Wtf

[NOIRTRASH]

WHITE SHADOW by Ace Atkins is an enjoyable read till the end where it dies in its sleep.

Atkins was a crime reporter for the deceased Tampa TRIBUNE. At the TRIB he wrote a series about the murder of Tampa's gangster boss Charlie Wall. Wall ran Tampa in the 1920s. Wall and I are related. Someone beat him and cut his throat. Wall let them inside his house. No struggle. Atkins' series got a Pulitzer nomination. Uts compelling reading till the very end.

The principle characters are newspaper reporter, a Tampa detective, Santo Trafficante Jr (gangster) and others. Trafficante was implicated in the JFK assassination. Fidel Castro makes a cameo appearance in the book.

Who killed Charlie Wall? I don't know.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Atkins published plenty of books. These others all seem to lack imagination, an essential fiction ingredient for times when your story runs outta steam. A story is a logical trail that's plausible even when events are fantastic.

I assure you nothing is more fantastical than math and the hard sciences; much of hard science are mental constructs you cant observe or measure. IF X THEN Y. But you cant sense X or Y. In fiction there must be description or a plausible cause, and you cant await an autopsy to learn what happened. Fingerprints on her arms then her dead body on a field 300 pages later aint a logical trail.