Back as a teenager in England in the 1970s, I enjoyed watching Steve
Forrest playing the John
Creasey character THE BARON in the
ITC TV series [broadcast in the US by the ABC Network].
The show starred American actor, Steve Forrest, as John Mannering, an
antiques dealer and sometime undercover agent working in an informal capacity
for the head of the fictional British Diplomatic Intelligence, Templeton-Green
(Colin Gordon). He is assisted by Cordelia Winfield (Sue Lloyd) and David
Marlowe (Paul Ferris).
In Creasey's original novels Mannering was British and, after the few
first entries, married. For the TV show, The Baron was transformed into a
bachelor and by casting a Texan in the role, the producers decided that 'The
Baron' would be nicknamed after the cattle ranch once run by his grandfather
that was described as being "200,000 acres and 300 miles from
Dallas" Read More HERE
And that brings me back to a writer that has excited me, with his highly
literate and thought-provoking crime novel “Fistful of Rain”, which for me is as enigmatic and
interesting as John Creasey’s The Baron. I am talking about the musician and
writer Baron R Birtcher.
I first met up with The Baron, back in 2013
at Bouchercon Albany, NY State. I was moderating a Private Eye Panel discussion about tales involving
private detectives, and specifically about Robert and Joan Parker.
Joining me on the panel were writers Baron Birtcher, Jack Bludis, Brendan DuBois, Charles Salzberg,
and John Shepphird--to help keep the discussion lively and informative. My
appreciation extended as well to author Reed
Farrel Coleman, who had
met Parker and discussed that encounter with me before the session began. He
also talked to me about his essay in the 2012 anthology In Pursuit of Spenser: Mystery
Writers on Robert B. Parker and the Creation of an American Hero (Smart
Pop), edited by Otto Penzler--a book that would be of interest to any Spenser
fan. Read More HERE
Anyway, after the
panel I was intrigued by Baron Birtcher, his writing, and his music which are interrelated,
as his novel titles indicate. So it was time to drink with The Baron, who too enjoyed
the odd glass of ice cold Gin and Tonic. After chatting with friends I made a
note to check out The Baron’s crime fiction, but as ever my planned intentions
got interrupted with my massive reading obligations, and I never made it to
exploring his fiction as I had other books I had committed to read for The CWA.
Then last month as I
investigated new publications (as like many seasoned literary commentators /
book reviewers) I was on the lookout for something new, something fresh. My attention
was halted by an interesting review in Publisher’s Weekly, for a Crime Novel
entitled “Fistful of Rain”. What made me pause initially was the
title as it is an allusion to Warren
Zevon, a favourite song of mine from “Life I’ll Kill Ya” – though
it was the opening paragraph from PW that intrigued me.
Rancher Tyler Dawson, sums up the previous year, 1974, in the
brief, cogent prologue of Birtcher’s elegantly written, bleak sequel to 2017’s South California Purples, as “one of the most demoralizing that I could remember.” He
goes on to comment on such downbeat topics as the Watergate scandal and the
U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. This sets the tone for what follows READ MORE HERE from
PW
I noticed the author’s
name – it was The Baron, the enigmatic writer from the PI Panel from Bouchercon
2013 Albany, and who I drank with late into the night. It was during that
evening, author and friend Roger
Ellory got excited meeting a fellow professional musician, turned crime
writer. As I listened to these two chat about writing and gigging, little would
I realize that many year’s later Roger and his colleagues would form a Rock
Band THE WHISKEY POETS and tour,
with their music infused with his lyrics, torn from his best-selling novels – CLICK
HERE for more info
So I grabbed a copy
of ‘Fistful of Rain’ which is a crime novel with a difference for
it is a deeply thought-provoking Neo-Western set in 1970s America (coincidentally
set at the same time I used to enjoy watching Steve Forrest as The Baron on British
TV). It also opens with a favourite line of mine from the German writer / philosopher,
Freddy
Nietzsche, and throughout this taut crime novel is much insight that
provoked deep thought – highly literary but with a lower case “l” and a literary
novel with a plot, one involved in the darker side of Human Nature.
I reviewed it at
Shots noting at the time –
Birtcher’s narrative is peppered with a diverse
array of characters who circle the tale with rich dialogue and insight. The
novel is a pleasure, as the author holds the reader in a firm clasp,
reminiscent of the late great Elmore
Leonard, with terse descriptions jimmied with conversations and talk that
make one ponder about life, until the dénouement arrives and changes things, as
the threads are tightened into a Cattleman’s lasso, making the reader take
stock.
Read More HERE
Both Mike
Stotter and I are big readers of Westerns, from our youth – so after
putting The Baron’s ‘Fistful of Rain’ down, I emailed The Baron and
asked for some insight into his work as in my opinion, he is sadly not as well-known
as he deserves.
The Baron is
published by the Independent Publisher, Sag Harbor’s The Permanent Press - and in 2014, Chris Knopf joined this
most interesting publisher.
I was born and
raised on a small horse ranch along the coast southern California, where my
family lived side-by-side with my grandparents and my uncle’s family. After
earning a bachelors degree in finance from the University of Southern
California (USC), I spent a number of years working as a musician, singer, and
songwriter. After stepping away from
live performance, I founded an independent record label, and later, a company
specializing in artist management, most particularly musicians.
I moved to Kona,
Hawaii in 1996, where I grew Kona coffee, and began writing what was to become
my first hardboiled thriller, Roadhouse
Blues, which went on to become a Los Angeles Times and IMBA Best
Seller. This was followed by the next three books in the Mike Travis series (Ruby Tuesday; Angels Fall; and Hard Latitudes), each of which is
set in the Hawaiian Islands.
The Advent of Rain Dogs
I was intrigued by
one of the supporting characters in the Mike Travis series, a bar owner with a
shadowy past about which he spoke very little. With the next novel in the
Travis series on my horizon, I sat down to write a short character sketch about
this character with the intent to get to know him better so that he could play
a larger role in Mike Travis’ world.
The long and the
short of it is that the story simply would not let me go, and what was supposed
to have been a couple of pages of back story turned into a complete novel, my
first stand-alone, Rain Dogs. Set amidst the nascent cocaine culture of the
late-1970s, it was received very kindly by readers and critics, and earned a
starred review in Publishers Weekly, who said “…many books call themselves ‘thrillers,’
but this one is the real deal.”
Introducing the Ty Dawson Series
Having somewhat accidentally
written about the Seventies in Rain
Dogs, I found myself wanting to explore the era more completely. Having
been a teenager during the early part of that decade, my recollections tended
to center around the music and atmosphere of a lively, though unsettling,
political and popular culture. Stated differently, though I can vividly recall
how it “felt” to live in those times, I did not necessarily understand the realities
of events that had shaped them. As a result, I attempted to place myself into
my father’s boots and re-examine the times through the eyes of a man of his
generation—a relatively young man in his early-forties, with a young family,
and facing social and political upheaval never seen in quite this form before—especially
given the unprecedented presence and influence of television, film, and popular
music of the time.
From the perspective
of an author of crime fiction, the backdrop of the 1970s also allowed me to
deal with matters of crime and its detection without the assistance of modern
devices such as cell phones, or the existence of DNA typing or the use of the
Internet. Frankly, I found it liberating to allow my hero, Tyler Dawson, to use
“old-fashioned” intuition, bare knuckles, shoe leather, and his own moral
compass to deal with the challenges that faced him.
My most recent
novel, Fistful of Rain, is the
second in the Ty Dawson series, following 2017’s South
California Purples.
The Baron’s Music
I have spent most of
my life around music, not only as a producer and manager, but above all, a fan.
I believe this is a common thread among those of us who are avid readers—particularly
among us readers (of a certain generation). Like so many of us, I was
profoundly influenced by the music of the times, and look back in wonder at the
breadth and depth of the variety of musical genres to which we were exposed.
One could hear Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers, and Joni Mitchell
all in the space of a single hour listening to the radio.
I suppose that my
takeaway from that experience is the importance of cohesion for an “album” to
resonate to the core of the listener; the corollary being that—again, in my
opinion—a book, or any narrative for that matter, is most successful when it
becomes a full-immersion experience, like a concept LP. I believe it is
critical for a book to have a “feel” that resonates and rolls through it from
beginning to end.
In my attempt to
accomplish that, I tend to choose my title first, then write to it. It is no accident that each of my
books takes its title from a song (with the exception of Hard Latitudes, which was originally
intended to be titled Run Like Hell).
Before I begin writing, I will come up with a playlist that I feel is true to
the feeling I want to maintain through the narrative arc, and I listen exclusively
to that playlist for the duration, until the manuscript is complete. I have
found that it helps to keep me “in my lane” and not drift too far afield where
the soul and the feel of the book is concerned.
My books tend to
contain a sort of nested-narrative format (I am fascinated by the butterfly
effect) wherein there may be several different stories being told
simultaneously, and coming together at the end. That format lends itself to an
architecture that divides into different “sections,” each of which I name with
the title of one of the key songs from my playlist. In that way, each book ends
up with a soundtrack of sorts. In the case of Fistful of Rain, I’m sure that you noticed the Buffalo Springfield musical thread.
Words and Text ©
2018 A Karim and © 2018 Baron Birtcher
No comments:
Post a Comment