Small Crimes

21 TALES for $0.99

2012-01-22T10:16:00.000-08:00

For a short time I'm going to make 21 TALES available for $0.99 for the kindle. That's right, less than $0.05 per story. Can't beat that, right? If you're a fan of Small Crimes, Fast Lane or Julius Katz you want to read this collection--Small Crimes fans for my early Manny Vassey stories, Fast Lane for a prequel story that allows Johnny Lane to for once act as the Lew Archer PI he always wanted to be, and Julius Katz for the Pete Mitchel stories since Julius originated from a mix of Nero Wolfe and Pete Mitchel.

"Inventively depraved" New York Magazine

"Dave Zeltserman is one of the crime genre's most accomplished, radical, and innovative talents. His command of style and personal dark vision of the world are framed in the short form to reach out and shake the reader by the throat. I only wish that 21 TALES had been 51 Tales or 101 Tales. We need more of his edgy stories to rattle the field." Tom Piccirilli, author of Shadow Season

"In a relatively short period of time Dave Zeltserman has established himself as the most relevant author of dark crime fiction working today. As usual, Dave doesn't pull any punches, and his 21 Tales is inventive, nasty, pulpy fun." Paul Tremblay, author of The Little Sleep

"Deadpan and more ruthless than ever, Zeltserman pulls off one clever shocker after another in classic pulp style. Not for the faint-hearted!" Vicki Hendricks, author of Cruel Poetry

"Zeltserman's twisty-tailed gems drag you deep into pulpland, bitch slap you dizzy, and leave you begging for more." Roger Smith, author of Mixed Blood

"Dave Zeltserman's stories demonstrate that he's as masterful with the short story as he is with the novel--the same stunning level of craft and the same lacerating vision. This is an important collection." Ed Gorman, author of Ticket to Ride

"I've become a big Fan of Dave Zeltserman for one simple reason: The man can write. 21 TALES, a collection of his short stories, sure will satisfy the most die-hard fan, while also giving bite-size tastes to the unconverted. It's broken down into five sections that range from the semi-autobiographical to the brutal, but are all dark tales of noir." Bruce Grossman, Bookgasm

"21 TALES is a lethal Molotov cocktail that won't give you a hangover but could give nightmares." Pulp Metal Magazine

So get your $0.99 kindle copy while it's still available!

Free Bad Karma

2012-01-20T13:40:00.001-08:00

The Kindle version of BAD KARMA is going to be free for the next 5 days. The reaction to this book has been interesting. When the book was released in 2009 readers unfamiliar with me tended to like it quite a bit, while fans of my harder core noir books that had already come out (Fast Lane, Small Crimes and Pariah) were just pissed off and disappointed that I wrote a hardboiled PI novel instead of another pitch black noir journey. In a way, this book opened up my readers to accepting Julius Katz and The Caretaker of Lorne Field, which they mught not have otherwise. Even though Bad Karma is a hardboiled PI novel, it's still very different from the norm, and at it's core it is very dark in its own right. It's also connected to three of my other books: BAD THOUGHTS, FAST LANE and OUTSOURCED.

I never really did much to promote this book in the past for several reasons: the timing of when this book came out couldn't have been worse, which was the same time PARIAH was released, the publisher never was able to fix the Amazon page which showed an early and rejected book cover, and finally, the goal for this book was significantly more modest than Caretaker and my 'man out of prison' noir trilogy books--namely to be a fun, hardboiled PI read.

Here are a few of the reviews from when the book came out:

"Detective Bill Shannon, introduced in Bad Thoughts (2007), is back, and a welcome return it is. Relocated from Boston to Boulder, Shannon has fled the Boston PD for a low-stress lifestyle, picking up a little work on the side as a private eye. But despite his efforts to find psychic and psychological peace of mind after his horrific encounter with Herbert Winters, the demonic serial killer from the earlier novel, Shannon discovers that putting distance between himself and the old evils doesn’t help him escape the new evils. Zeltserman weaves together elements of both mystery and horror genres, as Shannon again finds himself confronting the darkness that roams the boundary beyond one’s physical senses. It’s as though Zeltserman has aimed a 12-gauge sawed-off at smarmy New Age sensitivities and fired off both barrels. Irony abounds, as Shannon unmasks deviant gurus, evil yoga sudios, Russian gangsters, and guys who use their baseball implements in socially unacceptable ways. If you liked the first novel in this series, you’ll love this one." — Elliott Swanson, Booklist

"The violence in this book is more subdued than that in Bad Thoughts, but it's certainly there. The story is also a pretty straightforward p.i. tale, though not without some horror and New Age elements, which once again proves Zeltserman's versatility (he's doing noir novels and Nero Wolfe pastiches in EQMM, among other things). If you haven't read Zeltserman's work, it's time to start." Bill Crider, read the entire review here.

"Even though this is not SMALL CRIMES part two, don’t let that dissuade you from checking out the Shannon series. It might have its flights into the metaphysical world, but it’s still top-notch P.I. reading. Even for Yankee fans." —Bruce Grossman, Bookgam, read the entire review here.

"Loads of fun here"-- Drowning Machine, read entire review here.

"The novel works on three levels. It’s part clever murder mystery and part personal spiritual journey as Shannon tries to heal his psychological scars and achieve inner peace; it’s also an informed and impartial commentary on the New Age Movement, presenting both the positive and negative aspects the subculture. This might be a standard PI tale in structure, but it shares the ingenuity which has brought a distinctive touch to so much of Zeltserman’s fiction." The Tangled Web, read the entire review here.

If you like hardboiled PI fiction and are willing to try something a little different from me, I think you'll like this one. And you can grab it free now!

10 reasons to read SMALL CRIMES

2012-01-11T05:22:00.000-08:00

1) "The plot of Small Crimes ricochets out from this claustrophobic opening, and it's a thing of sordid beauty" NPR's Best Crime & Mystery novels of 2008

2) "spare but ingeniously twisted and imbued with a glossy coating of black humor." Washington Post's Best Books of 2008

3) "Zeltserman's breakthrough third crime novel deserves comparison with the best of James Ellroy" starred review from Publisher's Weekly

4) "Denton is one of the best realised characters I have read in this genre, and the powerfully noir-ish, uncompromising plot, which truly keeps one guessing from page to page, culminates with a genuinely astonishing finale." --David Connett, Sunday Express

5) "Small Crimes proves a deft entry in the tradition that goes back to Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me, James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and Charles Willeford’s High Priest of California — small masterpieces celebrating the psychopath as a grinning archetype, as American as apple pie." Sun-Sentinel

6) Not only does the novel have clean, simple prose, ample suspense and twists, and a fast-paced plot--standard fare; it also offers brilliant psychological insight into tortured souls, and on a deeper level, it is a moralistic tale about how small crimes beget larger ones." Bookmarks Magazine

7) "This is an extremely black tale that grips readers by the throat and doesn’t let go until their last breath has been spent. In other words, it’s a surefire contender for book of the year." Bruce Grossman, Bookgasm

8) "Small Crimes has plenty of crime, but obsession, hubris, and evil, pure and impure, are at the heart of this vivid noir." Booklist, Thomas Gaughan

9) "ultra-noir, funny, and shocking by turns" Barnes & Noble

10) "A Jim Thompson mentality on a Norman Rockwell setting... "Small Crimes" is a strong piece of work, lean and spare, but muscular where a noir novel should be, with a strong central character whom we alternately admire and despise." Boston Globe

10 Reasons to read PARIAH

2012-01-09T08:36:00.001-08:00

I'm always a bit hesitant to promote Pariah. Not that I'm not proud of the book, but it's a book that is going to upset and mortify the average mystery reader, and is a book that I wrote without any compromise and with no holds barred. When the Boston Globe ran an article after Robert B. Parker's death suggesting that I might be one of the local Boston writers who could be the new face of Boston crime, Pariah was just out and I ended up getting a bunch of angry emails from Parker fans who tried Pariah, with all them swearing they'd never read anything from me again. I can't blame them. If you love Spenser books, you're probably going to despise PARIAH. But if you have the slightest interest in dark crime fiction or noir, you're going to be glad you tried this book--at least that's the reaction I've been getting from noir/crime readers I've been hearing from.

1) "a doozy of a doom-laden crime story" Washington Post's Best Books of 2009

2) "Darkly enjoyable... clear, crisp prose; his fearless portrait of amorality; and his smart plotting" Boston Globe

3) "Following up the critically acclaimed SMALL CRIMES, Dave Zeltserman had to prove that book was not some sort of fluke. PARIAH proves that CRIMES was no fluke, even surpassing that previous novel in leaps and bounds, to the point that Zeltserman should be considered the new king of Boston crime." Bruce Grossman, Bookgasm

4) "Pariah is a terrific blast" Metro (UK)

5) "It's the kind of book that is going to spoil whatever I read next, as it's going to be found wanting compared to this." The Bookbag

6) "I just finished reading Dave's new novel Pariah. It is one of the most crazed, hilarious, bitter, brutal novels this side of those composed on violent wards." Ed Gorman

7) "Zeltserman, writing in the pitch-black comic tradition of Jim Thompson or Charles Willeford, deserves to stand in such exalted company." Chauncey Mabe, Palm Beach Arts Paper

8) "PARIAH IS ALL I KNOW OF BLISS AND LAMENT. BLISS AT READING A SUPERB NOVEL AND LAMENT AT KNOWING THAT DAVE ZELTSERMAN HAS NOW RAISED THE BAR SO HIGH, WE'RE SCREWED." Ken Bruen

9) "Another phenomenal outing for Zeltserman" Thuglit

10) "If the major newspapers and critics have any balls at all, this will be on their top ten lists – and not in some sub-category like “Best Mystery Novel” or some condescending bullshit list like that. This is the real deal, dear readers. Go get yourself a taste." Nerd Of Noir

10 quick reasons to read KILLER

2012-01-08T09:06:00.001-08:00

1) "Spare prose and assured pacing place this above most other contemporary noirs." Publisher's Weekly

2) "Dave Zeltserman is at it again writing about ex-con antiheroes with the kind of panache that would make Jim Thompson, king of the psycho killer novels, proud." Boston Globe

3) "With graphic imagery and exciting twists, this novel is impossible to put down and has a surprising ending. A brilliant read." Aberdeen Press & Journal

4) "Written in a spare, terse style, and with chapters alternating between past and present, we slowly learn more about March. But even then the closing chapters present a devastating twist and shocking conclusion." Sunday Tribune

5) "This novel is everything hard-boiled fiction should be - compact, direct and disciplined, and concerned with humans rather than stereotypes. It is also, for all its violent subject matter, a quietly told story, which makes its tension all the more intense" Mat Coward, Morning Star

6) "Killer is a major novel of crime." Ed Gorman

7) "Dave Zeltserman's Killer is simply one of the best crime novels I've read. Not in a long time, not in ages, not this year, but ever." Juri Nummelin, Pulpetti

8) "The whole book is told in tightly controlled prose that's perfectly suited to the subject matter. Killer is another bang-up job from Zeltserman, and a noir novel in the grand tradition. Don't miss it." Bill Crider

9) "This is vintage Zeltserman, and that means there's always a tail. With a sting. Be warned." Roger Smith

10) Amazon is currently deeply discounting the Kindle version of KILLER to $7.59

10 quick reasons to read OUTSOURCED

2012-01-07T09:40:00.000-08:00

1) "A small gem of crime fiction" Booklist

2) "You can outsource software engineering, but so far at least you can’t outsource crime writing as good as Zeltserman’s." -Boston Globe

3) "A dark, lightening-paced read" Financial Times

4) "Bodies mount up as the double dealing and revenge gather apace. The blurb on the book describes it as a "fast-paced, edge-of-your seat crime novel," and it really does live up to the hype. Add this to your holiday reading list for a piece of escapism." Morning Star

5) "Zeltserman’s nifty bit of neo-noir is damned decent fun" DIG Boston

6) "Back in the “real” world, Dave Zeltserman’s Outsourced is a dryly witty take on the heist caper genre with a gaggle of reluctantly redundant software engineers planning the perfect bank robbery. He brings together crazed hitmen, Russian mafiosi, Iraqi antiques smugglers and domestic angst in a fast-paced action romp that has the inestimable advantage (or not) that its characters are actually human." Peter Millar, London Times

7) "DAVE Zeltserman is one of the new, highly original voices in crime fiction, his writing spare, disciplined and concrete. His plots are as original as anyone writing hard-boiled fiction with an attractive noir edge, and always grimly entertaining. Like his characters. Outsourced, already being turned into a movie, follows an all-too-human bunch of outsourced software engineers who have no job prospects and no long-term insurance but do possess a plan. They are going to use their computing skills to rob a bank, and Zeltserman delivers a finely paced, witty and stylish take on the heist caper novel. More than most authors churning out mysteries, Zeltserman is fully steeped in the conventions of crime fiction. He remains absolutely his own hard man." The Australian

8) "Dave Zeltserman's OUTSOURCED is a speedy, gritty, hardboiled bank robbery tale that bops and weaves along as a group of out-of-work computer programmers decide to get their hands dirty and find they like it a lot. As with Zeltserman's previous novels SMALL CRIMES, PARIAH, and KILLER, his greatest storytelling skill is in the small true, emotional details that every reader will understand. He will definitely keep you flipping pages as fast you can, and once you finish one book you'll be racing on to the next." Tom Piccirilli, author of Shadow Season and The Cold Spot

9) Amazon is currently deeply discounting the Kindle version of Outsourced, and is available for only $6.33

10) The film version of Outsourced will be going into production this year, and don't you want to read the book before seeing the movie?

Still time to give Aukowies for the holidays!

2011-12-20T08:37:00.001-08:00

Stumped on the holiday present to give the person who has everything? May I suggest Aukowies? They can make the perfect present, especially for those who tend not to have the best luck with house plants or goldfish. They're easy to feed, and also they're tough, durable, and nearly impossible to kill. And now with the paperback edition of The Caretaker of Lorne Field, a book full of Aukowies have never been cheaper!

Here are 10 additional reasons to consider giving the gift of Aukowies during this holiday season:

1) Short listed by the American Library Association for best horror novel of 2010

2) Black Quill nominee for best dark genre book of 2010

3) "Superb mix of humor and horror" Publishers Weekly in a starred review

4) "delicious horror-ish novel" Newsday

5) "truly demented noir-horror monsterpiece" critic Chauncey Mabe

6) "a nail-biter" Library Journal

7) "This might be one of the best books of the year" Bookgasm

8) "Harrowing. Zeltserman colors it black with the best of them." Kirkus Reviews

9) "a very darkly funny dark fantasy" Locus Magazine

10) "superbly crafted horror story" Booklist

JULIUS KATZ & ARCHIE Free to Prime Members

2011-12-17T09:40:00.000-08:00

JULIUS KATZ & ARCHIE is now free for Amazon Prime members.

Caretaker and A Killer's Essence on the web

2011-12-16T08:21:00.000-08:00

The trend with The Caretaker of Lorne Field continues as Jim Winter has his say.

A Killer's Essence is highly recommended by A Momentary Taste of Being.

According to Newport Public Library, A Killer's Essence is "a quick, quirky, fresh read, noir yet with a hopeful ending, and to me, the best part is, this Zeltserman guy has 5 previous books in our library system."

Over 30,000 Juliuses

2011-12-09T08:45:00.000-08:00

Since making JULIUS KATZ MYSTERIES free on Amazon I've had 30,000 Kindle downloads. I was originally hoping to get around 20-25K downloads, and it did start petering out around 25K, but then a week ago Pixel of Ink gave it a mention, and that caused another relatively quick burst of 5000 downloads. So now the big question is how many of these free downloads are going to get read? If enough do, it should generate enough sales of JULIUS KATZ AND ARCHIE to allow me to start working on the next Julius Katz novel, if not, I'll keep writing Julius Katz short stories for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, so Julius Katz will continue in one form or another. The next Julius Katz story, ONE ANGRY JULIUS, will be appearing in the June issue of Ellery Queen (out in March), and sometime later, ARCHIE SOLVES THE CASE will also be appearing.

If you're a fan of Julius and Archie and would like to see another novel, you can help by leaving a review on Amazon and/or spreading the word elsewhere. In this day of ebooks, this type of support is critical from readers.

One thing I've learned during this process--if you use Smashwords, always opt out from distributing to Kobo. For several weeks I've been trying to get the price of JULIUS KATZ MYSTERIES set on Amazon to $1.99, but I can't because the price is still set to $0.00 on Kobo. Weeks ago I opted out on Smashwords to remove JULIUS KATZ MYSTERIES from Kobo, but it's still there, still with an old cover from probably 6 months ago, which also shows Kobo isn't picking up updates from Smashwords.

Reasons to get '21 Tales'

2011-12-06T11:04:00.001-08:00

Some reasons to get the print, kindle or Nook versions of 21 Tales:

1) You've read or are planning to read my crime noir novel, Small Crimes, which topped NPR's list of best crime and mystery novel of 2008, as well as making the Washington Post's best books of 2008, then you want to read 21 Tales for the Manny Vassey stories. Manny Vassey is a dying mobster who's at the heart of Small Crimes, but he also appeared in several of my early crime stories, which have been collected in 21 Tales.

2) 21 Tales has a pre-'Fast Lane' Johnny Lane story, where you get to see Johnny Lane at a time where he gets to play the Lew Archer-type PI he always dreamed of playing.

3) If you've been enjoying my Julius Katz stories, then you want to read my Pete Mitchel stories to see the origins of Julius. While I originally wrote 'Julius Katz' for the Black Orchid contest as a tribute to Nero Wolfe, there's every bit as much of the DNA from my con man, Pete Mitchel, in Julius, as there is from Nero Wolfe.

4) If you've been enjoying my stories in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine or other publications, you'll enjoy 21 Tales as the stories range from light + humorous con man stories to the darkest noir.

5) Authors Tom Piccirilli, Paul Tremblay, Roger Smith, Vicki Hendricks, Ed Gorman and Lynn Kostoff have all spoken up about how much they like 21 Tales. New Magazine has called 21 Tales 'inventively depraved'. Bookgasm wrote 'I’ve become a big fan of Dave Zeltserman for one simple reason: The man can write. 21 TALES, a collection of his short stories, surely will satisfy the most die-hard fan, while also giving bite-size tastes to the unconverted.'

JULIUS KATZ AND ARCHIE -- First Chapter

2011-11-23T06:35:00.001-08:00

“What do I want from you? Simple. Find out who’s planning to kill me.”

These words were spoken by one Kenneth J. Kingston as he sat across from Julius, his voice having a thick nasal quality that bordered on whining. Kingston’s legs were crossed, his manner seemingly casual and unconcerned, his mouth compressed into a curious smile that seemed at odds with what he had just told Julius.

Kingston was a well-known Boston-area crime writer. I’d say he was a bestselling writer, but he wasn’t, at least not with his last several books. He was forty-nine and physically almost the exact opposite of his fictional private eye, and he certainly had no resemblance to tough guy crime writers like Mickey Spillane or Robert B. Parker. Dressed in an Armani suit and wearing expensive Italian loafers, he was five feet eight inches tall, and thin with a slight build. I had seen his publicity photos, so I thought I knew what to expect, but those must’ve been carefully posed because in real-life he didn’t resemble them very much. From his demeanor you could tell that he believed himself to be good-looking, but he wasn’t. Even if his tight curly hair hadn’t begun receding up his forehead, he wouldn’t have been. Not with his thin nose being as pointy as it was, and not with his chin being even pointier, and certainly not with that mouth of his being too big and wide for his angular face when it wasn’t compressed into a curious smile. If I had olfactory senses, I would have been able to describe the cologne he was wearing, but since I don’t, I could only guess it was some sort of dense musk. Of course it was possible he wasn’t wearing any cologne, but he seemed like the type that would.

Kingston wasn’t the first person to ever sit in Julius’s office and speak those words, or at least words to that effect, but those other prospective clients appeared anxious and worried as they did so. I found Kingston’s smile and his overall behavior confusing, maybe even disconcerting. If it confused Julius, I couldn’t tell. Julius didn’t respond to Kingston’s bombshell. Instead, he sat expressionless, although the fingers of his right hand began drumming lightly on the top of his antique walnut desk, which indicated an annoyance on his part.

After Kingston had called Julius for an appointment, I built a profile on him, hacking into whatever databases I could find that referenced him, financial or otherwise. I discovered a number of things, including his past tax returns and his current net worth. While he had a hundred and twenty-three thousand dollars in savings and investments, he was not the millionaire you’d expect a well-known author to be, but I guess that wasn’t so surprising since, as I’d already mentioned, he was no longer a bestselling one. Four books ago he was, but since then his sales have been trending downwards. His last book sold a little over thirteen thousand copies, which was an unmitigated disaster given that his publisher printed a hundred thousand. As part of the profile, I also analyzed all of his books—both the early ones he had written with his writing partner and the ones he later wrote by himself. I didn’t get much from this analysis other than general indications that Kingston thought very highly of himself, and that the books were poorly written, at least the ones he wrote by himself, which most likely accounted for the downward trend in sales. I now went back to his profile hoping to discover a clue as to why Kingston would be smiling in such an unusual fashion for someone who believed his life to be in danger.

You’re probably confused at this point as to what’s going on. Let me explain. While Kingston probably believed there were only two sentient beings at that moment in Julius’s office, himself and Julius, there were actually three; although I was the only one not of a biological nature even though I acted as Julius’s accountant, personal secretary, unofficial biographer and all-around assistant. What I am is a two-inch rectangular-shaped piece of space-aged computer technology that’s twenty-years more advanced than what’s currently considered theoretically possible—at least aside from whatever lab created me. How Julius acquired me, I have no clue. Whenever I’ve tried asking him, he jokes around, telling me he won me in a poker game. It could be true—I wouldn’t know since I have no memory of my time before Julius.

So that’s what I am, a two-inch rectangular mechanism weighing one point two ounces. What’s packed inside my titanium shell includes visual and audio receptors as well as wireless communication components and a highly sophisticated neuron network that not only simulates intelligence, but learning and thinking which adapts in response to my experiences. Auditory and visual recognition are included in my packaging, which means I can both see and hear, although as I’ve already mentioned, olfactory senses were left out. I can also speak. When Julius and I are in public, or when he is with a client as he was now, I speak to him through the wireless receiver that he wears in his ear as if it were a hearing aid. When we’re alone in his office he usually plugs the unit into a speaker on his desk.

Julius calls me “Archie”, and I’ve grown to think of myself as Archie, just as I’ve grown to imagine myself as a five-foot tall heavyset man with thinning hair, but of course I’m not five-foot tall, nor do I have the bulk that I imagine myself having, and I certainly don’t have any hair, thinning or otherwise. I also don’t have a name, only a serial identification number. But for whatever reason Julius calling me Archie seems right; and besides, it’s quicker to say than the eighty-four digit serial identification number that has been burnt into me.

The reason I have an image of myself being five-foot tall is easy to explain. Julius wears me as a tie clip, which puts me at roughly a five-foot distance from the ground when he stands. At one point when Julius realized the effect he was having on my self-image, he tried wearing me on a hatband, but I found this new height disorienting, as if I were walking around on stilts, and Julius likewise found it uncomfortable wearing a hat, so we mutually agreed I’d go back to being worn as a tie clip. I’ve never quite figured out where my self-image of thinning hair and heavyset build came from, but guess they were physical characteristics I picked up from Dashiell Hammett’s fictional PI, the Continental Op; which could be explained by Julius patterning my personality and speech on the works of some of the most important private eye novels of the twentieth century, including Hammett’s Continental Op novels, Red Harvest and The Dain Curse. Or maybe for some reason I identified with Costanza from Seinfeld—one of the few television programs Julius indulges in.

I was searching through a database of photos from classic Hollywood scenes when I found one that showed the same smile that Kingston was now wearing. The photo was taken from “The Third Man” and it showed Orson Welles the moment a passing light catches his face while he’s hiding in the shadows. The same smile. A smile of amusement. It didn’t add up. Why would Kingston be so amused over the fact that he had an unknown assailant planning to kill him? I was going to ask Julius about this, but decided to hold off. From the way he was tapping on his desk, I knew the slightest nudge—intentional or otherwise—would have him demand that Kingston leave his office immediately.

The newspapers and TV had Julius as Boston’s most brilliant and eccentric private investigator. They were right about the brilliant part, but as far as the eccentric part, maybe they were right, I don’t know, but I’d call it more laziness than anything else. Julius’s true passions were fine food, finer wine and gambling, and until he met Lily Rosten, womanizing. He hated to forego his true passions for the drudgery of work and only did so when it was absolutely necessary; in other words, when his funds were dwindling and he needed money so he could continue collecting wine for his cellar, indulging at Boston’s most exclusive gourmet restaurants and wagering a good deal of money in either high stake poker games or on the horses. And even then it would take days of unrelenting nagging on my part before I’d be able to get Julius to budge. So Julius was never in a good mood when he took cases, and now he was in a worse mood than usual with Lily gone on a business trip and his recent steep and puzzling losses in poker. When he started drumming his fingers harder on his desk, I knew he was seconds away from dismissing Kingston.

“There’s that case of Chateau Margaux 1995 waiting for you at the Wine Cellar,” I reminded him.

His drumming slowed down. Julius had been looking for that vintage for several years, and it went for four hundred dollars a bottle. He would have to choose between suffering Kingston’s intolerable smugness or losing that wine, and I was betting on the former, which served my purposes. I took satisfaction from helping Julius, but I also had my own agenda. I wanted to solve a case before him. You see, I long ago figured out the name he gave me, Archie. It came from the fictional private eye, Archie Goodwin, Nero Wolfe’s second banana who was always one step behind his boss. So yeah, I got the joke, but one of these days I was going to surprise Julius. It was only a matter of seeing enough cases and analyzing the decisions Julius makes to allow me to readjust my neuron network appropriately. One of these days he was going to have to start calling me Nero.

Julius made his decision and stopped his drumming completely. “Sir, if this is some kind of joke,” he started.

Kingston’s eyes opened wide in a mock display of surprise. “Oh, this is no joke,” he claimed. And then he giggled. I didn’t think writers who wrote tough guy crime fiction were supposed to giggle, but that was the only way to describe the sound he made.

I could almost feel Julius sink back in his chair, resigned to the fact that he wanted that case of wine more than he wanted to be free of this man. While the newspapers may be right about Julius’s eccentricity, they were completely wrong about his being particular about which cases he took. That was a myth. While Julius tries to avoid the more unseemly cases, especially those involving domestic issues, his primary concern was the fee that the cases would pay. It took a good deal of money to support Julius’s lifestyle, more now than ever with Lily in his life, and before booking the appointment with Kingston I arranged for a minimum fee of ten thousand dollars, which was money Julius now needed. Right now he had enough to stake him for his weekly poker game, but not enough for his next month’s expenses or other luxury items, 1995 Chateau Margaux included.

“You say this is not a joke, yet you act like it is,” Julius said with a sigh.

“I assure you it isn’t,” Kingston said, his tone more serious, but still with a smirk on his lips. “As I told your assistant, I’m willing to pay you ten thousand dollars for what should be no more than a few hours of your time.”

Julius grunted. “Either you overestimate my abilities or you don’t need my services, not if you believe you only need a few hours of my labor,” he said.

Kingston’s eyes dulled. He was beginning to get bored with whatever game he was playing. “No on both counts,” he said. “I’ll pay you the ten thousand dollars up front, and I won’t need more than four hours of your time. You can bill me whatever outlandish fee you’d like if it takes more than that.”

Julius nodded slightly, his features marble hard. “Go ahead, explain to me why you think someone is trying to kill you.”

Kingston tried smiling again. Not his amused smile from before but more of a forced one. “How much do you know about book publishing, Katz?” Kingston asked. Julius showed remarkable restraint by simply shrugging and not asking what this had to do with someone plotting to end his life, as I badly wanted to do. Kingston’s lips tightened as he shook his head. “It’s a brutal business,” he continued. “It’s always been brutal, but now more than ever before. It’s the whole blockbuster mentality as publishers fight for limited space in the retail stores. Did you know that sixty percent of all books sold in this country are sold through retail stores, even though they’re only selling books as loss leaders? They’re the ones who are dictating what’s being published these days, and the quality of the book be damned. It no longer matters. It’s all about other factors now.”

Again Julius showed remarkable restraint, maintaining a placid expression and not commenting on the quality of Kingston’s own writing. Upon booking Kingston’s appointment, I emailed Julius an excerpt from one of Kingston’s recent books, and while reading it Julius made a face as if he had sipped a good cabernet that had turned vinegar. He could only read two and a half pages of it before putting it away, claiming that the writing would ruin his appetite for dinner.

Kingston stopped to rub an index finger over his lips, his eyes growing distant. Then his lips tightened into a thin smile and his eyes shifted to catch Julius’s. They were pale, unpleasant eyes.

“My last book didn’t sell as well as it should have,” he conceded. “My next book is good, very different from my others, but good nonetheless. If it isn’t a bestseller, my career is over. We’re taking steps to make sure that happens. Usually books are sent out to reviewers and other writers months ahead of their publishing date for reviews and blurbs, but we’re keeping my next one under wraps until the day it’s released in three weeks. Reviewers, advance readers, nobody is seeing it until then. We’re not even telling anyone the title. It’s one of the ways we’ll be creating an excitement for the book.”

Kingston reached inside his suit jacket and pulled from a pocket a folded sheet of paper which he handed to Julius. Julius unfolded this paper and glanced at it for a moment before placing it on his desk. There were six names on the paper. I recognized five of them from the profile I had built on Kingston. The sixth name I recognized because he was also a Boston private investigator. I told Julius who the first five people on the list were. I didn’t bother telling him about his fellow private investigator since he knew about him as well as I did.

I was confused by all this, but from the way Julius’s eyes narrowed as he stared at his prospective client, I doubted that he was. “And what exactly am I supposed to do with this list?” he asked coldly.

“What do you think?” Kingston said. “That’s the list of potential suspects. I want you to interrogate them. And don’t worry, they all probably want to kill me, all except maybe my wife, although maybe she does too. You should have fun trying to figure out which one of them wants to kill me the most.”

“This is only a publicity stunt,” Julius stated.

“Bingo! That’s why you’re the world class genius detective. So all I want from you is to spend an hour, two hours at the most, interrogating them as a group. Make it look real. They’ll all think it is. I’ll have a TV crew present. Then in two weeks, after the buzz and media attention has been building, bring everyone back for another round of questioning. This time when you’re done act as if you’re stumped and I’ll jump in and name the guilty party. It will be a brilliant piece of publicity that will get the public hot for my book.”

Julius sat completely still with his lips pressed tightly together. I felt as if my processing cycles had ground to a halt—a sensation that I knew was akin to holding my breath with anticipation. Under normal circumstances I knew Julius would tell this man to leave his home, but now I wasn’t so sure. He needed the money. His recent poker losses were not only unexpected but steep—over thirty thousand dollars. Usually Julius had clients lining up to hire him since he’s Boston’s most famous private eye, but when he finally consented a few days ago to take a case this time the pickings were slim, at least among well-heeled prospective clients. There was the Bolovar securities fraud case. They wanted to hire Julius a month ago, and they still wanted to hire him, but that case would require extensive traveling which was something Julius hated. So given all that, I understood the temptation for Julius to take this farce of a case and the ten thousand dollar fee that it offered for no actual work, which I knew also appealed to his innate laziness. If he accepted what Kingston was offering, it would be at least another month before he would take a genuine case, which would be at least another month before I’d have the opportunity to refine my neuron network. My processing cycles felt as if they had slowed down even more, and I realized this new sensation was dejection.

“Sir, I decline your offer,” Julius told Kingston.

My processing cycles nearly hummed as they raced along again. Kingston looked dumbfounded.

“What do you mean you’re declining my offer?” he snapped, his voice even more of a nasal whine than before. “Ten thousand dollars for no more than four hours work? Are you nuts?”

“If you wish to hire a trained seal for your amusement, I suggest you go to the aquarium. I’m sure it will cost you far less than ten thousand dollars. We’re done here.”

Kingston gave Julius a hard stare. “Twenty thousand dollars,” he said.

“I’m not interested.”

“Twenty-five thousand.”

There was a hesitation before Julius shook his head. “It is bad enough,” he said, “that at times I must sell my services to afford the necessities of life, but I have no intention of selling my dignity for any amount. I’m not interested in this charade, and you’ve wasted enough of my time. I must ask you now to leave my office and home.”

Kingston looked like he wanted to argue, but instead nodded and stood up, a thin sneer etching his face. “I’m not done with you yet, Katz. You’ll see.” He left the office then while Julius stayed seated, brooding.

I followed Kingston on several of the webcam feeds that had been set up through the house to make sure he wasn’t up to any mischief and watched him as he left without incident. Once the front door closed, I asked Julius about 1995 Chateau Margaux being a necessity of life. “And Le Che Cru and all the other fine dining establishments that you frequent. These are necessities?”

“For me, Archie, they are.” Julius let out a soft sigh. “I suppose you’re going to be pestering me about turning down an easy twenty-five thousand dollars,” he said.

“No, sir,” I said. “I have to believe that your reputation is worth far more than that sum of money, and it would’ve been unbearable having to watch you play the dupe to someone like him.”

Another sigh escaped from Julius. “It’s good that you understand that, Archie,” he said. “It shows you’re progressing nicely.”

“There’s still the matter of your finances, or lack of such. I know you have your poker game in four days, but we can’t count on any poker winnings from you after your last two disastrous outings. I also know you don’t like the amount of traveling you’d have to do to Los Angeles and Atlanta, but Bolovar still wishes to hire you, very much so, in fact, and their fee would be substantial.”

“Please, Archie, my last twenty-five minutes were unpleasant enough.”

I shut up after that. It would’ve been pointless to continue. Besides, it was almost three-thirty and Julius had been planning to go to the Belvedere Club for their cognac sampling, so he’d be leaving soon. For several minutes Julius sat listlessly, his gaze resting on the book Kingston had brought for him—his previous effort that had disappointed his publisher with sales of only thirteen thousand copies. Kingston had signed it, writing inside: ‘the best book you’ll read this year, at least until you read my next.’ I expected Julius to toss it in the garbage, but instead he let it sit on his desk. When he finally pushed his chair back and got to his feet, instead of heading outside so he could walk the three blocks from his Beacon Hill townhouse to the Belvedere Club, he headed down to his wine cellar. When he picked out a fair Zinfandel, that only confirmed the funk he was in. For whatever reason, Julius only drank Zinfandel when he was sulking, and the more he was sulking the fairer the label of Zinfandel he would choose. I kept quiet about it. I waited until he returned back to his kitchen and prepared a plate of assorted cheeses and crackers to bring out to his private garden-level patio before mentioning to him how he could be sampling exceptional cognacs now instead of drinking what was at best a fair Zinfandel, one that the Wine Spectator had scored at only 81.

Julius sat on a red cedar Adirondack chair that had faded over the years to a muted rust-color and poured himself a glass of the aforementioned wine. His gaze wandered to one of the many rose bushes that were in bloom. The patio was the crown jewel of his townhouse; over two thousand square feet, which Julius had professionally landscaped with Japanese maples, fountains, and a vast assortment of other plantings.

“This is what suits me now, Archie,” he said.

His sulking wasn’t going to do him any good. I knew it wasn’t over the lost fee, but instead over the fact that he had spent twenty-five minutes entertaining Kingston in his office, time that could’ve been spent in other pursuits. At first I thought of needling him about this childish display of his in an attempt to knock him out of it, but decided to try a different approach knowing that his mood was also being affected by Lily Rosten’s absence and the sting of his recent poker losses.

“I’m sorry about booking that appointment,” I said. “I thought it was a legitimate case. He promised that ten thousand dollar fee, but all he would tell me was that it was matter of extreme importance. A life and death issue.”

“Not your fault, Archie,” Julius said.

“Yeah, well, I still owe you an apology. If I had seen him first instead of just talking to him over the phone, I would’ve sized him up better. You know those Italian loafers he was wearing? Six hundred and twenty-four dollars was the lowest price I could find online. That alone should tell you everything you need to know about the guy. I’m surprised you didn’t invite him to your next poker game. You could’ve taken him for a bundle.”

Julius smiled thinly at that. “I was tempted,” he admitted. “But it would’ve meant several more hours of his company, which I decided was a poor bargain at best. Archie, for now I’d like some quiet.”

Yeah, I got it. He wanted to sulk, and he didn’t want me interfering with that. Fine. While he sat and drank his wine, I did some hunting for a prospective client to replace Kingston but couldn’t find any suitable candidates, and after that spent my time playing poker online. I won three hundred and forty dollars, bringing my balance to a little over four thousand dollars, which I had built from the twenty dollars they gave me as a promotion for opening up an account. I didn’t keep many secrets from Julius. In fact, my having this money was the only one, but I had my reason so I adjusted my programming to allow me to keep this one secret from him.

_______________________________________________

Download the rest of the novel now to your Kindle for $2.99

Download the rest of the novel now to your Nook for $4.99

(Kindle price will be going up soon to $4.99)

Book Guide with movie-style ratings

2011-11-20T08:45:00.000-08:00

With my 12th book, A Killer's Essence, recently published, and my 13th book, appropriately a horror novel, 'Monster: A Novel of Frankenstein' out next summer through Overlook Press, I thought it would be a good idea to put out this book guide complete with movie-style ratings. As you can tell from this , I've written crime, noir, horror, mysteries, hardboiled PI, thrillers, and sometimes a mix of these genres. I've arranged this book guide from my charming and humor-filled JULIUS KATZ & ARCHIE to my brutal and fierce crime noir novel, PARIAH. This guide can also be found on my website.

JULIUS KATZ AND ARCHIE (available now for $2.99, e-book only) The first full-length novel feature Julius Katz & Archie from my award-winning Ellery Queen stories. Charming and fun mystery. Rating: PG

THE CARETAKER OF LORNE FIELD (available hardcover, trade paper, e-book) Horror novel shortlisted by ALA for best of 2010. Black Quill nominee for best dark genre book of the year. Rating: PG

A KILLER'S ESSENCE (hardcover available now, e-book) Gritty crime novel with supernatural element that takes place with the 2004 ALCS Yankees-Red Sox series in the background. Rating: R

DYING MEMORIES (e-book only) Thriller. Rating: R

OUTSOURCED (trade paper, e-book) Crime thriller, bank heist. Booklist calls this 'a small gem of crime fiction'. Rating: R

BAD KARMA (out of print, e-book) Hardboiled PI, sequel to Bad Thoughts but very different tone with its evil yoga studios, dangerous Russian mobsters and deviant gurus. Rating: R

KILLER (trade paper, e-book) 3rd (and best) book of my 'man out of prison' crime thriller series. Much quieter than Small Crimes and Pariah, and in a way a quiet meditation into the mind of a killer. Rating: R

MONSTER: A NOVEL OF FRANKENSTEIN (hardcover out next summer) A gothic retelling of Frankenstein from the monster's point of view and where Victor Frankenstein and the Marquis de Sade are in league to bring hell to earth.

SMALL CRIMES (trade paper) 1st book of my 'man out of prison' crime thriller series. Named by NPR as one of the 5 best crime & mystery novels of 2008.

BAD THOUGHTS (out of print, e-book) A grim & bleak horror/crime thriller. To some, nightmare inducing. Rated: R

FAST LANE (out of print, e-book) My first novel. A mix of full-blown Jim Thompsoneque psycho noir and deconstruction of the hardboiled PI genre. Rating: R

BLOOD CRIMES (e-book) the first book of a planned 5-book series. A wild thrill ride of a book, wickedly paced, and loaded with sex, violence and intense horror. I'm sure Twilight readers who find this are going to be horrified, but Blood Crimes is quickly becoming a favorite among noir and horror readers. Rating: NC-17

PARIAH (trade paper) 2nd book of my 'man out of prison' crime thriller series. Named by The Washington Post as one of the best books of 2009. Fierce crime novel, as well as a satire on the publishing industry. Rating: NC-17

The trend continues and over 24,000 Julius's

2011-11-18T09:30:00.001-08:00

This is a short book, but it works. The Aukowies, though barely described, are a constant and lurking presence. Wisely, the author doesn’t give an explanation, or an origin, and so the book takes on a mythic aspect. As the book progresses, the questions of reality, mental illness, and faith arise, and soon even the main character begins to question himself as much or more than the other characters...It’s short, but it does everything a classic story should.

The trend continues with THE CARETAKER OF LORNE FIELD getting another damn fine review, this one over at DAMN FINE HORROR.

Over 24,000 JULIUS KATZ MYSTERIES downloaded to the kindle so far, and it's been gratifying to see comments from readers who are now discovering Julius & Archie for the first time; such as:

"Loved the characters"

"Julius Katz may be a lazy detective, but he sure is fun to read about! A surprising and enjoyable find"

"Fun short stories with sufficiently satisfying plot lines and characters. A nice modern take on mystery stories"

"I am not sure what happened - but I had no intentions of reading this book at all. It was obviously nothing like the paranormal books I normally enjoy. But after reading this book I bought the next book in the series"

"These are clever modern updates of the Nero Wolfe tradition. While the mysteries are excellent traditional mysteries, it is the "relationship" between Katz and his AI assistant Archie that is the star of the show."

The Archie Interviews

2011-11-17T08:26:00.000-08:00

Last year I conducted this 5-part interview with Julius Katz's erstwhile assistant Archie.

DZ: Archie, it's been quite a treat so far chronicling the cases that I have, first the Brewer case that we simply called 'Julius Katz', then the Penney case which Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine is going to be running later this year with the title 'Archie's Been Framed!', and now the Kingston case, which is probably the most fascinating of all of them and which I should wrap up chronicling soon. People outside of the Boston area who are unfamiliar with the Penney case have a hard time believing how accurate the title we gave it is.

Archie: Yeah, well, they should believe it. If Julius didn't pull my bacon out of the fire, they could've fried me for that one. And even though I've got a titanium outer shell, fifty thousand watts would be more than enough to short out my circuits.

DZ: It's one year ago today that you called me to chronicle these cases. I have to admit for a number of reasons I was surprised you picked me and not one of the more better known Boston crime writers, like Lehane. It wasn't because you and Julius thought I'd work cheap?"

Archie: Nooooooooooo....

DZ: Okay, that's a relief. Still, it was a surprise, especially with how different the tone is for some of my crime novels with what you and Julius were looking for.

Archie (chuckling): Yeah, calling the tone of Pariah and Small Crimes different might be the understatement of the year. But Julius is a fan, and as twisted and dark as he found some of your books, there was still that humor he was looking for. And I think you letting him read early drafts of Killer and The Caretaker of Lorne Field cinched it for him.

DZ: Do you think there's any chance we'll be able to get Julius to make an appearance here?

Archie: Roughly 0.00456 percent chance.

DZ: Roughly?

Archie: Plus or minus 0.000001

DZ: In other words, we've got a better chance of seeing pigs fly.

Archie: No, that's not true. With recent advances in genetic engineering, there's a higher probability of pigs flying.

DZ: Okay, not very encouraging. Something I've been thinking about. I've been unable to get releases from all of the suspects from the Kingston case, for obvious reasons. It looks like I'm going to have to come up with some fictional names for a few of them. What about allowing a fan of 'Julius Katz' having his or her name used instead for one of the murder suspects?

Archie: Interesting... I'll run the idea by Julius. (Note from DZ: Julius later declined this as he found the idea unseemly)

DZ: Your actual size?

Archie: Two inches long, one point one seven inches wide, and I weigh approximately one point two ounces.

DZ: You've mentioned that you imagine yourself as a five foot tall, balding heavyset man.

Archie: Yeah.

DZ: Why five foot tall?

Archie: Julius wears me as a tie clip, so when he's standing that would be my height if I was of a biological nature.

DZ: Does Julius know this?

Archie: Yeah, I told him once. When he realized the effect he was having on my self-esteem, he started wearing a hat with me attached to the hat band. That didn't work. First, Julius doesn't like wearing a hat, and second it was disorienting for me, almost as if I was walking around on stilts. So I'm back to being worn as a tie clip, but that height feels comfortable to me now. No complaints.

DZ: How about the balding, heavyset part of your image?

Archie: I'm not sure. Julius doesn't watch much TV, but he does like to indulge in Seinfeld reruns so maybe it's that I find myself identifying for some reason with Costanza. Or maybe it's me identifying with Hammett's Continental Op.

DZ: You told me about how your personality and experience base was initially built by feeding in important 20th century crime novels. So you find yourself most identifying with the Op?

Archie: Maybe. I'm a bit of a mutt, with a mix of Spillane's Mike Hammer novels, all of Hammett's works, Chandler's Marlowes, Ross Macdonald's Lew Archers, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfes, and others, including Damon Runyan's works.

DZ: Why Runyan?

Archie: I think so I'd be quicker to spot grifts.

DZ: And how'd you get the name Archie?

Archie: It's not my name of course. All I have is an 84-digit ID. But Julius started calling me it, and even though he started it as a joke, it seemed right.

DZ: A joke?

Archie: Yeah, the obvious one. That I'd be like another Archie. Archie Goodwin. Always beaten to the punch by his boss in solving the case. So far that's been true, but one of these days it won't be. All I need is to see Julius solve enough cases so I can keep adjusting my neuron network. One of these days he's going to have to start calling me Nero.

DZ: Julius turns down almost all the cases he's offered.

Archie: Yeah. 99.63 percent, to be exact.

DZ: He's that particular?

Archie: Nah, he's that lazy.

DZ: I don't get you.

Archie: Julius is lazy. Incredibly lazy. At least when it comes to work. He wants to spend his life pursuing his true passions, and he only works when his bank account hits anemic levels. When that happens, he'll take any case that pays enough. The whole 'particular about his cases' thing is a media derived falsehood, and one that Julius makes no effort to correct.

DZ: I think I know this already, but what are his true passions?

Archie: Wine, of course. He's got a cellar filled with the stuff. Top notch bottles too. Gambling, especially poker, but the horses also. And food. Julius is very much the gourmet. Probably hard to tell given how fit he is, but if he didn't spend an hour each morning with his intensive martial arts training and another hour with even more intensive exercise he'd be fat. Women also used to be one of his true passions, at least before he met Lily Rosten. Now it's just one woman.

DZ: He's a good-looking guy. He must've done well with the women.

Archie: I couldn't tell you how many nights he stuck me away in his sock drawer. Well, I could. But I won't.

DZ: I'd have to guess Julius is good at gambling.

Archie: One of the best at poker. He has no tell, at least when he doesn't want to have one, and I've spent hundreds of hours trying to find one. And he picks up other players tells faster than I can. But sometimes he'll get stubborn and stick with the horses and have losing streaks. I hate to admit this, but I always look forward to those losing streaks, because it usually means he'll have to take a case.

DZ: Since chronicling the Brewer case and having it published in Ellery Queen, I've heard from readers from other parts of the country who didn't realize this was a true crime case. That instead I had written a pastiche on Sherlock Holmes or Nero Wolfe.

Archie: Yeah, well, Julius is real alright. And while I'm artificially derived, at this point my neuron network is as complex as any human brain.

DZ: I know that, people in Boston know that, but you can understand how some people might think Julius's name is a play on Nero Wolfe's.

Archie: Only a coincidence. Most people probably don't realize Spenser is real too.

DZ: I didn't realize that. I thought he was a fictional creation.

Archie: Nope, Parker was doing the same as you now, which was chronicling Spenser's cases. Spenser, Susan, Hawk, all real.

DZ: Julius ever run into Spenser?

Archie: Yeah, he'd drop by occasionally and share a bottle of wine with Julius and talk shop.

DZ: You'll have to show one of your video recordings of that sometime.

Archie: I'll ask Julius.

DZ: Julius has his 5th degree blackbelt in kung fu, Spenser all bulked out with his weightlifting. Who do you think would win in in a fight.

Archie: It wouldn't be much of a fight. There were a few times after half a bottle of wine Spenser would try talking Julius into sparring with him. Fortunately for Spenser's health, Julius never took him up on it. They did arm wrestle once.

DZ: Really?

Archie: Yeah. Spenser goaded Julius into it. Thing with Julius is, while he's only 180 pounds, all of his martial arts training, especially his internal training, allows him to generate amazing power. He was kind and waited 30 seconds before slamming Spenser's arm to the table. I think he did it harder than he wanted to. There were tears in Spenser's eyes afterwards.

DZ: Spenser was crying?

Archie: He claims it was allergies.

DZ: You're usually kept busy being Julius’s accountant, personal secretary, unofficial biographer and all-around assistant, but what do you like doing during your down time?

Archie: You mean like hobbies?

DZ: Yep.

Archie: Well, it's not what most people would think of as a hobby, but I spend most of my free time adjusting my neuron network.

DZ: Probably not. What's involved with that?

Archie: I'll have a closed loop where I'll replay the events of a case, and I'll make adjustments, add new analytical models and additional pattern recognition modules to see if I can then make the same deductions that Julius did. It's a slow process, but eventually it will pay off.

DZ: With the pay off being...?

Archie: Solving a case before Julius. Someday it will happen.

DZ: So no hobbies?

Archie: I do have a few. There are some famous unsolved math problems where they offer two million dollar prizes for the solution. For about a year I've been working to find a solution for the Hodge conjecture. So far no luck, but I have ideas to explore. I also at times will analyze famous chess games to find flaws, and I've found a few. But most of my time is spent trying to replicate how Julius's brain works. I have a long way to go with that.

DZ: While chronicling the Kingston case I came across a name I never heard before. Desmond Grushnier.

Archie: A shadowy figure. Probably best we don't talk about him.

DZ: Julius has had run-ins with him?

Archie: Yeah, but that's probably all I should say on the matter.

DZ: Okay, I won't push you on it. What's Julius doing now?

Archie: It's 6:08 PM and Julius is sitting outside in his private garden-level patio, enjoying the summer evening, as well as one of his favorite Chardonnay's from his cellar and a platter of fine cheeses and meats. Lily will be stopping by in an hour, and he has 8:30 reservations at Le Che Cru.

DZ: Any new cases on the horizon?

Archie: Probably not for a while. With the money Julius still has in reserves from the Kingston case, not a chance I'll be able to pester him to take another case unless he finds some expensive wine to bid on at auction or he has a bad few weeks at the track.

A Killer's Essence at the Harvard Coop, now on kindle, latest review

2011-11-14T14:13:00.001-08:00

I'll be at the Harvard Coop tomorrow (Tuesday, Nov. 15th) at 7pm, reading/signing for A Killer's Essence.

My publisher has also just made A Killer's Essence available as a kindle download.

I'd like to thank Andrew Leonard over at The Man Eating Bookworm for giving A Killer's Essence its latest stellar review, saying in part:

I've read more books this year by Dave Zeltserman's than any other author, so it was no surprise to this bookworm that I was going to enjoy A KILLER'S ESSENCE. What still gets me though, what always blows me away, is that with each book of his I read, I think there is no way he can top it.

Then he does.

You can read the entire review here.

The case for Julius Katz

2011-11-12T11:28:00.001-08:00

So far over 23,000 copies of JULIUS KATZ MYSTERIES (JKM) have been downloaded to kindles. This ebook is made up of two award-winning stories that were previously published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine:

'Julius Katz' which won last year's Shamus Award for best private eye story, given out by the Private Eye Writers of America (PWA), and also the Derringer Award for best novelette, given out by the Short Mystery Fiction Society.

'Archie's Been Framed' which won this year's Ellery Queen's Readers Choice Award as it was chosen by Ellery Queen's readers as their favorite story published in the magazine in 2010 among some fierce competition, including Doug Allyn's Edgar-award winning story (Doug took second place in the Readers Choice Award).

Right now you can download JKM for free at Amazon for your kindle and for $0.99 at B&N for your Nook, and along with these there's also a full-length Julius Katz mystery novel titled JULIUS KATZ AND ARCHIE that is priced at $2.99 at both Amazon and B&N, and two more stories scheduled to be published in Ellery Queen--ONE ANGRY JULIUS, where a very petulant Julius solves a murder while sitting on a jury, and ARCHIE SOLVES THE CASE, where Archie (at least according to him) beats Julius to the punch in solving a case. I'm also planning to start writing a second Julius Katz mystery novel soon.

These stories and the JULIUS KATZ AND ARCHIE novel are very different from my crime and horror fiction. Most readers describe them as charming, witty and a lot of fun. The Wolfe Pack has endorsed them, and I've gotten emails from readers who are Rex Stout, Agatha Christie and Robert B. Parker fans, who have all enjoyed these stories and the novel immensely. I've also gotten enthusiastic endorsements from the following writers who have also enjoyed the exploits of Julius & Archie: Ed Gorman, Timothy Hallinan, Roger Smith, Bill Crider, Paul Levine, Naomi Hirahara, James Reasoner, Paul Brazill and Joe Barone.

Now here's the interesting thing (at least to me). I've also heard from a number of readers who are fans of my noir/crimes novels and The Caretaker of Lorne Field (horror), and not only are these fans of my much dark and more violent books enjoying Julius Katz, but some are telling me that JULIUS KATZ AND ARCHIE is their favorite of mine, and these are readers who typically never read mysteries.

Q. R. Markham should've read Pariah

2011-11-11T07:20:00.000-08:00

If he had, he would've known what his Frankenstein quilt of a novel, Assassin of Secrets, would've bought him.

Over 20,000 Julius's and counting

2011-11-09T06:27:00.000-08:00

Over 20,000 Kindle versions of JULIUS KATZ MYSTERIES have been downloaded since Amazon set the price to $0.00 last week. Tomorrow I'll be getting back into the trenches for the first time since I sold SMALL CRIMES to Serpent's Tail to talk about this.

Kindle publishing tip--better to use Author Central

2011-11-08T15:05:00.000-08:00

I've had several writers recently ask me how I got the book titles bolded in the description for JULIUS KATZ AND ARCHIE, and the way that was done was using Amazon's Author Central instead of their KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) pages.

Author Central is just a much better way to enter you ebook description. You can bold and italicize text, and you can enter in a lot more information than you can from the KDP method. For example, using this approach you can enter 4000 characters for the book description, then another 8000 characters in the 'From the Back Cover' section, which is a good place to put blurbs for your book, as well as blurbs for other books.

You can take a look at my JULIUS KATZ AND ARCHIE page to see how much better this can look than using KDP.

Bookreporter.com on A Killer's Essence

2011-11-05T09:15:00.000-07:00

Dave Zeltserman is arguably better known to literary critics and to fellow authors than he is to the public at large, which is puzzling. His output is steady and consistently strong. Best of all, his books have the potential to appeal to even casual fans of the mystery and thriller genres. His style and topics are meaty and accessible. Read the first page of any one of his books, and you will keep reading until the tale is told; read one of his books, and you will want to read them all. Part of the reason for this is that while Zeltserman deals with issues pertaining to crime in all of its manifestation, his stories also concern themselves with the affairs and situations of everyday living that are important yet often hobble us in the course of completing tasks that are (or seem to be) life-or-death matters.

So it is that A KILLER’S ESSENCE, Zeltserman’s latest effort, concerns itself with the hunt for a serial killer in New York, and much, much more. It is told in the world-weary voice of Stan Green, a New York City police detective who is driven and dedicated, possibly too much so. Green is assigned to a case involving the brutal mutilation and murder of a middle-aged woman on a bustling street in broad daylight. There is a witness to the crime, who, interestingly enough, is unable to describe the killer. Green is saddled with a superior who is never satisfied, even with the best work. There is no succor for Green at home, either. He is living with a high-maintenance girlfriend named Bambi (who, he hastens to tell us, is neither a stripper nor an escort); to be fair, she is asked to put up with a lot. His children live with his ex-wife and her new husband out of state, and his promises to them are more broken than fulfilled.

You can read the entire review here.

A Killer's Essence, price cut for Dying Memories, more Julius Katz and Archie!

2011-11-04T10:46:00.000-07:00

I'd like to thank Beth Kanell for sending over this photo showing a stack of A Killer's Essence being prominently displayed at the Mysterious Bookshop in NY.

I'd also like to thank Naomi Johnson for reviewing A Killer's Essence over at The Drowning Machine, and also to Bruce Grossman for doing the same over at Bookgasm.

Massive price cut for my thriller, Dying Memories, for the Kindle--$2.99 to $0.99. This is only going to be for a short time, so if you want to read a fun, fast-paced thriller that's very different from the norm (and very different from anything else I've written), now's your chance to pick this up for under a buck!

Over 12,000 kindle downloads of my award-winning Julius Katz Mysteries since this wen free 2 days ago! And there's been a carryover effect for JULIUS KATZ AND ARCHIE:

#17 in Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery > Hard-Boiled
#18 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery > Hard-Boiled

I'd like to thank everyone who's picked up copies of these, and let's help spread the word about JULIUS KATZ AND ARCHIE and get it #1 over at Amazon!

Award-winning Julius Katz Mysteries now a free Kindle download

2011-11-02T10:52:00.000-07:00

My award-winning Julius Katz Mysteries is now available as a free Kindle download from Amazon. That's right. $0.00, nada, zip, absolutely free. Not surprising that 1000s of readers have already taken advantage of this and that Julius Katz Mysteries is currently ranked third on Kindle's hardboiled mystery list. And here's the beauty of this--after reading these award-winning stories, the first full-length Julius Katz novel, JULIUS KATZ & ARCHIE, will be waiting for you as a $2.99 Kindle download. And other Julius Katz mysteries will be gracing the pages of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine in the near future, the next one being ONE ANGRY JULIUS. So if you haven't discovered Julius Katz and Archie yet, now is the perfect time!

Blood Crimes -- Monster Librarian

2011-10-21T11:36:00.001-07:00

The Monster Librarian recently reviewed a number of horror themed adventure books, and summed up their review of Blood Crimes with:

Strong language, gore, violence, and sexual situations give the first book in Dave Zeltserman’s series a high-octane feel. The fight scenes are graphic and leave you feeling as breathless as the characters. Highly recommended.

To read the full review of see the other horror books reviewed, click here.

10 quick reasons to read The Caretaker of Lorne Field

2011-10-20T10:53:00.001-07:00

Now that Caretaker is out in paperback, I thought I'd put together 10 quick reasons why you should read this book.

1) Short listed by the American Library Association for best horror novel of 2010

2) Dark Quill nominee for best dark genre book of 2010

3) "Delicious horror-ish novel...Zeltserman is fully in control." -- Newsday

4) "Superb mix of humor and horror...Zeltserman orchestrates events perfectly...Readers will keep turning pages to see how the ambiguous plot resolves." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review

5) "Harrowing. Zeltserman colors it black with the best of them." -- Kirkus Reviews

6) "Crime writer Zeltserman has produced a nail-biter...The narrative is straightforward and gritty, reminiscent of works of Dashiell Hammett...gripping and actually 'horrifying,' this title is recommended for horror fans and readers who may relish unpleasant surprises." -- Library Journal

7) "This superbly crafted horror story explores the dichotomy between belief and rationality." -- Booklist

8) "The black comedy of errors that ensues invites comparison to storiesby Kafka, David Prill, James Hynes, William Browning Spencer, and other authors who have mused on the dark side of daily breadwinning... Though Zeltserman's approach is clearly tongue-in- cheek, he deftly balances the competing interests of the characters to keep the truth of the narrative events ambiguous. A few deaths at conveniently inopportune moments and several coincidental fades to black only add to the dramatic tension of the narrative. Stories of this kind are hard to pull off and often collapse under the weight of their outrageous premises long before they end. It's to Zeltserman's credit that his novel holds together up to and through the final paragraph, and that it compels the reader to stay with it for that long." -- LOCUS Magazine

9) "The Caretaker of Lorne Field succeeds as a horror novel, a psychological thriller and a haunting parable, even in some ways that Zeltserman may not have intended. There are dark levels to this work, some of which are immediately evident and others of which reveal themselves only upon later reflection. I don't know if the book will come to be regarded as a classic, either now or at some point in the future, but it deserves to be." --Bookreporter

10) "Throughout, the reader is not sure if this is all some sort of mental breakdown, building to a fever pitch of an ending. As a writer, Zeltserman is not just limited to doing gritty crime, but has the talent to give some horror authors a run. This might be one of the best books of the year, yet might slip through the cracks. The one thing most who read this novel will agree upon is the true sense of creepiness that Zeltserman layers on as each page is turned." Bookgasm

And now for a bonus reason--Aukwowies have never been cheaper or more plentiful, and really, is there a better gift to give for Halloween than a book full of Aukowies??

Hitting stores today + reviews

2011-10-19T08:14:00.001-07:00

The paperback version of The Caretaker of Lorne Field is hitting stores today. Aukowies have never been this cheap, nor this plentiful, and really, is there a better gift for Halloween than a book full of Aukowies? Find out for yourself why the American Library Association short listed Caretaker for best horror novel of 2010, and why it was a Black Quill nominee for best dark genre book of the year.

A couple of recent new reviews have shown up for Caretaker. I'd like to thank John over at Pretty Sinister Books for his thoughtful review, which opens with:

I may get flack for what I am about to do, but here goes nothing. Dave Zeltserman’s exceptional novel The Caretaker of Lorne Field is a genre blending true original combining elements of the horror novel, the crime novel and...the fairy tale. And now that I’ve got you either scratching your head or rolling your eyes let me explain.

I'd also like to thank James Simpson from Australia, who also gave Caretaker a thoughtful analysis.

I must say I don’t read a great deal of horror novels these days, but as a kid I certainly did. However I stumble upon one or two every now and then and a few months ago I came across one of the best. You’ll have to go to the end of the fiction shelves to find this one (I know must customers never venture there but they should), it’s by an author who’s not normally a horror writer and is known more for his bad arse gets out of jail gets even with those who won’t leave him alone books, however The Caretaker of Lorne Field is simply a masterpiece.

You can read James' entire review here.

Over at Ransom Notes, Jedidiah Ayres came up with an interesting list of recommended creepy mysteries for this time of year, and gave A Killer's Essence a nice nod:

Playing another riff on the theme of sight and perception, but from the other side of the effect this time, Zeltserman has his NYPD homicide detective trying to solve a series of killings in the midst of a multi-dimensional maelstrom of personal crisis saddled with a lone witness to the killings with an annoying extra-sensory perception issue. Last year saw Zeltserman's first long-form foray into horror Caretaker of Lorne Field and this one takes his new tools and ingredients to successfully blend mystery and horror to great satisfaction.

Finally, if you'd like a signed copy of A Killer's Essence, contact The Mysterious Bookshop--they have a lot of them ((or at least I signed a couple of boxes of books for them).

Julius Katz Mysteries now Free!

2011-10-18T09:53:00.000-07:00

To celebrate Julius and Archie both being safe and sound, Julius Katz Mysteries is being made free over at Smashwords. This ebook contains last year's Shamus award-winning story, Julius Katz, and this year's Ellery Queen's Readers Choice Award winner, Archie's Been Framed.

So go over to Smashwords now and grab Julius Katz Mysteries for absolutely nothing!

Son of a gun -- Julius is alive!

2011-10-15T08:28:00.001-07:00

Anyone reading today's Boston papers already knows this, but Julius Katz is alive and well, and has identified to the police Anton Dupierre's murderer, and this culprit is the very same person who blew up Julius's townhouse, and surprisingly it wasn't Desmond Grushnier. Even more surprisingly, I was able to talk briefly with Archie this morning and he let it slip that Grushnier actually saved Julius's life. The call was brief given everything that was happening, and he apologized for ignoring my earlier calls, but he was under orders from Julius as the two of them went deep undercover to catch the person responsible for Dupierre's murder and all the rest of it. From what I've been able to piece together, after the explosion Julius called in a favor from the Boston Police Commissioner to report his death to the media, and that this was done equally to protect Lily as it was so he could continue his investigation in secret. I've also talked briefly with Julius, who is in surprisingly good spirits given the damage to his townhouse and the loss of his wine collection, and we're going to sit down together after his townhouse is rebuilt, and he'll be giving me the full story to write up.

Mystery Scene on A Killer's Essence

2011-10-11T08:10:00.001-07:00

In riveting narrative, Zeltserman illustrates what happens to a wounded man whose psychic powers outstrip his ability to cope. Think you'd like the power to see inside the dark hearts of others? Think again. How would it feel if, on the way to the office, we saw demons on the sidewalk, harpies on the subway? This is strong stuff, and the author is expert at sharing Zach's horror, as well Green's empathic reaction to it. In the end discovering the killer's identity isn't half as compelling as the inner torment of two men who are "gifted" with psychic abilities.

You can read the entire review here.

The trend continues with Caretaker

2011-10-10T07:33:00.000-07:00

Caretaker gets some love from Australia.

Now on Twitter

2011-10-07T08:48:00.000-07:00

My buddy Roger Smith has been trying to convince me for over a year to get on Twitter, and I finally made the leap. You can follow me now at @DaveZeltserman

A Killer's Essence & Caretaker

2011-10-05T07:32:00.001-07:00

The NJ Star Ledger gave A Killer's Essence a nice review in their most recent Killer Thriller roundup, summing up their review with "This eerie thriller deftly blurs the lines between madness and the perception of reality."

Today the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library writes about A Killer's Essence, saying in part: "A Killer’s Essence by Dave Zeltserman is an absorbing novel that skillfully integrates the various characters’ stories and the murder investigation seamlessly into a fascinating story. Edged with darkness, this is crime fiction that goes beyond the case and into the life of the detective."

I'd like to thank Dave Kanell at Kingdom Books for all the support he's given A Killer's Essence, and writing such nice things about it. Dave + Beth + Kingdom Books have been great supporters of mine (as well as Dave + Beth being good friends). There are few people out there as passionate about crime fiction as Dave Kanell, and they run one of the best mystery + crime fiction stores out there with probably more signed books than anyone. Anyone looking for signed books (mine included) or recommendations should be contacting Dave at Kingdom Books.

This is a good article from the Readers Advisor Desk on recommending horror novel to library patrons, but what I particularly liked was the three sure bets:

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The Ruins by Scott Smith
The Caretaker of Lorne Field

And finally, the trade paperback version of The Caretaker of Lorne Field now has a street release date of Nov 1st, which means it will start showing up in the next week or so in bookstores. Is there really a better Halloween present to give someone than the gift of Aukowies? With 100s of thousands of Aukowies in every book, the price of an Aukowie has always been a fraction of a cent, but now with the paperback release, it's never been cheaper!

Is Julius Katz still alive?

2011-10-01T09:22:00.000-07:00

I've read the newspaper reports like everyone else, and I was at his funeral two weeks ago, but I'm starting to have these doubts whether Julius is really dead. There's no arguing that Julius's townhouse was destroyed by four pounds of C-4, with the blast originating in his wine cellar. All that happened. But ever since the funeral a thought has been nagging at me that maybe things aren't what they appear to be, and I realize now what it was--a look that I caught from Julius's childhood friend, Phil Weinstein. And then there's the call I received last night from Julius's sister, Julie. She's pretty much convinced that Desmond Grushnier is behind the bombing (I wrote about Grushnier when I chronicled the Kingston case, which Julius had me publish as an ebook with the title 'Julius Katz and Archie'), and she wanted to know if I had any additional information about Grushnier that I hadn't given her yet. There was something about her tone that made me think she's beginning to doubt whether her brother is truly dead. And then there's Archie. With discussions I've had with scientists at MIT, his titanium shell would've protected him from the explosion. It's possible he was turned off prior to it, but it's also possible there's an entirely different reason why he hasn't been answering his calls.

My gut is now telling me Julius might still be alive, and that all the NY publishers declaring that there's no place anymore for a brilliant, eccentric PI like Julius, or charming traditional mysteries, might all be wrong. Hell, it wouldn't be the first time. So maybe, just maybe, Julius might turn out to be alive after all, and there just might be a place for him with today's mystery readers.

Boston Globe's revew for A Killer's Essence

2011-09-30T06:58:00.000-07:00

Here's the Boston Globe's review for A Killer's Essence that ran on Sept. 1st.

In ‘A Killer’s Essence,’ a writer at top of his game
BOOK REVIEW
September 01, 2011|By Ed Siegel

A KILLER’S ESSENCE By Dave Zeltserman

Overlook, 240 pp., $23.95

Dave Zeltserman has had to put himself in the shoes of any number of disreputable types in his estimable noir novels - hit men, out-of-control cops, old coots who think they’re saving the world by weeding a field. Now, in “A Killer’s Essence,’’ comes the ultimate in empathizing with the dark side. Zeltserman, who lives and dies with the Red Sox, creates a protagonist who - the horror - is a Yankees fan.
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Zeltserman, though, proves no masochist, setting the story in 2004. Should you need a reminder, that’s the year the Red Sox came back from a 3-0 deficit against New York to win the pennant and then to take the World Series, reversing the 86-year-old Curse of the Bambino. Why is this important in a murder mystery? Because Brooklyn detective Stan Green is something of a mess. He is approaching his 40s; his wife has divorced him and taken the two kids off to Rhode Island; his boss busts his chops at every opportunity; his new girlfriend is a bimbo named Bambi; his partner is laid up in a hospital; and his son is so angry at him that, under the tutelage of his stepfather, he has become a Red Sox fan. The eventual demise of his beloved Yankees is one more nail in his psychological coffin.

But while it’s fun for formerly long-suffering Red Sox fans to relive the glory days, the 2004 playoffs are the sideshow. The main event is Green’s attempt to unravel three murders in which the bodies have been grotesquely mutilated. Few writers are Zeltserman’s equal in setting up the chessboard with obsessive perps and depressive cops. And it isn’t always easy in the world of noir fiction to tell the difference between the two.

A major arbiter in this tale should be Zachary Lynch, who witnessed one of the murders. The problem is that Lynch suffers from lesions in the brain from a previous trauma, and he sees nothing but horrific hallucinations when looking at certain people.

Just Green’s luck. But if you’re thinking this development is too far-fetched, it turns out to be a superb, perhaps metaphysical metaphor for the evil and sadness in the world. The chapter in which Lynch details his affliction, and tells Green why he sees holes instead of eyes when he looks at the detective, is one of the finest pieces of writing Zeltserman has penned.

And that’s saying something because Zeltserman’s lean but muscular style, so evident in “Killer’’ and “The Caretaker of Lorne Field,’’ is just as sharply honed here. His ability to juggle Green’s story and Lynch’s, develop a riveting murder mystery, and even mix in some Brighton Beach ex-KGB sleazeballs, all in less than 250 pages, is a pretty neat page-turning trick.

Actually, I wish he had taken a little more time to weave in more from the playoff series - or is that just the Red Sox fan in me talking? A couple of other cavils: Green should have been more aware of the danger he was putting his family in by taking on the Russian mob, and - I’m not giving anything away - the penultimate suspect would have made a more satisfying murderer.

Perhaps this is all like complaining that the Red Sox were almost swept by the Yankees in 2004. Ultimately they were a memorable winner. So is “A Killer’s Essence.’’

Ed Siegel, a longtime former theater and television critic for the Globe, can be reached at esiegel122@comcast.net.

More on the film deal for A Killer's Essence

2011-09-29T08:49:00.000-07:00

From today's Publisher's Marketplace:

"Dave Zeltserman's A KILLER'S ESSENCE, a homicide detective looking into a remarkably violent murder finds his only witness is a neurologically disabled recluse able to see into the souls of others -- and as more murders occur, the witness proves terrifyingly perceptive, to Martina Broner and Frida Torresblanco at Braven Films"

Film deals are always a crap shoot, but with how passionate Frida and the rest of Braven Films are about my book, I feel pretty good that a film version of A Killer's Essence will be made. Back in May my wife and I met with Frida for several hours in NY to talk about this, and the deal might've taken a little longer than I might've hoped to come together, but it's done now and I'm looking forward to seeing how this progresses, and I'd like to thank my agent, Chip MacGregor at MacGregor Literary for seeing this through. A little bit about Frida, before starting Braven Films, she produced many terrific movies, including Pan's Labyrinth, and I feel confident she's going to make something special with A Killer's Essence.

About the vagaries of film deals--two months I thought I'd be announcing a film deal for The Caretaker of Lorne Field. We had a deal agreed to, but then it slipped away at the last second. But I still have one of the hottest new directors wanting to make it, and a producer working to get a deal put together, so there's still a chance that it will happen.

First sighting of A Killer's Essence

2011-09-28T15:25:00.000-07:00

I was in Brookline today and spotted a stack of A Killer's Essence at the Brookline Booksmith, which is really a great bookstore, one of the best I've been to. I'm still waiting for my author copies, so this was my first chance to see the book and it looks great.

A Killer's Essence -- Chapter 1 (also available for Nook and Kindle)

2011-09-27T07:49:00.001-07:00

Here's the first chapter of A Killer's Essence. It's a short one, but I've also got Nook and Kindle versions for anyone preferring that--just send me email letting me know whether you'd prefer a Nook or Kindle file.

_____________________________________

Back in 1972 I was seven years old and always tagging along after my older brother, Mike. This was before the attention you have today on child abductions and pedophiles—that evil existed, shit, it has probably always existed, but it wasn’t on TV or the news much, if at all. You didn’t have CNN and the Internet to focus on it twenty-four seven, and as a result a lot of parents didn’t think about it. Back then it wasn’t all that unusual for a seven year-old and a bunch of ten year-olds to spend their afternoons hanging around their Brooklyn neighborhood unsupervised. And that was what Mike and his friends and I used to do, at least when he and his friends couldn’t shake me, and I was a tough little bugger to shake back then, just as I am now.

This one afternoon it was just Mike and me. We had just spent a half hour in Bob’s Drugstore thumbing through the comic books until the owner got fed up with us and told us to buy something or leave. Mike spent a dime on a Skybar candy bar. He broke off the caramel piece for me and we left anyway. While we were walking past the fish market a man came out and offered us five bucks to clean up the backroom. Mike wanted that five bucks, but something about the man made me grab onto Mike’s arm and pull him back while shouting “No!” repeatedly as if I were demon possessed. Mike looked at me as if I was nuts, and I thought he was going to punch me, but that wouldn’t have stopped me from what I was doing. A couple of older men from the neighborhood wandered over to see what the commotion was about, and the man from the fish market started to look nervous. He told us to forget it and he went back into his store.

“What’d you do that for, Stan?” Mike demanded, his narrow face taut and angry. “Five bucks! You know what we could’ve bought for five bucks? Are you stupid?”

At this point I was crying. I couldn’t explain to him why I did what I did. I couldn’t say it out loud. I couldn’t have him think I was even nuttier than he already thought I was. Anyway, all I wanted was for us to get away from there, so I kept pulling on his arm, using every ounce of strength I had to drag us away from that store. One of the neighborhood men gave me a concerned look and told Mike that he should take his little brother home. Mike looked pissed, but he did what the man asked him to. All the way home he kept asking what was wrong with me.

Later at dinner Mike told our folks what had happened and how I cost us five bucks. Pop asked why I did what I did, but I couldn’t explain it to him. He shook his head, disappointed-like, and gave me a lecture about the value of money, but left it at that.

The next night while we were eating dinner, Mr. Lombardi from down the hall knocked on our door. Chucky Wilson, who was a year older than Mike, hadn’t come home yet from school and he wanted to know if either Mike or I had seen him or knew anything. We didn’t. He looked tired as he apologized for interrupting our dinner. Pop asked him if they needed any more help looking for Chucky. Mr. Lombardi thought about it, but shook his head and told Pop to finish his dinner and if they still hadn’t found Chucky in another hour he’d let Pop know. After Mr. Lombardi left I told Pop that Chucky was with that man from the fish market.

“What?”

“That man from the fish market must’ve promised Chucky five bucks also. That’s where Chucky is!”

“Stan, quit talking nonsense,” Mom said.

“I’m not! I’ll bet anything that’s where Chucky is!”

“Stop it now!” Pop ordered. “Christ, I don’t know how you get these ideas.”

None of us had much of an appetite after that, Mike and me mostly pushing our food around our plates and Pop staring off into space. After a while of that he got up and left the table and then the apartment. He didn’t bother saying anything to Mom about where he was going. She looked like she was fighting hard to keep from crying.

It turned out that Pop collected other men from the neighborhood and they visited the fish market. They broke into the store and found the man who had offered Mike and me five bucks. He was in the back room chopping up what was left of Chucky. I didn’t learn that part until recently, but that’s what they found. It was days after that when Pop asked me how I knew where Chucky would be. I couldn’t explain it to him, so I shrugged and told him I just knew.

For years I had convinced myself that none of that happened. That it was a dream I once had, or maybe a story I heard, or something from a movie or TV show that I saw as a kid. After meeting Zachary Lynch, I started remembering more about that day back when I was a seven year-old kid and thinking that maybe it wasn’t just a dream. I found the old newspaper stories about that man in the fish market and what he did to Chucky Wilson, and then dug out the police reports. My Pop had died when I was twenty and Mom is in no shape these days to remember anything, but I talked with Mike and he confirmed what happened. All those years we never talked about it, both of us pretending it never happened.

“What did you see that day, Stan?” he asked.

I shook my head and told him I didn’t know, and from the look on his face he seemed relieved to hear that. The fact is I did see something. When that man came out of the fish market wearing his stained apron over a pair of dirty khakis and even dirtier tee shirt, for a moment I didn’t see a man but something ghoulish, something from out of a nightmare. It only lasted a second, if that, and then he turned back into a balding and scrawny middle-aged man, but for that moment I saw something else.

Later, after talking with Mike, I sat quietly and remembered everything I could about that day and wrote it all down. After all those years I finally accepted what I saw. I still have never told anyone about this other than Zachary Lynch, and he’s the only person I know who would possibly understand.

A Killer's Essence in stock + film option sold

2011-09-26T05:58:00.001-07:00

A Killer's Essence is now in stock at Amazon and BN.com and should be in bookstores soon. A film option has also been sold and I'll be writing more about that soon.

"a memorable winner" Boston Globe

“Detective Green is a believable character, down on his luck with little going for him but his job. Nonetheless, he meanders through life, precariously balancing all its myriad and conflicting facets, and coming out on top in this chilling page-turner attuned to the most discerning of avid crime lovers. Well written and well paced. Recommended.” New York Journal of Books

"Zeltserman’s signature creepiness is available here and there, but what really drives this novel is the engaging portrait of an honest, hardworking cop who, on the job and off, gives the best he’s got, knowing how rarely it will be enough." Kirkus Reviews

"A scary, keep-you-guessing thriller not to be missed." Elliott Swanson, Booklist

"This mix of police procedural, noir, spec lit, and domestic character study is entertaining and expertly plotted. Set against the backdrop of the 2004 ALCS, and the collapse of the Yankees against the Red Sox, New York City police detective Stan Greene investigates a brutal series of random murders while juggling (and dropping) the pieces of his personal life. Oh, and there’s a witness, a veritable shut-in who might be able to help despite his neurological damage and his demonic hallucinations. Like all of Dave’s novels, A KILLER’S ESSENCE is tightly plotted storytelling featuring realistically flawed and memorable characters." Paul Tremblay

Julius Katz's funeral

2011-09-16T07:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon I went to Julius's grave site funeral. It was a private affair and attended by about 200 Julius's close friends, including several dozen famous chefs who flew in from all over the world, with his only family being his younger sister, Julie, who I'll talk about later. It rained during most of the service, at times coming down in an angry downpour, which somehow seemed fitting. Lily Rosten wasn't there. From what I heard she collapsed on being given the news of Julius's death and has been hospitalized. After the services, Julius's favorite restaurant Le Che Cru, hosted what was meant to be a celebration for Julius's life for this gathering, and all these famous chefs went back to the kitchen to try to outdo each other. I'm sure the food was spectacular, but it was hard to notice since I had no appetite, but the wine was good, and I enjoyed listening to stories about Julius's childhood and other stories from later in his life. I wish Lily could've been there.

Julius in the past had told me about his sister, Julie. She's 32--ten years younger than Julius, and kind of "troubleshooter for difficult problems", and while Julius "dabbled" (5th degree black belt in Shaolin Kung Fu dabbling??) in martial arts as a way to keep fit, Julie takes it much more seriously and studied intensely in Japan for six years. He didn't tell me how stunningly beautiful she is, but even with her in mourning, she was beyond breathtaking. Julie and I talked privately later. She wanted any notes that Julius and Archie might've provided me, which I gave her, and she promised that she was going to track down whoever did this to Julius and see that justice is done, although I don't she meant seeing this person arrested. She seemed genuinely surprised when I told her the true nature of Archie--I guess like everyone else she thought Archie was a flesh and blood person and I was turning their true life cases into some sort of meta fiction, and she also promised to find Archie. Somehow I think Archie would be okay with her. I also had her read the last case I wrote up for Julius--the Quayle case which I titled "Archie Solves the Case", because I really don't know what to do with it given what has happened. Julie had maintained a stoic front through the service and afterwards, but as she read this case she broke down both laughing and crying, and wants me to publish it as a final tribute to Julius. I'm still not sure.

Reports out of Boston are that Julius Katz is dead

2011-09-13T06:48:00.000-07:00

It's being reported this morning by the Boston Police that the body taken from Julius's townhouse has been identified by DNA testing as Julius leaving no question that Julius is dead. I've also learned that the blast originated in Julius's wine cellar, and it is believed that 8 pounds of C-4 were used. While the brick townhouse building is still standing, what I've heard is that the inside has been completely incinerated.

There's going to be a private funeral for Julius this Thursday. Julius's sister, Julie, called me earlier this morning and asked if I'd attend and I told her I would.

I'm still getting no answer when I try calling Archie. I talked to several scientists over the weekend, and according to them with Archie's titanium shell, he should've survived this blast. All I can hope is that Julius had gotten sufficiently annoyed enough at Archie to have turned him off before the blast, and that Archie will remain turned off and never have to realize what has happened. In many ways Archie is a pure innocent, and I don't think he'd be able to handle this well. My worst fear is that he's ended up in the hands of Desmond Grushnier and is being reprogrammed by Grushnier.

When I finished transcribing the Kingston case with Archie's and Julius's help, and wrote it as the true-crime book, Julius Katz and Archie, I had NY publishers all telling me the same thing--that Julius was an anachronism, that today's readers don't care about charming traditional mysteries or brilliant, eccentric detectives. At first I didn't believe this, but I'm now thinking they might be right and that's there's no place in today's world for someone like Julius.

I'll post more after the funeral.

A Killer's Essence over at B&N's Ransom Notes

2011-09-09T07:23:00.000-07:00

Jedidiah Ayres compares A Killer's Essence to Turner & Hooch (in a good way) over at B&N's Ransom Notes.

More on the explosion at Julius Katz's townhouse

2011-09-08T07:14:00.000-07:00

I was able to talk with a grief-stricken Lily Rosten for several minutes this morning, and here's what I've found out:

A massive explosion occurred at five PM Tuesday at Julius's townhouse, with the police believing the explosion originated in Julius's wine cellar. I know from my work with Julius that he usually visits his wine cellar at five each evening to select a bottle, which he'll bring out to his patio.

A body has been removed from the townhouse. The body has been burnt beyond recognition, and a DNA test will be performed to see if it's Julius. The police have told Lily they expect to have the result by early next week.

There's nothing about Archie. I've tried calling him several times without any answer. I don't want to speculate any further, at least not until the police announce the results of their DNA test.

I'll report more here as news comes in.

Disturbing news about Julius Katz and Archie

2011-09-07T06:55:00.000-07:00

Today I was going to wrap up my series about where the ideas for my books come from by writing about my 15th book, Julius Katz and Archie, but some very disturbing news is coming out of Boston about Julius. Hell, it's easy enough, I'll do in anyway, then get to the breaking news. Readers outside of Boston think that I'm doing some sort of pastiche on Nero Wolfe or Sherlock Holmes, and that a detective as brilliant and as accomplished as Julius couldn't be real. Readers here in Boston know Julius is real, but because of the way I write Archie, they think I'm writing some sort of meta fiction--taking a real person (Archie) and writing them as a tiny advanced piece of computer technology, and doing all this while writing about a real murder they've read about with this fictional device. Well, I'm not doing any of that. I'm simply taking all of Archie's journals and recordings, and cutting them down to either story or novel size. Basically I'm simply editing what Archie has already produced, with a little smoothing of the language here and there.

Now for the disturbing news. Reports are coming out of Boston that there's been an explosion at Julius's townhouse. I've tried calling Archie and have gotten no answer, and by itself that's very distressing. In the past Archie has always answered my calls immediately. I don't have a good feeling about this. Last week I was talking with Archie about the Anton Dupierre murder case Julius is embroiled in, and he was hinting that things were turning treacherous. I've put in calls to the police and Lily Rosten, and when I get more information I'll report about it back here.

The Thrill of A Killer's Essence

2011-09-03T06:55:00.001-07:00

In the current issue of The Big Thrill, they're running an interview with me mixed in with a review of A Killer's Essence.

NYJB on A Killer's Essence: "a chilling page-turner"

2011-09-02T08:36:00.000-07:00

“Detective Green is a believable character, down on his luck with little going for him but his job. Nonetheless, he meanders through life, precariously balancing all its myriad and conflicting facets, and coming out on top in this chilling page-turner attuned to the most discerning of avid crime lovers. Well written and well paced. Recommended.”

You can read the New York Journal of Books complete review here.

Boston Globe: "A writer on top of his game"

2011-09-01T06:38:00.000-07:00

And that’s saying something because Zeltserman’s lean but muscular style, so evident in “Killer’’ and “The Caretaker of Lorne Field,’’ is just as sharply honed here. His ability to juggle Green’s story and Lynch’s, develop a riveting murder mystery, and even mix in some Brighton Beach ex-KGB sleazeballs, all in less than 250 pages, is a pretty neat page-turning trick.

I'd like to thank the Boston Globe for their terrific review for A Killer's Essence. You can read the entire review here.

Next Wednesday I'll be wrapping up my series of where my book ideas come from with my 15th and so far final book, Julius Katz and Archie.

Where my ideas come from: Murder Club

2011-08-31T06:55:00.000-07:00

Murder Club was the 14th book I wrote, but before I talk about it I need to give some background.

Back around 1998 I started a small software business with a partner. The basic idea for this business was that I was going to use this scripting technology to quickly build a core set of customizable network management products, my partner was going to offer training services, and we would also offer consulting. The idea was really a great one, but I made two very big mistakes. Well, really three. First, I rushed into this without seeing a lawyer and having papers drawn up, and while we had a verbal agreement that I would own my work and he would own his if we separated, we had no legal separation agreement going into it. Second, while I covered most of the startup expenses, including an expensive industry tradeshow, Interop, he volunteered to handle the website. He was thinking ahead and I didn't realize what a killer this would turn out to be. Third, I ignored things I shouldn't have.

So we start this business. I've got my head down as I'm rapidly building our products, my partner is working on his training class, we're meeting with different companies to get some beta testing sites lined up, and my wife, who was working in software sales, quits her job to join us. Interop turns out to be a huge success. This is a giant show--miles of floor space with the big companies building small little mansions for their booths, while we have a small 6-foot table in the Siberia section of the show called Startup City, we still get a steady stream of potential customers to us, many of whom seem excited about what we're doing. But as it turned out due to reasons I can't discuss here, this turned out to be the beginning of the end.

So for the next 3 months things are deteriorating quickly between me and my partner. Even with that, we've gotten about 40 customers and about 100K in revenue--and these customers include Lucent, The US Army, banks, utility companies, financial institutions, colleges and military contractors. And I'm getting customers telling me these are the most useful network management products they have. And we're getting more training and consulting interest. And then the plug gets pulled. My partner takes down the website. This in effect kills us. All our marketing literature we'd been sending out and all the prospects we met at Interop have our website address. With our website taken down, we're dead. Before and after doing this company, I'd worked at a number of startups, all of which were heavily funded with venture money, and none of them were ever able to generate the customer list that we got in only 3 months of having the product available--or generated 100K in revenue in less than 7 months of operation. And now not only were we dead, but now it was going to get really ugly.

Here's where I started acting smart. I hired good lawyers. The first lawyer I hired was just great--a very even keeled man who was able to get the other side to agree to arbitration so we wouldn't have to go to court. Since he wasn't a litigator, he pointed to a real pit bull of a lawyer--if I ever had to go to court again, I'd want this guy at my side. I don't want to go too much into the hearing except that the judge ending up giving me what I asked for, which at this point was simply the products I built (my ex-partner was claiming ownership of them). I'll give one story about the hearings--my lawyer had told me that when I was examined by the other attorney, she should only ask me yes or no questions, but if she asks me a why question, I can say whatever I want. So the very first question is a why question--and I launch into my whole defense. She tries stopping me, and I tell the judge that she asked me "why". And he turned back to her and told her that she did ask me why. So I continue and give out my whole story.

While this whole mess was going on, which was unbelievably stressful, I had a dream where I'm meeting a good friend of mine, this Russian software engineer I'd worked with for years, at a Russian restaurant, and we're getting blitzed on vodkas while I'm telling him my sad story. And this friend of mine, now drunk, starts bragging how he's heard of a guy who for a not too outrageous fee will fly a Russian to this country, and after your problem disappears, the Russian will be flown back to disappear back there.

So all of this had formulated into my idea for Murder Club--a husband and wife whose lives are being ruined by a vindictive business partner, and the rabbit hole the husband finds himself tumbling down when he lets himself go as far as to hire that Russian to make his problem disappear. I had this idea for years, and after writing a thriller (Dying Memories) and a horror novel (Monster), I wanted to write a noir novel again, and something absolutely pure noir with no compromise. And so I finally set about to write Murder Club. Once I was done I showed it to two authors I respect a lot, Roger Smith and Ed Gorman, and here's what both of them had to say with their comments edited to remove spoilers:

"I love it, Dave. It is very tight, very fast and very claustrophobic, left me breathless at times. It also has the stench of pure evil running through it, that is really unsettling. A profoundly pessimistic and very disturbing ending. Difficult to forget." Roger Smith

"I love Murder Club! Just as a pure story it may be my favorite of your books. The Russian angle is fantastic as is the reality of the perils of partnerships. Ill pay you the highest compliment I can--they remind me of my two favorite Lionel White novels The Money Trap and Before I Die. There are no similarities in stories or characters but the mood of desperation so beautifully sustained and twisted even deeper with surprises--masterful, Dave!" Ed Gorman

So where is Murder Club now? It's still unsold. There's no question in my mind that this is the best noir novel I've written, as well as the bleakest, but I also know it's going to a hard sell, especially in today's climate. So far I've shown it to two editors working for Big Six publishers, and both tried to buy it, and both were blocked. At this point I'm accepting that my profile needs to be raised before I can sell this, but I also think there's a good chance that will be happening soon. I've heard from my film agent that Outsourced is moving quickly towards production, I also have a film deal agreed to for A Killer's Essence (and am waiting for an updated contract and will give more information about this once I get it), and things are looking very promising for a film deal for The Caretaker of Lorne Field. So for the time being, I need to put Murder Club in a drawer, and when these things happen Murder Club will find the right home.

Where my ideas come from: Monster

2011-08-30T07:52:00.000-07:00

One day when I was walking around the long since defunct Brookline Barnes & Noble, I was noticing all the vampire, dragon, zombie, Wizard of Oz & werewolf books, and was thinking what hasn't been done, and what I came up with was Frankenstein. Yeah, I know, Dean Koontz has his Frankenstein series, but that has been placed in modern times and has little in common with Mary Shelley's novel. I started thinking then of a version written by the monster and where everything a dying Victor Frankenstein tells Captain Walton is a lie to cover his own crimes and depravity. I started getting excited by this idea but also severely intimidated by it. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a great novel, and for those of you who haven't read it you should. It's very unlike any of the movie adaptations, including (especially) Kenneth Branagh's "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein". It's also in it's own way a very powerful noir story. Anyway, the intimidation won out and instead of working on this I wrote Dying Memories.

The idea, though, wouldn't leave me alone, and nine months later I started considering this more seriously. A friend of mine who's a PhD candidate in 18th Century European History and fellow Black Belt student at our Kung Fu studio, Alden Ludlow, put together a reading list so I could properly research, among other things, 18th century witchcraft, satanic cults, London sex clubs, supernatural mythology, folklore and fiction. So after 6 months of research that also included historical figures Marquise de Sade and Samuel Hahnemann, I felt ready to start it.

If you haven't read Shelley's Frankenstein, the book takes place in a lot of different locations--starting with Ingolstadt, Germany, then Geneva, French Alps, London, Scotland, Ireland, back to Geneva, and finally the Artic. What I did was layer my version over these same locations but have different reasons for this traveling, as well as make the monster in my version the hero. The Marquise de Sade and his philosophy also plays a critical role.

Overlook Press will be publishing this next year, I can honestly say this by far the best book I've written, and will probably ever write. More than any book I've written, I'm looking forward to seeing this one in print.

Where my ideas come from: Dying Memories

2011-08-26T07:21:00.000-07:00

After seeing how difficult it had been to sell The Caretaker of Lorne Field and A Killer's Essence, books that I thought should've been easy sales to the Big 6 publishers but kept getting blocked because they were deemed too different, I decided to write a more conventional thriller, but one with enough of a noirish edge so I'd be happy with it. So now I needed both an idea and a plot, and after some brainstorming hit upon a very cool idea. I needed to do some research on nanotechnology to better understand and formulate this idea, and while I don't want to ruin the story by giving this away now, the idea I came up with is something I'm convinced that will be developed in the future. Maybe not today, or next year, but give it 10 years or so. And it will be a scarier world when that happens.

So now that I had myidea, I needed to work that into a plot, and I did so by steeping it deeply with paranoia, and Dying Memories was born. I wrote it to follow the standard thriller conventions: shorter chapters than I usually write with a kind of cliffhanger at the end of each of these, and like my other books, lots of twists and ever escalating danger. But I also gave it enough of a noirish edge so it would stand out as a book that my current readers would also be happy with. My friend, Vincent Zandri, was having a lot of success with the ebooks that StoneGate Ink were publishing, so I decided with Dying Memories to play more in the ebook world and have StoneGate publish this one also.

Where my ideas come from: Killer

2011-08-25T08:00:00.001-07:00

When Serpent's Tail told me they wanted to publish Pariah, I threw out the idea of a book based loosely on Boston hitman, John Martorano, as a third book to make Small Crimes, Pariah, and now what would be Killer, a 'man out of prison' noir trilogy. Martorano had killed 20 people and then was able to serve out only 12 years in prison when he cut a deal to give evidence against Whitey Bulger. I had no idea what this third book would really be about, but I wanted to have a 2-book deal with Serpent's Tail so I'd get to write a book for once without having to hustle afterwards to sell it.

I never had any intention of writing a 'man out of prison' noir trilogy in the first place. I started Pariah with Kyle Nevin leaving prison because I thought it would be an interesting contrast to what I did in Small Crimes since Nevin is almost the opposite of Joe Denton. While Denton is deep in denial as to how much damage he's caused and what he really is, Nevin is just a force of nature--someone who remorselessly leaves death and destruction wherever he goes.

So now that I had this third book that I needed to write, the trilogy took shape as everything just kind of coalesced. It just ended up fitting so well as you had each protagonist going down their own paths--for Joe Denton it was a search for redemption, for Kyle Nevin it was money, revenge and to reestablish himself as a man to be feared, and for Leonard March, my ex-hitman protagonist of Killer, it was a search for self identity.

So while I had no clue what Killer was really going to be about (other than this very vague notion that it would be loosely about someone like Martorano) when I threw out the idea to Serpent's Tail, I ended up both creating and finishing off my noir trilogy with what many (myself included) feel is the best book of the three.

Where my ideas come from: A Killer's Essence

2011-08-24T06:59:00.000-07:00

The ninth book I wrote, A Killer's Essence, will be published this September and will be my 10th book published (with Blood Crimes and Julius Katz and Archie self-published as ebooks). The original title I had for this was Essence, and my publisher and I went through a long list of titles before settling on "A Killer's Essence". While very different than my "man out of prison" noir books, this and my still unpublished, Murder Club, are easily my two best crime novels, and I'm in the process of wrapping up a film deal for this one which I should be able to talk about more in a few weeks.

So the idea for A Killer's Essence came from a very cool idea that hit me. With the book coming out very soon, I don't want to ruin it by talking about what this idea was, but when you read the book you'll see.

So now that I had this idea, I had to work it into a story. I started this in November of 2007. The Red Sox had just won their second World Series in three year. 2004 was a cathartic moment for millions of Red Sox fans, and making it even more so was the way they came back from the dead against the Yankees in the ALCS. Whether this was a conceit on my part or not, I wanted to center this book during the 2004 ALCS, and a good part of the book takes place then with the Sox-Yankees series being more than just a backdrop but in a way integrated into the story. The book didn't seem to fit the Boston area, so I placed in the New York (Brooklyn and Manhattan respectively), and with it set there, I got to have some fun and show the ALCS (and the Yankees massive chokejob) from the point of view of a diehard Yankees fan.

So far I really haven't talked much about what A Killer's Essence is about. Let's just say this is my most character driven novel, and in a way it's about two very damaged people, Stan Green, a decent man and a good cop whose personal life is spinning out of control, and Zachary Lynch, a recluse who is barely able to fit in this world, and how they ultimately end up helping each other.

When I finished A Killer's Essence, I was sure I had a book that the Big 6 publishers would want to buy, and I showed it to an agent who used to be an editor for Gold Medal. She told me if she was still at Gold Medal she'd buy it in a heartbeat, but that the book was too gritty and different for publishers today. I ended up finding an agent, Matt Bialer at Sanford J. Greenburger, who fell in love with this book and ended up selling it and The Caretaker of Lorne Field to Overlook Press. Maybe it is too gritty for the Big 6, but I'll be finding out in the next few weeks whether it's too gritty for today's crime readers.

One last note, Matt, who lives in Brooklyn, was convinced when he read the book that I must've lived there at one time also because of how authentic it felt. Nope. If I ever lived there it was in a previous life, and if that was the case, I hope I wasn't a Yankees fan then!

Julius and Archie could use a little help...

2011-08-23T06:24:00.000-07:00

Julius Katz and Archie are currently engaged in the case of the missing tags, and they could use your help... 15 seconds should do...

I read recently how Amazon has these hidden groups that are directly related to tagging, such as mystery series, and that these can have a major impact on book sales. So if you want to give Julius and Archie a little bit of help, please click on the tags already in place for these two books (about halfway down the Amazon book page), and if you can click the Like button at the top even better! Thanks! I know Julius and the little guy will appreciate your help.

Julius Katz Mysteries
Julius Katz And Archie

My series of posts of where my book ideas came from will continue tomorrow with my ninth book.

Where my ideas come from: Blood Crimes

2011-08-22T07:41:00.001-07:00

Back in 1997 I was still trying to work with the agent who had given me the Silence of the Lambs ripoff plot that I transformed into Bad Thoughts, and now he gave me this really cheesy vampire biker script that he wrote that he wanted me to novelize. There was no way I could've written a decent book off the script he gave me, but it got me thinking about putting vampires in a noir world--although not supernatural vampires, but more along the lines of the ones from I am Legend where a virus creates vampire-like changes in a person. The more I thought about this, the more excited I got by it, and I worked out an extremely harboiled/noir script based on this idea. When I showed this new script to my agent, he was not happy and that ended up being the final split between us.

Fast forward to 2006. I'd just finished Pariah, and my Blood Crimes script (then titled Vampire Scripts) had been on my mind for the last 9 years where I'd been wanting to turn it into a series of novels, and so I wrote my 8th book. Unfortunately, my agent at the time had her hands full trying to sell Pariah and Caretaker, so she didn't want to take this on. When I later switched agents, he fell in love with it, as did a lot of younger editors we sent it to, but the problem was the vampire genre had been hijacked into teen/women romance genre with the success of Twilight and True Blood, so it became impossible to sell a hardcore crime/horror vampire novel. The book also generated a lot of excitement with the film people I showed it to, but we ran into that same problem where until the Twilight and True Blood dominance wears off, there's no way of doing anything with it in Hollywood.

Anyway, I decided to put this out myself as an ebook, and reader reaction has been great. I know the book is going to upset any Twilight fans who stumble on it, but I'm getting emails from readers who tell me they hate vampire books but love this book. I'm also seeing readers really digging seeing vampires taken back to real horror, and written in a tough-minded violent adult style. Blood Crimes is the first of what I'm hoping to be a 5-book series.

Where my ideas come from: Pariah

2011-08-21T09:21:00.000-07:00

I wrote Pariah in the early Spring of 2006. For years I'd been fascinated by the stories I'd been hearing and reading about Whitey Bulger and had been wanting to write a crime novel based on him, although I hadn't figured out what angle to use. At this point I had finally sold Small Crimes to Serpent's Tail after having the book rejected by every NY publisher, and was still struggling to find a home for Outsourced.

What finally pushed me into writing Pariah were two things: (1) seeing all these South Boston mobster tell-all books come out in early 2006 (2) the Kayva Viswanathan plagiarism scandal with Little Brown. Both of these sent me into a rage-filled writing frenzy, and I ended up writing Pariah as a mix of crime and what I politely like to say is a satire on the publishing industry, although it's really a fuck you to New York publishing. I ended up writing Pariah in 6 weeks, which is the quickest I've written a book, and while this will probably surprise anyone who has read Pariah since it's such a fast read, this is not a thin book--it weighs in at 95,000 words.

For those who've read Pariah, you probably think I also used the OJ Simpson "If I Did It" story. Nope. I had Pariah written well before that story came out. I just didn't think it would be possible for a NY publisher to behave as outrageously as I had my fictional publisher, but once again NY proved me wrong.

While Pariah made a number of end of the year best lists, including The Washington Post's best books of 2009, I'll always be grateful to Serpent's Tail for publishing this, because there's not a single New York publisher who would've ever had the balls to publish this.

Where my ideas come from: The Caretaker of Lorne Field

2011-08-20T07:36:00.000-07:00

My wife and I bought a house where we had what I think was a black locust with a root system that ran all over our front yard and the side of our house. Every day, 100s of weeds would pop up from this root system, and they'd grow fast, maybe growing as much as a foot after 4-5 days, and then they'd develop thorns. IF left unattended I'd have a forest of these black locusts, so every day I'd pull out 100s of them. After a few years of doing this I told my wife I was going to write a book about these weeds. Maybe I was joking, maybe I was serious, I can't say for sure now, but when she told me I was nuts, I had no choice, I had to write the book then!

I'd like to thank Paul Tremblay and John Langon For their write up yesterday on The Caretaker of Lorne Field.

Where my ideas come from: Bad Karma

2011-08-19T06:17:00.001-07:00

Bad Karma was the 5th book I wrote, and was the 4th one of mine published.

I wrote this back in 2005, and at the time Fast Lane had been published here and in Italy, but Bad Thoughts, Small Crimes and Outsourced were still all unsold, and I decided to write a sequel to Bad Thoughts to help generate more interest in that book. At the end of Bad Thoughts, I had Shannon and Susan in Boulder, Colorado, and decided to keep them there. After the hell I put them through in Bad Thoughts, I also wanted them to be back together and happy, and I wanted Bill well along the way of healing himself psychically from all the damage that had been done to him. My goal from the beginning was to write this as a more conventional hardboiled PI novel so it would be an easier sell.

So now that I had my goals, I had to come up with an idea for a plot. At the time a couple of people I knew had gotten messed up by this cult that operates what looks like these seemingly harmless yoga studios, so I wanted to use that, especially with the cults that were in operation in Boulder when I was there from '78 - '82. I had also written a PI story that I was never quite happy with and never sent out, but I liked its plot, so I decided to salvage that from the story and use it for Bad Karma. Finally, I go back to Boulder occasionally, and I wanted to write this as almost an homage to the Boulder I used to know (and love) as opposed to what Boulder has become. Finally, my wife was studying homeopathy back then (and is now a practicing homeopath), and I decided to make Susan a homeopath, and have homeopathy play a role in solving the murders.

Bad Karma is my only somewhat conventional hardboiled PI novel (I say somewhat because there's a lot of new age stuff in it, including a fair amount dreamwork, lucid dreaming, etc.). I never really pushed Bad Karma because the lousy timing of it coming out weeks before Pariah, but it's been really interesting the way readers have responded to it. Fans of Fast Lane and Small Crimes seemed almost betrayed and angry by this book, while readers unfamiliar with me tended to like this book quite a bit, at least from the emails I received and the reviews the book garnered. Well, it's been brought back as an e-book, and I hope people give this one a chance, accept that not everything I write is going to be some pitch-black noirish journey (although at it's core, Bad Karma still has a very dark plot), and if you do read this, let me know what you think.

Where my ideas come from: Outsourced

2011-08-18T08:00:00.001-07:00

I'm writing these blog posts in the order in which I wrote my books, so while Outsourced was my 8th book to be published, it was the 3rd book I wrote.

The idea for Outsourced came from several places. I need to put this in some context. I wrote Outsourced in 2004, and at that time I was very disappointed that Small Crimes was having no luck finding a publisher. Second, I'd been a software engineer for about 20 years and the industry's push to outsourcing was something that I was keenly aware of and interested in. Third my short Nigerian email scam story, More Than a Scam, was really my first success in the great reader response it was getting and making honorable mention in Otto Penzler's Best American Mystery Stories anthology, and so I thought I hit on the secret to writing something that will grab people's attention and sell more easily--be the first out there with a very topical theme. So I decided for my 4th book to write a bank heist novel with my bank robbers being software engineers who'd been made obsolete (and desperate) due to their industry's push to outsource their jobs.

The results of my using outsourcing as an underlying theme for the book ended up being mixed. On the plus side, it immediately attracted the attention of Hollywood, and eventually led to a film deal, and it's now looking very likely this will be going into production soon, but editors at different publishing houses who tried to acquire the book were being shot down by their editorial boards because of the fear that outsourcing wouldn't be an issue by the time the book would be published in 2006. It wasn't until I stripped out most of the outsourcing theme and made the book more of a pure bank heist novel that I was able to sell it to Serpent's Tail. This also turned out to be my most widely translated book, with it currently having been translated to German, Dutch and Lithuanian, with French and Thai coming.

Where my ideas come from: Small Crimes

2011-08-17T06:11:00.001-07:00

Small Crimes came about from two newspaper articles I read. One was about a Sheriff's office in Denver in the 60s where they were robbing businesses blind, including an incident of stealing a safe they couldn't break open, loading it onto a pickup truck, and not securing it well enough so that it fell off into the middle of the street. The other was about a cop who committed a crime very similar to the one that my fictional Joe Denton did, and then somehow this cop not only serving out an extremely light sentence in County Jail, but then getting his pension once he was released. With that first newspaper story, Sheriff Dan Pleasant and his boys were born, as well as the extreme corruption within my fictional Bradley, Vermont. Joe Denton and his situation came out of my merging the second newspaper story onto this corrupt environment and playing a lot of what-if games to try to figure out how a bent cop committing such a heinous act could be treated so lightly.

Once I had this idea for Small Crimes (and the title came to me early on and just felt very right), I set about to write a more modern noir novel than Fast Lane which would be thematically centered around the idea of redemption and whether you reach a point where it's no longer obtainable. Fast Lane drew a fair amount of comparisons to Jim Thompson, and while I love Thompson's psycho noir novels (and could probably hold an honorary degree in them with all the times I've read and studied them), I set about to write Small Crimes to be very different than a Thompson novel. It kind of surprised me later when some readers and reviewers still compared Small Crimes to Jim Thompson. When I reread Small Crimes I couldn't find a single vestige of Thompson anywhere in it, and Joe Denton is really the antithesis of Thompson psycho noir antihero. What also surprised me was the heavy Dan Marlowe influence that had worked its way into the book. I hadn't realized this while writing it, but I guess it made sense since The Name of the Game is Death is probably my favorite noir novel.

Where my book ideas come from: Bad Thoughts

2011-08-16T06:51:00.000-07:00

Back in 1996 I was working with an agent who was trying to sell Fast Lane, and he gave me this plot he wanted me write. It was kind of a knockoff of Silence of the Lambs that involved an FBI profiler whose parents were killed years earlier by some nasty serial killer, and she's now hunting down this same killer. I didn't want to do this, and instead reworked the plot significantly to be Bad Thoughts. At the time I was very much into trying to induce an out of body experience and astral voyages, taking Boston Adult Education classes in it, reading books, doing exercises to induce one, etc. and so that whole subject plays heavily in Bad Thoughts. Also, some beyond terrible stuff happened that put me in a really bad state of mind when I wrote it, and that's probably why it turned out to be my bleakest and grimmest book.

Where my book ideas come from: Fast Lane

2011-08-15T06:47:00.001-07:00

I'm going to borrow from Patti Abbott's blogpost from yesterday, and each day over the next two weeks write about where the idea for one of my books came from, and I'm going to do this in the order in which I wrote these books. So first up is Fast Lane.

Back sometime before 1990 I was listening to the Jerry Williams show (a Boston area radio talk show) where he had a PI on as a guest, and the PI was talking about a young girl who had been adopted and who hired him to find her biological parents, and how things did not turn out well when he found the girl's biological father.

That was what sparked the idea for Fast Lane, which would be my first novel. At the time I was reading a lot of Ross Macdonald, and my first attempts at Fast Lane were to have a Lew Archer-like PI uncover the sordidness and coverup of a fellow PI, but it just wasn't working well. Then I discovered Jim Thompson and saw a completely different way to write this.

What also plays heavily in Fast Lane was at the time that I wrote it (1992) I was kind of annoyed at the direction popular PI novels were heading in, with what I considered these more cartoonish white knight-like PIs who'd carry out their own vigilante brand of justice to the scum they were dealing with, and I wanted to show this type of behavior could also be pointing out a psychotic personality, and this pushed Fast Lane to being both psychotic noir and somewhat a deconstruction of the hardboiled PI genre.

Fast Lane was first self-published in 2002 under the title In His Shadow, and later a slightly altered version was published by Point Blank Press with the Fast Lane title. It was also published in Italy by Meridiano Zero.

The Trend Continues

2011-08-06T16:54:00.001-07:00

The Trend continues for The Caretaker of Lorne Field (which will be available Sept. 27th as a trade paperback) as it gets yet another very nice recommendation.

Another Glowing Review for Julius Katz and Archie

2011-08-03T08:57:00.001-07:00

Julius Katz and Archie is a wonderful mix of old school and new. It’s old school in that the mystery is presented in a slight variation on the classic British drawing room setup (the suspects are all gathered together, though not in a secluded location), the violence is minimal and offstage, with the investigator solving the crime through intelligence and deduction instead of car chases, fist fights and shootouts. New school, on the other hand, is well represented by Archie’s very high tech presence (he’s constantly hacking into various databases to gather information) and hard-boiled personality. Indeed, in Julius Katz and Archie author Dave Zeltserman has packaged the best of both crime fiction worlds into one delightfully charming read.

To read Elizabeth White's review click here.

"one of the most original thrillers I’ve read in a long time"

2011-08-01T07:59:00.001-07:00

A new review of Pariah is up at The Mystery Bookshelf.

Today's Top Suspense Summer Book Club Read: Dying Memories

2011-07-28T06:46:00.001-07:00

I write about my latest thriller, Dying Memories, over at the Top Suspense blog.

A short (800 word) story

2011-07-23T07:11:00.000-07:00

Hope You’re Having Yourself an Especially Grand Time
by
Dave Zeltserman
(originally published in Discount Noir)

Hank Tilson welcomed the man with the angry eyes to MegloMart. When this man stared at the rattlesnake in hell tattoo on the inside of Hank’s right forearm and then told Hank to have an especially grand time himself, it gave Hank the shivers. Partly it was the way this man’s expression changed when he saw Hank’s tattoo, and partly it was the sound of this man’s voice. But it was also those words.

Now I hope you’re having yourself an especially grand time…

Those words were familiar to Hank, and lurked somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind. He couldn’t quite pull out where those words were from, but he knew they meant something special, just like he couldn’t quite pull out from his memory why this man seemed so damn familiar. It was two months ago when Hank took this job as a MegloMart greeter. Three weeks ago this man showed up for the first time and instantly started giving Hank the dead eye. Everyday afterwards this man would show up to glare angrily at Hank and stare at his right arm. Hank had broken his arm four months earlier and had a cast covering his tattoo. It wasn’t until last night that he had the cast removed. This was the first time this man had seen his tattoo.

Hank realized then where he knew this man from. It was over twenty years ago, but as he thought more about this man he could see the resemblance and he remembered it all. Back then the man would’ve been thirty, Hank would’ve been close to the same age. At that time Hank was a full-blown meth addict and he supported his habit by stealing whatever he could, sometimes beating up and mugging the elderly, sometimes through home invasions. This was where Hank had first seen this man: during one of his home invasions. Hank was pretty sure this wasn’t in Muncie, Indiana where this MegloMart was. He was pretty sure also it wasn’t in Indiana, but he couldn’t remember where it had taken place.

That night Hank was just going to rob them. He had gloves and a mask on, and he had no intention early on of doing what he did. But the man’s wife was such a tiny pretty little thing, and it pissed Hank off realizing that he’d never have a tiny pretty little thing of his own, at least not of their free will. So he changed his plans. He had brought a .38 revolver with him, and he used that to force the wife to tie up her husband, and then he did terrible things to her as he made the husband watch. After he was through with her, he choked her to death. Then he told the husband that he hoped he was having himself an especially grand time. He should’ve killed the husband also, but in his meanness he wanted this man alive and remembering what happened to his pretty little thing. This wasn’t the only murder Hank ever committed, but when he eventually got arrested it was for check kiting, and not for any of the beatings or home invasions or murders that he did. He ended up serving seven years at the Shawnee Correctional Center, and when he got out he supported himself with low-level cons and odd jobs.

His heart started palpitating wildly in his chest over the thought that that man had recognized him. But he had a mask on that day, and back then he was as thin as a weed, and by the time he had left Shawnee his body had thickened and changed. These damn MegloMart uniforms with the short sleeves and vests! If he were allowed to wear a long sleeve shirt, the man never would’ve seen his tattoo. But still, how could this man be sure from just one tattoo? Hank wanted to flee, but if he did the man would certainly be sure then.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. Hank turned and saw the man whose pretty little thing from long ago he had tortured and butchered.

“Aren’t you going to ask if I found everything I was looking for?” the man said.

Hank was sweating badly now. He nodded, croaked out, “Sure.”

“Yep, sure did.” The man took a hunting knife out of his bag and showed it to Hank. “I was told it could cut through bone as easy as paper.”

With that the man plunged the knife into Hank’s chest. At first everything went black. Then Hank could see again, although it was hazy with flames everywhere. Standing in front of him was a dour looking demon who gave Hank a forced tired smile and welcomed him to hell.

The End

"modern masterpieces of neo-noir writing"

2011-07-21T05:14:00.001-07:00

"These three books, "Small Crimes", "Pariah", and "Killer", are modern masterpieces of neo-noir writing. They may serve as a primer on the ongoing power and possibilities inherent in the genre." - Steve Shadow Schwartz, Poisoned Fiction Review

Booklist review for A Killer's Essence

2011-07-20T12:07:00.000-07:00

Zeltserman is garnering quite a reputation for innovation in crime fiction, and his latest book shows why. Beginning with all the customary trappings of a world-weary cop yarn, the novel smoothly transitions into Zeltserman’s subtle, edgy brand of horror. Homicide detective Stan Green thinks his one lead to the identity of a serial killer just went south when Zachary Lynch, the only eyewitness, claims he only sees people’s souls, not their faces. As Green gradually learns more than he really wants to know about Lynch and the bizarre ability he claims to possess, the novel becomes a character-rich study of conflict between preconception and perception. Mix in a serial killer making his debut, and the tension just keeps coming. Zeltserman’s new work retains the honed-razor psychological insight of his award-winning The Caretaker of Lorne Field (2010). A scary, keep-you-guessing thriller not to be missed. — Elliott Swanson

More on Julius Katz and Archie

2011-07-18T08:31:00.001-07:00

James Reasoner was kind enough to read and review Julius Katz and Archie, saying in part:

This is a well-plotted novel, but the real appeal of this book is the relationship between the two title characters and the funny, engaging voice in which Archie narrates the story. Also, in these days when mystery fiction has become increasingly divided into numerous sub-genres, it’s nice to read a traditional mystery the likes of which once dominated the field. JULIUS KATZ AND ARCHIE is available as an inexpensive e-book, and it gets a very high recommendation from me.

You can read James' review here.

Julius Katz and Archie..

2011-07-15T12:47:00.000-07:00

is being profiled at the Indies Book Blog

Top Suspense's Sizzling Summer Reads!

2011-07-12T06:18:00.001-07:00

We're announcing a Summer Book Club over at Top Suspense. My entry is Dying Memories, which is probably a perfect thriller for the summer. Fast-paced, lots of twists and turns where you're never quite sure what's happening, a nice noir edge, nasty, dangerous villains and a protagonist to root for. That's right, my protagonist in this one is the good guy!

Take the Blood Crimes Summer Challenge

2011-07-10T08:19:00.001-07:00

There's a reason why I keep hearing from readers who tell me they hate vampire books but loved Blood Crimes. This review from Paul Brazill seems to be representative of what I've been hearing from most readers:

"Let's face it; most vampires are big girl's blouses. If Tom Cruise in `Interview With A Vampire' is anything to go by then the typical vampire is about as scary as Adam Ant's `Dandy Highwayman'.

But there's nothing of the New Romantic about the vampires in Dave Zeltserman's `Blood Crimes'. These are hard rocking creatures of the night. Indeed, the book kicks off with our heroes ,Jim and Carol, driving along an archetypal American highway listening to The Doors `Riders On The Storm'. This sets the tone of 'Blood Crimes' perfectly although there's more than one `killer on the road' in this hardboiled take on the vampire legend.

Jim and Clara are classic noir lovers on the run, like those in They Drive By Night, Theives Like Us,Badlands and Natural Born Killers. They're trying to escape from Serena - a rich, vampire femme fatale - and Metcalf - an ex CIA hit man who performs experiments on vampires in an underground laboratory. Throw a world weary Private Eye and a biker gang into the mix and you have a really well written, blood splattered and very cinamatic page turner that fans of From Dusk Till Dawn and Near Dark will love. And not a lavender fop in sight!"

So here's my Summer challenge--if you've got a Kindle or Nook, download the free sample and see if you can read it without being hooked! And if you do get hooked, help spread the word!

"I highly recommend that you grab a copy of JULIUS KATZ MYSTERIES."

2011-07-08T08:04:00.000-07:00

I'd like to thank James Reasoner for his review of Julius Katz Mysteries.

For fans of Small Crimes

2011-07-07T06:16:00.001-07:00

Small Crimes was published in 2008 and made a bit of a stir when NPR picked it as one of the 5 best crime and mystery novels of that year, saying:

"This tale is told by one of fortune's fools: Joe Denton is a crooked ex-cop in Vermont who's just been released from jail after serving seven years for stabbing the local district attorney in the face. Since what's past is never truly past in crime noir, no sooner does Joe step out of the slammer than cosmic IOU's begin to rain down on his head. First, the disfigured DA cheerfully greets Joe outside the prison and announces that a local crime kingpin (and Joe's secret boss) is dying of cancer and has found religion. The kingpin's expected confession should send Joe straight back behind bars. Then, the local sheriff (also crooked) orders Joe to murder the DA before the crime kingpin can confess. The plot of Small Crimes ricochets out from this claustrophobic opening, and it's a thing of sordid beauty."

Small Crimes made other best of the year lists, and received other raves reviews from the Boston Globe, Sun-Sentinel, and others. It has since been translated to Italian (where it placed 3rd in last year's Bloody Mary awards) and French.

Fans of Small Crimes are going to want to read the Manny Vassey stories in 21 Tales!

For fans of Fast Lane

2011-07-06T06:40:00.000-07:00

My first novel, Fast Lane, was first published in Italy by Meridiano Zero and later in 2003 by Point Blank Press in the US, and it ended up developing a loyal following among noir readers. In a lot of ways it's a very ambitious book, both a deconstruction of the hardboiled PI genre and a very wild psycho noir. Here's what Patrick Millikin at Poisoned Pen Bookstore wrote about it:

"In the last few years there have been a number of writers, such as Ken Bruen and Victor Gischler, who've taken the classic PI novel and tweaked the hell out of it, creating something fresh and unique. Add Dave Zeltserman to the list. Several pages into his debut, I knew that I was reading something special." Patrick Millikin, Poisoned Pen's Book News, Hardboiled Crime Club Selection

If you're a fan of Fast Lane, you want to read The Dover Affair in 21 Tales, which is one of Johnny Lane's earlier cases.

recently published stories+ 3 free ones

2011-07-05T06:45:00.000-07:00

My recently published stories:

The Canary in the Top Suspense Anthology

Some People Deserve to Die in the current issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

When Death Shines Bright in the recently released Cape Cod Noir from Akashic Books

Emma Sue in the recently released On Dangerous Ground Stories of Western Noir

Here's an easy way to read 3 stories of mine for free if you have a Kindle (or maybe a Nook also). Download the free sample of 21 Tales and start reading right now for free Danny Smith, More Than a Scam (received honorable mention in the 2003 Best Mystery Stories Anthology) and Flies.

Anyone with a Nook, I'd appreciate you letting me know what stories their free sample includes.

"the best crime novel I have read in the last year"

2011-07-01T13:24:00.000-07:00

I'd like to thank David Kanell at Kingdom Books for his early thoughts on A Killer's Essence. The book won't be out until September 1st, but Kingdom Books is a great place to contact if you want signed copies of any of my other books. And if you're looking for an ebook to tide you over, I'd like to suggest three very different mystery/crime titles.

Julius Katz and Archie has a classic traditional mystery feel, but with a unique twist that makes it unlike any mystery you've read. The consensus so far is that this is highly enjoyable, charming and a lot fun. Appropriate for any mystery reader. Or really any reader.

Dying Memories is a pure thriller with lots of twists and turns, a plot that will keep you guessing and is appropriate for any thriller reader.

Blood Crimes is a high octane thrill ride of a book. People who claim they hate vampire books still love this one. Ultra noir, violent and extreme horror. The anti-Twilight! You've been warned!!

Julius Katz and Archie, Pariah, Whitey Bulger

2011-06-29T05:21:00.001-07:00

Yet another reviewer who finds Julius Katz and Archie amazingly fun and entertaining:

Julius Katz and Archie is a wonderfully fun, classic sleuth mystery story that will appeal to a wide audience range. I highly recommend this as the perfect way to relax and indulge in a bit of summer fun!

Read Cafe of Dreams review here.

Interesting that Whitey Bulger claims that while he was a fugitive he came back to Boston a couple of times fully armed to take care of business. With Bulger's capture, I thought I'd reprint the Washington Post's review of Pariah (a book that's the polar opposite of Julius Katz and Archie) by Maureen Corrigan

What a sick puppy of a writer Dave Zeltserman is! I didn't think a suspense story could get any more dark and twisted than Zeltserman's pulp masterpiece of last year, "Small Crimes." In that nasty little immorality tale, a crooked ex-cop bent on redemption gets released from prison and finds out that nobody -- not his ex-wife, not his young daughters, not even his elderly parents -- wants him back. The kicker is that they're right. By the end of "Small Crimes," I was wrung out thanks to the ingeniousness of Zeltserman's nonstop plot twists and the stark meanness of his universe. Now comes "Pariah," a doozy of a doom-laden crime story that not only makes merry with the justice system, but also satirizes those bottom feeders in the publishing industry who would sign Osama bin Laden to a six-figure contract for his memoirs, if only they could figure out which cave to send their lawyers into. If there's any other young writer out there who does crime noir better than Zeltserman, I don't even want to know. As it is, I can barely handle reading him without altogether losing whatever faith I've got left in humanity.
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The antihero of this latest excursion into the underside is Kyle Nevin, a former heavyweight in the South Boston Irish mob. Eight years earlier, Kyle was set up by his former boss, Red Mahoney, to be murdered during a big bank heist; but fate smiled on Kyle, and another guy took the fatal bullet instead. Now, just released from eight years in the slammer, Kyle is out for revenge, sniffing out Mahoney the way a half-starved bloodhound would catch the scent of an underdone Big Mac. As is required in any work of crime noir worth its grit, we readers see the world through Kyle's bloodshot eyes. And here lies Zeltserman's particular brilliance: As a murderous sociopath, Kyle, like his predecessors in the Zeltserman lineup, is so boisterous in his self-justifications (for everything from breaking the little finger of a litterbug to kidnapping a sickly child to burning alive a close relative in his bed) that a reader can't help but laugh at the fervent illogic of it all. Here, for instance, Kyle describes the way he and his reluctant younger brother, Danny, steal a laptop from an unsuspecting "mark" who has just left an upscale Boston coffeehouse:

"I grabbed for the laptop and as the mark realized what was going on and tried to pull back, Danny was out of the car and clocking him on the side of the head with the brick. . . . The reality of the situation, the guy was no more than a hundred and sixty pounds soaking wet, and a slap on the side of the head with an open palm would've done the trick, but I was glad to see Danny use the brick. Not that I cared whether or not some effeminate mochachino-swilling yuppie had his head bashed in, but that type of violence was what I needed to bring the old Danny back."

In Kyle's perspective, the robbery serves as a terrific therapeutic exercise for Danny. And the really sick thing is that the scene is so brazenly buoyant that the reader gets carried along with the moment, too. Hooray! The Nevin Brothers are back! Bad luck for the yuppie who was just at the wrong place at the wrong time, but a good break for Danny and Kyle, who commit the assault in broad daylight on a Boston street, without any witnesses around.

The thing about luck, though, is that it always changes. After that aforementioned kidnapping goes haywire, Kyle dodges another jail term with the help of a principled defense attorney who can barely stand to breathe in his tainted presence. Then, he's offered a fabulous book deal to write a true-crime "fictional novel" of how the kidnapping might have gone down. (Zeltserman is obviously exacting some comic revenge on members of the publishing profession who, like their mobster counterparts, are always trolling for "the big one" and training their beady eyes on the bottom line.) Kyle is set up with a book packager who's supposed to help him bang out the novel in two months. Oprah, the bestsellers lists, European book tours and Hollywood await. Trouble is, Kyle's luck turns. He comes down with a nasty case of writer's block. That's just the very beginning of a long, loopy downward slide into the abyss.

I'd say Zeltserman can't top "Pariah" for its sheer diabolical inventiveness, but he probably will. And given that the corrupting vision of his work is so powerful, I ought to know better than to read the next novel he writes. But I probably will anyway.

Whitey Bulger and Pariah

2011-06-28T06:31:00.001-07:00

I have to admit I was (for lack of a better word that I can use in a public forum) amused at seeing the rash of South Boston mobster tell-all books that were published in 2006. At the time I had just sold a crime novel, Small Crimes, to the London publisher, Serpent’s Tail, but I’d also been struggling for years to sell one of my books to NY. Although it might have been a bit galling to see the large New York publishers sidling up to these convicted criminals and handing them book deals, I could understand the fascination with all things Whitey Bulger. After all, I shared that same fascination, and I had for years both before and after Whitey became a fugitive, read everything I could about him in the Boston Globe, and listened to all the stories and rumors about him on talk radio. This was a real-life gangster story almost too bizarre for Hollywood—Boston’s most feared gangster being brothers with the State Senate President. And then there would be stories about Whitey’s criminal activities, his extortion methods and murders, and even things like him getting a hold of a winning lottery ticket. And you’d hear stories secondhand from people who had contact with him that were likewise chilling. Once Whitey became a fugitive, it really got interesting as we all found out about Whitey being an informant for the FBI. And not just any informant, but one who corrupted his FBI handlers so he could use them to squash his competition, and worse, get tipped off so he could kill those wanting to testify against him.

So it ‘s easy to see why we were all so fascinated by Whitey and the stories and rumors circulating about him. Seeing those tell-all books in 2006 ended up providing the motivation I needed to write Pariah. In most of my crime novels I dig into the criminal mind and try to understand the psychology of why they do what they do, and at the same time explore the darker impulses we all feel. With Pariah there’s a lot of that, but I also drew upon all the stories and rumors I had read and heard over the years to write a fictional story that would feel like it was imbued with a real sense of history of how Whitey Bulger and his underlings operated. In the novel I have a Whitey Bulger-like character named Red Mahoney, but the focus is on Mahoney’s right hand man, Kyle Nevin, who was betrayed by Mahoney, and now out of prison wants revenge on his fugitive ex-boss, as well as reestablishing himself as a man to be feared. And while it’s a brutal and fierce crime novel, it’s equally a satire on the New York publishing industry and our celebrity-obsessed culture, a culture that’s all too willing to make a criminal into a celebrity if the money’s right.

I was surprised when I saw the story late last Wednesday night about Whitey Bulger being captured in Santa Monica. I’d read about him scattering funds throughout Europe, and I assumed he would live out his days anonymously there or in Southeast Asia never to be heard of again. It just seemed that Bulger was too smart, too clever, and just too lucky to ever get caught. Early reports have Whitey living in a rent controlled apartment in Santa Monica for the last fifteen years instead of in Europe as we all thought, so he fooled us all. But I guess his luck finally ran out, and with his capture a chapter in Boston’s history has closed. Maybe there will be another chapter to add if Bulger confesses to the FBI, or writes yet one more South Boston mobster tell-all book.

Whitey Bulger and Pop Culture

2011-06-26T17:17:00.001-07:00

The Boston Globe is running this following slide show of Whitey Bulger inspired movies and books, but somehow they forgot about Pariah, which they reviewed in 2010. Below is Ed Siegel's review for Pariah which ran in the Globe:

Story of a Southie thug rises above crime noir in ‘Pariah’

Kyle Nevin’s not the kind of guy you would want to cross. He’d as soon beat your face into a pulp for looking at him the wrong way as he would cadge a drink off you. Unless you’re a good-looking woman, of course, in which case he’d have other plans.

Nevin, a former big-time South Boston mobster, is the central character in Needham writer Dave Zeltserman’s darkly enjoyable new novel, “Pariah,’’ which appears to be based, at least in part, on the story of Whitey Bulger.

The Whitey character here, however, is not Nevin but Red Mahoney, who ran Southie before ratting out Nevin and the rest of his mob to the FBI and taking off for Europe. Nevin’s now out of jail and out for Red’s blood, but not before reviving ties with his brother, Danny, who’s trying to go straight, and with Nola, a yuppie nymphomaniac who goes trolling for bad boys at a Southie bar.

Sound clichéd? At times it is, but Zeltserman’s talents as a noir writer rise above the genre’s conventions, even if he stumbles over them here and there. First and foremost, “Pariah’’ is a page-turner, even more so than his earlier novel, “Small Crimes.’’

Nevin is one of the more unlikable main characters you’ll come across, someone who’s reminiscent of Jim Thompson’s ugly protagonists. But as with Lou Ford in Thompson’s “The Killer Inside Me,’’ Nevin draws you into his web of sex and violence by his sheer, self-confident sociopathology.

Not that he lives without a code of conduct. How do you deal with a restaurateur who won’t cover his garbage, thereby drawing rats to the alleyway in back of Danny’s Brighton apartment? “By snapping the guy’s finger and smacking him in the face with a car door. In this world that’s how you get someone’s attention.’’

Watching Kyle get steamed about Danny going over to the other side - he now prefers sushi to red meat - is one of the more interesting parts of the novel. That and Kyle’s wooing him back to life among the carnivores. Part of the allure of that relationship is that readers tend to identify with Danny, so we understand that the life Kyle holds out will probably be no good for Danny - or us - but we also appreciate how powerfully seductive is Kyle’s offer to take a walk on the wild side.

But let’s face. It’s not really Kyle but Zeltserman who’s doing the seducing with his clear, crisp prose; his fearless portrait of amorality; and his smart plotting. That doesn’t always prevent him from letting the story wriggle away at times. Things go too bad too quickly in the middle of the book, and Zeltserman is a little too coy in having it both ways as far as Kyle’s role in a couple of deaths. The Southie jargon often sounds inauthentic and other aspects of the story feel more like an exercise in noir instead of an exploration of contemporary life.

There’s more than enough compensation, though, in Zeltserman’s smooth, lively writing and his witty satire of the publishing industry in the second half of the book. We won’t give anything away, but chances are that by the end you’ll be thinking of James Frey, O.J. Simpson, and John Henry Abbott, along with Jim Thompson and Whitey Bulger.

Or forget about those guys and just think about Dave Zeltserman, and what a fine addition to the local literary scene he’s become.

Another rave review for Julius Katz and Archie

2011-06-25T05:49:00.001-07:00

Julius Katz and Archie is an excellent, fun, and entertaining read. I thought I’d read it in at least four sittings, but it turned out to be two…and that’s only because I couldn’t keep my eyes open after the first 111 pages. I had to finish the last 19 pages as soon as I woke up the next day to find out whodunnit. It’s very engaging and appropriate for any age.

Read Lisa Haselton's review here.

Note. 'Julius Katz and Archie' is roughly 75,000 words, and Lisa was given a review copy in PDF form, where 130 pages is about the same as 280 pages if it were a print book.

The latest word on Julius katz and Archie

2011-06-24T06:21:00.001-07:00

Read the latest review for Julius Katz and Archie at Life in Review.

Now that Whitey's been captured....

2011-06-23T07:36:00.001-07:00

Now that Whitey Bulger has been captured, wouldn't this be a perfect time to read Pariah if you haven't done so already?

"I didn't think a suspense story could get any more dark and twisted than Zeltserman's pulp masterpiece…Small Crimes…Now comes Pariah, a doozy of a doom-laden crime story that not only makes merry with the justice system, but also satirizes those bottom feeders in the publishing industry who would sign Osama bin Laden to a six-figure contract for his memoirs, if only they could figure out which cave to send their lawyers into. If there's any other young writer out there who does crime noir better than Zeltserman, I don't even want to know. As it is, I can barely handle reading him without altogether losing whatever faith I've got left in humanity." Maureen Corrigan, Washington Post Best Books of 2009

"Darkly enjoyable... clear, crisp prose; his fearless portrait of amorality; and his smart plotting... what a fine addition to the local literary scene he’s become." Boston Globe

"Take Dave Zeltserman’s Pariah, an entry in what I think of as the Whitey Bulger sweepstakes. Fictions based on the fugitive Boston Irish mobster to date include George V. Higgins’ 2000 novel At the End of the Day and the Oscar-winning Martin Scorsese film The Departed. Zeltserman, writing in the pitch-black comic tradition of Jim Thompson or Charles Willeford, deserves to stand in such exalted company." Chauncey Mabe, Palm Beach Arts Paper

"PARIAH is my pick for crime novel of the year. Tough, relentless, and packed with blunt force trauma, the book uses a Whitey Bulger-inspired premise as the framework for a disturbing and darkly satirical study of a psychopath." Hard Feelings

In this month's Ellery Queen

2011-06-22T14:18:00.001-07:00

This month Ellery Queen publishes my short story, Some People Deserve to Die, which is probably my favorite of my short fiction. This is how Ellery Queen describes the story on their website:

If you're looking for something contemporary and edgy, we've got that too: Dave Zeltserman is becoming one of the modern masters of the noir story and in his tale for us this month, "Some People Deserve to Die," he combines tough prose with an ironic twist, as the investigation of the murder of an immigrant from India uncovers some unsavory family matters.

I think most writers have favorites among their works. For me with my short fiction, there are certain elements about different stories that I'm proud of. With 'More Than a Scam' it's a certain time and emotional shift that I pull off, with 'Closing Time' it's using this jovial tone to mask a very dark story underneath, with 'Julius Katz' and 'Archie's Been Framed' it's the way both stories flow and ultimately work, with 'Money Run' it's the quadruple cross that my hero ultimately pulls off on himself, with my upcoming story in Ellery Queen, 'A Hostage Situation', it's the way I pull the rug out from just about every reader, and with 'Some People Deserve to Die' it's the tone and a slight twist at the end.

I also have my favorites among my novels, but I'll keep that to myself other than saying my upcoming crime thriller, 'A Killer's Essence', is among my favorites, and along with Killer and 'Julius Katz and Archie', one of my 3 best crime novels, with all three of them being very different from each other. Killer being a contemporary noir thriller, 'A Killer's Essence' a crime thriller with a paranormal element (and where I get to have a lot of fun at the NY Yankees expense), and 'Julius Katz and Archie' a charming and humor-filled traditional mystery with probably the most unusual detective sidekick in the history of the genre.

This review made me smile

2011-06-21T06:26:00.001-07:00

I had to smile when I stumbled upon this review from the Mystery Librarian for Pariah, especially her first line:

Pariah by Dave Zeltserman is one of those few novels that leave me reeling and speechless at the end of it!

Others in the past had written similarly about Pariah. The Bookbag in their review wrote "It happens rarely, but sometimes you get to the end of a book and what has gone before leaves you speechless." The Washington Post called me a sick puppy because of Pariah, but also picked Pariah as one of the best books of 2009. And so on.

I'll always be thankful to Serpent's Tail for publishing Pariah. In today's climate there's no way any other publisher would've ever taken on a crime novel this dark and subversive.

"one of the best characters out there in mystery and suspense"

2011-06-20T06:29:00.000-07:00

Another superb Julius Katz and Archie mystery! Their are clues revealed through-out for the reader to try and figure out who the killer is, with Archie leading the way. But Julius always does something "off-screen" to trip Archie up. The plot it tight and sound, having this reader guessing the whole way while being thoroughy entertained! Archie is one of the best characters out there in mystery and suspense. Very cleverly written -- I can't wait for the next one!

I'd like to thank Wendy over at the Minding Spot for her review of Julius Katz and Archie.

A Chat Between Me and Archie

2011-06-17T09:30:00.001-07:00

A chat between me and Archie.

New look for Dying Memories

2011-06-16T06:39:00.000-07:00

I love this new look for Dying Memories, and to celebrate this new cover I'll be giving free copies out to the first 5 people who ask for one, just let me know whether you want a kindle or nook version.

Kingdom Books--Tomorrow

2011-06-10T07:04:00.000-07:00

I'm making my 3rd trip to one of my favorite bookstores tomorrow--Kingdom Books in Waterford, VT. I'll be there from 11-12:30 reading and signing Outsourced, as well as talking about other books. And if anyone's interested in ordering a signed copy of any of my books, these are the people to call!

13 Things to Know About Julius Katz

2011-06-09T09:26:00.001-07:00

Here are thirteen things to know about Julius Katz.

Reviews and Interviews

2011-06-06T07:46:00.000-07:00

Over the last week a whole bunch of reviews of my books and interviews with me have shown up on the web.

First, the reviews and interviews from Man Eating Bookworm:

Me and Archie chatting
An interview with me
Julius Katz and Archie review
Killer review
Outsourced review

Hydraulic Blog Splitter review for Outsourced

Somebody Dies review for The Caretaker of Lorne Field

Translation of the French newspaper, Libération's, review of Small Crimes.

Kicking off new interview series with Ian Rowan at More News From Nowhere

Talking with Allan Guthie over at Criminal-E

Interview at The Examiner

Review for On Dangerous Ground over at Randall Johnson's blog (not the baseball pitcher!)

Julius Katz and Archie Day!

2011-06-01T07:15:00.000-07:00

Today is the official release date for Julius Katz and Archie, and here's my online press release.

The Man Eating Bookworm's review for Julius Katz and Archie

Paul Brazill's review

Joe Barone's review.

Roger Smith on 'Julius Katz and Archie'

2011-05-31T09:07:00.000-07:00

“Julius Katz and Archie is a charming and sophisticated drawing room mystery from the pen of the multifaceted Dave Zeltserman. Although the book harks back to the classic whodunits of the Nero Wolfe era, eccentric detective Julius Katz’s sidekick, Archie, is a character straight out of tomorrow: the brilliantly conceived spawn of our digital world. The clever plotting will satisfy mystery aficionados, while long time Zeltserman fans will be pleased to hear that there is a fist of steel lurking under the elegantly tailored velvet glove.” Roger smith, author of Wake Up Dead and Mixed Blood

Thanks are in order!

2011-05-30T07:07:00.000-07:00

First here on Memorial Day, all of us owe a debt of gratitude to all the service men and women past and present who've risked their lives for our freedom, my sister being one of them.

now for thanks regarding far less important stuff involving writing and books...

Al Guthrie for interviewing me over at his new site, Criminal-E

Andrew Leonard for hosting a whole week about my books over at his site The Man Eating Bookworm

Another excerpt from 'Julius Katz and Archie'

2011-05-29T09:17:00.000-07:00

Here's another excerpt from 'Julius Katz and Archie'. To set up this excerpt, Julius had earlier been approached by a client to participate in a potentially embarrassing charade for a large fee. When Julius turns this client down, a bottle of ’78 Montrachet is later added to the fee to induce him, and well, what can Julius do but accept?
_________________________________________________

“I thought your dignity and reputation weren’t for sale?” I asked.

A wry smile pulled up the edges of Julius’s lips. “I don’t believe I ever said anything about my reputation being priceless,” he said.

“Okay, your dignity then.”

More of his wry smile. “Technically, Archie, I don’t believe I as much sold my dignity as bartered it away.”

It was a clever joke, but I wasn’t much up to joking then. More of that excess heat began to burn again in me. “For a lousy bottle of wine! That’s what you did it for!”

“I hardly think you can call a ’78 Montrachet a lousy bottle of wine.” Julius’s smile faded as he sat straighter in his chair and rubbed his thumb along the knuckles of his right hand. With others, Julius kept his emotions and thoughts impenetrable, with me he didn’t bother. Right now he was showing his annoyance, but I didn’t care. “The man is a philistine,” Julius continued. “He was going to mix soda water with a ’78 Montrachet to make a wine spritzer. It would’ve been a crime to let that happen.”

“So you were just saving humanity from an outrage?”

“Precisely.”

“Okay,” I said. “I understand. For a bottle of wine, you’ve agreed to play a stooge.”

Julius stopped rubbing his knuckles. He took in a slow breath and with a forced attempt at humor, said, “And of course, twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“Of course, we can’t forget the twenty-five thousand dollars. So for that money and the Montrachet, you’ll be looking like a dunce to the world.”

“Again, Archie, things are not always what they appear.”

“Yeah, well, as far as the TV and newspaper reporters are going to be concerned, Kenneth J. Kingston will be trumping you at your own game. Should I be ordering you a dunce cap now for the occasion? I might be able to find a good deal.”

Julius slowly began rubbing his knuckles again. “Enough of this, Archie.”

I should’ve taken the hint, but I couldn’t help myself. “Sure, of course,” I said. “I understand. But Boss, should I get a jump on updating your biography to reference that you’re no longer Boston’s most brilliant detective, but have slipped to the second-most? Or should I wait until after Kingston plays you for a chump? Now that I think of it, after that happens I’m not even sure you could legitimately claim that title since probably every other working private investigator in Boston would be able to prove themselves intellectually superior to Kingston, so by the transitive property that would in effect make you Boston’s least brilliant detective. Not as compelling a title for you to hold, but I guess we’ll have to deal with it. If you want I can order stationary now to that effect, or I can wait until—”

I pushed him too far. Julius cut me off, saying, “Goodnight, Archie.” And blast it! My world went black as he turned me off!

Latest review for Dying Memories

2011-05-27T06:37:00.000-07:00

This one held me captive from the first page and I couldn't put it down until I finished the final page. Highly recommended, explosive and action packed from beginning to end.

You can read the entire review at Reviews From the Heart

Paul Levine on 'Julius Katz and Archie'

2011-05-25T07:05:00.001-07:00

"It's a nifty change-of-pace for the usually hard-boiled Dave Zeltserman. Clever, sophisticated and witty, 'Julius Katz & Archie' will thrill fans of Nero Wolfe...and readers who never heard of him! Zeltserman knows how to mix character, action, and plot and create a pitch-perfect, modern mystery. More, Sir! The sooner the better." -- Paul Levine, author of "Flesh & Bones"

Bill Crider on 'Julius Katz and Archie'

2011-05-24T06:57:00.001-07:00

“Julius Katz may be the titular star of Dave Zeltserman's new novel, but it's the voice of his AI assistant, Archie, that carries the day. Archie's more human than most "real" people, and funnier, too. The satire bites, and the mystery satisfies. Julius and Archie became favorites of mine when they first appeared in Zeltserman's award-winning short stories, and they're even better in novel form. Long may they thrive.” Bill Crider, author of the Sheriff Dan Rhodes series

All About Julius!

2011-05-23T06:15:00.000-07:00

Julius Katz gets a nuce endorsement from the Wolfe Pack

This intriguing mystery series evidences some similarities to Rex Stout's detective pair, Nero & Archie, but only some. This modern-day duo from Boston's Beacon Hill, are well worth a try. One of the more striking similarities is the humor evoked by first person narrator, Archie Smith.

Some people reading this might wonder if you need to have read Nero Wolfe to appreciate 'Julius Katz and Archie'. My experience with both the short stories and the novel is not at all. Fans of Nero Wolfe enjoy Julius Katz (and especially Archie), but readers unfamiliar with Nero Wolfe but familiar with Sherlock Holmes also tend to enjoy this series a lot, thinking Julius and Archie are a modern day Sherlock and Watson. And readers who haven't read either Nero Wolfe or Sherlock Holmes also tend to like it a lot. So what it comes down to is if you like mysteries, you're probably going to like my Julius Katz mysteries.

'Julius Katz and Archie' also gets a very nice review from Joe Barone.

In other words, this book is just good fun with a lot of clues and enjoyable characters.

And finally, I have a blog post over at Patti Abbott's blog explaining how I came about writing my first Julius Katz story.

Naomi Hirahara on 'Julius Katz and Archie'

2011-05-22T07:03:00.000-07:00

"Fans of Donna Andrews's Turing Hopper artificial intelligence mysteries, rejoice! Award-winning author Dave Zeltserman has created silicon chip Archie, the high-tech sidekick to Julius Katz, Boston's most famous and laziest wine-drinking detective. Here is a delightful traditional mystery that follows in the footsteps of Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey series.” --Naomi Hirahara, Edgar Award winning author of the Mas Arai mysteries

Gerry Boyle on 'Julius Katz and Archie'

2011-05-21T07:10:00.000-07:00

"Julius Katz and Archie are the Holmes and Watson of our times. Dave Zeltserman serves up his crime-fighting duo with assurance and nary a word misplaced. An addicting read that did what the best noir does: takes you back to the archetypes of the past and propels you into the future. Open Julius Katz and Archie and enjoy."
Gerry Boyle, author of Port City Black and White and the Jack McMorrow mysteries