  Not many people want McCain to find out if Cullen is innocent.  They'd be happy to see him convicted.
As usual in Gorman's books, the characters are a lot more complex than they first appear.  As soon as you think you know them, you find out that you don't.  People are never simple black-or-white creations.  They're complex mixtures who will leave you thinking about them when you lay the book aside.  Also as usual, the writing is clear and clean and sharp with astute observations about the times, the politics of the era, and human nature.  It's enough to make you envious if you're a writer and prone to that sort of thing.  Not that I am, of course.

When I read Bad Moon Rising, I thought it would be the last book in the series.  I was really glad to discover that it wasn't, and I hope there will be many more to come.  This as an excellent series, and I highly recommend all the books in it, including this one.





Overlooked Movies:  Hardcore



















Ed here: This is Paul Schrader at his best. I thank Bill for reminding me how good  it is.
Bill Crider:

You've heard this story before: "It was a wandering daughter job."  This is an excellent version of that story.  This time the wandering daughter is Kristin VanDorn (Ilah Davis, in what might have been her only movie role), who's been brought up n the rigid Calvinst home of her father, Jake (George C. Scott).  When she goes missing on a church-sponsored trip to California, Jake hires a sleazy P.I. named Mast (Peter Doyle) to find her.
What Mast finds is a hardcore porn film starring Kristen.  Was there ever anybody better at playing a tightly wound guy than Scott?  The scene where Mast shows Jake the film is just one of several in the movie that prove Scott was a masterful actor.  The scene is so famous that it's become part of an Internet meme, as in George C. Scott watches Star Wars on Blu-Ray or George C. Scott watches the Modern Warfare 3 trailer.
Naturally Jake doesn't consider that his daughter might be appearing in a hardcore film of her own volition.  He believes she's been kidnapped and forced into the role, so he goes to Calfifornia to find her.  He travels through the belly of the beast in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego.  Along the way he enlists the help of a woman named Niki (Season Hubley), who's in the porn game herself.  There are some fine scenes between the two of them, complete opposites that they are, that really bring out their characters.  
The rest of the plot and its unfolding, I'll leave it to you to find out.  This movie was a real shocker to me when I saw it long ago, 1979 or '80.  I'm sure it's lost a lot of the shock value by now, but parts of it would still be tough to watch.  Scott is really good.  So are Boyle and Hubley. 
The movie was written and directed by Paul Schrader, whose brother, Leonard, wrote the novelization.  I read that one when it came out, and I'm sure I still have a copy of it somewhere.  If I ever run across it, I'm going to read it again.

Headlines that shouldn't be true but are

TMZ chief Harvey Levin: We have proof NFL ‘turned a blind eye’ to Ray
Rice

Pat Robertson: ‘Blessed are the fully armed’ in church, ‘theirs is the
Kingdom of Heaven’

CNN host shreds Fox for ‘victim-blaming’: NFL woman abuse joke made me
want to ‘throw up’

Facebook status drives man to shoot at ex-girlfriend, but gun jams, so
he kills her lover

Fox host spends 12 seconds not apologizing for ‘stairs’ quip about NFL
domestic violence

Man who called 911 in Ohio Walmart shooting changes his story after
viewing video

‘Sons of Guns’ reality show star Will Hayden charged with raping second
child

Texas Governor Rick Perry’s lawyers invoke Louis XIV to dismiss charges

Facebook status drives man to shoot at ex-girlfriend, but gun jams, so
he kills her lover

MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski baffled by Kirsten Gillibrand: Why won’t you
‘name names?’

Wash. state city councilman demands all prayers be directed to
Christian God

Fox complains Obama wasn’t ‘leading’ on Ray Rice matter as White House
issues statementt

Remains of missing nursing student Holly Bobo found in Tennessee

Watch Keith Olbermann’s epic rant: NFL head Goodell is an ‘enabler of
men who beat women’

Pennsylvania man accused of beating woman, setting her genitals on fire
follow on Twitter | friend on Faceboo

High School Girl Taunted, Beaten At Bus Stop For Acting ‘Too Much Like
A White Person’

Three nuns found murdered in convent...

Handsome Men Have Poorer Sperm Quality, New Study Shows

Keith Olbermann on Roger Goodell: “An enabler of men who beat women”
who “must resign”

China kills nearly 5,000 dogs in one city

One of our finest crime writers: Noreen Ayres Brash Books

09.08.14 WRITING THE JUAN DOE MURDERS: WHAT’S OLD IS NEW, WHAT’S NEW IS OLDNoreen Ayres




The Juan Doe Murders  could have spun right off today’s headlines. Back in the ‘90s when I was living in Southern California, I was touched by the fate of Hispanics who arrived without, shall we say, government permission. Driving south just twenty miles from my home, I’d see highway signs with the black silhouettes of a running man and a woman just behind him grasping the hand of young child whose pigtails are flying as she seems lifted nearly off the ground; above them, the word “Caution.”The signs were to notify drivers that illegal aliens were told by their “coyotes” to jump out of vehicles near the immigration checkpoint and run across the freeway to hide in the shrubs until they could make their way north. Regardless of the political question, the rendering is symbolic of just one of the dangers of illegal immigration. (Today the original sign hangs in the Smithsonian, and many of the signs have been removed as crossing areas have changed or widened.)I regularly shot handguns at an indoor range located on a narrow road a little off the freeway. On the other side of the road, shrubs collected in thick stands. But I could still make out a small migrant camp, shirts laid out on the ground. The camp was very close to railroad tracks. More than once I read about a train annihilating an immigrant.If I drove north to reach one of the biggest malls in the nation, I’d pass by hundreds of acres of cultivated land: Rows and rows of green stuff growing. Dozens of workers, male and female, bent to their tasks under hot sun. To get a feel for what the work was like, I harvested corn and bell peppers one year and potatoes another, for charity. But I knew at any time I could wipe a sleeve across my forehead, trudge up to the collection points, unload, and call it a day. The people scrambling for a better life couldn’t. One morning a man walked into the rows, located a certain other man, pulled a gun, killed him, and ran. I don’t remember if he was ever apprehended.I’m not saying the “illegals” are right in coming here as they do. I just can’t erase the memory of darker-skinned nannies in white uniforms who sat on park benches watching the children belonging to the owners of nearby mansions, this park a mile from my house (my house not a mansion, however!). The contrast between how most people in the county lived and how the struggling members of Hispanic origin live, legal or illegal, just got to me.Calling these souls “aliens” and “illegals” distances us, although I realize we use the words as shortcuts. I chose the title  The Juan Doe Murders  easily after twice observing multiple simultaneous autopsies at the county morgue as part of classes in criminal investigation that I was taking. Somewhere, somehow, I heard the term “Juan Doe” in reference to a case file. During that period as well, I encountered several newspaper stories about deaths in county cities heavily populated by Hispanics, with and without Green Cards—which were not green but pink until 2010. There were case files with “John Doe” on them and “Jane Doe,” but the “Juan Doe” term offered another uncomfortable separation.I wanted to change the truth and give name to some of the unidentified corpses. In fiction, we can.On the other hand, there are some readers and writers who believe fiction is compressed truth, so I will stick with that!Tags: coyotes, crime fiction, crime novels, illegal aliens, Jane Doe, Juan Doe, Juan Doe Murders, mystery novels,Mystery Writing, Noreen Ayres, thrillers, unidentified corpses