Michael Wiley: Justice in the Sunshine State

INGRID THOFT

Serving on a panel at a conference is always a crap shoot.  Sometimes, the panel gods work in your favor, and you end up sitting next to a true gem, and other times, you'll be just fine if your future interactions are a wave across a crowded hotel lobby.

Luckily, my experience with today's guest falls into the first category.  Michael Wiley and I were on an Sunday 8:30 a.m. panel together at the Long Beach Bouchercon (correct me if I'm wrong, Michael!) and seeing him has been a Bouchercon highlight ever since.  This year, Michael was nominated for the Shamus Award for Best P.I. Novel for his latest, MONUMENT ROAD.  Alas, he didn't win, but this book should definitely be on your TBR list. 

Set in present day Florida, MONUMENT ROAD introduces readers to Franky Dast, an investigator like no other.  Released from prison after being wrongly convicted of a heinous crime, Franky goes to work for the Innocence Project-like organization that won his freedom.  Here's the scoop from Michael.

INGRID THOFT: Franky is an intriguing character because he is so complex; he inspired such mixed emotions!  I felt sympathetic and outraged that he’d been wrongly imprisoned, but then, I’d cringe at his poor choices!  How did Franky Dast come to be?

MICHAEL WILEY: When I was a kid, I was much more disturbed on the few times when my parents or teachers accused me of doing something I didn’t do than the times when they punished me for doing something I did. The failure of adults to see what I imagined must be obvious innocence shocked and shook me. As an adult myself, I’m as interested in moral ambiguity and think I understand it as well as the next crime writer—but false accusations still horrify me. For a long time, I wanted to write a book about a character whose life has been ripped apart by such an accusation and who is struggling to put that life back together, but I couldn’t find the right story.

With all the recent news about false convictions and exonerations, I found the story. Men and women who’ve fought for years or decades against incredible odds—from behind bars, against a criminal justice system designed to keep them there—to convince others of their innocence are some of the most complex real-life heroes I know of. Men and women who run innocence projects and justice initiatives—Bryan Stevenson, Barry Scheck, others—are equally complex sidekicks and often heroes themselves. I model Franky Dast on a number of real exonerated death row inmates. When he gets out of prison, he joins a justice initiative as an investigator.

What looks like a poor choice to you or me may look like a reasonable or at least acceptable one to him. He has lost everything except his life—which he almost lost—and he’s starting from the very bottom, unable to go lower. So he takes risks, sometimes very dangerous ones. The ability to take them is all he has, his only freedom.

By the way, to my thinking, the biggest risk he takes in Monument Road is one most of us take. Through the course of the book, he allows himself to fall in love.


IPT: That's a very good point, and I also love the idea of taking risks being his only freedom.  I was definitely looking at Franky through my lens of experience ("make good choices!") when, of course, his experience has taught him there are no good choices.  You've got me thinking long after I finished the book, Michael!

When reading it, I often felt like I needed to cool off from the Florida heat and humidity because of the terrific sense of place you established.  Did you set out to make the setting a character of sorts?  And/or was the setting critical to the story in your estimation?

MW: I love powerful settings and think they’re just as critical to a story as characters are. In Toni Morrison’s SONG OF SOLOMON, Guitar Bains says, “I do believe my whole life’s geography.” I’ve lived in the Midwest (Chicago), the Northeast (New York), and the Deep South (Jacksonville), and I’ve found Guitar’s words to be true to my life. I’ve also found that other writers’ fictional settings thoroughly color my reading experiences and even color my experiences of real places when I visit them. When I started setting books around the Florida-Georgia border, I worked hard to catch the colors—and the sounds, smells, and humidity—of this place. If the setting makes readers want to turn on the AC, I’m a happy man.

IPT: In addition to writing, you teach literature at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville.  Can you name a book or two that you love to teach and why?

MW: The one I’ve just mentioned is among them. To me, SONG OF SOLOMON is nearly the perfect novel. The characters are immensely complex, conflicted, and lovable (even Guitar Bains, who is a psychotic killer). The settings—north, south, in between—are rich and evocative. The plot is gripping. The language is narrative and lyrical. The book is also great crime fiction. All these characteristics—including the part about crime fiction—are also present in many of the other books I love to teach, ranging from HAMLET to Marlon James’s A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEVEN KILLINGS to James Ellroy’s THE BLACK DAHLIA.

IPT: What has surprised you most about being a published author?

MW: In 2006, when I sold my first book (THE LAST STRIPTEASE, to St. Martin’s Press), I was surprised by the warmth and friendliness of the writing community. That fall, I went to my first crime-writing convention—Bouchercon, in Madison, WI—and writers I’d known only as a fan and admirer took me under their noir-ish wings. The crime-writing community does a better job of passing it around and passing it forward than any other group I’ve met.

IPT: Is there a wannabe book lurking in the back of your brain, something you would write if you didn’t have to consider agents, editors, and fans?  A romance?  Non-fiction?  Cookbook?

MW: I love how successfully crime fiction cross-pollinates with other writing genres: dystopian, fantasy, historical, horror, literary, romance, true crime, western, etc. I know of a basket-load of mysteries that include recipes. So I don’t feel very constrained. In BLACK HAMMOCK, I rewrote one of the oldest crime stories—about Electra and Orestes reclaiming their house from the man who killed their father—setting it on a twenty-first century barrier island off the coast of Florida. Not many people read that one, though, so maybe I should have considered agents, editors, and fans more closely.

I'm off to download a copy of SONG OF SOLOMON, which I'm embarrassed to say I've never read!  Michael will be here today to answer your questions, and he's giving away a copy of MONUMENT ROAD to one lucky reader!  

MONUMENT ROAD
Having spent eight years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit, Franky Dast now works as an investigator for the Justice Now Initiative, seeking to help others in the same situation. But when he learns that Bill Higby, the detective whose testimony helped convict him, is facing his own murder charge, Franky is torn. Should he help the man he hates more than any other, the man who remains convinced of Franky’s guilt to this day?

As Franky delves further, he comes to realize that in order to prove Higby’s innocence, he must also prove his own. Unless he finds out what happened that fateful night eight years before, the night 15-year-old Duane Bronson and his 13-year-old brother were murdered, Franky will always be under suspicion, and the real killer will remain free. What really happened that dark, wet night on Monument Road? And is Franky prepared for the shocking truth?


Along with the Franky Dast mysteries, Michael writes the Daniel Turner Thriller series (Blue Avenue, Second Skin, Black Hammock) and the Shamus Award-winning Joe Kozmarski Private Detective series (A Bad Night’s Sleep, The Bad Kitty Lounge, Last Striptease). He is a frequent book reviewer and an occasional writer of journalism, critical books, and essays.
Michael grew up in Chicago and lived and worked in the neighborhoods and on the streets where he sets his Kozmarski mysteries. He teaches literature at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville—the setting of Monument Road and the Daniel Turner stories.

Could You Succeed as a Private Detective?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: There’s no question that writing a wonderful novel requires a lot of sitting down at your desk and just writing the darn thing. But there’s a lot more, especially when an author is devoted to the story.

I’m so enchanted by Susan Breen’s novel. I wouldn’t have predicted that I’d be drawn to something so…sweetly thoughtfully sensitive.  But Maggie Dove is a treasure.  And I am so delighted to hear the bravery and risk-taking that went into it!

And the self-awareness.

Today, Susan Breen shares her adventures! Could you be the main character in your own book? Susan decided to find out first hand. And see below for a wonderful giveaway!

AN AUTHOR’S EDUCATION

               By Susan Breen

When I finished writing my first mystery, Maggie Dove, I discovered, to my surprise, that I had ended the book with Maggie opening a detective agency. This seemed like a fabulous idea until I started writing the second book and realized I had no idea what being a private detective entailed, beyond having watched a significant number of Thin Man movies some time ago. It was a conundrum, especially because the book deadline was in six months.

I did the obvious thing. I googled private detective and came up with a lot of useful information, but what I really wanted to know was what it would be like for a normal person (using the word normal in the broadest sense of the word) to open a detective agency. So, I decided to become a detective myself, which it turns out you can do on line.

Every month or so, a brown-wrapped package shows up in my mailbox with readings on such topics as “Becoming a Process Server, “Conducting Marital Investigations,” and my favorite: “What are Gut Feelings?” Every session ends with a test. (I’m happy to report I’ve aced each test!) 

Best of all, each session includes a number of detective exercises. These included such things as how to go through your neighbor’s trash (which I refrained from doing) and how to conduct surveillance, which I did. Along the way, I’ve learned a number of intriguing things, about myself and about detectives.

1    

       

 First, and to my surprise, I discovered I am fabulous at surveillance. I spent an afternoon following various people around Times Square (because I work near there) and I can affirm that nobody noticed a thing. This is the great advantage of being a short middle-aged woman. Quite honestly, I think I could hurl myself at someone and they wouldn’t notice. 

           Less surprising, I discovered I am terrible at car surveillance. Somehow, turning on an ignition makes things more serious. The exercise was to follow someone in a car and take pictures, “when convenient.” I can tell you that it is never convenient to drive and take pictures. By the time I entered the password to turn on my phone, the “suspect” was long gone. However, I did put that experience to good use in Maggie Dove’s Detective Agency.

3        Maybe the most surprising thing I’ve learned is how much information is public. You would not believe what you can learn about yourself, or your relatives, or your boss. Just starting with the stuff that’s easy to find, and free, there are real estate records, title records, criminal records, divorce records. Things that you would cringe to have other people know are right there, and I’m leaving out the special PI data banks, that you have to pay for but give you access to even more.

4        Finally, I was surprised to discover how many opportunities there are for women in this field. I thought there would be a lot more physical intimidation involved (which is not an area in which I excel.) But most of being a private detective is about gathering information—interviewing people, phoning them, following them. In fact, the primary requirements seem to be intelligence, patience and creativity.

Perhaps my main take-away from all of this is how much I enjoy being a private detective. Should things go south with Maggie Dove, you may find me stalking you. But you won’t notice. So don’t worry.

Have you ever had to learn something weird in order to be able to do your job?

HANK:  Yes. Every day. And happily so.  How about you, Reds? And leave a comment to be entered for a copy of  MAGGIE DOVE'S DETECTIVE AGENCY! But Susan, I have to say, your personal story is hilarious. An on-line detective? Who'd have thought?

But Reds and readers, what’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever tried?  (Debs, peanut butter and mayonnaise doesn’t count…)

Susan Breen is the author of the Maggie Dove mystery series, published by the Alibi digital imprint of Penguin Random House. Her short stories have been published by a number of magazines, among them Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, American Literary Review and Best American Non-Required Reading. An upcoming Maggie Dove mystery story will be published by Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Susan teaches creative writing at Gotham Writers in Manhattan. She lives in a small village in the Hudson Valley with her husband, two dogs (cockapoos) and a cat. Her three grown children are flourishing elsewhere.

PI Mistakes Crime Fiction Writers Make by Steve Brown

Today, in honor of True Crime Tuesday, Steven Kerry Brown, a real life private investigator, is here to tell us about mistakes fiction writers make with their fictional PIs. Thanks so much for coming and take it away Steve!

SKB: I’ve been an investigator for almost 40 years. Eleven years as a special agent with the FBI and almost 30 years as a private investigator. I devour commercial crime fiction. I also write both fiction and non-fiction which revolves mostly around private investigative type themes. There are some authors that “get it right” and many that do not. Who “get’s it right?” Nobody does all of the time but the following do a pretty damn good job of acutely portraying their PI protagonists. Robert Crais and Michael Koryta. There are others that get it right most of the time. Who screws it up? I’m not going to tell you.

But how can you tell? Here are 4 scenarios you’ll find in the typical PI novel.

The PI is computer illiterate and uses a geeky friend who lives in the basement of his mother’s house to get all of the online data he needs by hacking into private and government databases. No, no, no, no. Get the idea? I know this is fiction and we’re going to “suspend disbelief” but your fiction needs to have the appearance of reality. Show me a private investigator who is not computer literate, who doesn’t subscribe to at least 3 different proprietary databases and doesn’t have direct access to the department of motor vehicle records in his own state for vehicle tags and drivers license information and I’ll show you a PI who is starving to death.

Hmm, starving to death PI. Now that’s another cliché isn’t it? Let’s look at real life numbers. But first a little theory. There are always people who will work for less. If your PI protagonist is going to compete with the competition on price then he’s going to be serving subpoenas for $15 each. That won’t even come close to covering the price of gasoline in his/her car. I charge $85/hour plus expenses like $0.62/mile. This is augmented by charges for rental of GPS tracking devices ($350/wk), database, tags, and driving histories pulled etc. etc. etc. I pay my employee investigators and subcontractor investigators $40/hr and $0.50/mile. So if my employee bills 30 hours a week (and they can bill twice that) then they’re grossing $62,400/year. Not getting rich but not starving either. That’s more than most of us make writing about private investigators.

The third clichéd scene is where the private investigator irritates his nemesis in the police department. Detective Hardcase says, “You low life skulking PI. You better stay away from my investigation or I’ll pull your license.” First make sure your PI is working in a state that requires licensing. In The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Private Investigating, 2^nd Edition, page 20-21 I’ve laid out which states do not require any licensing of private investigators. It’ll be difficult for detective Hardcase to pull my license if I don’t need one anyway. There have been some changes in the state list over the last year or so. If you have any doubts, email me.

Back to pulling that license. Can Detective Hardcase really do that? Not really. Licensing bureaus in most states are state agencies and licenses are not issued or denied by the local police or sheriff’s office. The worst Detective Hardcase could do is file a complaint with the state licensing bureau and then they would investigate, hold their hearings etc. So threatening to pull a private investigator’s license is mainly an empty threat and very, very clichéd. Don’t use it.

The fourth follows from the above scene. The private investigator is hired by “the family” to investigate a murdered/kidnapped/disappeared/ family member. Your protagonist is in competition with the police. Frankly, most private investigators make their living by conducting insurance “sub-rosa” surveillance in cases like workmen’s compensation, slip and falls, or other insurance related investigations where a claimant is screaming about serious injury but the insurance company thinks he is roofing his house on the weekends. That is the day-to-day pay-the-bills case most PIs work. But there are those who have practices like mine, that do involve murders/suicides/missing family members and whose paths do cross with the police department on nearly every case. I have yet to have a single argument or shared a harsh word with any police/FBI/state law officer in 30 years. Have I pissed some off? You betcha. They may bitch about me in their offices (usually because I’ve found good leads that they’ve missed and they look incompetent to their superiors) but our face-to-face relationships have always been cordial and professional, even under the most stressful of circumstances.

Steve Brown is the author of THE COMPLETE IDIOT’S GUIDE TO PRIVATE INVESTIGATING. He blogs with James N. Frey and Jeffrey Phillips at Handcuffed to the Ocean. You can also find him at his website.

On the Treasure of Trash

Your Trash Ain’t Nothin’ But Stash

By Colleen Collins & Shaun Kaufman

We changed a couple of words from the old Steve Miller song “Your Cash Ain’t Nothin’ But Trash” for this blog title because it sounded catchier than “How Private Investigators Rummage Through People’s Trash for Evidence, Such as Drugs.

In our combined 14 years as private investigators, we’ve successfully solved a number of cases by getting down and dirty in other people’s trash. It’s amazing how many people blithely toss their most secret information, such as receipts, phone numbers, credit card statements, personal letters…and drugs. They might be more careful with their garbage if they knew incriminating items from it could end up in a court of law.

Some of our clients are domestic relations lawyers who sometimes need evidence in child custody cases. In one case, a father of two small children suspected his ex-wife’s erratic behavior and excessive weight loss (60 pounds in 4 months) was due to her using meth. When his attorney hired us to find evidence, we knew what to do: Conduct a trash hit on the ex-wife’s garbage.

Case Preparation: When, Where, What

We always prepare ahead of time for a trash hit. Trust us, it’s enough of a mess rummaging through a stranger’s garbage without making the activity a spontaneous event.

For this particular case, we:

• Checked what day of the week the ex-wife’s trash was picked up (the husband had an idea which day, which we confirmed by checking the municipal website).

• Surveyed the ex-wife’s home the week before and learned she set out the trash the night before trash collection pick-up.

• Prepared our equipment (for example, checked that cameras had batteries, purchased bulky gloves as we didn’t know if there’d be needles in the trash).

Getting Dirty

After dragging ourselves out of bed at 4 a.m. on “trash hit” day, we:

• Dressed in dark colors (yeah, sounds James Bondish, but wearing that neon-yellow Led Zeppelin T-shirt means being easily identified).

• Packed our equipment (cameras, gloves, bags) into the vehicle.

• On the drive over, reviewed who was doing what (last thing a PI team wants is to look like the Keystone Cops – it’s supposed to be a trash hit, not a trash comedy of errors).

• Turned off dome light so the vehicle would stay dark inside while opening doors (wearing dark clothes doesn’t matter if you put yourself in the spotlight!)

• Parked next to the trash and quickly did our dirty work.

Often after trash hits, we take the refuse to a public area (such as a public park) and do a first pass through the trash, tossing unnecessary items in a public dumpster. This way we’re not driving a trash-packed, foul-smelling vehicle for miles and miles back to our office. Although this could be a funny scene in a story.

For this particular case we knew we’d be carefully sifting through trash for possibly miniscule amounts of meth, so we rolled down the windows and drove our trash-packed, foul-smelling vehicle back to the office while watching the sun come up. Ah, nothing like the smell of detritus in the morning.

Back at the office, we laid out the trash. Wearing latex gloves, we documented suspicious evidence (see photos below):

Photo 1: Baggie with specks of white powder

Photo 2: Pen and arrows point to suspected meth

We also retrieved a dismantled writing pen, whose cylinder appeared

to be filled with a fine coating of white powder.

Conclusion

We mailed the baggie and pen cylinder to a DEA-approved private forensic lab. Their tests confirmed the traces of white substances were methamphetamine.

When the case went to court, the father won custody of the kids based on the photographs, lab report and our investigative testimony. This case occurred several years ago, but just the other day the attorney told us that the mother has yet to call her kids. That she’s still in that house with her meth, disconnected to the real world. Sad but true, she’s become a line in that Steve Miller tune… baby you’re crawling way past your speed.

If you’re writing a sleuth character or story, think about incorporating a trash hit to find evidence for a wide variety of cases, from child custody to missing persons to homicides.

Thank you, Jan Brogan and Jungle Red Writers, for hosting us as your blog guests today.

Colleen Collins and Shaun Kaufman are private investigators and writers. Their non-fiction ebook How to Write a Dick: A Guide to Writing Fictional Sleuths from a Couple of Real-Life Sleuths will be available on Kindle and Nook in July 2011.

The authors are gifting one Kindle ebook of How to Write a Dick: A Guide to Writing Fictional Sleuths from a Couple of Real-Life Sleuths to one person, chosen at random, who comments on today's blog. If you don't have a Kindle device, Kindle apps for PCs and Macs are free and easily downloadable from Amazon. Add your email address to your comments so if your name is picked, the authors will know how to contact you! The winner's name will be picked by midnight, July 7.

Ask a P.I.

Rosemary: Today's your chance to have a one on one session with a P.I.

I met Vito Colucci, Jr. when I was doing research for my book, Dead Head. I didn't have the first notion of what a real P.I. - all I knew was what I'd seen in movies and on t.v. - a far cry from the real job. Until I met with Vito and he gave me the lowdown.

Vito is the owner of Colucci Investigations LLC. He's a former member of the Stamford, Connecticut Police Department where he worked as Narcotics Detective and Undercover Organized Crime Investigator. One of the main investigations Vito spearheaded during that time was uncovering organized crime ties within his own police department. Working along with the FBI, he wore a wire for this assignment and infiltrated two crime families.

For the past 22 years, Vito has been a private investigator working many high profile cases; Michael Skakel/Martha Moxley case, Jayson William’s case, (honeymooner)George Smith case, the Charla Nash chimp case and the Andrew Kissell murder case. Vito has also worked on some of the biggest high profile cases in CT including murders, rapes, corrupt priests, etc.

Vito is a regular commentator on various news programs including: Fox News MSNBC, Catherine Crier/Court TV, Star Jones, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Larry King, and CNN Headline News, The Bill O’Reilly Show and the Joy Behar Show.
Vito was a featured speaker at the first World Investigator’s Conference in Las Vegas in 2005.

Vito has his own nationwide network radio show “Crime Time with Vito Colucci PI" on the Business Talk Radio and Lifestyle Talk Radio networks (where I was a guest last week!) and he's just completed a thirteen episode series called “Bloodwork” for A&E Crime & Investigation network. He is also the author of the newly released book “Inside the Private Eyes of a PI.” Vito is a member in good standing of CALPI (Connecticut Association of Licensed Private Investigators. (Visit him at www.coluccipi.com)

And with all of these projects and hectic schedule, Vito's agreed to answer your P.I. questions today. So fire away!