We are delighted to welcome author Jeffrey Alan Lockwood to Omnimystery News.
Jeff's soon-to-be-published murder mystery, the first in a new series, is Poisoned Justice (Pen-L Publishing; October 2016 trade paperback and ebook formats) and he tells us today more about the origin of the book in a guest post titled, "Some Things Just Need Killing: An Exterminator Discovers that the Worst Pests Have Two Legs".
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Photo provided courtesy of
Jeffrey Alan Lockwood
The lawyers have John Grisham and the diplomats have Robert Ludlum, so who's writing stories about pest control operators? Let's face it, pest management is not a profession that the public associates with intrigue or adventure. An assassin of earwigs does not make for a dashing hero. Most people want to know as little as possible about what's happening in their crawl spaces. So my challenge as an entomologist-turned-writer was to craft a fictional character who was true to the field of pest management — and who would connect readers to a darkly enchanting profession.
I worked for nearly 20 years as an entomologist, starting with graduate studies at Louisiana State University where my mobile home provided first-hand encounters with cockroaches, fleas, flour beetles and a home-invader opossum. As a professor at the University of Wyoming, I developed better ways to kill legions of grasshoppers across expanses of rangeland. And I discovered that the field of pest management is tailor-made for crime noir.
Mystery fans are familiar with noir through the literary and film classics (Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon or Philip Marlow in The Big Sleep). Think of those black-and-white movies from the 1940s with Humphrey Bogart playing a gumshoe holding a glass of bourbon, being conned by a dame and trounced by fate. So how does this genre reflect the pest control industry?
First, the noir hero is both principled and flawed. He takes responsibility for the violence he brings into the world and makes no excuses. Cold calculation can add up to the need for extermination. And while decisions by a professional are supposed to be dispassionate, sometimes there's a fine line between justice and vengeance.
Next, the private investigator lives with moral ambiguity in a world that is not filled with light and goodness. While the public desperately wants to deny what crawls in the darkness of basements and alleys, somebody has to decide when doing bad things to bad actors — whether they have eight, six or two legs — is a good thing.
Finally, death is part of the game. Most people prefer that somebody else does the dirty work of cleaning up the world. Gutters and drains are the realm of noir, where the labors of the guy armed with a snubnose .38 or a backpack sprayer are invisible and unappreciated, except when things go wrong.
So I created Riley, a hardboiled cop-turned-exterminator with a soft spot for his hard-working employees who keep his business running so he can provide for his mother and brain-damaged brother. Riley is pragmatic to the core, not caring that his office manager is lesbian or his technicians are a Vietnam vet, an African-American from the projects, or a Jewish kid, as long as they care for their work and look out for one another. The son of Irish immigrants, Riley cleaves to old-school views in the fast-changing world of 1970s San Francisco:
I'd gotten to know Sergio through these annual conventions of California exterminators. Like me, he refused to call himself a "pest control operator". Next we'll have hookers calling themselves "sperm control operators". I hate it when people try to hide behind fancy labels. If you're not proud of your work, then do something else.
For Riley, the world is infested with vermin of various sorts, so a rodent control project echoes his days on the force:
I wasn't shedding any tears for rodents, and I didn't shed any for the criminals I put away as a cop. It's nothing personal. Rats are just being rats and sociopaths are just being humans. But somebody has to make sure that innocent people aren't hurt by these creatures, and sometimes that means using force. Even deadly force.
That is how Poisoned Justice came to be the first in a series of mysteries featuring an exterminator who makes no apologies for "killing what needs killing." His profession is not socially beloved, but it is honest work that makes peoples' lives better in public housing projects and Knob Hill mansions — and in the dark cracks and gritty crevices of The City.
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Jeffrey Lockwood grew up in New Mexico and spent youthful afternoons enchanted by feeding grasshoppers to black widows in his backyard. This might account for both his scientific and literary affinities. He earned a doctorate in entomology and worked for 15 years at the University of Wyoming, where he became a world-renowned assassin, developing a method for efficiently killing billions of insects (and few bystanders). This contact with death drew him into questions of justice, violence, and evil. He metamorphosed into an appointment in the department of philosophy and the program in creative writing. Pondering the dark side of humanity and the creepy side of insects led him to the realm of the murder mystery.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at JeffreyLockwoodAuthor.com and his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Facebook.
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Poisoned Justice by Jeffrey Alan Lockwood
A Riley the Exterminator Mystery
Publisher: Pen-L Publishing
When an activist ecology professor is found dead in his hotel room, the police chalk it up to natural causes, but his wealthy and fiery widow is convinced it's foul play. She needs someone who can operate behind the scenes — in the dark cracks and gritty crevices of San Francisco. Riley the exterminator fits the bill.
Riley's career as a police detective was cut short when do-gooders saw him beat information out of a child kidnapper. Now running his father's pest control business, Riley pursues two-legged vermin on the side. Turned out an ex-con can be licensed as an exterminator but not a private eye.
Winged ants and dead flies at the death scene suggest something's amiss to a man who knows insects. The dead professor's students, each harboring a secret, reveal that their environmentalist mentor had plans to take down the pesticide industry. But he needed cash for the operation — and that put him on a collision course with a most unusual drug lord.
When Riley's investigation unexpectedly reveals that the drugs that poisoned his own brother might be connected to the professor's death, extermination is in order. But he'll need to join forces with an intoxicating South African beauty — a reluctant ally, armed with lethal poison.
— Poisoned Justice by Jeffrey Alan Lockwood
