Wrong Place. Write Crime

It's a pleasure being compared to mega pulp master Eric Beetner and in the company of bestselling crime writer, Frank Zaphiro. I wasn't off the plane from Chernobyl and the latter is interviewing me on his awesome podcast Wrong Place. Write Crime. We not only discuss my catalogue, but important noir/crime writerly stuff like, you'd better be enjoying what you're writing or it's gonna damn well show itself on the page. If you don't like your own words, your fans or would-be fans ain't gonna like it either. Make sense? Oh and we're also lucky to be published by the same gritty, take-no-prisoners outfit, Down&Out Books.

Grab the Podcast HERE:

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Also, please don't forget THE EXTORTIONIST, the latest in the Steve Jobz PI Thriller series, is currently available for pre-order at a special low price that will double after its November 29 release date. So act now thriller fans.  
 

The Last Good Mystery Bookshop...

...And it's located way down in Manhattan, only a few feet away from 9/11's Ground Zero. Yesterday I signed a whole bunch of hardcover editions of The Caretaker's Wife, my brand new novel that began with this elevator pitch: The Postman Always Rings Twice meets High Plains Drifter.

Being that The Mysterious Bookshop is one of the last good bookshops left in my neck of the woods anyway, I wanted to make a video of my experience, beginning with hopping the Amtrak in Albany and ending with a short, pay-my-respects visit to the 911 memorial in lower Manhattan.

You can check out the video here:

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Who doesn't love Die Hard?

"Yippee ki yay, mofo!"

I know I do. Who can forget Bruce Willis, aka John McClain, fighting the bad guys in his bare feet after they'd hijacked the Nakatomi (sp) Towers in LA? Or in Die Hard 2 (Die Harderer, or something like that), being blown out of a fighter jet after pulling the eject lever? You just couldn't kill the guy no matter what you did to him.

I wanted to write a book like that. Something explosive and pyromania-like. But I also wanted my main character, Ike Singer, to be human, with a nice family, who had the will to live when evil unexpectedly arrived at their doorstep. In this case the evil takes the form of an attractive young blonde scientist, Dr. Allison Darling, who builds nanothermite bombs, knows how to use them as a weapon of terror, and has one very major grudge against Singer.

With that I give you The Detonator which is released today in hardcover and eBook from Polis Books. If you start reading it and find you can't stop, I will have done my job. It was constructed as a page turner and an attention grabber. These days, writers have to compete with everything from Twitter posts to Netflix. We have our work cut out for us.

DON'T GET BOMBED!
Get The Detonator

"Dynamite!"
--Publishers Weekly

"Only author Vincent Zandri can make readers understand the meaning of revenge, hate, greed, betrayal and the dangers of getting involved with bombs, pipe bombs, and being a Master Blaster. This book would really hit high ratings on the WIDE SCREEN!"
--Sam Freene

"Riveting,"
--Booklist


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Perfection: the relentless pursuit

Of course, we'll never get there.

But there is the relentless pursuit. I think it gets worse as you get older...the desire to get things right, perfect. If not the first time than the last time. Or die trying.

I'm about to board a flight back to NYC so I'll make this quick. But I'm reminded of an old video I caught on You Tube of Genesis playing a concert circa 1985. There's this long, and dynamic medly based on the song The Cage, and it goes on for maybe 20 minutes or more with tons of drumming on Phil's part. It's an amazing display of musicianship with a variety of tempos and time signatures. It's not for amateurs.

Towards the end of the piece, Phil must exit his drum kit in order to take over the lead vocals once more. It occurs at the song's most dramatic point, when things slow down and a lush tune called "Afterglow" begins. But here's the thing: you would think Phil would simply get up from his drums, head over to center stage. Which he does. But before going there, he pulls out his drum key and takes maybe three seconds to tune one of his tom-toms. He doesn't go nuts over it, but he takes the time out to adjust it enough to suit his sense of perfection.

Now just imagine the tens of thousands of screaming fans in the crowed and the ear blistering music going down, and yet, Phil feels the need to tweak the tom-tom before the song's ending. Something he could have easily let go. Something that would have gone totally unnoticed. Imagine if you will, people driving home from the concert complaining, "Great show, but Phil's ten inch rack tom was out of tune." You get the point.

My latest, THE CORRUPTIONS, was to be released in hard-cover this past week, but the galley's aren't perfected yet. Not yet tweaked enough. I don't know if perfection will ever be reached, but the publishing folks at Polis Books were good enough to delay publication for a couple of weeks, until we get it right. One of the reasons I'm flying back early from Europe is to make sure everything, including the launch goes perfectly. In fact, one of the characters the novel is based on, David Sweat who broke out of Dannemora Prison back in June of 2016 is anxiously awaiting publication of the novel inside his solitary confinement cell at New York's Five Points Max. Sweat and his partner pulled off one of the most perfect prison escapes in the history of humankind's organized incarceration. My story is a fiction, and only inspired by him, but hey, all the more reason to get it right.

Get it perfect.
As perfect as I can. 

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World War III and More Pleasant Observations

How ISIS has Fun in the Summer Sun

It's been way too long since I've posted here. But if I have an excuse or excuses, it/they are good ones. This summer has been taken up almost entirely with my rewrite for When Shadows Come, my new stand-alone psych thriller coming from Thomas & Mercer in April of '16. Time is also being consumed by my rewrite of Orchard Grove, my new hard-boiled/noir effort to be released by Polis Books in January '16. Both books are major releases for me and represent precisely my evolution as a writer with 20 books to his credit (or discredit, depending upon which side of the fence you're on).
 
Some common sense observations from the mind of a rugged individualist (card carrying Independent) thus far for summer 2015:


--You don't plead the 5th unless you're afraid of going to prison.

--You don't wipe the personal server clean of 30K emails unless you have something serious to hide.

--You don't make a deal with the Devil unless you have sympathy for the Devil.

--An estimated 50 Iranians who oppose the Iran Nuke Deal have been executed since the interim agreement was signed some months ago.

--"No" means "no," right? Well, "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" means just that...Death.

--The EPA is the new BP when it comes to ruining the environment. Will Obama take time out from his vacation to visit Colorado and the thousands of people affected by this environmental disaster, like he did the Gulf spill? Methinks the photo ops won't work in his favor.

--The national debt is closing in on 20 Trillion. If the debt ceiling were an airplane, 20 T is where we stall out, and begin a spiraling nose dive towards the ultimate calamity.

--Planned Parenthood is now officially in the organ harvesting business.

--Amnesty for illegal immigrants is not about love. It is a power grab for the Democratic caucus. More votes means assured victory, assured big government, assured dependency on government handouts...Oh, and more senseless murders.

--ISIS is not the JV team anymore. They are now the Varsity squad outfitted with WMDs, some of which have been discovered in Iraq.  Go figure.

--"All Lives Matter."

--Russia is on the move, testing NATO's resolve. And remember when North Korea signed a deal with President Clinton back in the 90's assuring the world they would not develop nuclear weapons? It was a deal based not on "trust" but verified inspections. Looks like the bad guys just can't be trusted to keep their word. In the end, it's possible the next POTUS will find him or herself trying to avoid WWIII.

--Is it any wonder that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are killing it in the polls while our professional politicians steer the world towards a disaster no one will be able to avoid?

 

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