Frank Johnson

Uncategorized

Created by Ed Lynskey
Pseudonyms include Lyn Key
(1956–)

A former Army MP, FRANK JOHNSON is a thirtyish-divorcee working as a private eye and sometime gunsmith in the fictitious town of Pelham, Virginia. The town, once rural, is now being swallowed by the suburban sprawl from Washington, DC.

Franks gripes a lot about his staff of computer geeks, but he’s a bit of a Poindexter himself — he may detest Microsoft, but he’s also a Linux weenie. But that’s not the only contradiction in his life — he’s also an on-again, off-again reformed and then not-so-reformed smoker and drinker.

Aiding and abetting Frank in his adventures are three supporting characters. His “brilliant but outspoken” attorney Robert Gatlin, a rather eccentric billionaire whose posh office is near Middleburg’s horsey aristocracy. His big passion in life, besides eating and hamming it up on COURT TV, is sticking it to “The Man” every chance he can get. And, of course, prying Frank out of legal jams. Frank employs Johnson on occasion to do some heavy lifting and research, and has dispatched him to such locales as Hanio, Frankfurt, Bermuda, Turkey, Boston, New York, Toronto, Mexico City, New Mexico, West Virginia, and Florida.

Frank also occasionally works with the Peyton brothers, mostly Gerald and occasionally Chet. Chet is a teen-ager, up for about anything. He usually works driving heavy equipment, but is usually available when Frank needs him. His older brother Gerald, however, is the real deal — a bail bonds enforcer (aka “bounty hunter”). He’s called in frequently, and eventually becomes Frank’s full-time partner.

Eventually also joining the cast is  Frank’s medical examiner wife Dreema.

So far Frank has appeared in a staggering number of  both short stories and “novels” (more charitably,”novellas”, tagging in at barely over 100 pages), over the years.

Formulaic?

Maybe not at first, but for the last ten years or so,  even the Amazon synopses on the series page for each novella are pretty much fill-in-the-blank affairs, rife with stock phrases and recycled pot-shot descriptions, each one beginning with “For his next hardboiled outing, P.I. Frank Johnson…”

Still, definitely a notch above most instant series, with a impressive list of big name blurbs over the years to back it up.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Astoundingly prolific, American writer Ed Lynskey‘s work, mostly crime fiction of one sort or another, has appeared in numerous anthologies, magazines and e-zines, including Plots With Guns, Futures, Judas, Detective Mystery Stories, 3rdDegree, Mississippi Review, Hard Luck Stories and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. In his past, Ed has worked at one time or another as a gunsmith, fry cook, political campaign worker, technical writer, support engineer, and a sash and door millworker, as well as an occasional book reviewer for The New York Times and The Washington Post. He grew up in rural Virginia and has traveled to Toronto, Bermuda, Frankfurt, Ankara, and Mexico City. Today, he lives and works in the gray swirls of suburbia surrounding Washington, DC.

His first Frank Johnson novel, The Dirt-Brown Derby, was published in 2006, and a tsunami more have followed. He has since also written several standalones, running the gamut from horror to cozies in such books as Lake Charles, Quiet Anchorage and Ask the Dice, and has also written numerous short stories featuring Sharon Knowles, a former homicide cop turned P.I. who maintains close ties with her former employers.

But that’a not all! Ed has written a multitude of other series, featuring such diverse characters as the Tuxedo Cat, Isabel and Alma Trumbo, Juno Patchen, Piper and Bill Robin, Hope Jones and… well, you get the idea.

UNDER OATH

  • “The Dirt-Brown Derby is hard, fast, and unsentimental. PI Frank Johnson is a guy you want on your side.”
    — Bill Crider
  • “Pelham Fell Here is a delight. With a plot as complex as your grandmother’s crocheted doilies, Mr. Lynskey creates a portrait of the rural hill country that rings as true as the clank of a Copenhagen can on a PBR can, as does his handle on guns, love, and betrayal. This a novel well worth the read and makes me want more.”
    — James Crumley
  • “…bears the richest nicotine and bourbon stains of the hardboiled genre, yet also bristles with vitality. The plot sings, the characters are twisty and textured, and the violence is brutal but inevitable. These elements would be more than enough, yet Ed Lynskey offers so much more in the form of a perfectly pitched prose style that swings effortlessly from back-country grit to Appalachian poetry and back again.”
    — Megan Abbott

SHORT STORIES

  • “The Fixer” (August 2001, Malone’s White Fedora)
  • “Malice Becomes Her” (November 2001, 3 A.M. Magazine)
  • “Murder, Tally Ho” (November 2001, Judas Ezine)
  • “Stet” (January 2002, Judas)
  • “Swag” (February 2002, The Writer’s Hood Mystery)
  • “Death Row Casanova” (February 2002, Plots With Guns)
  • “A Dead Duck Can’t Whistle” (March 2002, Nefarious)
  • “Topsy Turvy” (May/June 2002, Plots With Guns)
  • “Troglodytes” (June 2002, Judas)
  • “Shiny Hammers, Bright Nails” (July 12, 2002, South Ocean Review)
  • “This Is It, Mr. Johnson” (August 2002, Orchard Press Mysteries)
  • “Chalice” (September 2002, Judas)
  • “Not Too Dirty, Not Too Sweet” (Autumn 2002, The Moonwort Review)
  • “Black Felt” (November/December 2002, Plots With Guns)
  • “Think Pink” (Winter 2002, The Moonwort Review)
  • “Next of Kin” (Jan./Feb./March 2003, Futures)
  • “The Black Lacquer Coffin” (Spring 2003, 3rdegree.com)
  • “Vanished” (May 2003, Detective Mystery Stories)
  • “Didymus” (Summer 2003, Down These Dark Streets Anthology)
  • “After Big Noise in Hanoi” (Summer 2003, Hard Luck Stories)
  • “Plain Vanilla Wrapper” (September 2003, Mysterical-e)
  • “Wood Shavings” (October 2003, Shred of Evidence)
  • “Pawn” (October/November 2003, Crime Scene Scotland)
  • “The Hanoi Hilton” (Spring 2003, Volume 9, No. 2, Mississippi Review)
  • “Mariachi Redux” (November/December 2003, Plots With Guns)
  • “Against the Season” (not yet published, Shots)
  • “A Treeless Land” (December 2003/January 2004, Crime Scene Scotland)
  • “Green Earrings” (Spring 2004, Nuvein Magazine)
  • “Gold Medal” (April 2004, Detective Mystery Stories)
  • “Goethe’s Needles” (April/May 2004, Crime Scene Scotland)
  • “Agog Ages Ago” (August 2004, Dead Mule)
  • “The Zinc Zoo” (August 2004, Nuvein Magazine)
  • “Running Up the Score” (September/October 2004, Crime Scene Scotland)
  • “The Perfect Victim” (Fall 2004, Hard Luck Stories)
  • “Bangkok Sferics” (Fall 2004, Blood and Thunder: Musing on the Art of Medcine)
  • “The Hearse Driver” (Winter 2004, Combat: The Literary Expression of Battlefield Touchstones)
  • “Ahoy Boy” (Winter 2004, BULLET)
  • “Following the Sunsphere” (Winter 2005, Volume 11, No. 1, Mississippi Review Online)
  • “Shooting Blanks at the Alamo” (January/February 2005, Crime Scene Scotland)
  • “Wire to Wire” (March 2005, Mysterical-e)
  • “Silversonic” (April 2005, Nuvein Magazine)
  • “Daddy Warbucks” (July/August 2005, Crime Scene Scotland)
  • “The Rebel Yell” (November/December 2005, Crime Scene Scotland)
  • “How to Defuse a Terrorist” (Winter 2005, BULLET)
  • “Laetrile” (May 2006, Thuglit)
  • “One Diener’s Justice” (Crime scene Scotland)
  • “Striptease on Mount Rushmore” (2008, Deadlines; aka “Smoking on Mount Rushmore”)
  • “Juror Number Three” (2013, Smoking on Mount Rushmore)

COLLECTIONS

  • Out of Town for a Few Days (2004) | Kindle it!
    Containing 15 stories .featuring Frank Johnson.
  • Smoking on Mount Rushmore (2013) | Buy this book  | Kindle it!
    Includes five stories featuring Frank Johnson.
  • A Clear Path to Cross

NOVELS

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.

Published

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