About your Book:
Dark Blonde
and
the Mike Angel Series
Synopsis –
Dark Blonde
Julia Gateswood hires reluctant PI, Mike Angel, to find her missing sister, but Julia’s social position and the sordid past of the sister make this anything but a simple case. Julia’s a mysterious ex-beauty queen, who married for ambition to congressman Henry Gateswood, a charismatic ex-professor running for a vacated
US Senate seat from Illinois in 1962. When Julia’s sister Gail, a loose woman with past shady connections, disappears, Julia calls on private eye Mike Angel, who quickly learns his new employer isn’t everything she seems to be, but what she is beyond a doubt is a great hypnotist of Mike’s libido.
Before Mike is hardly into the case, he’s visited by Julia’s strange secretary, who later finds the missing sister’s headless body in the guesthouse of the Gateswood estate. Mike and his unofficial partner, Rick Anthony, a 25 year veteran of the NYC detective force and, whose vocabulary suffers from too many NYU grad classes, get to the crime scene before the police and follow clues that pit them against powerful Chicago mobsters.
Rick was a partner for many years with Mike’s late father, who was murdered on his first case as a private investigator.
O.W. Wilson, a famous police chief and gangbuster from Kansas City, has taken over the Chicago force and enlists Mike to seek the department mole connected with the year old Summerfield scandal, where police were in cahoots with robbers. Mike hunts for Gail’s killer while sorting out the threads of motive, political intrigue, bad cops and an arrogant DA, and Henry Gateswood’s role. All the while Mike becomes conflicted by attraction to Julia, who disappears at a critical juncture, only to discover that her husband has placed her in a sanitarium. What were Henry’s real motives for putting her away? Who killed Gail and how does she fit into Chicago mobsters on the run from the Summerfield scandal? Mike and Rick follow too many clues to a surprising conclusion.
One twisting aspect of Mike’s investigative instincts is often timely warnings from the “voice” of his late father, and also through sensations felt in a long scar Mike won during a shootout with the Russian mob who was behind his father’s death. He also struggles with a desire to commit to Molly Bennett, his office manager and love interest, while conflicted with an over-healthy desire for attractive women who cross his path.
This is the third in a series of four Mike
Angel novels. These take place in NY/NJ (
Dark Quarry
), and Chicago in the early 1960s (
Dark Quarry,
Dark Lake
,
Dark Blonde, Dark Poison). Some actual historical characters and events are used.
Free Book Reviews
What do you think readers will find most notable about this book?
David H Fears
I like to think they will recognize a tortured-soul protagonist, be pulled in by the writing style (which has been compared to
Raymond Chandler and other greats), intrigued perhaps by the complex plot, glued by the page-turner aspects and charmed by the supporting cast
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Have you acquired any good anecdotes surrounding this book? If so, could you share one?
David H Fears
There are a ton of good anecdotes IN the book, but not surrounding it. If it were surrounded, I’m confident that the hero would find a way to escape!
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Did researching and writing this book teach you anything or influence your thinking in any way?
David H Fears
All four of these Mike Angel novels required some historical research into the early 1960s, and I learned a great deal about Chicago, the various mobs, and other personalities. Real events, places and many names are real. As a historian I feel these give the story verisimilitude (or truth-likeness).
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What would you most like readers to tell others about this book?
David H Fears
That they couldn’t put it down and finished it wanting to read another in the series; that they got to know the main characters and enjoyed their collaboration on crime fighting.
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Can you suggest one question readers might find interesting to discuss, concerning you, your writing in general, or this book?
David H Fears
Do you consider this novel a hardboiled mystery, or do the other subplots of seduction conflict and guilt/supernatural element make it something else? To what extent does the humor in it come across as parody, and does this add or detract to the story?
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How can readers help you promote this book?
David H Fears
They can post a line or two of positive response on Amazon’s product page for the novel, and also post in FB or Goodreads that they enjoyed the book and highly recommend it. Word of mouth is everything for an Indie ebook.
About You:
David H Fears
Back in 1971 I discovered that Mark Twain had traveled through my hometown in 1895 on the way to his world tour to get out of debt. That seed began to grow until in 2004 I began what has become a monumental, 4-volume work, Mark Twain Day By Day, an annotated chronology in the life of
Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Each volume (3 are now published) is 1150-1250 pages, and sell for $125 to Universities, Libraries, Societies, and Mark Twain scholars.
Just before I got into the Twain writing, I began writing short stories, a few of which morphed into a hardboiled private eye detective novel. After studying hundreds of such books, and admirng Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane's work, I wrote four of them--and oh! how much fun they were to write. No one had to be politically correct, and the protagonist was driven to live up to his father's legacy--he was too young to be a PI at the start (30), but he had the help of his late father's detective partner on the NYPD, and the love of a good woman who was willing to wait until wild oats were sewn. So I got totally wrapped up in these characters. I believe good mysteries must be complex page turners; hardboiled should have the protagonist fighting corruption. There's sex, violence, and psychological reflection in my novels.
I also studied composition theory, and read thousands of short stories. I taught writing at two for-profit colleges.
Today I am working on Vol. 4 of MTDBD, and also revising older short stories & novels. I've discovered the market for ebooks and have published all of my novels in such forums, along with several short stories and two collections.
Like Mark Twain, I love cats, am father to 3 girls, and am a westerner who has lived in various parts of the country.
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Why do you write?
David H Fears
To tell good stories. I grew up with good storytellers and I wish to be one. My imagination runs 24/7 and urges me to write. There is no greater challenge than to continually improve one’s writing skills.
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What is your greatest strength as a writer?
David H Fears
Perspective and experience about life and the main passions of the human condition.
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What quality do you most value in yourself?
David H Fears
A wacky and active sense of humor that is a lens for all of living.
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In addition to writing, what else are you passionate about?
David H Fears
Historical research; teaching writing at the college level, the NBA, old cars, young women.
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What are you most proud of accomplishing so far in your life?
David H Fears
Besides three wonderful daughters, the completion & publication of 3 of 4 volumes (to date), some 1100-1200 pages each of Mark Twain Day By Day, an annotated chronology in the life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
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Is there any new or established author whom you feel deserves more attention, and what is it that strikes you about his or her work?
David H Fears
There are many established writers who wrote many short stories that we don’t hear much about—
Italo Calvino,
Alice Munro,
Eudora Welty,
John Cheever—who deserve much more praise for their work. As for new authors, I’m still sampling ebooks and searching. I like some of
Joe Konrath’s work, but so far most of those ebook new authors I’ve read need a good editor.
