Created by Nick Kowalski
I can almost picture the big lug, standing out in the spotlight, neat, clean, shaved and (almost) sober, stalking the stage in some comedy hot spot on the Strip, cracking ‘em up with one-liners and snappy, cock-eyed similes…
He had a face like a collapsed lung…
He was a big man… not much wider than a beer truck…
She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket…
So perhaps it was inevitable that eventually someone would take the hint — Nick Kowlski’s DASH FULLER is a former Hollywood fixer and bagman trying to make it as a stand-up comic.
Only problem?
Dash isn’t particularly funny.
Although as a first person narrator he does have a way with words, like the breeze that “felt hotter than a dog’s breath.” But hey, almost anything is better, he decides, than working in the tawdry Tinseltown shadows, covering up dirty, sordid secrets — a job that he fears cost him his soul. Or at least his self-respect.
Dash (or at least a version of him) first popped up in a 2023 short story, “Back to Hell House,” where, fresh offstage (he bombed), he’s approached by his old boss Manny to locate a runaway star. The perpetually sleazy Manny needs “someone not on the payroll” to find a missing actor who’s gone off the rails. Which should have set off all kinds of alarms for Dash.
But, desperate for cash, Dash reluctantly agrees. And promptly heads back onstage to ask the audience for help, offering cash for info.
That beginning is revised and reprised as the kick-off to his novel-length Where the Bones Lie (2025), but that’s just the start. Dash’s impromptu plea attracts the attention of the gothy Madeline Ironwood, she of the fiery red hair, combat boots and heavy Navy overcoat, who soon seeks him out. They meet at a taco stand (It’s LA — where else would they meet?). She wants him to look into the murder of her father, Ken Ironwood, whose corpse was recently discovered in a rusty oil drum in a dried-up lake bed, out near San Douglas in the wine country north of Santa Barbara, a haven for the rich, the powerful and the mind-your-own-damn-business. Apparently dear old Dad famously ran drugs back in the day, but disappeared when Madeline was only two.
Now she wants some answers. And maybe some vengeance.
Dash warns her that he’s not a licensed investigator, but she doesn’t care —she’s already tried a few of those. She just wants “someone who can find things out” and “can keep secrets.”
Dash is intrigued, and certainly wouldn’t mind doing some actual detective work that doesn’t reek. And hey, maybe being a legit P.I. could be a whole new career. Certainly better than going back to work for Manny.
And so we’re off. Dash heads off to San Douglas, Madeline insisting on accompanying him, and soon enough they’re roaming the countryside, facing off against assorted cops (both ineffectual and/or crooked), assorted miscreants and thugs, a wealthy winery owner and obnoxious documentary filmmakers intent on telling the Ken Ironwood story. Even Manny is hovering on the edges, only a phone call away, intent on drawing Dash back into the fold.
It’s an auspicious debut, and the ending?
Yikes.
The author is thinking Where the Bones Lie may be the start of a potential series.
Yes, please.
SHORT STORIES
- “Back to Hell House” (Fall 2023, Vautrin)
NOVELS
- Where the Bones Lie (2025) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- Hollywood Fixers
Tinseltown Troubleshooters & Other Miscreants
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
