Review: Murder Unscripted

Murder Unscripted

by Clive Rosengren

ISBN: 9781935797197

a 2012 release from

Perfect Crime Books

111 pages, Trade Paper

Eddie Collins is a sometime Hollywood actor and a part-time investigator. He’s cast in the old style; a loner, divorced, he views the world through plain, cracked lenses. Nothing rose-colored here. He’s an authentic character, one you’d be likely to encounter on Sunset Boulevard. If you made the connection and bought him a drink, Eddie might tell you a story. Like this one.

When the scene opens, Eddie Collins is costumed as a cowboy, perched on a fake rock, chewing on yet another piece of chicken. He’s doing a TV commercial for an enterprise called Chubby’s Chicken. A telephone call to his office sends him, on behalf of his client, a bonding company, to the set of a murder. It turns out the deceased actress is Eddie’s former wife.

The novel benefits hugely from the author’s background. He’s a former theater, film and television actor who has appeared in numerous theatrical films and television dramas. Rosengren uses his considerable experience to infuse the novel with authenticity, but he never slides into the bitterness or the whining of too many journey-actors who made a living but never reached starring level. Eddie Collins has come to terms with his career and that’s why he’s become more of an investigator than an actor.

“Murder Unscripted,” is a short, fast, read, well-plotted and intrinsically solid. The characters are enjoyable to follow and the final emotional twists are logical and just right for the character and the tone of the story. I hope to see much more of Eddie Collins in the near future.

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Carl Brookins www.carlbrookins.com http://agora2.blogspot.com, Case of the Great Train Robbery, Reunion, Red Sky

Review: Death Pans Out

Death Pans Out


by Ashna Graves

Hardcover, 288 pages,

from Poisoned Pen Press



Reporter Jeneva Leopold, faced with a life-altering decision, takes a leave of absence from her job to recover from surgery. Breast cancer has claimed part of her body and she wants time to recover in relative peace. Not just from the debilitating effects of the surgery itself, but she wants to be in a place where she can think about her life and her existence. This is a novel about an unusual woman with an unusual plan to rehabilitate herself.



There are great stories surrounding the searches for precious metals from California, South America and the Yukon, as well as the production of gold from less well-known regions, and this one takes its cue from those stories. Fact or fiction, we are never quite sure, but here is a story which may well become a part of that so interesting body of literature.



Jeneva’s family has long owned an idle gold mine in the mountains of Southern Oregon, a harsh, vastly rural region of high deserts, mountains, isolated communities, wild animals and, legends. One legend surrounds the mysterious disappearance of Jeneva’s uncle, Mathew. Mathew disappeared one night from the cabin at the mine almost twenty years before the story opens, and his mining partner has retreated into a silent years from which he may never emerge.



Jeneva takes a long leave of absence and moved to the cabin at the mine where she intends to spend several months of the summer physically and mentally recovering from her trauma. Almost immediately, a parade of compelling characters begins to invade her peaceful existence, from a weird self-styled “artifact hunter,” who insists that he always camps on Bureau of Forestry land and visits the area regularly, to a hearty sheriff who seems at times too good to be true, to a taciturn former model and beauty queen turned rancher, to assorted miners, a tall funeral director and other assorted characters. They all make for some fascinating scenes and while the action is never of a high order, the rising tension and sense of danger to Jeneva and her friends, is well-handled.



I enjoyed the story, learned some things about governmental land management and local attitudes toward government, and found the ending quite a surprise. If there are small problems with this debut novel, they stem from an experienced reporter acting entirely too trusting and naive to serve the story, and a couple of the rants are a little too long. That said, I look forward to another adventure with Jeneva Leopold.



Carl Brookins

www.carlbrookins.com, www.agora2.blogspot.com

Case of the Greedy Lawyer, Devils Island,

Bloody Halls, more at Kindle & Smashwords!

Review for Kind of Blue

Kind of Blue


by Miles Corwin

ISBN: 978-1-60809-007-5

From Oceanview Publishing

323 pages, November, 2010



A few years ago, this author wrote a couple of serious non-fiction books about the Los Angeles Police Department. He spent a lot of time with cops in that city and wrote books that became best-sellers, “The Killing Season” and “And Still We Rise.”



Now he’s back with a powerful persistent novel that draws from the same source material. “Kind of Blue,” is not your ordinary police procedural. It constantly reminds readers that the cops involved are no super beings, rising above the worst humanity can offer to save their city; nor are they all thugs, wife beaters and abusers. They are ordinary citizens, sometimes corrupt, sometimes honorable and brilliant, often prejudiced, but too often willing to make the supreme sacrifice for the citizens they serve. And, occasionally they violate the rights of criminals.



Author Corwin bends a keen and discerning eye on this stew of varying humanity to fashion a fascinating novel of human relations. Asher Levine, a dedicated, mostly honest cop, is one of LA’s best homicide detectives. But as the book opens, Levine is a former cop, having abruptly resigned after he was unable to protect a vital witness from being murdered. The death of Latisha Patton, never solved, devastates the detective and causes him to question his abilities, even though it is clear that apart from his dedication, he is a brilliant detective. So he resigns.



A year passes and a decorated officer has died, murdered in his home and the special homicide squad needs Levine’s help solving the case. More to the point, certain key executives in the LAPD hierarchy need the case solved or at least put to rest. Levine has had that year to discover his resignation hurts him more than it does the LAPD. With clearance from the top cops, Levine is fast tracked back to the force and handed the case.



The problem, of course, is that Levine won’t just concentrate on the current case and thus all sorts of actions that need to be buried along with the ghost of Latisha Patton. Traces of other earlier activity begin to resurface as Ash Levine winds his way through labyrinthine police and social structures of the street until he comes to the shocking final solution.



The title is apt, a riff on a 50 year old Miles Davis studio piece, the cover fits the mood and the attitude of the novel. All the elements fit nicely and it was a pleasure to read this excellent book.





Carl Brookins

www.carlbrookins.com, www.agora2.blogspot.com

Case of the Greedy Lawyer, Devils Island,

Bloody Halls, more at Kindle & Smashwords!

Guest Blog with Carl Brookins on Internet Marketing

I have the honor of being the first person to ask Carl Brookins to guest blog. When you see what he has to say you will wonder why no one has picked his brain before this.

This document is a deliberate exercise in individual marketing considerations. It is for authors who want to consider Internet marketing in this world. I deliberately did no research, relying on my memory of what’s available. I found it instructive. What I looked up are the references to links so you aren’t sent on a weird journey. I have no particular axe to grind.

As an aside, it occurs to me that weird journeys are sometimes useful. Porn for example. If you believe what you read on the Internet, nobody in the crime fiction writing community ever wants to be exposed to porn sites. Ewewew! Disgusting! Demeaning! Awful, etc etc. Well, a man I know spends a good deal of his time cruising porn sites looking for illegal stuff. Exploited children for example. He’s a cop. If he spends every waking hour he will never visit all the porn sites (use your definition of porn) that exist. Pornography, as defined by federal statutes and testimony as a multi-billion dollar business. Annually. Who’s buying? Nobody I know. Uh huh. Why is this stuff so successful? Why don’t customers buy my novels instead? And yours?

Nobody really knows what works in comparison to other techniques of marketing. That’s been true since marketing was invented and nobody I know is willing to try restricting themselves to a single method and then later changing to another method for long enough to really know what doesn’t work. Anybody who tells you they have the answer(s) is prepared to take your money. Branding, marketing yourself, selling yourself and/or your book; it called exposure, or branding if you like that label better. It’s all good. If you do it the right way. And I have the Right Way. Pardon me, I have to wipe away my tears of laughter.

For one thing, Internet marketing and advertising is new and constantly changing. The business models that worked yesterday are dysfunctional today. There’s a new cyber network popping up every time you turn around. What will tomorrow bring? Do you know about these sites?


http://www.authorbuzz.com/; http://www.librarything.com/; http://www.mysterywriters.org/; http://www.shelf-awareness.com/index.html; http://www.sistersincrime.org/; http://www.goodreads.com/; http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Working_Writers/; http://www.murdermustadvertise.com/; http://www.shortmystery.net/markets.html; http://brennalyonsden.blogspot.com; http://www.jeffreymarks.com/; http://www.ascamacho.com/; http://www.dorothyl.com/; http://www.facebook.com/; http://www.myspace.com/; http://www.jakonrath.com/freebies.htm; http://www.authorsden.com/;


That’s just a sampling of web sites with information and services that may be useful. Some of them offer specific books on modern marketing. I neither endorse nor disparage any of the above and you’ll find my books and stories at several of them. You’ll also find more sources if you visit my website, www.carlbrookins.com or http://www.minnesotacrimewave.org/.

I could go on for a very long time and build a very long list. You can do it yourself. My point is this: There are a variety of inexpensive and pricy tools available to market yourself and your writings on the Internet. There is one thing we know for sure. The easier you make for a reader of your marketing efforts to buy your product, the more sales you will have. From that it follows inevitably that Internet links to sales outlets are important. There are still a great variety of non-Internet tools which you should not eliminate from your marketing mix without careful consideration. The number of people in the nation with regular access to high speed Internet is less than 50% A lot of people use library computers for their on-line addresses. The mail is important! Do you want to ignore half the reading population?

In the end, it’s just like anything else you do, or it should be. Proceed cautiously, be disciplined, particularly when spending money. Keep track of what you doing and allot adequate but not endless time to blogging, texting, emailing and so on. Be active on the Internet, but not to the neglect of your serious writing. If becoming a successful well-paid author is your goal, you must continue to write seriously and thoughtfully. Dancing on the Internet or spending large sums on advertising and mailings unless you have the resources, can consume you. Don’t let it.