In my latest crime novel, Interception City, written as Parker T. Mattson and to be published by Black Mask in early 2013, I’ve taken several disturbing real life elements and incorporated them into a story of murder, mayhem and illicit sex set in a tiny isolated community in the deep southern Florida Everglades.

In my last crime novel, Killing Liberty, published by Black Mask in 2012, I took several disturbing real life elements and incorporated those into a tale of murder, mayhem and illicit sex set in a tiny isolated community in deep southern Alabama.

My next crime novel, Killing Time, to be published by Black Mask later next year, will be a disturbing tale of murder, mayhem and illicit sex set in the tiny tropical island community of Key West, southernmost point in the continental United States.

It will again feature ex-Detroit homicide detective Derek Raiford.

Sounds familiar, I guess.

Anyway, as a consultant to over a hundred of the Fortune 500 companies in an earlier lifetime, I travelled the entire country for years, overseeing projects that often required me to stay in a variety of communities both large and small.

Sometimes for weeks or months at a time.

I can also say that I’ve either lived or at least spent time in every major city throughout the United States and made it a point to set foot in every state, except Alaska (too damn cold; sorry, folks).

As a representative of my client companies, I had to interact with all levels of people.

This included executive, management, professional, medical, technical, clerical and hourly individuals. I also dealt with countless political types, many of them ‘behind the scenes’ power brokers in each community, as well as the actual mayors, city managers, business leaders and even local law enforcement members.

The advantage of this to a writer, of course, was that I met a great many characters in a great many locations, characters that I’ve used as the foundation for many of the people, both good and horribly bad, I put into my crime fiction.

I’ve been very careful, so far, to not mention any of the actual locations in my books, or use any names even close to the real ones, because there’s far more truth in each than it’d be wise to admit.

As my protagonist, Jim Starke, says in Interception City, “The truth may or may not set you free, but it can definitely get you killed.”

And in that particular crime thriller coming up, I combined a small hotbed city of the 1980’s (located in the ‘near-South’ portion of a Midwest state) with another backwards little community I’m familiar with deep in the Florida Everglades.

Both of which I updated to become Interception City.

My mayor in Interception City is an 78-year-old ex-bootlegger married to a 19-year-old high school drop-out. The actual mayor that character’s based on was a particularly amiable 78-year-old gentleman who told me it rained the entire week of their honeymoon in Barbados and that she nearly killed him.

I had dinner at their comfortable home several times a month and she always asked if I’d like some ‘tongue’ with a weird little look, while holding out a silver tray of the stuff as an appetizer.

I still haven’t tried it, all these years later. I’ll stick with regular roast beef, from whatever other part of the cow that comes from.

Another young woman I met on that same assignment was the daughter of the wealthiest man in town.

He owned a large manufacturing plant, the local dollar store and two gas stations. In his late-50’s, he was married to a flighty 17-year-old girl who stuck her hand down the back of my jeans at a family picnic I was invited to down by the river.

I’m certain it was an accident. I think she was reaching for the fried chicken and I somehow got in the way.

Sorry.

Regarding the young woman I’d met, both her father and her sweaty 300-pound brother were openly serious members of the Ku Klux Klan. As was the local police chief and a large portion of the small police force.

They’d recently posted a sign at the city limits advising black people to ‘…not let the sun set on their black asses in their fine upstanding town.’ The state police ordered them to take down the sign.

In the early-1980’s!

This was not Little Rock, not Mississippi and not the 1950’s. Amazing.

Every now and then, the young woman (daughter & sister of these diehard KKK-folks) secretly drove 90 miles to the nearest large city to date a variety of black men. She’d been doing it for years.

And it turned out I was the only person she could tell, an outsider, knowing I considered her secret both perfect and ironic.

And, of course, highly dangerous. I couldn’t make up this stuff.

One of the B.Y.O.B. bars just outside of town had an actual dirt floor. Their illegal after-hours wet-T-shirt contests and group-gropes always made a muddy mess. Yet even the local cops attended.

It was very much a town of extremely bored and restless young women. The police chief, far more friendly and decent-seeming than he apparently was (the racist bastard), once told me all the local women were hot-assed.

And he showed me several explicit Polaroid photos to prove it. He let me know he had an extensive personal video collection as well, but I never got to see it.

Anyway, the stories and the characters go on and on.

Enough to write about well into my old, older and even oldest age. I didn’t think much of my corporate consulting career while I was living it, but I now see it was the basis for much of what I’ll (hopefully) spend years writing about.

In any case, I believe I’ve combined truth and crime fiction in a way that won’t get me or Black Mask into any serious trouble.

But if you recognize yourself or your friends or even your community in one of my crime thrillers (as several of my Facebook cohorts very much will), I’m just kidding.