I’ve spent my incarceration writing, studying, and reading, where for many years I dwelt on the hard-boiled genre of detective fiction. Dashell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James Cain were my mentors.
I devoured every book, reading, re-reading, and outlining complete books like The Maltese Falcon and The Glass Key, immersing myself.
“Brother’s Peeper” is the first chapter of an unpublished novel paying homage to Hammett’s Sam Spade and the Blackmask tradition. My characters are imagination fertilized by felony composites. Writing saved my sanity in a six-year cauldron of San Quentin State Prison’s madness. I’m hoping to help my family and community I wronged, and thereby, find redemption.
Dad was my muse and when Alzheimer’s took him, I gave up on publishing. It was too difficult from a prison cell without outside help. Interest and comments are welcome.