San Francisco has always embraced the weird, the outrageous, and the rebellious. From the raucous times of the Barbary Coast, to the howling poetry of the Beats, to the free love of the hippies, letting your freak flag fly is not just a slogan in the City by the Bay, but a way of life.
All of that uninhibited freedom, though, has at times fostered a sense of lawlessness in San Francisco. For every sailor who awoke in a brothel in the Barbary Coast, another awoke on a ship, kidnapped by “Shanghai” Kelly; while the Beats were reciting poetry in North Beach, Sonny Barger was forming the notorious Oakland chapter of the Hells Angels; and as the hippies were frolicking in Golden Gate Park, the Zodiac Killer was tallying victims all across the Bay Area.
It’s not surprising, then, that two great crime books to come from San Francisco were written by authors with checkered pasts. You Can’t Win by Jack Black, and Shake Him Till He Rattles by Malcolm Braly, were penned by career criminals who straightened out in time to capture their respective eras in San Francisco history. Though written decades apart, the books share a voice that is particular to that of an ex-con. It is a voice that is tough yet empathetic, unflinching yet forgiving. It is neither self-pitying nor self-flagellating. It is the voice of a life lived hard.
You Can’t Win, first published in 1926, is the autobiography of Jack Black, who was at various times a burglar, a convict, a dope fiend, a “yegg,” and a member of the Johnson Gang of thieves. Black crisscrossed the country at the turn of the 20th century, learning his craft (thieving, not writing) from a cast of characters so vivid, their names alone will make you smile: The Sanctimonious Kid, Salt Chunk Mary, Sticks Sullivan, Foot-and-a-half George, and Montana Blacky, to name just a few. After many visits to San Francisco, Black eventually settled down in the city, his decision no doubt influenced by his stay in nearby San Quentin prison.
Open to any page in You Can’t Win and you will see why it was the favorite book of William S. Burroughs, who wrote the introduction for the AK Press reissue. Black’s teeming prose, his rat-a-tat-tat rhythm, and his use of street slang are obvious influences on the Beats, especially Jack Kerouac. You Can’t Win is also stuffed with delightful old time colloquialisms: professional thieves were “yeggs,” cops were “bulls,” opium was “hop,” and everyone was addressed as “kid,” no matter their age.
Black tells us at the beginning of the book that he is going to write about the things he stole during his life as a thief just as he took them, “with a smile.”
An excerpt of Once Upon a Lie, the first book in the Maeve Conlon thriller series by Maggie Barbieri (available December 10, 2013).
In October 1947, the House Committee on Un-American Activities held its first hearings into alleged Communist subversion in Hollywood. This kicked off one of the darkest eras in the history of the American film industry. For years, Hollywood was thrown into turmoil as investigations were held in Congress and on the front pages of newspapers all across America. Careers were ruined, friendships betrayed, and an entire generation of filmmakers and filmgoers came of age in a postwar environment boiling with suspicion and fear.
During the Prohibition years from 1920 to 1933, alcoholic beverages were illegal in the United States. But it was still fairly easy to get a drink. One of the easiest ways was to find a speakeasy—a hidden bar that served bootleg liquor and that often required a password to get in. Legend has it that the name speakeasy came from patrons being told to “speak easy,” or softly, so the police wouldn’t hear the party.
2) An unmarked door or a misleading sign. You have to know where the speakeasy is. Most doors are unmarked, but I’ve visited one behind the façade of a Fortune Telling shop and another where you had to go into a restaurant and pick up an antique phone to gain admittance.
A neuroscientist who had his brain scan handy while reviewing those of various psychopaths, schizophrenics, and even some murderers serendipitously diagnosed his own “low activity in areas of the frontal and temporal lobes linked to empathy, morality and self-control.” See image above. According to Joseph Stromberg's blog post at 
An excerpt of Shoot the Woman First by Wallace Stroby, the third thriller in the series about thief Crissa Stone (available December 3, 2013).
What do President Zachary Taylor and Warren G. (Gamaliel) Harding have in common, other than being president? Yes, both were somewhat heavyset. But more importantly, both of their deaths have stirred the pot of conspiracy. Taylor, who died in 1850, was believed to have died from overeating in hot weather. Harding officially died of a stroke or heart attack. But were their deaths really natural, or were they murder? In Taylor’s case, the exhumation and forensic exam of his body proved without doubt that he had indeed died of natural causes. But the whispers of murder still float around Harding. Could the notorious womanizer-in-chief have been murdered? Or were his well-known blood pressure issues really to blame?
Existentially speaking, Alan Slater isn’t exactly moving mountains. At age 32, he’s a home windows salesman who drinks too much, smokes too much, and has such an anger management problem that he’s stooped to using a self-help method of counting dolphins to try and keep his head together during his many flare-ups. His boss seems to get a kick out of sending him on false sales leads, and while his 21-year old girlfriend is sexy and smart, their relationship brings him as much aggravation as it does satisfaction.
We love a good villain. Villains with complex characters, mysterious motivations, and great resourcefulness are the best. The hero needs to be challenged, right? The better the villain, the greater the hero’s triumph will be at the end. (Going by movies such as Thor and The Avengers, Loki hits pretty high on the villain scale. This is a character that challenged not only one hero, but an entire group. Even Holmes had his Moriarty, a villain so great that they both went over Reichenbach Falls.)
Chewing like this guy, you'll always notice the difference, not to mention avoiding a holiday Heimlich marathon.
I think Altman's rendition of The Long Goodbye gets a bad rap.
Using a valid U.S. address (and for a small fee), 
The Missing Dough by Chris Cavender is the sixth installment of the Pizza Lovers Mystery series featuring Eleanor Swift, who faces the skewering of a former brother-in-law during the Founders Day Festival (available November 26, 2013).
