The Private Eye Writers Bulletin Board

Word on the street is…

This is something new I’m trying out, but it really depends on you. If you’re a private eye writer, and you’ve got something in a private eye vein coming out in the next little while, please let me know via email (or DM me, for you youngsters) and I’ll post the news here. All I ask is that you keep it short, keep it pithy and keep it relevant. If you’re not sure, check out What the hell is a private eye, anyway?

Don’t worry–I’ve got plenty of thumbtacks.

Also, let me know what you think about this idea…

J.R. Sanders
In Dead-Bang Fall, my second novel featuring 1930s L.A. private eye Nate Ross, a penny-ante theft caper turns deadly when one of the miscreants is murdered and Nate’s the prime witness. It turns complicated when the number one suspect, a former friend and disgraced colleague, turns up asking for Nate’s help only to vanish again. Nate’s forced to confront more than one ghost from his past as his struggle to prove his on-the-lam client’s innocence brings him up against hostile cops, a pair of rolling assassins, film pirates, mobsters, and a girl who may need his help or may be playing him for a chump.

Gary Phillips
My upcoming novel, One-Shot Harry, introducesKorean War vet, part-time process server and crime photog Harry Ingram. It’s set in 1963 L.A.,  on the eve of a visit by Martin Luther King Jr. to the city. I suppose he’s an amateur sleuth but trust me–he’s rugged nonetheless. (February 2022)

Bill Duncan
The latest Rafferty P.I. novel, Down The Barrel, launches on February 1st 2022. It’s available to pre-order now where all good e-books are sold. Paperback to follow a couple of weeks later. (January 2022)

Martin Ross
I’ve kicked off a Facebook blog, Short Suspects, that covers one lost or exceptional but lesser-known short story or novella (and the anthology or collection where it can be found) five times  a week. I try to hit the history of crime fiction, how genre trends reflected social, cultural, and pop trends, insights into the authors, and how to find and affordable copy of the collection of the day.
To date, I have featured the shorter cases of the 87th Precinct (“Empty Hours” through “Merely Hate”); short stories and novelettes that inspired or are related to popular of classic films (Double Indemnity, Rear Window, Bloodwork and Bosch, the James Bond films); and, currently, the print private eyes who helped bring the genre into the 21st Century — Matt Scudder, Easy Rawlins, Bill Smith and Lydia Chin, Stanley Hastings, and Dave Brandstetter. Coming up: A look at the rarer and more unusual treasures in the Ivy Books paperback anthologies of the late ’80s/early ’90s, Otto Penzler’s great sports mystery anthologies, and a look at Edward D. Hoch and his multiple sleuths. I have somewhere around 300-400 anthologies and single-author collections, so I should be able to keep this going for years to come. And if you’d like to chime in on the PI short story from time to time, I’d be delirious. Well, very happy, anyway. (September 2021)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Check out One-Short Wonders, Martin’s survey of some of his favourite one-shot P.I. stories.

John Triptych
Although I’m primarily a sci-fi writer, I have also written two books (so far) about Dapper Luoo, a Chinese American private eye in 1950s Los Angeles. The second book, Oceans of Brass, will be out August 15th. I did an interview on  Indie Crime Scene about the writing of the first book that came out last year. (August 2021)

Ron Miller
Wrapping up my first new Velda short story in years. Velda finds herself on her cousin’s farm while solving a murder mystery in “E-I-E-I-Oh Velda!” (August 2021)

Fred Zackel
My new book Drunk on Blood is available on Amazon. Cricket West, a Las Vegas private eye, a broken nose blonde on the dark side of thirty, has been hired by the Archbishop of Las Vegas and partnered up with a Jesuit monsignor from the Vatican to observe and bear witness to the strange and unholy evils in the Catholic Church that he must confront. Carry your gun, she is told. Always reload quickly.
And check out “Murder By Proxy,” my Crime Micro-Flash Fiction, which appeared in the June Mystery Tribune. (July 2021)

Brandon Barrows
The first issue of Guilty Crime Story Magazine is out and includes my story “Give Me a Reason,” plus six more, all-new stories and an article on Mickey Spillane’s legendary P.I., Mike Hammer! Available on Amazon in both Kindle and print editions. (July 2021)

Max Allan Collins
The first of three novellas about a new ’40s female P.I., Fancy Anders, will appear soon from Neo-Text as an e-book with a POD option. Two more Fancy novellas will follow and eventually be collected (I hope). Illustrations are by the fabulous Fay Dalton. Meanwhile, the third John Sand spy novel by Matt Clemens and me will be out soon, as we1l, from Wolfpack: To Live and Spy in Berlin. Much is in the works for the 75th anniversary of Mike Hammer next year (I, the Jury was published in 1947). (July 2021)

Michele Bazan Reed
Jazz age P.I., Harry Jerome, is featured in “The Canine Caper,” published in June in the Sisters in Crime Guppy Chapter antholory, The Fish That Got Away. In the story, Harry takes on a wily canine thief at the 1921 New York State Fair Dog Show. (July 2021)

Richard Conrath
ln A Cold Copper Moon, Cooper, a private investigator desperate to find his son, now eight years missing, has dreams about his son’s kidnapping–are they real or are they just part of his nightmares? In the meantime,Cynthia Hayward has hired Cooper to find her father, missing since Thanksgiving, because she’s heard that he’s good at finding missing people. And he is. (July 2021)

O’Neil De Noux
I’ve had three short stories published recently: “Ticking of the Big Clock” in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (January/February 2021), “The Girl with the Gibson Girl Look” in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (March/April 2021), and “Fort Dumpster” in the June 2021 issue of Pulphouse Fiction. (July 2021)

Ken Harris
The Pine Barrens Stratagem: From the Case Files of Steve Rockfish drops on January 27, 2022 from Black Rose. It follows Steve Rockfish, a private detective struggling with the pandemic, who just landed his biggest client. But as Steve digs deeper, he’s thrown into the den of a monolithic criminal alliance and his effort uncovers a myriad of illicit activity dating back to the 1940s and as recent as yesterday. (July 2021)

Corey Lynn Fayman
My most recent novel, Ballast Point Breakdown, won top honors at the 202 1 San Diego Book Awards, selected as best Published Mystery/Suspense Fiction and also receiving the Geisel Award for overall best-in-show. (July 2021)

David R. Thompson
Level Best Books is publishing my next 1940s-era hard-boiled detective mystery novel, Shanghai Ruby, which is due out in July. Private eye Matt Thornton is hired by a friend of Humphrey Bogart to recover jewels given to a mobster’s mistress, and Ernest Hemingway is threatened while overseeing his latest movie. Thornton uncovers a connection to several murdered women and a communist plot to overthrow the Hollywood Movie industry with funds generated from a counterfeit currency scheme, laundering the money through Chinatown’s illegal gambling, dope and prostitution business.

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

• Have You Heard the News?
  My own selection of rumours, gossip, allegations and occasional facts about all P.I.-related things that links I think might warrant further investigation.
• The Private Eye Writers of America
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