Ed here: I was always a fan of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. I still remember when it first appeared in the late Fifties. Cool covers and name writers. Little did I know that a decade or so later people like Bill Pronzini and James Reasoner would be writing the "Mike Shayne" short novels that appeared in each issue. In fact James wrote all of them for a number of years.
"The Man in The Moon" is a first rate private eye story--you wanna know how to write one? outline this--starring a p.i. James did a number of stories about in Shayne. At Kindle 99 cents it's the equivalent on a nice big very cold ice cream cone on a hot summer's day. Very nice work.
Here's an excerpt from an interview with James from Storyteller's. Fascinating.
StoryTeller’s 7 1. I downloaded a novel the other day called TEXAS WIND, your debut novel, published in 1980. I’ve read that it’s considered one of the finest private eye novels ever written. Quite an achievement for a first novel. What kind of pressure did that put on you?
JR: I don’t think it really put any pressure on me because it took a number of years for the book to develop that reputation. When the book came out it got very little distribution because the publisher was about to collapse (I didn’t know that was going to happen when I sold the book to them). So, for a long time it was just an obscure first novel that became something of a cult item because the few people who read it kept beating the drum for it. And while that was going on, I kept writing other things, so I didn’t really look back. Now, of course, I’m very pleased and gratified by the response TEXAS WIND has gotten over the past 33 years since it came out. I was so young when I wrote it that anything good in it is just pure instinct on my part. I didn’t really know what I was doing. (Most days I still feel like that.)
2. You’ve written over 200 novels in a broad range of genres and under numerous pen names. If you were asked to name your top three favorite novels which ones would they be and why?
Actually, I’m closing in quickly on my 300th novel. The one I’m working on now is #298. But as for my favorites, in no particular order: UNDER OUTLAW FLAGS, my Western/World War I novel, for a couple of reasons—I really like the narrator’s voice in that one and think I hit most of the notes I was trying to hit, and also because I wrote myself into it as a character (I’m the fat little kid eating popsicles and reading comic books in the framing sequence). - See more at: http://www.tomrizzo.com/storytellers-7-james-reasoner-words-by-the-million/#sthash.4UWf02rk.dpuf
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