SHOTSMAG CONFIDENTIAL

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True Crime . . . in Fiction by Alex Finlay Posted: 09 Mar 2022 10:00 PM PST Joe Exotic. Carole Baskin. Adnan Syed. Steven Avery. If you immediately recognize these names, chances are you're one of the millions who can't get enough of True Crime. Dating back to the sixteenth century, the True Crime genre is nothing new. But until recent years, the genre was "relegated to the bin of 'trash' culture." Then came high-quality shows – the Serial podcast, the Making a Murderer docu-series, and others – and suddenly creating and watching (and listening to) True Crime became downright respectable. The shows are now a mainstay, and in many instances, national obsessions.  It was therefore inevitable that True Crime found its way into fiction. Kit Frick, author of the podcast-centric novel, I Killed Zoe Spanos, wrote a compelling piece about the rise of the True-Crime podcast novel, equating the podcaster with a natural offshoot to crime fiction's long fascination with journalists.  Beyond podcasts, it's no wonder that the True Crime documentary has also become attractive to novelists. They allow writers to not only use the age-old story-within-a-story structure, but also explore the medium itself.  All of this True Crime content – from the well-researched documentaries, to the spectacle that was Tiger King, to weekly Dateline episodes – share one thing in common: they all use private trauma for public entertainment, which is good fodder for novelists. Integrating True Crime documentaries into a novel can allow an author to explore what happens to participants when the cameras stop rolling. When the documentary subjects are left to deal with the aftermath of being a character in a real-life game of Clue. Where members of the public can take it on themselves to seek justice, electronically tarring and feathering people or even entire communities. Where loved ones of victims can see their worst day relived over ten episodes amid a score of haunting string music. In my 2021 thriller, EVERY LAST FEAR, I examined these themes in a story about a family made infamous by a docu-series who are later found dead under mysterious circumstances, a surviving son left to uncover the truth about their final days.  This month, I release THE NIGHT SHIFT, which doesn't incorporate a True Crime documentary or podcast, but the novel draws on a type of crime that is the frequent focus of True Crime genre: workplace murders on the nightshift. My novel begins on New Year's Eve 1999, when four teenagers working at a Blockbuster Video in New Jersey are attacked, and only one survives, inexplicably. Fifteen years later, four more teenage employees are attacked at an ice cream store in the same town, and again only one makes it out alive. In the aftermath, the lives of the survivors of the two crimes intersect, revealing the secrets of both nights. The idea started when I was strolling the streets of Georgetown, a neighborhood in Washington, D.C., and I spotted the coffee shop where, in 1997, all the employees were brutally murdered at the end of their shift. I remember it well because they caught the killer shortly after I moved to the city a few years later. That day in Georgetown reminded me of another similar tragedy more than a decade later where two employees working late at a high-end athletic store near my home were attacked by masked intruders – one of the two employees was brutally murdered, the other survived. The crime really shook our community, but then there was a twist: police arrested the surviving victim who was later convicted of murdering her co-worker and staging the scene. I've since learned of so many of these types of crimes, many which go unsolved. These cases are haunting because they involve young lives cut too short, our own memories of the excitement and camaraderie of first jobs, and the need for justice for the victims, their families, and loved ones. I didn't base THE NIGHT SHIFT on any of the real crimes, but they got me thinking about the heartbreak and trauma that accompany these peculiarly insidious types of mass murders, something I explore in the novel. I delve into the legacy of trauma for the families, the pressure on law enforcement from communities, and the senselessness of these shameful events on the night shift.  The Night Shift by Alex Finlay (Head of Zeus) Out Now  What connects a massacre at a Blockbuster video store in 1999 with the murder of four teenagers fifteen years later? It's New Year's Eve of 1999 when four teenagers working late are attacked at a Blockbuster video store in New Jersey. Only one survives. Police quickly identify a suspect, the boyfriend of one of the victims, who flees and is never seen again. Fifteen years later, four more teenagers are attacked at an ice cream store in the same town, and again only one makes it out alive. In the aftermath of the latest crime, three lives intersect: the lone survivor of the Blockbuster massacre, who is forced to relive the horrors of her tragedy; the brother of the fugitive accused, who is convinced the police have the wrong suspect; and FBI agent Sarah Keller, who must delve into the secrets of both nights to uncover the truth about the Night Shift Murders... More information about Alex Finlay and his books can be found on his website. You can also find him on Facebook and on Instagram.

Escape from New York by A F Carter Posted: 09 Mar 2022 11:07 AM PST A series of television commercials, ubiquitous a few years ago, portrayed a terribly embarrassing incident of some sort, memorialized by an amused, off-camera voice asking a simple question: Wanna get away? And I did. Big cities, New York mostly, have been my venue for many years. Sophisticated protagonists, even more sophisticated villains, ironic conversation, the right club, the right restaurant, the swollen bank accounts, the suave gangsters. Police detectives with an exhaustive knowledge of Yuan dynasty porcelain. Nothing wrong with any of that, of course, but over time, the foodie tidbits become repetitious and creativity wanes. Learning by rote never appealed to me, writing by rote even less. I needed a change large enough to force the little brain cells into action. The Yards was, and is, the result. Was because I finished The Yards more than a year ago. Is because… well, because I can pick it up, flick through the pages, careful, of course, to preserve the jacket. I can read passages at random that confirm the creative distance traveled. Baxter is a small industrial city (population: 100,000) in the American heartland. The industry that sustained it for a century was the least glamorous I could imagine. Four meat packing plants once offered steady work to generations of Baxter's citizens. You'd never be rich showing up at the plant every morning, but you could raise a family and be reasonably certain the children you reared would survive long enough to rear children of their own. Instead of dying at seventeen from an overdose of fentanyl.  As The Yards begins, that security has vanished. Three of the four plants that powered Baxter's economy have closed, leaving the Yards on the eastern end of the city a post-apocalyptic mass of fallen brick, twisted metal, and ramshackle housing. Worse, the last plant in the city, Baxter Packing, will close for good within a few months. Opiates and meth-amphetamine now dominate the city's culture, with overdose a leading cause of death. Those few children who avoid the traps that ensnare so many adolescents, who stay the course long enough to graduate high school, seem to have only one goal. To put Baxter in the rearview mirror. Two women, thrust into this sea of dysfunction, serve as The Yards co-protagonists. Single mothers both, they struggle to provide for their young children, and to keep hope alive, the hope that their kids will be among the few to avoid the traps that await them in the city's schools. No nannies for these children, not even professional day care, and despite very different parenting styles, their mothers are incredibly self-reliant. Git O'Rourke is a Licensed Practical Nurse who splits her working hours between a nursing home's psychiatric unit and an elderly gangster with the wherewithal to afford home nursing. Delia Mariola is a detective on Baxter's wildly underfunded police department. Unable to afford a Crime Scene Unit, the Baxter P.D. must rely on the State Police to process any scene more complicated than a simple burglary. They have no lab and autopsies are performed, not by a trained pathologist, but a cardiologist moonlighting as a coroner. Both of these women's lives are dominated by practicalities. They don't choose between vacations in London or Rio, or fly into New Orleans just in time for Mardi Gras. Food on the table, clothes on backs, rent paid at the end of the month, car payments, electric and cable bills. There's never enough money and they live their lives a few paychecks away from sleeping in their cars. Still, they don't ask for pity, or indulge in self-pity. They persevere. A quick example: predictably, after a childhood of severe neglect, Git chose the wrong husband, a bully with heavy hands. "So, yeah, I was young and soft. A little girl looking for a daddy, any daddy. But give me credit, I hardened in a hurry. Sean used his fists to enforce his ownership rights, fists and threats. That ended on the afternoon I shot him with the Glock he kept in a night table drawer. The bullet grazed his ribs, but I'd been aiming at his head and Sean knew it. He turned and fled, through the door, up the street and out of my life. Leaving the Glock and his unborn child behind." The police are not called, by Git or her husband. "Folk like us," she explains, "don't." The Yards by A F Carter (Head of Zeus) Out Now  Git O'Rourke just wanted to blow off some steam. She never expected to be accused of murder. The rundown town of Baxter doesn't have a lot going for it, but there's always somewhere for single mum Git O'Rourke to cut loose and forget about her life. All she wanted was to put aside worried thoughts of her daughter, Charlie, and find a handsome stranger to spend the night with. She never expected to be accused of murder. Now Git is in deep trouble. She's just woken up in a dark hotel room with a strange man she can't seem to rouse, and surrounded by money and guns. When the dead body is discovered with a bullet through its forehead, Officer Delia Mariola is one of the first on the scene. She knows the victim is connected to the mob, but something feels off - all signs point to a pick-up gone wrong. Which means that all signs point to Git.

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