Black Rock - chapter one

This book won't be published until sometime next year (I hope the first half of the year) but here's the first chapter.


ONE

Constable Eddie Dougherty climbed up the iron work of the Victoria Bridge onto the railway tracks and said to his partner standing by the radio car, yeah, “C’est une bombe.”

            They were halfway between the island of Montreal and the south shore, cars slowing down but still managing to get past in the single lane and Gauthier said, “Vachon arrive,” as the unmarked black station wagon pulled up behind the radio car and Gilles Vachon and Robert Meloche got out.

            The bomb squad.

            Dougherty walked back onto the railway tracks in the middle of the bridge and showed Vachon the blue Expo 67 flight bag wedged between one of the the stone piers and an iron truss.

            Meloche said, “Tabernac,” and Vachon nodded and looked from the flight bag to Dougherty’s badge and name tag and then spoke english, saying, “Did you hear anything?”

            “Just the river.”

            Vachon said, “Of course.” Twenty feet below the bridge the St. Lawrence rushed by. “This bridge is over a hundred years old,” Vachon said. “It would be a shame to lose it.”

            Dougherty didn’t know what to say, he’d only been a cop a couple of years, practically still a rookie and Vachon was becoming a legend dismantling so many bombs, but he didn’t seem very serious.

            “It was the longest bridge in the world when it was built, almost two miles. Just for trains then, of course,” Vachon said. “These lanes were added later,” and he stomped on the metal grated surface the cars drove on.

            Meloche said, “Come on,” and started climbing down the iron work.

            Vachon nodded a little and looked down at the bag and then back to Dougherty and said, “You didn’t get too close, did you?”

            Dougherty said, no, but now he was feeling too close. A bag stuffed with dynamite and the bomb squad was two guys in overalls.

            Vachon reached down and took something out of a leather pouch on his belt and Dougherty figured it must be some kind of fancy bomb squad tool and then saw it was a pair of nail clippers.

            “To snip the wires,” Vachon said and he followed Meloche until they were standing on the concrete pier face to face with the blue bag.

            Dougherty followed them as far as he could, holding on to a truss and watching as the two man bomb squad who had dismantled almost a hundred of these dynamite bombs in the last year talked about what to do. The flight bag was zipper-down, of course, wedged in fairly tight.

            From up top Gauthier yelled, “What are you doing, come up here,” speaking english but Dougherty didn’t say anything. He watched Vachon and Meloche waving their hands and talking but couldn’t hear what they were saying over the rushing water below.

            After a few minutes Meloche shrugged and pushed one end of the bag until it came loose and fell into the river and disappeared in the fast moving current. And then the two bomb squad guys climbed back up the iron work to the railway tracks.

            Dougherty said, “What the hell,” and Vachon said, “It’s gone now.”

            “Yeah, but now there’s a bomb in the river.”

            “You don’t know that,” Meloche said, “it could be a bag of donuts,” and he climbed up past Dougherty.

            Vachon said, “The dynamite is ruined, it’s safe now.”

            “What are you going to say in your report?”

            “What report?” He walked over to unmarked station wagon, stood by the passenger door and said, “If we report it, it gets in the press, why give these bastards what they want?”

            Dougherty said, yeah, “I guess,” and Vachon smiled and got into the passenger seat of the unmarked station wagon and Meloche drove towards the south shore to turn around and head back onto the island of Montreal.

            Dougherty just stood there watching them go and then Gauthier, who’d been a cop longer than Dougherty’d been alive said, “Come on, that’s enough action for me, I need a drink,” and got into the squad car.

            The action was why Dougherty had joined the police.

The rest of Chapter One can be found here.

Swag by Elmore Leonard

While doing a little research I came across this ad for apartment rentals in Montreal in 1970:

The building (which is still there but doesn't look very swinging on Google view) is near the airport and now I've discovered stories of wild parties with stewardesses (no one used the words "flight attendant") and the rumour that Xaviera Hollander (the Happy Hooker) lived there for a while, or maybe partied there or maybe worked there.

But what the ad really made me think of was Frank and Stick in Elmore Leonard's Swag and the apartment they lived in while pulling armed robberies around Detroit.

Swag wasn't the first Elmore Leonard novel I read but it was the first one that had characters that acted exactly like people I knew.

QuebecCrime Festival

The line-up for the QuebecCrime Fest 2012 is starting to come in and I'm thrilled to be included.

The festival will be taking place in Quebec City from October 23rd to October 27th.

It's just like old times for me, included on a panel described as, "Anglophone Panel and Book Signing." I don't hear the word, "Anglophone" in Ontario very much ;).

There's more information at the fest's website here.

A Fun Reading and Back on Kindle

Last Wednesday I was lucky enough to be one of three writers reading from our books at Ben McNally Books, a terrific bookstore on Bay Street in downtown Toronto (in 1981 I started out at university in the economics department and dreamed about working on Bay Street so this was a long time coming ;).

For more info about the evening, check out Julia Madeleine's blog (and pick up her novel, The Truth About Scarlet Rose while you're there, it's good).

At the reading I heard a rumour from someone at ECW that IPG and Amazon were close to working out their disagreement and the my books would soon be available once again for the Kindle, and I see today that has happened. So far the bundle of the first three novels hasn't shown up on Kindle (it's available for Kobo) but it should soon.

ECW Crime Night

Wednesday, May 23rd at Ben McNally Books:

As the invitation says, there'll be short readings by Mike Knowles, Brent Pilkey, David Whellams, Marc Strange and me.

I haven't read the Marc Strange or David Whellams books yet, but my guess is they're up the usual high ECW standards (present company excepted and all that..) and I know for sure that Mike Knowles and Brent Pilkey are very, very good and also worth hearing live, so to speak.

So, Ben McNally Books, 366 Bay Street, Toronto. The Jays are out of town that day, anyway...

My Hobby

Years ago I had a photography hobby that I've recently started up again.

It's very simple. When I see a business called "Mr."-something, I take a picture.

Like this:

And now I'm going to post the pictures on a blog called Mr. Pictures.

Black Rock

For the past few months I've been working on a new novel which right now I'm calling Black Rock. It's set in Montreal in 1970, the year of the "October Crisis" and is about a young, almost-rookie cop who gets involved in the hunt for a serial killer.

I was planning to write a novel about the value of a single life (if that doesn't sound too pretentious, which I know it does) and set it against the backdrop of the kidnapping and murder of Quebec politician Pierre Laporte. One of the things I've heard a lot about the period of terrorism we lived through in Montreal in the late 60s and into 1970 was that "only eight" people were killed by terrorists and I started to wonder, well, isn't one too many?

When I started to look into this idea of the value of a life I thought about the memorial on the Montreal side of the Victoria Bridge commemorating the deaths of 6000 Irish immigrants to Canada during the famine. 6000, that’s a lot, surely no one would ever say, “only six thousand,” about that.

And yet, I’ve driven by that monument thousands of times in my life and never stopped to read the inscription and never really knew the story behind it. It’s official name is The Irish Commemorative Stone and Wikipedia says it’s sometimes called the “Ship Fever Monument” or the “Boulder Stone” but I’ve never heard it called anything but the “Black Rock.”

The story I’ve always heard about the Black Rock was that Irish workers digging out the piers for the Victoria Bridge sometime between 1854 and 1859 discovered a mass grave – the coffins of 6000 Irish immigrants who had died of typhoid on the ships crossing the Atlantic (or died under quarantine in the ‘fever sheds’) in 1847.

And it’s only now that I’m realizing between the typhus epidemic and the discovery of the mass grave less than ten years have passed. So, in less than a decade the deaths of 6000 people have been buried and forgotten. No marker, nothing.

The story goes that when the workers dug up the mass grave they also dug up the big rock and wanted to use it as a memorial. I have a feeling there was some discussion about not losing any work time to do it, but let’s call that a hunch.

The inscription on the rock reads:

"To Preserve from Desecration the Remains of 6000 Immigrants Who died of Ship Fever A.D. 1847-48 This Stone is erected by the Workmen of Messrs. Peto, Brassey and Betts Employed in the Construction of the Victoria Bridge A.D. 1859.”

So, the Black Rock fits with my ideas about the value of a single life, but I am a little wary about trying to attach myself to so much history. And the murders of the three women. When does exploitation start, exactly?

Well, one writer is using historical events and not exploiting them, but writing fantastic books, is my friend Adrian McKinty. His latest published novel, The Cold Cold Ground, takes place in Northern Ireland in 1981 and there’s really nothing I can add to the long, long list of great reviews the book has received. The weird thing is it’s easier to get the e-book or the audiobook in north America as no US publisher has picked it up.

I predict that will change with either the second or third book in the series.

Audiobooks

Dirty Sweet and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere are now available as audiobooks from Audible.com.

Swap and Tumblin' Dice should be available sometime this month and they'll all be available soon from iTunes.

All four are narrated by William Dufris and I think he does a fantastic job.

And there was a review of Tumblin' Dice in the National Post today by Sarah Weinman which said very nice things. My favourite part is: "Each of John McFetridge’s three previous novels have a rhythm to them, mixing taut dialogue, spare description and a dark sensibility with the cool calm of a master bass player."

It's funny she mentions the bass. I bought my first bass, a Hagstrom, in about 1978 but when I joined the band Smiley's People in 1985 I switched to guitar (strictly rhythm, as they say) and the bass was played by Michel Basilières, whose fantastic novel Black Bird won the Amazon/Books in Canada Best First Novel Award.

The real guitar player in Smiley's People was Clifford Schwartz and here's a clip of him playing with Cirque du Soliel:

The Bundle

ECW Press has issued my first three novels as a single ebook for less than ten bucks.

It's available for the Kobo here, and I hope for other formats soon.

The Moon and the Stars and the Sun

Well, the Star and the Sun, anyway. Tumblin’ Dice received a couple of very good reviews this weekend in the Toronto Star and the Toronto Sun (and other Sun newspapers in Canada).

The Star said the book has, “just the right balance of grit, humour and rock’n’roll knowledge,” and that the, “story of the middle-aged guys in The High taking a deep dive into the world of shylocks, bikers, murder and much more entertaining stuff that seems to be just sleazy for its own sake.” Well, I think there are a few reasons for the sleaziness, but fair enough. Entertaining, that’s the part I like.

Full review here.


And the Sun said, “There's still plenty of sex, drugs and rock and roll in this post-middle-aged world -- the riffs alone on the groups and music of the day will appeal to a whole lot of readers -- and there's even some love and romance, albeit of hard-bitten sorts.” It also said, “McFetridge is -- or should be -- a star in the world of crime fiction.” And all I can say to that is, thank you.

Fulle review here.


When looking for a title for this blog post I realized that for all the rock’n’roll talk in Tumblin’ Dice there’s very little mention of The Beatles. Well, in the book the band The High are about my age so they were around twelve years old when The Beatles broke up and stopped putting out records. Like me, the first records they bought were by The Rolling Stones, Alice Cooper and Aerosmith (I think the guys in The High were too cool to start off with a K Tel record).

And now that I think about it, Instant Karma would make a really good title for a novel...

Reviews

Reviews are starting to come in for Tumblin' Dice and so far they're very good.


The Quill and Quire review is now online here.

There's also a good review in Publisher's Weekly that says:

Things start accelerating from the opening line, which sets the tone, engages interest perfectly, and could have come from Elmore Leonard. "The High had been back together and on the road for a couple of months playing mostly casinos when the lead singer, Cliff Moore, got the idea to start robbing them." And the avalanching pace keeps going as the band's efforts to supplement their income illegally leads to violent complications. The scheme takes a personal turn when the High decide to take revenge on a casino owner, Frank Kloss, who had ripped them off on their first contract, and continued to take advantage of them for a decade of representation. Like Leonard, McFetridge is able to convincingly portray flawed figures on both sides of the law.

And Spinetingler Magazine said, "Tumblin’ Dice is a razor sharp riveting story with a very cool vibe. Loved it. Highly recommended."

It can't be all good, of course, and this week Tumblin' Dice also got a couple of very negative reviews, but I'm not man enough to post links to those.

I also did a Q&A with OpenBook Toronto which is now online here. Some good questions including one about the challenges and pleasures of working with characters from previous books.

And we have lift-off

Today is the official launch date for Tumblin' Dice.

So far, my friends have said good things about the book and the review in Quill and Quire (Canada's Magazine of Book News and Reviews) was starred and said that each of the, "...colourful characters takes huge chances, frequently hoping for an equally huge payoff. The only one not taking a chance on Tumblin' Dice is the reader," which is very nice of them.

The publisher, ECW has put the first chapter online here.

The books is available in hardcover and e-book in all the usual places. In fact, the US distributor, IPG, have had 5000 of their books pulled from Kindle sales in the US but for some reason my books were not among them.

If you by the book or take it out of the library or borrow it from a friend or find it on the floor of a bus I hope you like it.

Thanks.

The Honour Killing in Tumblin' Dice

My novels are often critisized for having too many characters, too many sub-plots and being too messy. Fair enough, life is messy.

Usually my books have a murder investigation that isn’t directly related to the main plot and isn’t really a mystery, but is the kind of murder that happens all too often. Sometimes these murders come rather late in the book and wrap up fairly quickly. These murders are usually based on real incidents that have happened in Toronto and, I hope, they serve to develop the characters a little more and to develop the theme of the book a little more.

These murders interest me precisely because they aren’t mysteries, they don’t require brilliant detective work or even much forensics but, sadly, they happen all the time. Often these crimes are committed by one family member against another.

In Tumblin’ Dice the murder is the kind the media is now calling an honour killing.

This murder is seperate from the main plot but is investigated by the same police officers (McKeon and Price) involved in the central plot and I think helps to develop the theme of the book, the question of peoples’ ability or inability to adjust to change.

What really struck me about honour killings and the reason I felt one fit in this book was how much the motives and language looked and sounded like a mob hit; someone is causing trouble, bringing dishonour to the family, questioning the absolute authority and they must be stopped and a message must be sent to anyone else who may cause trouble, bring dishonour and question the absolute authority.

An honour killing murder trial just finished here in Ontario in which three members of the Shafia family (husband, wife, son) were convicted of first degree murder of four women (first wife and three daughters). This is not the case I fictionalized in Tumblin’ Dice, but the motives are very similar. In this case an expert on honour killings, Dr. Shahrzad Mojab, has testified (something that hasn’t happened much up till now as plea bargains are often struck, something some people involved feel happens precisely so that there will be no public testimony about honour killings) that, “the way to deal with the dishonouring is through the shedding of blood... It’s a way of purifying the honour of the family.”

Or maybe it was Vito Corleone who said that. It’s a little flowery for Tony Soprano but he would certainly agree with the sentiment.

The one-time leader of the Hells Angels in Montreal was once heard on a wire tap advising a guy who felt he’d been dishonoured to, “get a baseball bat and go get your honour back.”

Dr. Mojab co-edited a book called, “Violence in the name of Honour,” which wouldn’t be out of place as a title for a book about organized crime families.

“Cleaning one’s honour of shame,” Dr. Mojab said, “is typically handled by the killing of a loved one,” and with the murderer often ending up being, “respected as a true man.” I think in the mob you need to kill someone to become a ‘made man,’ and the bikers are said to require a murder before someone can receive a full patch and be, “respected as a true man.”

Dr. Mojab also said there may even be family meetings held to discuss whether a killing is necessary. I’m not entirely sure, but I think in the mob they call this a “sit down.” Dr. Mojab also said that sometimes the girl in question is brought in, “to hear the decision” and be told that “it is best for her and for the restoration of family honour.”

Often afterwards, Dr. Mojab said, such fathers will claim they loved their children, that the killing was “part of the continuum of love and care.” The fathers may even claim that the suffering of the rest of the family, having to live as dishonoured, is greater than death.

So, I think the similarities are there.




Last week the National Post newspaper published an ebook called Killed Because They Were Girls, made up of the articles by Christie Blatchord (who did an excellent job) that covered the Shafia murder trial in Kingston that’s available for Kindle, iBook, Kobo, Nook and probably more formats. The quotes here from Dr. Mojab are from articles written by Christie Blatchford.

The Music of Tumblin' Dice

It's a novel with a rock band as the main characters, so yeah, there's a lot of music references in Tumblin' Dice.

The song above is As the Years Go By by Montreal's own Mashmakhan and the mention in the novel is this:

On the bus, waiting hours to cross the bridge back into Canada from Buffalo, Cliff actually sat down beside Ritchie and said, why don’t we put the guitar solo back into “As Years Go By”? Ritchie said, “You serious?” and Cliff said sure, “Why not. The way it should’ve been.”

You'll notice right away I screwed up the title, leaving out the the. But I wanted to have Mashmakhan in the book. As the Years Go By is the only song of theirs to have really survived and it makes them seem like pop band but the rest of their music was a lot more psychadelic. They were, afterall, named for a kind of hash that was popular in Montreal in the late 60s.

The fictional band in Tumblin' Dice is called The High and they had some minor hits in the late 70s and early 80s but then, well, here's what it says in the book:

Back in ’84–’85, towards the end of the High, instead of going hair metal and Poison and Cinderella, they’d gone keyboards and tried to hang on to the pop charts. Ritchie hated it, didn’t care that Van Halen was Jumping or the Stones had gone Undercover of the Night or Rod Stewart had his Infatuation, he just wanted to play guitar.

Another Montreal musician I wanted to have in the book is Michel Pagliaro.



Pagliaro wrote and recorded songs in both English and French and had a few big hits in the seventies. I wish he'd tour with Ringo Starr's All Star Band or something like that, it would be great to see him live again.

One Canadian band that's not mentioned in Tumblin' Dice is Max Webster.



I first saw Max Webster live at the Montreal Forum with RUSH, must have been '77 (now thanks to the magic of Google I can just look it up and see that it was, in fact, March 31st 1977) and at the time the Frank Zappa fans I was with were really there to see Max Webster. Today the lead guitarist and vocalist from Max Webster, Kim Mitchell, is the afternoon DJ on Q107 here in Toronto.

Max Webster isn't mentioned in the book because it's The High that toured so much in the late '70s with RUSH.

Made him think of that line, Geddy screaming it out. Shit, Rush, those guys still getting along, still having fun. Shit, playing high schools from St. Catharines to Oshawa, the High and Rush in the ’70s.

That line, something about if you choose not to decide you’ve still made a choice.

Ritchie laughed, thinking only fucking Neil Peart could make a rock’n’roll lyric out of that and only Gary Lee Weinrib could sing shit like that and get twenty thousand people singing along.

After that it's pretty much all American and British music.

What Was the First Album You Bought?

Whenever the topic of “first concert” comes up I’ve got a great story. In January 1974 (I was fourteen) my cousin Mike was on his way out west and the day he stopped at our place in Montreal Bob Dylan was playing the Forum. Mike asked me if I wanted to go see the show and I said it had been sold out for months. Mike said, no problem, we headed down to the Forum and Mike bought us tickets (and maybe a little something else ;) from a scalper in Atwater Park.

The concert was great, though I have to admit I was too young to appreciate Bob Dylan and my favourite part was The Band.

But when it comes to “first album” I don’t have such a good story. The first album I bought was K-Tel’s “Fantastic: 22 original hits 22 original stars” in late 1973.

Oh sure, it had Bill Withers’ “Lean On Me,” and two Elton John songs, “Crocodile Rock” and “Rocket Man” it also had Vicki Lawrence’s (Mama, from The Carol Burnett show?!?) “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,” and something called “Bongo Rock” by The Incredible Bongo Band.

At the time my favourite songs on the album were probably Stories' "Brother Louie," and The Five Man Electrical Band's "I'm a Stranger Here." This was in the era beore "Disco Sucks" so there's an odd mix, for sure.

Here’s the complete song list:

Stories- Brother Louie
Elton John- Crocodile Rock
Dawn (featuring Tony Orlando)- Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree
Focus- Hocus Pocus
The Sweet- Little Willy
Bill Withers- Lean On Me
Lobo- It Sure Took A Long, Long Time
Vicki Lawrence- The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia
The Incredible Bongo Band- Bongo Rock
New York City- I'm Doin' Fine Now
Barry White- I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby
Maureen McGovern- The Morning After
Chester -Make My Life a Little Bit Brighter
Les Emmerson- Cry Your Eyes Out
Charlie Daniels- Uneasy Rider
Albert Hammond- The Free Electric Band
Foster Sylvers- Misdemeanor
Five Man Electrical Band- I'm A Stranger Here
Stampeders- Minstrel Gypsy
Peter Foldy- Bondi Junction
Jim Stafford- Swamp Witch
Elton John- Rocket Man

Turns out there was a TV commercial for this album but I don’t remember it:



Also, it seems that K-Tel had the same albums in the US and Canada with slightly different song lists.

So, what was the first album you bought?

George McFly Day!

My friend Adrian McKinty has started something called George McFly Day. It's the day when the author copies of a book arrive at your house. Well, today is George McFly Day at my house as my copies of Tumblin' Dice arrived.

ECW Press have done their usual excellent job with the book and together with the previous three it's starting to look like a real series.

This will also be the first book in ECW's, "Buy a book, get the ebook free," promotion.

Official publication date is March 1st.

Oh, and the about the book runs like this:

The High, a band with a few hit songs in the late 1970s, have reunited to play the nostalgia circuit at casinos. But for bassist Barry and lead singer Cliff, this tour promises to be unforgettable and even more worthwhile than ever. In this fourth installment of the Toronto series, these two band members turn the tables on the gritty underworld of casinos, as they rob the loan sharks and drug dealers who work at every stop of the tour. After finding their old manager who had swindled millions from them years ago, Barry and Cliff decide to go for the big score and get it all back — and more. But when the Saints of Hell, the notoriously dangerous motorcycle gang, get involved, all bets are off.

As usual with my books there are probably too many characters, too many sub-plots and not enough mystery but as my son Douglas (on the right in photo above said, "You sure use the f-word a lot," so there's that.

Free ebook with purchase

My publisher, ECW Press, is trying something new with their spring catalogue books including Tumblin' Dice; buy a book, get the ebook free.

Here's what the press release says:

“When readers pay top price for one of our books, we feel they should be able to read it in the way that fits best with their life: a printed book in a comfy chair, an eBook on their phone on the bus, whatever,” said David Caron, ECW Press co-publisher. “We also wanted to find a way to include bookstores that don’t sell eBooks, so that both the store’s customers and the bookseller feel that they are getting good value from an ECW Press book.”

The way it works is that when you buy a book in a bookstore or online you send an email to ECW, and include where you bought the book, the receipt number, and your preferred ebook format. ECW will send you the file, and a request to include you on their newsletter list, as well as some more ways to connect with ECW Press.

I like this plan, I think it's a good idea to be able to get the book in every format you want with one purchase.

I also like the idea of finding a way to involve bookstores that don't sell ebooks - indies, really. I saw an interesting post a little while ago from author Dean Wesley Smith about "gift card" ebooks that could be sold in bookstores. He described it like this:

"You walk into any major store and see a huge stand of gift cards. Now imagine that rack full of cards are all cards that represent electronic books. All the buyer of the card has to do is log in a code on the back of the gift card to download the book to any device."

And there's no reason it has to be a "major store," it could just as easily be a local independent bookstore. You could still browse, talk to a human being, get recommendations and make your purchase locally.



Getting back to ECW's spring list, there are a few books I'm looking forward to (in addition to Tumblin' Dice, of course), mostly the Mike Knowles Mystery Omnibus containing the first three Wilson novels.

Just in time to get caught up before the fourth Wilson novel, Never Play Another Man's Game is published in May.

Below the Line for Kobo and Nook and now Kindle, too.

The first book I had published, Below the Line, is now available as an e-book for the Kobo and the Nook.

First published in 2003 as a trade paperback from Signature Editions, the description goes like this:

Admit it. When there's a film shooting in the neighbourhood, we all slow down to get a closer look, secretly hoping to catch a glimpse of a real live movie star. But who are all those other people bustling about the set with cables and lights and power tools? They're the Canadian crewmembers: the location scouts, caterers, make-up artists, grips, gaffers, and armies of assistants. These are the folks who bring the stars their breakfast, park the trucks, and paint the set the director's latest favourite shade. On budget sheets and cost reports they are known as the crewmembers "below the line." Inspired by their own experiences in film, authors John McFetridge and Scott Albert have created an authentic backdrop for their novel, with script pages, call sheets, and camera reports, giving the reader a complete behind-the-scenes experience.

I'm not sure how all those, "script pages, call sheets and camera reports," look in the e-books (they required the trade paperback to be a little extra-wide). When writing the book Scott and I made up a complete schedule for the movie being made (Life and Death in Little Italy ;) and fit our short stories around that. It was a lot of fun to do.

I don't know when the book will be available for the Kindle.

The Nook edition is here.

And the Kobo edition is here.

Edit: The Kindle edition is now available here.