Paul Levine – Page 5

Crime Fiction: Brash New Kid on the Block

September 24, 2021May 21, 2014 by Paul Levine

Crime Fiction authors Lee Goldberg and Joel Goldman remind me of Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks. And no, neither Lee nor Joel has a mustache.

crime fiction chaplin — Charlie Chaplin wanted to control his own work.

Ninety-five years ago, Chaplin and Fairbanks (along with Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith) opened their own studio: United Artists. They’d been working for the big-name studios and thought they could do a better job making movies. They also wanted the creative control that the commercial studios wouldn’t give them.

crime fiction...fairbanks — Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. bears a strong resemblance to Joel Goldman in the sense that they both wear hats.

Brash Books Bursts Onto the Scene

This month, Goldberg and Goldman, both highly successful writers in the crime fiction genre, opened “Brash Books,” a new publisher of ebooks and paperbacks. They are already offering selections from crime fiction stalwarts Bill Crider, Dick Lochte, Dallas Murphy, Barbara Neely, Bob Forward, Tom Kakonis, Noreen Ayres, and others. Here are some of the paperbacks.

The Brash Books tagline is…well, brash: “We Publish the Best Crime Novels in Existence.” Oh, how the ebook revolution has turned the publishing industry upside down. Twenty years ago…make that ten years ago, this would not have been possible. The cost of production and distribution of “dead tree” books would make wanna-be publishers blink.

Crime Fiction Rookies Welcome

While the initial offerings are from established crime fiction writers, Brash is opening the door (or transom?) to unpublished authors, too. Go here to see how to submit your work. Why do I think they’ll be deluged with manuscripts?

Well, there are lots of unpublished authors out there, some of whom are very good. There is also a contingent of formerly published crime fiction writers who can no longer get a contract with a New York publishing house. But as some doors close, others open.

Crime Fiction Back in Print

In my case, the ebook revolution gave second life to many titles that were long out-of-print in brick-and-mortar bookstores. Those books are now alive and well on Amazon. There’s another benefit for the writer, too. By giving re-birth to the first book in a series — in my case, “To Speak for the Dead” (1990) — electronic publication opened the door to fresh NEW ebooks and paperbacks. Again, in my case, the tenth book of the same series, “State vs. Lassiter” (2014).

As for Brash Books, let’s look back at United Artists a moment. It remained independent for nearly 50 years, producing everything from “The Three Musketeers” with Fairbanks in 1921 to “A Hard Day’s Night” with the Beatles in 1964. I’m hoping Brash Books is around for a half century, too.

Paul Levine

Nuclear Weapons: Fact, Fiction and Loose Nukes

September 24, 2021May 2, 2014 by Paul Levine

Several years ago, I wrote “Ballistic,” a novel in which an Air Force missile base in Wyoming was attacked by terrorists. The story raised the fear of “loose nukes,” nuclear weapons in the hands of those who would use them. Or, in the shorthand language of flap copy:

A Nuclear Missile…

A Band of Terrorists…

And Only Two People Who Can Prevent Armageddon.

The set-up for the novel was that U.S. Air Force “missileers” — the personnel in underground launch control capsules who enter the codes and turn the keys — doubted their services would ever be used. Discipline was poor, equipment was obsolete, and the missile silos were vulnerable to attack.

So what’s been in the nuclear weapons news lately?

Nuclear Weapons: Peacekeeper — A U.S. Air Force motivational poster for the missile forces

U.S. Nuclear Weapons: 1960’s Technology

If you watched “60 Minutes” last Sunday, you know the answer. The snarky headline describing the piece in the Huffington Post yesterday screamed: “Soooo Our Nuclear Missiles Are Run By Computers That Still Use 8-Inch Floppy Disks.” (The “60 Minutes video is also there).

“On a recent tour of one of the nation’s Air Force nuclear missile facilities in Wyoming, Leslie Stahl of CBS’ ’60 Minutes’ made the surprising discovery about the archaic state of technology inside the facilities. Dana Meyers, a 23-year-old missileer working at the facility, told Stahl of the floppy disks: ‘I had never seen one of these until I got down in missiles.’

“In the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. government built several facilities like the one Stahl visited to operate and conceal its Cold War-era Minuteman missiles. Most of the technology hasn’t seen a hint of upgrade since then. For example, the missileers use analog phones for communication, as shown in the CBS report. The computers that would receive a launch order from the president to deploy one of the missiles are Internet-free, bulky and painted a retro-inspired muted yellow.”

The “60 Minutes” piece also showed a drill in which specially trained U.S. commandos attacked a missile silo overrun with “terrorists.” That was exactly what I had written years earlier…although the heroes of “Ballistic” were a lowly, drunken Air Force sergeant and a terrified female psychiatrist who had been tasked with testing the mental state of the missileers. (Yes, that was based on a real study involving the safety of our nuclear weapons).

Nuclear Weapons Tomfoolery

The CBS story comes hard on the heels of other embarrassments for the Air Force nuclear weapons program. Consider this: missileers were recently cheating on their fitness exams! “Air Force Secretary: 37 Nuclear Missile Launch Officers Involved In Drug, Cheating Scandal”

Nuclear Weapons: Silo — I commissioned an illustrator to make this drawing to help me with the logistics of moving U.S. troops and terrorists throughout the Launch Control Capsule and missile silo.

Then there’s this humiliation. Earlier last month, General Michael Carey, the man in charge of all 450 Minuteman missiles was forced to resign after a rowdy, drunken trip to Russia, of all places. As explained by Huffington Post:

“Investigators determined that Carey had engaged in ‘inappropriate behavior,’ including heavy drinking, rudeness to his hosts and associating with “suspect” women, according to the investigative report made public last December.

“After the Russia trip, a member of his delegation lodged a complaint about Carey’s behavior. That person, described as a female staff member in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, asserted to investigators that on the delegation’s first night in Moscow, Carey was drinking and speaking loudly in a hotel lounge about how he was ‘saving the world’ and that his forces suffer from low morale.”

All of which gives me an idea for a new book!

Paul Levine

Jake Lassiter: Flirting with Disbarment

September 24, 2021April 21, 2014 by Paul Levine

Jake Lassiter faces disbarment in “Last Chance Lassiter,” the prequel to the ten-book series featuring the Miami Dolphins linebacker turned trouble-prone lawyer. In the novella, a young Lassiter – a few years out of night law school – slugs a client. Why? The transcript of his Bar Disciplinary Hearing answers the question, as he spars with the judge assigned to his case.

************************************************************************************

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF FLORIDA

THE FLORIDA BAR, Case Number SC-14-238
Petitioner

vs.

JAKE LASSITER,
Respondent

TRANSCRIPT OF BAR DISCIPLINARY HEARING

**************************************************************************************

JUDGE BUCKSTROM: Apparently, Mr. Lassiter, you have a propensity for violence.

JAKE LASSITER: Not really, Your Honor. The only time I was arrested, it was a case of mistaken identity.

Q: How’s that?

A: I didn’t know the guy I hit was a cop.

Q: But in this case, Mr. Lassiter, you have admitted striking your own client.

A: Technically, he wasn’t my client. It was our first meeting, and I hadn’t agreed to represent him.

Q: So why did you hit him?

A: He came at me with a baseball bat from the collection on my office wall. Barry Bonds. Mark McGuire. Alex Rodriguez.

Q: You collect from any players who didn’t break the rules?

A: Innocent until proven juiced, Your Honor.

Flirting with Disbarment — Jake flirts with disbarment in “Last Chance Lassiter.”

Q: So your testimony is…your prospective client attacked you with your own bat?

A: Under Florida’s stand-your-ground law, I could have shot him with a machine gun.

Q: The complainant swears you hauled off and slugged him without provocation.

A: So he’s a liar in addition to being a wife beater.

Q. Now, hold on, Mr. Lassiter.

A: He was charged with spousal abuse and wanted me to suborn perjury. Specifically, he said–

Q: Stop right there! That’s hearsay.

A: I thought this was an informal proceeding.

Q: My report to the Florida Supreme Court is damn formal, pardon my French. And you, sir, are flirting with disbarment.

A: (inaudible)

Q: Did you just laugh, Mr. Lassiter?

A: Sorry, Your Honor. Flirting with Disbarment. Sounds like my life story.

Q: Indeed. I’ve reviewed the litany of Bar Complaints against you. Are you familiar with Florida Bar Rule Seven-D?

A: Not really, but if it’s only number seven, how important can it be?

Q: What!

A: Like in the Ten Commandments. Number seven outlaws adultery. No biggie, if you look at the statistics.

Q: Mr. Lassiter, Rule Seven-D states that “Lawyers must comport themselves with dignity.”

A: Sounds like a slap-on-the-wrist offense. Can I plead nolo and get a sternly worded letter from Tallahassee?

Q: Assault and battery is a felony, and a felony is a disbarable offense.

A: Disbarable? Is that even a word?

Q: That’s enough! Your flippancy will be noted.

A: Now, flippancy is definitely a word. But a funny one. No way can you say flippancy and not smile.

Q: What about the word disbarment? Want to crack wise about that one? Disbarment! Disbarment! Disbarment!

A: I get your point, Judge. I just do things my own way.

Q: If you don’t follow the Ethical Rules, just how do you go about practicing law?

A: I look for a cause that’s just, a client I like, and a check that doesn’t bounce.

Q: How’s that working for you?

A: I seldom win the trifecta.

Q: I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. Do you have any remorse? Do you regret striking your client? Your prospective client.

A: My Granny taught me that any man who hits a woman is a low-life scumsucker, and if I were ever to see such a thing, I should put a stop to it. Well, I couldn’t stop this bastard, so I just called him a bully and a coward who doubted his own manhood, a pussycat pretending to be a tiger. He’d been admiring the Barry Bonds black maple bat. I was hoping he’d come at me with it. When he did, he swung more like Barry Manilow than Barry Bonds. I ducked and caught him with a left jab to the jaw followed by a right hook to the gut. He tossed his cookies on my loafers.

A: So you have no regrets about this violent incident, which could lead to your disbarment?

Q: Sure, I do, Your Honor. I regret getting caught.

“Last Chance Lassiter” is available in paperback and as an ebook from Amazon. More information on the Jake Lassiter Series Pages.

How I Killed The Miami Herald’s Tropic Magazine

September 24, 2021March 26, 2014 by Paul Levine

By Paul Levine

The official story: there just weren’t enough ads for maternity jeans.

I’m talking about the death of Tropic Magazine, which appeared every Sunday in The Miami Herald from October 1967 to December 1998. The magazine won three Pulitzers, published Dave Barry, John Katzenbach, and Carl Hiaasen, among others, and invented Miami’s strangest event, the “Tropic Hunt.”

Who Really Killed The Miami Herald’s Tropic Magazine?

I wrote a piece in the September 13, 1998 issue and then the cover article on October 25. Six weeks later, The Miami Herald killed the magazine. The word around the newsroom was that Tropic wasn’t making money as a stand-alone magazine. No kidding. But it certainly added value with some of the best writing (both journalism and fiction) in the newspaper over those 31 years.

(Full disclosure: I was a Miami Herald reporter who once worked at Tropic in 1970, shortly before going to law school).

For the last 15 years, I’ve been happy to let The Miami Herald take the rap for terminating that wonderful little magazine. But my guilty conscience compels me to cop a plea. Or at least raise the question: did my two articles lead to Tropic’s surprising demise?

The cover story on September 13, 1998 was titled “On Being Beautiful,” a series of essays commissioned by Editor Tom Shroder on physical beauty. A 24-year-old woman wrote the lead article entitled “Don’t Hate Me For Being Beautiful.” A young male model wrote a piece about putting on unwanted weight when working in Paris. “What is happening?” his agent asked. “You look like a giant croissant.”

Oh, the humanity!

I wrote “In Defense of Wrinkles.” Yep. And this was more than 15 years ago! Miami Herald photographer Charlie Trainor, Jr. took a photo about three inches from my face and then had some fun with it.

Miami Herald Tropic — No plastic surgery for me. I earned my wrinkles.

The Miami Herald: A Plastic Surgeon Ruins My Day

Here’s my little piece, which ran adjacent to an ad for $16.99 maternity jeans:

Just when I was getting used to my looks, when life had bestowed the dubious blessing of crinkly eyes and a furrowed brow, when it might be said that my face had acquired character, a plastic surgeon suggested he could take 10 years off my appearance by drilling holes in my head, slicing some muscles, yanking up my forehead, and fastening it to my skull with metal pins.

I received this heartening offer while standing in the gym near the bench press, having lifted a respectable amount of iron for a lanky fellow whose work requires mere mental gymnastics while seated in a cushioned chair.

“Look at that vertical crevice between your eyes,” the sawbones said with the same awe Spanish conquistadors must have expressed upon seeing the Grand Canyon.

“I know,” I replied. “It looks as if Lizzie Borden hit me with an ax.”

“We can get rid of it,” he promised. “And while we’re at it, we’ll take out some muscles to keep you from frowning or raising your eyebrows.”

“I need to raise my eyebrows to express irony,” I said, raising my eyebrows.

“Wrinkles!” he shouted. “It causes wrinkles.”

Smoothing out my forehead and plucking the fat from beneath my eyes, he promised, would leave me with a youthful demeanor reminiscent of my bar mitzvah photos.

“If you don’t do it,” Doc Hollywood warned me in solemn tones, “with gravity and aging, your forehead will slide even lower and eventually cut down your vision.”

“OK, so I’ll give up my dream of landing an F-14 on the deck of a carrier.”

But his words cut even deeper than his scalpel. I pictured myself as a beady-eyed Chinese Shar-pei, peering out from under a corrugated brow. Rushing to the mirror, I saw that he was right. Just when had my forehead slipped south? Most men aren’t aware of such subtle changes. As a man ages, I once read, his genitalia shrinks. Now, that we would notice.

“If you’re afraid of the surgery,” the surgeon continued, “I could simply inject Botox into your forehead. It’s derived from botulism and will paralyze the muscles and smooth out the wrinkles.”

“So would a ball peen hammer,” I replied.

I sometimes think that every crease and crevice can be attached to a specific trauma, so now I chart my face as a botanist might the rings of a giant Redwood. Aha, there’s the year of my career change, my divorce, my father’s death.

My past is littered with youthful humiliations, including being dateless for the junior prom. Adolescence began with huge black eyeglasses and a four-inch-high dirty blond flat-top that resembled an Iowa wheat field.

I did, however, have a sparkling personality and a deadly wit that I mistakenly believed could convince a girl — once sprawled across the front seat of my ’56 Ford at the drive-in theater — to shed her blouse. This strategy failed, notwithstanding soaking my turquoise vinyl upholstery with English Leather, which I understood to be a powerful aphrodisiac.

Later, with anti-war rebellion in the late ’60s, I let my hair grow long and bushy until it must have appeared that a muskrat was sleeping on my head. But now, three decades later, with a decent haircut and having grown accustomed to my face, I do not want to be reminded that the downhill slide may be even more painful than my awkward adolescence.

Aging means more than sagging jowls and a wrinkled brow, of course. In the past three years, I have had knee surgery, two hernia operations, and my first colonoscopy . . . clean as a whistle, thank you very much. I have bone spurs in both thumbs; I have trouble with the small-print on menus in darkened restaurants; and I get whipped in wind sprints by my 17-year-old son.

When I turned 50 earlier this year, I began receiving mail from the American Association of Retired Persons and a men’s health magazine that promises sturdy erections into my 90s if I would only buy a variety of food supplements favored by ancient Indian tribes from Peru.

I Am the Sum of My Aging Parts

Oh, Botox, schmotox! No plastic surgery. I don’t want an eye job, a chin implant, or penile enlargement. Keep your liposuction, collagen injections, and endoscopic forehead lifts. I know men are doing these things, but it’s all too trendy for me, a guy as up-to-date as a Ban-Lon shirt. I don’t carry a pager or a purse or wear suspenders, cuff links, or even a watch.

I don’t have an earring or a tattoo, and I don’t smoke cigars or wax melodic over the smoky essence of single-malt Scotch. I’m not in touch with either my feminine side or my inner child. I’m not a man of the ’90s, much less the millennium. OK, OK, I’m a throwback. So sue me . . . but don’t slice me.

It’s not that I am unconcerned about my appearance. I will swim my laps and hoist my weights in vain efforts to stave off gravity and the passage of time. I will eat low-fat foods with an occasional timeout for an oversize steak at Morton’s. I will drink gallons of water, hide from the sun, and imbibe martinis only in moderation. I will be the sum of my aging parts, and the wrinkles will bother me not a whit. After all, I earned them.

Paul Levine
Formerly of The Miami Herald

(Much has been written about the agonizing death of newspapers. Locally, the Miami News died in 1988, Tropic in 1998. The Miami Herald building, pictured above, is being demolished, and the newspaper now resides in the Everglades. Well, actually the burg of Doral, FL. Nonetheless, the newspaper’s staff, stretched thin, continues to l produce excellent journalism. I still read the newspaper and always will).

Mystery Writers Find Truth in Fiction

September 24, 2021March 18, 2014 by Paul Levine

By Paul Levine

Mystery writers are hit with this question all the time. “Where do you get your ideas?”

“I steal them,” I usually reply.

Sounds flippant, but it’s true. I’ve often stolen – or borrowed – real people and events for my fictional legal thrillers. My first novel, “To Speak for the Dead,” involved a physician charged with killing a patient with an injection of succinylcholine, a drug that paralyzes the lungs. Pretty inventive…except a Florida doctor had been convicted of killing his wife just that way 25 years earlier.

In real life, the doctor was sentenced to life in prison but was paroled after serving 12 years. So, in Florida, it seems, a horrific premeditated spousal homicide will get you a neat dozen years.

My path to joining the ranks of mystery writers started with covering the courts, then practicing law for 17 years. After a first stint writing legal thrillers, I spent several years working in television (“JAG,” “First Monday”) where one of my great pleasures was writing dialogue for James Garner and Charles Durning, the Chief Justice and Senior Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in our fictional world).

mystery writers on the Air — Charles Durning and James Garner in “First Monday”

As for my fictional justice system, it’s a place teeming with incompetence, corruption, and wackiness. That stems from real life, too. Mine.

A week after graduating from Penn State, I started work as a criminal court reporter with The Miami Herald. Unfortunately, having never been in a courtroom, I didn’t know habeas corpus from an bottlenose porpoise. A prosecutor took pity, showed me around, and taught me a few Latin expressions. (“Mero Motu,” it turns out, is not a greeting in Tokyo, but rather an act undertaken on the court’s own motion).

While covering the courts, I began having lunch with the prosecutor and two of his colleagues. They wowed me with their war stories, singing paeans to the majesty of the law and the high calling of public service. So sure enough, I went to law school, and my three prosecutor pals became judges. Now, flash forward 20 years. Those judges must be deans of the profession, right? Nope. All three are in federal prison, convicted of bribery, one of them for “selling” the name of a confidential informant so the defendant could arrange his murder.

Is It Any Wonder Mystery Writers Get Cynical?

So is it any wonder that I’m cynical about the halls of justice, where as Lenny Bruce once complained, the only justice is in the halls? Is it a surprise that judges in my books tend to be myopic, forgetful, and occasionally crooked? (One judge, in a lame-brained attempt to be fair, simply alternates rulings on objections. “Sustained.” “Overruled.” “Sustained.” “Overruled.”)

But back to the Miami courthouse in 1970 where, as a fledgling reporter, I also made friends with the Courthouse Gang, a multi-ethnic posse of retirees who showed up every day for the free entertainment. My buddies all knew a good story and invariably guided me to the right courtroom and filled me in on testimony I missed. The Gang lives on in fiction, as mystery writers love colorful characters.
Myron (The Maven) Mendelsohn, Teresa Toraño, and Cadillac Johnson use their unique skills to help the squabbling lawyers in my “Solomon vs. Lord” novels.

Another fascinating real trial found me interviewing aging mobster Meyer Lansky, who was charged with bringing through Customs personal ulcer medication for which he didn’t have a current prescription. In the law, the technical name for that charge is “chicken-shit harassment.”

mystery writers love lansky — Meyer Lansky was always pleasant to me but told me virtually nothing.

My interviews of Lansky basically consisted of me asking him questions and him asking if I wasn’t too young to be a reporter. He seemed to be a courtly old gentleman, and I stole (“borrowed”) that part of his personality to create Max Perlow, the aging Miami gangster in “Lassiter.”

As a young man, Perlow worked in a pre-Castro Havana casino for…Meyer Lansky. (Mystery writers also make things up).

mystery writers love gangsters — Aging gangster Max Perlow, in “Lassiter,” is loosely based on Meyer Lansky

The last trial I covered as a reporter was a doozy. Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors, was charged with indecent exposure for exposing himself at a Miami concert. One of the prosecutors was a mini-skirted former beauty queen named Ellen Morphonios, renowned for her ribald sense of humor. Just before opening statements, Ellen told me her trial strategy: “I’m gonna have the clerk stamp that dirtbag’s equipment and call it ‘State’s Exhibit One.’” Hey, you don’t hear that on CNN.

Morrison was convicted, then died at age 27 in Paris while the case was on appeal. While no autopsy was performed, speculation has long been that Morrison died of a heroin overdose. (Wikipedia relates several conflicting accounts of the singer’s death).

Mystery Writers love courtrooms — Singer Jim Morrison of The Doors leaving the courtroom where he was convicted.

Courtrooms may look like churches, trimmed with mahogany and exuding an air of solemnity. And sure, some proceedings are deadly dull, but there’s a surprising amount of humor between bench and bar.

In my first year practicing law, I tried a case before a colorful old judge named Frederick Barad. I thought I was doing great, but in closing argument, I noticed that a juror was sound asleep.

“Your Honor,” I whispered, gesturing toward juror number three, who was snoring loudly.

“What do you want from me?” the judge replied. “You put him to sleep. You wake him up.”

The courtroom has been keeping me awake – and entertained – for nearly four decades. These days, my job is to pass that along to readers.

For more information about my “Jake Lassiter” and “Solomon vs. Lord series, please visit my Amazon Author Page.

Finally, I’ve been tossing around the term “mystery writers” interchangeably with “thriller writers.” Technically there are differences, but that’s a subject for another day. For what it’s worth, Wikipedia lists me as a “major author” (hooboy!) of legal thrillers and a mystery novelist.