DOUBLE SHOT: Death Pulls a Doublecross and Markham by Lawrence Block

It's probably came up here before, but Lawrence Block is one of my absolute favorite writers. I found him in high school and for a while just sorta went back and forth between him and Donald E. Westlake who I found about the same time. I'd read a Dortmunder then a Burglar book and then a Parker and a Scudder (or a Chip Harrison or an Evan Tanner) and was pretty much guaranteed a good time. 

And lucky for me Block is prolific, so I got lots to treat myself too for years to come. Take Death Pulls a Doublecross, I've had a copy of this for years (the later Coward's Kiss version) and surprisingly never read despite the aforementioned love of Block and my general love of private eye books. So, I stumbled into a copy of the original Gold Medal paperback (another thing I love) and decided to take it for a spin. Then there was something gnawing in the back of my head, wasn't this book supposed to be different book?

See, I also like to read author's talk about their work, and I like to read about the pretty screwy publishing world (especially in the 50s through the 80s) which means I've read a lot of blogs, introductions, interviews, etc. etc. Block has a colorful bibliography with tons of early pseudonym work for, um, the "adult" market under several different names. A lot of these have been republished these days. But all of that used to be a big book-lovers mystery. A lot of still is a mystery when it comes to the adult books of the day. Back to Block, eventually I remembered a book called Markham by Lawrence Block that I'd also had for a long time without reading. Ah, yes. It all came back to me, so here you go:

See, Death Pulls a Doublecross or Coward's Kiss as it was originally (and eventually) titled was supposed to be a book called Markham. Or more to the point it was supposed to be a tie-in book for a TV show called Markham starring Ray Milland who at one time had X-Ray vision, I believe. Block had been hired to write a Markham book and a book on the equally forgotten TV show Johnny Midnight (that became Strange Embrace) but once he finished Death/Coward, he rather liked it and thought it might be too good to be a tie-in book to a show. He showed it to people and they agreed. So, with some changes it ceased being a book about a guy named Markham and became about a guy named Ed London. Oh, then he still had to write the Markham book, more on that later...

Death Pulls a Doublecross is a fine Gold Medal paperback. I honestly have never really been let down by a Gold Medal, sure some are better than others, but I haven't found a real stinker in the bunch, yet. I'll see how it goes. Ed London is out hero here. He's a New York private eye and when we meet him (in a great opening) he's disposing of a nude, female body. Soon, he's on a rollercoaster with stolen Nazi gems, gangsters, perky actresses, complete with gunfire, stolen Beretta's, sex, plenty of pipe smoking and drinking. It's all told in Block's hard-boiled, breezy style. The mystery might be a little easy to figure out if you've knocked about the mystery world, but I bet there's still a few surprises in store for you.

Ed's an interesting private eye, a little more urbane than the usual type (that's probably the Ray Milland touch he was a fancy-dan) who drinks cognac, smokes the pipe, likes classic music and expensive rare books. But don't let that fool you he's still a wonderful paperback hero to follow with a solid punch and a willingness to plant a bullet in a baddie. You can easily see a world where Block wrote a slew of books starring Ed. He didn't. Much like his other Gold Medal book The Specialists, he tried to write other tales of Ed, but they never came out to full length. Luckily, he wrote some short stories which are included in book partially put together by our buddy Bob Deis and his cohorts as The Naked and the Deadly which I now need to pick up, even though I own a copy of One Night Stands and Lost Weekends which collects them too.  

The best way I can describe Death Pulls a Doublecross is that it's an exceptionally well written Mike Shayne or Johnny Liddell or Pete Chambers novel. Which may sound like a knock, it's not. The book treads a familiar ground, doesn't try and reinvent the wheel and just goes about its business of entertaining you in a highly polished, professional way. Which is pretty hard to do if you think about it. So, I whole-heartily recommend this one. The Gold Medal edition is a little pricier, but it's been reprinted a few times (as Coward's Kiss) and is pretty easy to track down. And do track it down.

But it got me thinking about Markham. Which I already had on my shelf, and I began to wonder how different the two books were considering Death Pulls a Doublecross's origin. My inquisitive mind had to know, so I pulled Markham off the shelf. Markham, the show was well before my time, but I have seen a fair amount of 50s/60s detective shows so I understand the format. The show was obviously a "star vehicle" for Milland, the kind of stuff that honestly still gets made. Plug a star into a weekly detective show and rake in the money. It works. Sometimes. This one lasted 60 episodes, a lot today but not that many back then. It was crowded market for detective stuff. It was also promoted by Schlitz beer, which seems to clash with the "upscale, jet-setting nature" of the character. *shrugs*

Markham is a lawyer and private eye (gotta diversify right?) who's cases send him all over the world, but he's based in New York. He's urbane (like Ed London) but seems a bit stuffier. A little less Lawrence Block-humor has been injected into him. It's almost like it was dashed off to meet a contract after a talented writer wrote too good of a book the first time. Hmm. 

That's not to say it's a bad book, far from it. Here the subtitle is The Case of the Pornographic Photos which is just charming and quaint at this point. It's a wandering daughter job for Markham. A wealthy friend's slightly wild daughter has taken off during college and Markham is tasked with tracking her down. You can probably extrapolate from there: private eye shenanigans. Markham (at least Block's Markham) is pretty solid lead, though it's hard to imagine Ray Milland as a private eye. There's some nice Block-lines in there, but it's far from his best work. Either way it's a fun little mystery-lover's easter egg that it exists as a companion piece to Death Pulls a Doublecross. Markham was later released as You Could Call It Murder and it's a pretty cheap pick-up if you want to see what a pro can produce on the quick. 

Like I said, Block is really top-shelf talent. You really can't go wrong with a book with his name on the cover. 

And my now traditional sign-off, my first novel Gunpowder Breath is available on Amazon as an eBook!

QUICK SHOTS: Fan Fiction by Brent Spiner

I grew up on Star Trek (both the original and The Next Generation) both were favorites of my dad. I had the action figures, a phaser of my own and even read a few of the "expanded universe" books via my school's library. I dug Star Wars as a kid too, but I'm much more inclined to call myself a "Trekkie."  My father died rather unexpectedly in my early 20s and for a long while I sorta stayed away from Star Trek in general. But now my wife digs it, and we go to sleep with The Next Generation playing on Pluto TV. A full circle, I suppose. 

So, a little while ago I found out that Brent Spiner, who played Data in The Next Generation had written something that amounts to a mystery novel and I was intrigued. I've always been interested in this little sub-set of mystery fiction, where an actor writes (or has a ghostwriter do it) themselves into a mystery novel. Gypsy Lee Rose did it, George Sanders did it, George Kennedy did it. For all the Star Trek actors who have had books, I'm sorta surprised there's not a Lenard Nimoy plays Sherlock Holmes book, or William Shanter takes his T.J. Hooker training and solves a murder book.  

Brent beat 'em all to the punch. It's not a straight mystery novel either. It's a blend of "fact" and "fiction," telling the story of a deranged stalker he had to deal with in the early 90s during The Next Generation's run. The stalker was real, and bits of pieces paint a little bit of an autobiography, but the flip side is pure gonzo crime-fiction. Twin ladies who look like Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs, one an FBI agent, the other a professional bodyguard, close calls, funny cops, quirky side-characters and fictional versions of the whole Star Trek cast fill out the book. 

It's a mad-cap little mystery adventure with a funny and engaging tone. Brent obviously doesn't take himself too seriously but also indulges in some liberties as the creator of his own little world (both the twins have the hots for him) and then sprinkles it all with some fun in-side showbiz stuff and in-jokes. The early 90s setting was nice to read about too; it never got bogged down in the modern trappings that bore me out of a lot of new novels. The mystery element isn't too bad either, it plays the threat real and so there's enough "danger" to keep it interesting.

In a lot of ways it reminded me of Carter Brown's Larry Baker series about a Hollywood screenwriter who gets tangled up in slightly sexy and mysterious happenings. Or a full-showbiz and updated Dan Turner tale. It was an immensely enjoyable book, I'm sure it helped to have been a fan of Brent before. If you were oblivious to Star Trek, the book would probably lose its charm. But I was right up my alley.

And my now traditional sign-off, my first novel Gunpowder Breath is available on Amazon as an eBook!

QUICK SHOTS: Aquanauts #1: Cold Blue Death by Ken (Manning Lee Stokes) Stanton

The Aquanauts is a Lyle Kenyon Engle joint, which means he thought it was a good enough paperback idea to commission veteran pulpster Manning Lee Stokes to crank out 11 volumes. Our hero is William Martin aka Tiger Shark aka, the, uh, Aquanaut. A deep-sea commando with enough underwater gadgets to make G.I. Joe jealous. It's a delicious idea for a paperback hero, unfortunately everything in the books tastes a bit stale.

Manning Lee Stokes wrote a lot of books. He started out in comics, writing Seven Seas Comics and like the second graphic novel ever The Case of the Winking Budha. Then he wrote some mystery novels, including the pretty solid (from what I heard) The Grave's in the Meadow. After a while of not setting the publishing world on fire as himself he became names like Nick Carter (Nick Carter: Killmaster), Paul Edwards (John Eagle), Jeffery Lord (Richard Blade), and the like. Also, like pretty much any paperback writer of the time, he wrote westerns and some porn. I like his work with Nick Carter and John Eagle, which would be the place to start if you're interested in his work.

I have the full run of 11 books in The Aquanauts. I got most of them in on foul swoop at the wonderful Gardner's Used Books in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The rest I picked up here and there on the internet. They have some of coolest and wildest covers on any of the 70s Men's Adventure books. The first time I tried reading one I was disappointed and bailed on it pretty quickly. I still kept buying them though. That's called "a sickness."

But as I finish up my next book The Grill-Master, which is the first in a series, I decided to do an unofficial series here where I look at the first book in long-running series. This series isn't too long running, but I figured what the hell, it's my blog. Maybe I just wanted to punish myself, because I knew I was in dangerous waters.

So, Cold Blue Death introduces us to, I'm just going to call him Tiger. He was a 'Nam Vet (obviously) and a frogman (obviously) who gets recruited to be an ocean commando/spy guy by he's given a bitchin' submarine called the KRAB, an underwater dart gun and a bunch of other spy toys. The set-up is a little like Engle's other series Nick Carter: Killmaster mixed with John Eagle: The Expeditor. Only with the fun dialed down to 2.

His mission? It involves a dead Navy man in the Bermuda triangle, nuclear threats, sunken treasure, hot ladies, evil guys named Toad and other groovy 70s action stuff and when the action starts...it's over pretty quickly. Tiger Shark is a fairly boring "standard issue hero," outside of ogling ladies he only thinks of the mission and doesn't seem like he'd be fun to have a beer with. Then the rest of the book is mostly plodding and just over-stuffed with words, descriptions and threads that don't add up to much. It's pretty clear Stokes was making it all up as he went. Probably with a bottle of amber liquid nearby for stamina as he pounded out the keys.

This was a slog to get through. At times it felt like wading through knee-deep water (water, Aquanauts, get it?) and then every now at then Stokes would remember he was writing for entertainment and throw something awesome in there to keep me going. If I hadn't committed to this little "read the #1s" series I got going, I probably would have put this one back on the shelf like I did with the last Aquanauts I tried. But I am glad I finally read one of the damned things. Too bad it wasn't better. 

And my now traditional sign-off, my first novel Gunpowder Breath is available on Amazon as an eBook!

GUNPOWDER BREATH by Kilroy (Again)

Recently Bob Deis (if you don't know that name, you might be in the wrong spot) posted a very lovely review of my novel (or novella or novelette) Gunpowder Breath (under my handle Kilroy) over on Amazon and on my Goodreads page. Being a self-published writer this sort of things helps immensely. I'm sure I'd have more readers if I did anything other than mentioning the books on posts here, but I'm terrible of self-promotion. I probably should get better, who knows if that'll happen. So, thanks Bob for the reviews! It's always nice (and surprising) to have someone like your work, especially when it's a weird little book told in three major gunfights. Bob also put it on a 10 Book Recommendation List on his wonderful site Menspulpmags.com, a site I frequent often. It's a good list that made me purchase a couple books. I'll take this moment to recommend two of Bob's own books that I love He-Men, Bag Men & Nymphos and Weasels Ripped My Flesh. Both are wonderful primers for the wild world of Men's Adventure Mags and beautiful books to boot.

Speaking of Men's Mags, that's where a little of the inspiration for Gunpowder Breath came from. I wanted to write a book of pure motion, something that stood up and ran to the last page. I feel that same energy when I read stories from the Men's Adventure Mags. They're stories with a fire in their belly and I really dig that. I think I accomplished that, whether it's good is reader problems. So, thanks again Bob for reprinting them! 

I was also really influenced by B-Movies, I'm talking Direct-to-Video movies, especially of the 80s and 90s. Scrappier productions that may not have had "stars" but made up for it in crazy stunt work and full-tilt action. Stuff like Fred Olen Ray's Armed Response (1986), PM Entertainment's Recoil (1998), Bloodmoon (1997), Steve Wang's Drive (1997) or Red Sun Rising (1994). Smaller pictures that had to fight (get it?) more to be entertaining. I like the idea of all of that and the underdog energy, Dick Mulligan, the washed-up and drugged-addled mercenary "hero" of Gunpowder Breath certainly has to fight for everything he does. 

And finally, where did Kilroy come from? Well, my name is Roy and I've always enjoyed the "Kilroy Was Here" graffiti from WWII. That, plus my love of author pseudonyms gave me a natural inclination to write under a penname. But more specifically when I was a James Bond obsessed teenager I read Trevanian's novels The Eiger Sanction and The Loo Sanction and they had quite the influence on my writing with their action played straight but with a winking humor sprinkle throughout. It's in the DNA of Gunpowder Breath but is perhaps more noticeable in my upcoming book (and hopeful series) called The Grill-Master. I also think it's cool to go by one name, like Cher. 

So, this is just a little break from out regularly scheduled programing. Many more book reviews on the horizon, thanks for this indulgence if you made it this far. 

QUICK SHOTS: The Hawkline Monster by Richard Brautigan

I'm going to be honest with you folks. I read The Hawkline Monster months ago and didn't think I'd review it. I sorta didn't think I didn't think I could really review it. It was something I read very fast. It's very different than the usual thing I review here (though in some way very much the same) but mostly I think it just took me a few months to truly digest it. I don't think I still got it fully digested but that's a problem for future me.

I was writing a movie (that I'm now making) at the time. It's a horror film with a character that can massage and shift your reality and surprise, surprise, the universe gave me the right book at the right time. A book that sorta massgaes reality. Things work out like that sometimes. I have had a copy of The Hawkline Monster by Richard Brautigan on a shelf since my teens (seems like a long time) and I've always meant to read it. I have to be in the right mood for westerns. I have to be in the right mood for horror novels. A horror/western? Talk about the right mood.

But The Hawkline Monster called to me. Much as it calls to the characters within the novel and I pulled it off the shelf and read it nearly in one sitting. That's no great accomplishment. It's a slim, fast read of a book and the words seem to just float on into your brain. It's what I would call a bawdy novel of the 70s with supernatural and metaphysical touches. It's also a parody of tough-guy westerns and gothic horror stories, buts it's also very unsettling. See it's got its cake and it's eating it too. 

Richard Brautigan was a counter-culture writer of the time, with some scores to his name. Somewhere along the way he wrote The Hawkline Monster. I've never read any of his work before, but I've been aware of him for a long time, and I recently picked up his mystery novel Willard and His Bowling Trophies, and it got me thinking about Hawkline. Cameron and Greer are two guns for hire; they carry rifles and revolvers in a big trunk and get hired (in a whorehouse) to come to a house and kill the monster that lives under the joint in some "ice caves," by Magic Child, the native American woman/girl (she changes like everything in the book) who takes them to the spooky house.

Once they get to the place they find Miss Hawkline the owner, a spooky butler and well something about the house clouds folks minds. It's something in the air that prevents them from going on and getting to the monster killing. Mostly it's sex that distracts them. Good distraction. Everything past this is a series of funky scene strung together before Cameron and Greer shake off enough to grab their guns and go down into the caves.

In a lot of ways this is a hippy-dippy take on a B-movie. Several B-movies, a poverty row western mixed with a monster/mad scientist movie then the whole thing was dipped in acid and left to soak, oh, and add a "dirty movie" in the soup for good measure. It's a crass and crude book that at times feels like a dirty Belmont-Tower paperback then will swing into something gonzo. It's a book that that's not for everyone, and honestly, I think the whole thing was a bit of a joke Brautigan was playing on the readers, but it's a good joke if you're in a joking mode. I was and I loved it.

And my now traditional sign-off, my first novel Gunpowder Breath is available on Amazon as an eBook!

QUICK SHOTS: Nick Carter Killmaster #1: Run, Spy, Run by Nick (Michael Avallone) Carter

I'm back on my side-quest to read the number #1's in various long running series with the first Nick Carter Killmaster. I have never reviewed a Nick Carter on the blog. I have like a whole bookshelf full of them, a lot of them purchased cheap from a thrift store next to the local Airforce base. I guess Nick had fans there. But I rarely read a Nick Carter, in fact a lot of the time I sorta forget of the series as a whole when thinking of Men's adventure books, when the series was one of the longest running. Am I not a fan?

The books were a Lyle Kenyon Engel produced joint, and he seemingly tried to recreate the success of these with a dozen other series like Aquanauts, Hot Line, The Baroness, Chopper Cop, etc. etc. but Nick Carter was his biggest action series. The whole thing was a throwback to begin with, a "reboot" of Nick Carter, Detective from the pulps, movies and radio. Seems like we've always recycled ideas. Here, Nick is switched from a gumshoe to a secret agent to keep up with Mr. Bond. He works for an agency called AXE and packs a Luger and a dagger along with other gadgets. I think this is one of the reasons I rarely think about 'ol Nick. I love the ideas behind a lot of Engel's produced series. An underwater troubleshooter with his own submarine? An undercover 70s cop on a motorcycle? A spy who poses as a race car driver? All those sounds awesome, but since it's all for hire work through a middleman to the publisher, it all sort feels a little bland a lot of the time. Too many of the edges have been sanded off. 

Engel hired one of my favorite writers ever Michael Avallone to pen the first couple adventures of this new Nick Carter. Avallone had written a fair number of mysteries in his Ed Noon series by then and would go on to write a lot of swinging spy stories with The Man from UNCLE, The Girl from UNCLE, The Coxeman, The Butcher, and even Ed Noon soon took spy missions from the president. I've covered one of his own super spy characters (that I wish got a series) David Seven here and a bunch of his other work on the site before. I'm a fan.

And this is one of the few #1's I have read before, but it was so long ago that I remembered nothing of it. Run, Spy, Run is the well-designed #1 for a series. It introduces the new set-up and the side-characters. Nick's gear and the swinging spy vibe that the series would carry on. Avallone is tamped down here (more on that later) and playing it fairly "straight." He's a kooky writer, full of exuberance that flowed onto the page. Here we have a competent piece of genre fiction that does what it sets out to do: sell more books. 

Engel didn't seem to like Avallone's draft of the book and in Avallone's own words, said it was "heavily edited," by Valrie Moolman and that's clear. Occasionally a Avallone line will appear, and I do think all the stuff with Nick Carter's pistol, knife, and gadgets all having nicknames was probably Avallone's idea. That's a major throwback to the pulps. Something like The Avenger's "Mike and Ike" gun and knife. Avallone loved the pulps. 

Run, Spy, Run isn't a bad book, it's just not super remarkable. Even #13 or #19 of the Ed Noon books are remarkable, so I blame it on the editing. Avallone couldn't help writing like Avallone, take a look the review for his novelization of Friday the 13th: 3-D and see how he could make most anything come out like his. 

Here in #1, we set up Nick's Blofeld, Judas with his plot to blow up planes with politicians on it. The rest is the trappings of the Bond-era of spy fiction, with secret bases, sexy ladies, travel and action. Though the action isn't dwelled upon and seems a little lifeless. It's almost like it was rewritten too much...hmm...weird, right? The whole thing just makes me want to take an Ed Noon of the shelf and get a proper jolt of Avallone's style.

My copy of Run, Spy, Run is a bundle-up with Nick Cater #100 packaged with, well, #100: Dr. Death and The Preposterous Theft, a pulp Nick Carter tale. It's a dandy little package. This wasn't my favorite Nick Carter, that would be John Messman's Sea Trap or Manning Lee Stokes's Spy Castle. Theses used to haunt used bookstores, but I see less and less in the wild anymore which is a shame, but they can still be found pretty cheap online in big lots. 

And my now traditional sign-off, my first novel Gunpowder Breath is available on Amazon as an eBook!

QUICK SHOTS: Mike Hammer #10: The Body Lovers by Mickey Spillane

I came to Mickey early. I had read some Joe Lansdale, some James Crumley, then some Hammett and finally some Chandler. I've said it before that Chandler and I'll say it again. Marlowe doesn't always do much for me. I guess I'm not romantic enough. And Hammett could write circles around him. So, after my Chandler I found a stack of Spillane's at a book sale, but none of the ones the internet was telling to read to start. It was a pile of his short story collections, The Tough Guys and Me, Hood plus a Tiger Mann or two and some late-period Hammer's like The Snake and Survival...Zero. The last one in the pile was The Erection Set. 

I started with The Erection Set. Taking it along to a trip to grandma's and getting the full reading it under the cover experience (since it had Spillane's naked wife on the cover and didn't want to scandalize grandma) and it was an eye-opener. I quickly made it a mission to track down more Spillane. He was sorta a nuclear bomb going off in my head. It was the tough guy private eye stuff I was liking, but action (and sex) filled. He was a guy for me, for sure. I went through most of the Hammers and my personal favorite Spillane, The Deep in short order. I've had a lot of fun experiences reading Spillane novels. I was reading a Hammer in a bar one time before someone took a swing at me over me talking to a lady. I listened to Dead Street with a .40 Cal Glock on my hip in the front of an armored car as I drove too much money around. I took a Spillane on my honeymoon...I don't think I read much of it though. 

SIDE-NOTE, one of my treasured possessions is an autographed first edition of The Deep scored for $1 from a thrift store. I didn't realize it was sign until AFTER I read the thing either. 

Luckily, it's been long enough since I've read a lot of his books that if I reread them, they will be mostly new experiences. It had been too long since I read one, and the other day at this warehouse that sells books, Blu-ray's and DVDs for around a buck I ended up with an extra copy of The Body Lovers. This one a later Signet edition from the 80s/90s with some nice clean retro artwork. The best thing is that it has some bigger font. The old Signet editions that I read originally have SUPER small font and my eyes aren't getting any younger. Makes you crave a Lancer Easy Eye.

So, The Body Lovers is probably no-ones favorite Mike Hammer, it's not mine but I had a lot of fun with it. This is one is sorta towards the end of the "second run" Hammers when Spillane came back after his Jehovah's Witness conversion, after this one and Survival...Zero, everyone had to wait until 1989 to get a new Mike Hammer. Mike and Mickey are both older here, a little more mellow but still free with a wisecrack, a fist or a shot from a smokin' .45 and not to mention everyone's favorite gal Velda is still by his side. 

You can come home again, cause I had a helluva time visiting. Spillane could write a page turner. His way with words was commendable, it's clear why he was as popular he was. Every line makes you wanna jump to the next. He called his readers "customers," and I'm a tried-and-true customer. Mickey's style is at once wonderfully old fashioned and strikingly fresh, he swings some of the same punches as Agatha Christie and yet is the hardest of the hard-boiled. And make no mistake Mike Hammer is a detective. He puts in the time; he's got receipts for all his legwork and all his jawing with characters. Sure, there's some easy "conclusions" and some random "coincidences," but he's gotten a bad rap for this kind of writing. 

So, if you're popular ya gotta be bad right? That's the way the reviewers treated Mickey. There're some reviews that hurt my writer's heart to this day. Which is no small feat. I'm here to say Mickey was FRAMED. Mickey wrote like Lays makes potato chips. I think both are grand and I know professional chefs who like potato chips and a lot reviewers rarely see the forest for the trees. Can ya tell Mickey's a favorite?

But what about The Body Lovers? Well, Mike is driving around and guess what? He runs into a nude woman in lingerie. We're off and running. Along the way he tangles with sadistic pimps, international crime-dude rings, ladies throw themselves at him, he gets a client in prison via a hidden note, gets to shoot his .45 caliber best friend and gets to dish out hot justice for the little guys of the world. Mike's an avenger character. He's tough enough and brave enough to take on the nasty people in power and he serves his purpose here. 

Like I said this is probably no-ones favorite Hammer, but it's a rollicking read, a trip though the nasty parts of town with you pal Mike. Spillane never lost his pure readability. You pick this one (or hell any of them) and you'll find yourself happily flipping the pages until its done. The Body Lover's might not reach the fevered pitch of an I, the Jury or a One Lonely Night, but it's got more than enough gas in the tank to drive to a good time. 

And my now traditional sign-off, my first novel Gunpowder Breath is available on Amazon as an eBook!