Enigma Part Two: Time and Distance
The agent of my dreams for the crime novels has requested the manuscript of The Working Dead. She read Flamingo Dawn last year, liked the writing, didn’t like the way the story was presented, which I understand. All the POV characters in Flamingo Dawn are presented in real time staggered by order of their appearance rather than sequentially. The novel begins at noon the first day and ends at noon on the second day, but the opening scene takes place at 10pm on the first day. The chief of NYPD’s Intelligence Division is killed in a home invasion. The names of every undercover cop in the city are in the hands of a vicious killer. Time is of the essence and the lead detective has to figure out who killed Walt Bergman and why before cops begin to die. The detective is involved with the dead man’s wife and she’s fled to LA. Did she kill Walt? Is everyone overreacting? Does the main character want to solve the crime? None of the characters understand what is happening until the end.
Back to the request. If you write enough and submit enough you find yourself in odd circumstances. Here are mine: I have an agent but he doesn’t like crime novels. He reps a thriller I wrote called Ways to Die in the Congo and some non-fiction. We agreed that I’m on my own for the crime books. Flamingo Dawn is in the final round of consideration by a publisher. The Working Dead was written before Flamingo Dawn but I never marketed it beyond showing it to an agent ot two. I envision The Working Dead as book three in a series but I wrote it to stand alone because I couldn’t predict which of the books might be sold first, if ever. I have four of these manuscripts featuring the characters from the series all designed to stand alone or stand together, written over a period of five years. When my “first novel” appears it will likely be my fourth or fifth or tenth depending.
I’m delighted this agent asked for The Working Dead. The book is set in San Francisco with a side trip to Venezuela. An old flame approaches the main character who finds her in the arms of a colonel from Venezuela’s Interior Ministry. Her family operates a gold mine under threat of Nationalization. Her father and her husband have borrowed money from mobsters while they fight the decree. The detective learns that his family is involved and discovers the truth about a thirty year old homicide involving a labor organizer representing tunnel rats ( The Working Dead.) Anon.