Thomas Pluck's Blog, page 13
January 25, 2017
pre-order Bad Boy Boogie and get swag
The day has come. Bad Boy Boogie: a Jay Desmarteau crime thriller, is now available for pre-order. If you’ve read short stories with Jay in ThugLit and Blood on the Bayou, you know what to expect from this ex-con Cajun bad boy, who’s just as deadly with his wits as his fists.
If you email me your paperback pre-order receipt (photo, email from Amazon or B&N, etc) and include a mailing address, I will send you a surprise on publication day: a signed bookmark, and I’ll email you the Jay Desmarteaux short story that kicks off right after Bad Boy Boogie ends. Send it to me (remove the spaces) at badboypre @ thomaspluck . com
The e-book isn’t up yet, but when it is, the same offer applies. Get this Bad Boy right here.
On the fence? Here’s what a few of my literary heroes have to say:
“Thomas Pluck has with this novel launched himself into the rare category of … must-read novels … must re-read … must tell all and sundry about. It is that fine, that compelling. Made me relive all that a wonder novel yields. Just tremendous.”
— Ken Bruen, author of the Shamus and Macavity Award-winning Jack Taylor mysteries
“Thomas Pluck is a crime writer to watch. Steeped in the genre’s grand tradition but with heart and bravado all his own, his writing is lean, smart and irresistibly compelling.”
–Megan Abbott, author of You Will Know Me and Queenpin
“Tough, tight, and taut, BAD BOY BOOGIE is a standout. Thomas Pluck is a writer who knows his dark territory inside and out. A damn fine read from start to finish.” –Hilary Davidson, author of Blood Always Tells
And don’t you love the cover? Even if you don’t, you can’t miss it:
Tagged: Bad Boy Boogie, Pre-Order Special
January 19, 2017
Bad Boy Boogie uncovered!
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Ain’t she a beauty? Designed by James Ray Tuck Jr., a fine author in his own right. Working with Eric and Lance at Down & Out Books has been a dream. The book will be published in April. It will be available for pre-order soon, and I will share the links once they are live.
So you can’t read it yet, but here’s what people who have read it have to say:
“Thomas Pluck has with this novel launched himself into the rare category of … must-read novels … must re-read … must tell all and sundry about. It is that fine, that compelling. Made me relive all that a wonder novel yields. Just tremendous.”
— Ken Bruen, author of the Shamus and Macavity Award-winning Jack Taylor mysteries
“Thomas Pluck’s BAD BOY BOOGIE is a vivid dose of New Jersey noir with heart, soul and muscle.”
– Wallace Stroby, author of the Crissa Stone series
“Thomas Pluck is a crime writer to watch. Steeped in the genre’s grand tradition but with heart and bravado all his own, his writing is lean, smart and irresistibly compelling.”
–Megan Abbott, author of You Will Know Me and Queenpin
“Jay Desmarteaux is a worthy addition to the list of crime fiction protagonists. He’s Louisiana heart mixed with pure New Jersey grit. Thomas Pluck’s prose is taut, muscular, and pulls the reader through the book’s violent bursts at a light speed clip. Look out for this one.”
– Dave White, Shamus Award Nominated writer of the Jackson Donne series
“My first Thomas Pluck novel won’t be my last. Bad Boy Boogie is a superb, taut, little thriller that hits all the right notes and sustains its central conceits to the very last page.”
– Adrian McKinty, author of the Sean Duffy crime novels
“Beautiful Bad-assery. Full of lyrical longing for a youth unfulfilled and the brutal truth of an adulthood gone dangerously wrong. Brilliant. Thomas Pluck may well be the bastard love child of James Lee Burke and Richard Stark.”
– Josh Stallings, author of Anthony and Lefty Award nominated Young Americans, and the Mo McGuire series
And here’s a little taste:
When Jay Desmarteaux walked out the gates of Rahway Prison, the sun hit his face like air on a fresh wound. The breeze smelled different, felt charged, electric. He had spent twenty-five years as a monk locked inside a dank Shaolin temple dedicated to violence and human predation while the men who put him there lived free from fear.
Men who needed killing.
I’ll be touring, so if you want to hear me read, grab a beer, arm wrassle, or set my beard aflame, check out my Events page.
Tagged: Adrian McKinty, Bad Boy Boogie, Dave White, Down & Out Books, Josh Stallings, Ken Bruen, Megan Abbott, New Jersey, Nutley, Wallace Stroby
January 9, 2017
The Art of Cracking a Safe
While the rest of us were eating hot dogs in puff pastry, popping champagne corks, or wearing goofy 2017 sunglasses, two intrepid thieves hammered their way into a diamond merchant’s digs on 36th street in Manhattan, blocks away from phalanxes of NYPD officers, and opened two safes, cleaning them out of $6 million in merchandise:
“a team of burglars broke into a jeweler’s office on West 36th Street on New Year’s Eve. The crime was widely reported for its scope — the thieves made off with $6 million in diamonds and other gems — and its brazen timing, occurring as the ball dropped six blocks away in a neighborhood teeming with police officers. Surveillance video showing two people hitting a sixth-floor door with hammers was taken immediately after midnight, the police said, when the sound of cheers would have most likely drowned out any banging.”
I love a good safe cracker story. After reading Agatha Christie Ms. Marple novels on my English teacher’s spinner rack, my introduction to crime fiction was Michael Mann’s movie THIEF, starring James Caan as a professional burglar dueling with the mob. Loosely based on criminal Jean Seybold’s (pseud. Frank Hohimer) memoir The Home Invaders, it is rough and flashy like an uncut diamond. The book is much different. Mostly they broke into rich homes and stuck a gun in people’s face. It all fell apart when a Senator’s daughter was the victim and was assaulted. So don’t buy the honor among thieves line. (Save that for Bernie Rhodenbarr, Lawrence Block’s bookstore-owning burglar.)
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There’s many ways to open a safe. Nitroglycerin, drills, sledgehammers. In THIEF, James Caan’s Frank famously cuts open a bank vault with a thermal lance. Our daring safe crackers, according to by the NY Times’s crime beat reporter Michael Wilson, did not force their way into the safes. Investigators think they got the combinations from the installer (or that’s what they’re telling the press). Another theory, mine, is that they just cracked the safes. This isn’t something every Joe can do, but check out fellow Jersey boy Jeff Sitar. Here he is, cracking a bank vault in five minutes:
Jeff is the best public figure who cracks safes. He offers his skills to people who have lost their combinations, with proper documentation. But how many can do what he does, or close to it, who have chosen a different career path?
It makes one wonder, and appeals to the desire for “hidden knowledge” that drives much of my favorite crime fiction: where we get a tour into the dangerous outlaw world from the cozy confines of our safe European homes. If you like books about safecrackers, I can recommend two of my favorites: The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton, and Young Americans, by Josh Stallings. Two short, great reads.
Do you have a favorite novel about a safe cracker? Share it below!
Tagged: Jeff Sitar, Josh Stallings, Michael Mann, Safe Cracking, Thief
January 8, 2017
Don’t Make Hiring a Private Eye One of Your New Year’s Resolutions
A must-read blog is Writing PIs, for writers and everyone. Great advice on protecting your privacy from stalkers and thieves here:
We once got a call from a woman who wanted to know how her abusive ex-boyfriend had learned her new home address. We ran a quick search of her address on Google, and guess what? She’d listed it on an online resume, which meant anybody could find that home address by simply searching for her name.
Let’s go over a few resolutions you can make to protect your confidential information so you don’t need to add “Hire a Private Investigator” to that list.
Tip #1: Stop sharing your home address
It’s your home, your private residence, the center of your family life — you don’t need to share this address with anybody other than friends, family and trusted business contacts. One way to protect your home address is to provide your business address instead.
Another way to protect your home address is to purchase a private mailbox from a US post office, or from a…
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January 6, 2017
My Favorite Reads of 2016
Because this is a thing writers do, I went through my Goodreads list and found the books I enjoyed reading the most last year. Some of them were published earlier, but why should that matter? I try to read a varied list, but it’s always something I struggle with, because there are so many great books I haven’t read yet, and my library request list is currently over 350 books long.
In Sunlight or In Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper, edited by Lawrence Block.
You Will Know Me, by Megan Abbott
The Nix, by Nathan Hill
Ratlines, by Stuart Neville
Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was, by Sjón
The Cold Cold Ground, by Adrian McKinty
What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, by Randall Munroe
Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang, by Joyce Carol Oates
Juliet Takes a Breath, by Gabby Rivera
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt
True Grit, by Charles Portis
The Last Samurai, by Helen DeWitt
The Jealous Kind, by James Lee Burke
Cutting Teeth, by Julia Fierro
Stranded, by Bracken MacLeod
The Big Rewind, by Libby Cudmore
Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart
All the Bridges Burning, by Neliza Drew
The Devil’s Highway, by Luis Alberto Urrea
God of the Rodeo: The Quest for Redemption in Louisiana’s Angola Prison, by Daniel Bergner
No Happy Endings, by Angel Colón
The Fade Out, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante
Twilight, by William Gay
Last Night at the Lobster, by Stewart O’Nan
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
Cannibals and Other Stories from the Pine Barrens, by Jen Conley
Midnight Falcon, by David Gemmell
On the Move: a Life, by Oliver Sacks
And I read many more, but these stood out the most.
The Year’s Best Crime & Mystery Stories 2016
Paperback available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and your local indie bookstore.
Available as an e-book on Kindle, B&N Nook, Apple iBooks, and Kobo.
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If you haven’t read it, or just want to read it again with some more great crime stories, grab it for your e-reader or read it on your phone, PC, Mac, iPad, ePood, or someone else’s.
My story’s about love and pain and justice on the Neuter Scooter, and it’s a personal favorite. I’ll be returning to these characters…
Tagged: Anthologies, Joyce Carol Oates, Kristine K. Rusch, Megan Abbott
December 17, 2016
Advance Praise for Bad Boy Boogie, a Jay Desmarteaux yarn
The advance praise is coming in for Bad Boy Boogie. I’m thrilled that authors whose work I’ve admired for years–Ken Bruen, Wallace Stroby, Dave White, and Adrian McKinty–have kind words about my crime thriller, out in April 2017 from Down & Out Books.
When Jay Desmarteaux walked out the gates of Rahway Prison, the sun hit his face like air on a fresh wound. The breeze smelled different, felt charged, electric. He had spent twenty-five years as a monk locked inside a dank Shaolin temple dedicated to violence and human predation while the men who put him there lived free from fear.
Men who needed killing.
When Jay Desmarteaux walks out of prison after serving 25 years for the murder of a vicious bully, he seeks his family and follows the advice of his convict mentor: the best revenge is living well.
But old friends want him to disappear, and new enemies want him dead. With his wits and fists, Jay unravels a twisted tale of small town secrets and good old New Jersey corruption.
Advance Praise:
“Thomas Pluck has with this novel launched himself into the rare category of … must-read novels … must re-read … must tell all and sundry about. It is that fine, that compelling. Made me relive all that a wonder novel yields. Just tremendous.”
— Ken Bruen, author of the Shamus and Macavity Award-winning Jack Taylor mysteries
“Thomas Pluck’s BAD BOY BOOGIE is a vivid dose of New Jersey noir with heart, soul and muscle.”
– Wallace Stroby, author of the Crissa Stone series
“Jay Desmarteaux is a worthy addition to the list of crime fiction protagonists. He’s Louisiana heart mixed with pure New Jersey grit. Thomas Pluck’s prose is taut, muscular, and pulls the reader through the book’s violent bursts at a light speed clip. Look out for this one.”
– Dave White, Shamus Award Nominated writer of the Jackson Donne series
“My first Thomas Pluck novel won’t be my last. Bad Boy Boogie is a superb, taut, little thriller that hits all the right notes and sustains its central conceits to the very last page.”
– Adrian McKinty, author of the Sean Duffy crime novels
December 16, 2016
Unloaded makes Oline Cogdill’s best of 2016
Looking for gifts for the crime lover in you? Reviewer Oline Cogdill published her list of the best of 2016, and among the many fine books is the charity anthology Unloaded: Crime Writers Writing Without Guns, the brainchild of Eric Beetner, from Down & Out Books. Thanks to Hilary Davidson for the head’s-up:
My Denny the Dent story “The Final Encore of Moody Joe Shaw,” is available only here. It also contains stories from Hilary Davidson, Joe Lansdale, Joyce Carol Oates, Reed Farrel Coleman, Alison Gaylin, Kelli Stanley, Tom Pitts, S.W. Lauden, Grant Jerkins, Holly West, Angel Luis Colon, and many more.
The book can be bought from Amazon in paperback or for Kindle, and you can also order it from your local bookstore or Barnes & Noble.
December 8, 2016
A Protectors Bargain and a Plucking Holiday Gift Guide
The answer is always more books. What was the question?
Oh, with the holidays coming, what to buy for your friends and loved ones? Books, of course. They don’t read? Well that’s just wrong. How do you fix it? More books!
For example, you can get nearly 100 stories from authors all over the globe if you buy the two Protectors anthologies. Generally they cost forty bucks plus shipping, but in the giving spirit of the season, you can buy them directly from me for $30 shipped (in the continental US. Email me for elsewhere).
Just click the “Contact” button up there and email me, and we’ll work from there. I can take checks or Paypal, but I’d recommend Paypal if you need the books by the holidays. I will take orders until December 20th.
If you want to buy the books from Amazon instead: Protectors 2: Heroes and Protectors: Stories to Benefit PROTECT are available there. BookPeople and Watchung Booksellers also have copies.
I’m in those anthologies, but not in what’s possibly the best anthology of the year, In Sunlight or in Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper, edited by Lawrence Block. A beautiful book with 18 paintings and stories to go along with them, by Stephen King, Lee Child, Joyce Carol Oates, Megan Abbott, Warren Moore, Joe Lansdale, Craig Ferguson, and LB himself. I loved this book, couldn’t get enough of it. And next year, LB’s doing another. My story “Truth Comes Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind,” inspired by the painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme, will appear in the sequel Alive in Shape and Color.
Want a Christmas story? My story “Letters to Santa” appears in ThugLit Presents Cruel Yule, edited by Todd Robinson, with stories by him, Hilary Davidson, and many more. The story is only available here, and it’s my take on “be careful what you wish for” … with a visit from the Krampus.
I wish you all the best of holiday seasons with your friends and family. I’ll be in Louisiana celebrating with the in-laws, and looking for lost Carcosa. If I don’t return, blame the Yellow King…
December 7, 2016
Visiting the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial
When we visited the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial, I was reminded that tourists are ugly from all over. Not long after 9/11, I noticed people coming to take photos of Ground Zero. I can understand that, I like taking photos as well. What bothered me was how they posed in front of it, smiling. It just seems disrespectful. I saw the same oblivious ugliness as tourists posed in front of the list of those who died at Pearl Harbor.
The viewing platform.The memorial is hallowed ground; the ship is below you. The platform crosses it just behind the front turret, which remains above water. This was a clever way to mark the grave of nearly 1200 men who died during the sneak attack, an enormous cross that’s not there unless you think about it. The bow and stern are marked with white buoys. Around the harbor you see cement markers memorializing the other ships sunk on that day.
The list of those who died at Pearl Harbor, without a smiling idiot.It’s eerie, looking down through the crystal blue water and seeing the rusted hulk of the ship just below, occasionally seeping oil. Small colorful fish dart around the structure. A sign asks you to not throw coins, which contribute to the decay.
The remains of the front turret, gun removed.The immensity of the battleship is not readily apparent below the surface. Even when you see the buoys, it’s hard to imagine. I’ve seen larger boats, like the ore boats of the Great Lakes, but not from above. The sailors who shuttle you to the platform remind you that this is a cemetery at sea, and to be respectful, but it’s quickly forgotten.
The ship stretches into the distance.The small white dot below the other ship marks the stern. That and the slightly rust-colored tinge to the water gives you an idea of the Arizona’s size. A torpedo pierced the bow, but it sank with the superstructure otherwise intact. It’s a solemn place, or should be. Maybe they need more soldiers there to give a presence of authority; at Arlington National Cemetery, people were well behaved, especially during the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I think people posed in front of the Eternal Flame, which is still pretty lame.
I didn’t see any people doing this at Bergen-Belsen, or in front of Anne Frank’s grave. Soldiers vs. civilians, I guess. Ground Zero is certainly hallowed ground to the families of the dead, yet tourists feel compelled to smile and pose in front of the empty hole. The stereotype of the Ugly tourist isn’t just for Americans anymore.
The anchor of the U.S.S. ArizonaWe visited the U.S.S. Bowfin while we waited 2 hours for our shuttle to the platform. It’s parked right nearby and a good way to kill time while you’re waiting, without sweating with the mobs in the museum and souvenir shops.
The U.S.S. Bowfin, aka “Pearl Harbor Avenger”
It’s about the same as the U.S.S. Growler near the Intrepid museum in NYC. If you’ve never been on a sub before, it’s a good look into the life of a submariner. The cramped beds, the hatchways, the claustrophobic spaces; it makes Das Boot seem roomy.
On the old subs everything is make of brass and looks like antique steampunk machinery. It seems out of place next to the large mechanical switches and analog gauges. It’s sort of in-between the brass equipment of old sailing ships and the voting-booth look of switches and knobs on war machinery of the 70’s and 80’s.
I’m not sure if they allow you on the deck of the Growler, but we got to crawl all over the cannons and guns on this one. And take clever photos. And while I would not pose smiling before 1,177 watery graves, or a list of men who died in combat, I believe the stern of the Pearl Harbor Avenger and Old Glory are perfectly fine.
Tagged: Hawaii, History, Photos, World War 2
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