with Dana King
We are delighted to welcome back thriller writer Dana King to Omnimystery News.
Last week we spoke with Dana about his Shamus Award-nominated PI novel A Small Sacrifice, and we invited him back today to write on a topic of his choosing.
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Photo provided courtesy of
Dana King
I was advised that things have been pretty serious here lately, and I could lighten them up if I wanted. The book I'm flogging, A Small Sacrifice, is about the murder of a six-year-old boy. Dark family secrets are involved. Not a lot of yuks inherent in that. Still, there is humor.
How can that be? What could possibly be funny about the death of a small child? Nothing. But peripheral events can be funny, even if it's the whistling through the graveyard kind of humor. People are like that.
You've almost certainly laughed at a funeral. If you haven't laughed at a viewing or wake, there may be something wrong with you. Laughter does not have to imply happiness. It signifies humor. Dead people did funny things before they died. Those stories get told. People laugh. Weird things can happen on the way to the funeral. I deliberately told a funny story at the funeral of a dear friend because everyone was so solemn, talking about how selfless he'd been helping other cancer patients, I didn't want the occasion to pass without someone mentioning he had also been one of the funniest people I ever knew. His brother caught my eye after the telling. He appreciated the effort. He wasn't up to it.
Crime fiction is rife with possibilities for humor, and not just in the hands of Donald Westlake or Carl Hiaasen. Cops are often funny, if only as a way to break the stress. If you want to have some fun with cops, read one of Connie Fletcher's books. (Especially the first two: What Cops Know and Pure Cop. Both are, unfortunately, out of print, which is going to be a problem when my much used copies fall apart.) Cop stories, told by cops, full of escapist dark humor. Educational, terrifying, and genuinely funny all at the same time. Joseph Wambaugh can break your heart — there are times I had to take a break when reading The Onion Field — yet his fiction is laugh out loud funny, both in the cops' smart ass comments and in well-conceived and executed set pieces.
Crooks often provide a different kind of humor. Many are lightly educated, and a lot aren't too bright in the first place, which opens the door for all kinds of dumb things to happen. (Think of the malapropisms of Little Carmine Lupertazzi in The Sopranos.) Not deliberately funny, but not as smart as they think they are, this brand of humor was best captured by Elmore Leonard. Get Shorty, his most openly funny book, is awash with them. Ray Bones thinks he's the smartest guy in the room, when he'd have a hard time being the smartest guy in a phone booth. And Bo Catlett delivers what may be Leonard's tour de force for such comments, when talking to Chili Palmer about how easy it must be to write a screenplay.
Chili opened the script again, flipped through a few pages looking at the format. "You know how to write one of these?"
"You asking me," Catlett said, "do I know how to write down words on a piece of paper? That's what you do, man, you put down one word after the other as it comes in your head. It isn't like having to learn how to play the piano, like you have to learn notes. You already learned in school how to write, didn't you? I hope so. You have the idea and you put down what you want to say. Then you get somebody to add in the commas and shit where they belong, if you aren't positive yourself. Maybe fix up the spelling where you have some tricky words. There people do that for you. Some, I've even seen scripts where I know words weren't spelled right and there was hardly any commas in it. So I don't think it's too important. You come to the last page you write in 'Fade out' and that's the end, you're done."
Chili said, "That's all there is to it?"
"That's all."
Chili said, "Then what do I need you for?"
Chili's no Richard Feynman himself, but he's clearly the president of this Mensa chapter.
A clever expression or simile can do it. No one would consider Raymond Chandler a humorous writer, but he wrote turns of phrase that are laugh out loud funny and still appropriate to a serious scene. Dave Robicheaux shares lighter moments with Clete, Alafair, and whichever wife happens to be alive in a given book. Elvis Cole is a character, and not just in the fictional sense.
Beware the book that is too dark, too often. Not to say they can't work, but they can wear you down. Humor lightens a mood, and sets the reader up for something dramatic, and characterizes as well or better than anything else. Elmore Leonard is famous for telling writers to leave out the things people tend to skip. They don't skip laughs.
What does any of this have to do with A Small Sacrifice? Not much, frankly. There are lighter moments there, but it probably has the least humor of anything I've written. So why write this post? Well, the book was nominated for a Shamus Award, and, as anyone who has heard my opinion of awards knows, that's funnier than hell.
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Dana King has worked as a musician, public school teacher, adult trainer, and information systems analyst. His short fiction has appeared in New Mystery Reader, A Twist of Noir, Mysterical-E, and Powder Burn Flash.
He lives in Maryland with his Beloved Spouse, where he pays the bills by working as a consultant at an undisclosed location. It's not one of those, "he'd tell you, but then he'd have to kill you" deals. He's just not going to tell you.
For more information about the author, please visit his blog One Bite at a Time or find him on Facebook.
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A Small Sacrifice
Dana King
A Crime Thriller
Detective Nick Forte is not impressed when Shirley Mitchell asks him to clear her son's name for a murder everyone is sure he committed. Persuaded to at least look around, Forte soon encounters a dead body, as well as the distinct possibility the next murder he's involved with will be his own.
Clearing Doug Mitchell's name quickly becomes far less important to Forte than keeping references to himself in the present tense.
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