Did you kill Saul Colmes?
Laugh. That is the question, right there. My question. Did you bring my cigarettes?
Yes.
Thanks.
Y?know, I thought a lot about you last night. About what you might ask me. I kind of knew you?d ask me that question this morning. It?s funny, really, how a lifetime can come to be defined by a single question. For most people this question would be something suitably broad: ?What does it all mean??; ?What?s my purpose??; ?Is there a God?? Folks who never get past those questions must live pretty happy lives. A lacking in any events of raw definition, you might say. Other folk?s questions are almost pathetically focused: ?Where will my next mouthful of food come from??; ?How will I avoid getting beaten today??. These questions belong to those to whom the very term defining event would seem almost superfluous- they are living moments, existing in a circle unto themselves.
Me? My question, well, that?s my question. That?s why you?re talking to me at all, isn?t it? You don?t care about me, beyond a limited context. You care about him, and you?ll probably listen to everything I?ve got to say, no matter how perfidious it is, just to see if you can glean one or two tidbits of celebrity goss out of it to sell to the press. That?s cool. I?ll try not to disappoint.
Mr. McKinley, I can assure you I have no desire to do anything other than to assess your psychological condition. Contingent on that is that you answer my question.
To answer that question, I have to tell the stories of a couple of people. A liar. A whore. A coward. A lover. A wife. We?re all tied together, and to hear one story, you kind of need to hear them all. We each killed Saul, in our own way. Oh, and the guy who actually killed him.
Was that you?
Laugh.
Oh, no. You don?t get off that easily. You?ll miss the good stuff.
You?re speaking differently today.
How so?
I don?t know, more eloquent, I suppose. More composed.
Weeell, you caught me by surprise yesterday. I didn?t really know what I was getting myself in for. Now I?ve had some time to think, write some stuff down, order my thoughts. I think I can lay it out a little better for you.
You?ve been writing?
I?m always writing, babe.
I?d enjoy reading that.
I?ll bet you would.
Is Jez the liar?
I?ll let you reserve your judgement on that. Where were we?
The Trusted Professions.
Right. Right. It was from this old Graham Green novel we?d been forced to read in College. Brighton Beach, I think.
The End of the Affair, actually. Doctors, lawyers and priests.
The trusted professions. You read Green?
Some.
Oh I fuckin? adore Green. Fuckin? love `em. He?s half the reason we got into the detective biz at all.
And the other reason?
It just seemed like a cool profession, y?know? We just wanted to do something that was outside the regular stream of things. I mean lawyering and doctoring and accounting it?s all so normal, y?know? We wanted to have something different to do every day. We?d thought about it all our lives, we finally had the money to do it, we went for it.
Jez had amassed savings through his career as a lawyer?
No, and that?s an important plot point actually, I should explain that. So, yeah, I hadn?t really made a lot of money since leaving College, and Jez had some, but nowhere near the amount we needed. Jez was quite tight with Samantha?s dad, that is to say, his father-in-law, so he borrowed a pretty hefty chuck of cash from him, on the understanding that we?d pay it back with interest over the next ten years or so.
How hefty are we talking?
A million. I don?t think Samantha?s dad really saw us as a good investment, he just wanted his daughter?s husband to have his own business- to make it. But it weighed heavily on Jez, the debt, I know him and Samantha had more than one fight about it. Which is odd really, I mean, fuck, I don?t think a million was a lot to that old bastard. You ever heard the name Alan Avery?
No.
Well he?s big in property y?know, and in London, big in property is fuckin? big. It was a drop in the ocean to him, but he never let Jez or me forget who?s board we were riding on. Asshole. He?s half responsible for this shit.
A million pounds is a considerable sum.
Actually, the bizarre thing is it?s not a lot when you?re trying to set up a business. Especially when you?re starting out from scratch like we were. I mean, most PIs are ex-cops, they know the terrain, they?ve got the contacts- we didn?t really know what the hell we were doing. We just thought it would be fun. And it was, I suppose. I mean, we got ourselves a nice office in Canary Wharf, all glass and steel. Fitted it out, fully furnished. Secretary, ads in the paper. And the gadgets- fuck! The gadgets! Man, that was the reason! The reason we got into it.
The SSC-726 Super-Ear. Ex-View noLux bullet-camera with remote rotation. We spent a month just shopping out all the cool surveillance shit we could finally afford. We?d always kind of followed that sort of gear casually, Sharper Image catalogues and all that, but this was our first chance to really play around with some of that stuff, we really went to town. Top of the line all the way. When someone gives you a mil, yeah, you tend to go a little crazy for a while. Still, it all got used up pretty quickly- a years? rent in the Wharf will set you back about half a mil right there. We had a lot of fun. Me and Jez had kind of drifted apart in our mid-twenties, y?know, he was off with Samantha a lot, taking his bar exam, setting up his life. I was travelling and generally living the mad life. But to go into business together, it was like all our little projects in school all over again, only more so, because this time we were bankrolled, and it was serious, and we were committed to making it. I?ve gotta say, it was really good to begin with. Setting up was fun.
But it was tough to get clients. There was a lot of outflow with not a lot of inflow, you know what I mean? We really didn?t have much idea of how to break into the business, how to make ourselves known. A person needs a PI, you think they look in the paper? I don?t know what they do. I still don?t know! Laugh. Can you believe that? We were on the `net, the paper, even thought about putting an ad on TV. Ever seen a PI ad on TV? That?s because it?s not really a service you place in front of others, it?s something people come looking for. And for that sort of business, you really need a name.
It wasn?t all bad, I mean, we did a bit of scutwork, mainly checking out people?s?ever seen that show Cheaters?
No.
Yeah. I?ll bet you don?t watch a lot of TV. Okay, so, people would write into the show and say they think their man is cheating on them. Or woman, I guess. Pardner. And so this show will check things out, follow the partner around, look at their mail, eavesdrop on their calls, and if they are cheating ?and they always are- they stage a confrontation between the cheater and the, uh, cheatee, the jilted significant other, and then they film everyone getting all upset and stuff. It?s real bottom-feeding TV, I mean, you can practically see the host salivating over the prospect of other people?s pain. And that was us. Not the host or filming it?well, sometimes we filmed it?but, yeah, that was us- someone would contact us, they?d think their partner was cheating on them, they wanted to know for sure, it was driving them crazy, the suspicion, and they needed to know, and yeah, we?d find out for them.
And you know: Two things. First, when the suspicion is driving you crazy, you don?t need us. When the suspicion is driving you crazy, it?s happening. It?s real. I?m saving you a few grand here, babe. When you?re so sure that you need to lay down five G?s to know the answer, that?s sure enough. Don?t come to us. Dump the motherfucker already. And two: When you?re having your partner investigated? When the trust between you is that far gone, it?s already over. Even if we find him innocent, which has not, in my professional experience, ever occurred, even if we find the, the dude innocent, you?re already fucked. The thing is fucked. Get out. That?s my advice, to you. There ya go.
Thank you.
You?re welcome. So, yeah, we did a couple of check-it-outs, sometimes some daddy would want a background on his daughter?s fiancé, or vice the versa, a lot of background stuff. Background stuff is mostly internets these days. It?s changed the whole game. Ten years ago, you?d pay a PI because he?d know the right pair of hands to slip some money into to get some info on someone. Now it?s all on google. You know how much money we would have lost if we?d have a big sign saying: ?Google it.? above our reception desk? Well, considering my current circumstances, nothing, but, a lot, y?know? Ten years ago we?d have been sneaking into someone?s house to nick their diary out from under their bed. Now we read their weblog. The first thing a magician learns is that there's no such thing as magic. Privacy?s a myth. You think you got it? You don?t got squat. I googled you last night, babe. Know what I found?
I?d be very interested to know.
Nada. You must have a common name. I couldn?t be bothered searching through all those pages. Plus we only get an hour on the `net and I need all that time to find which porn sites they haven?t blocked, y?know?
Laugh.
I like you. We can talk some more, I guess. You sure you don?t want to write a book about me?
Just a psychological report, Dalent.
Neat. Can I read it?
I?ll ask.
Right, so we do a few cheater-checks, I?d say that?s about ninety percent of the biz, and then background maybe nine percent. We did a bit of coincidence design, but that?s really exaggerated, I mean, people?that?s not really so common.
Coincidence design?
Yeah, this ah, this was the rage among PIs in `99, I think a few PIs still do it, but it never really took off. Basically, it targets affluent young-to-middle aged men who have their sights set on some young girl who they work with or see on their coffee run every day, and they want to get to know her, so we research her background and design a coincidence for them, y?know, a meeting, like, bump into her at her favourite gig or in her favourite section of the bookstore, or some sex shop she frequents, I don?t know, some place she hangs out, and because the client knows all about her, he can engage her in a discussion she?ll find interesting, and to her it?ll all seem like some fantastic coincidence that she?s met this guy with all her interests, it?ll be like she?s met her soulmate. But it?s all a scam, it all falls apart. Never really works. More often than not you get sued by the guy who hired you for inflicting emotional trauma or some bullshit. We did a couple of cases, but there aren?t as many target clients as you?d think. Rich guys usually get rich by being confident. Rich, confident guys don?t need help meeting girls. Losers are usually poor. Pretty narrow window of opportunity among men.
Female clients?
Ha! Are you kidding me lady? If a girl wants a guy, she walks up to him and tells him she wants him. Deal closed. Done. Got `im.
That hasn?t been my experience.
Try it. Trust me. Try it. Done deal. You gotta be kidding me. Jesus, you been in the jungle too long, babe.
Maybe you?ve been in prison too long?
That may just be. Maybe I?ll just go back to my cell now. I miss my teddy. He might be lonely.
I?m sorry. I apologize. That just came out. Please, I was enjoying listening to you.
Khf.
I apologize.
Right, right. Okay, so, yeah, as I was saying, ninety-nine percent of private investigation is scut-work. It?s runt stuff. It?s research, it?s endless hours sitting in your car listening to static with an audio-scooper, trying to figure out if that noise you?re hearing is someone doing the wild thing or a dog scratching behind its ears. It?s the ultimate in banality. Nearly drives you crazy. But you can get through it because you know that one percent is coming. It?s out there. It?s the excitement baby, it?s the knowledge that while the doctors and the lawyers and everyone inside the stream will never get out, will never see the difference between the days?er, wait, did you just write down that I said it?ll drive you crazy? Can, we, uh, take that off the tape? Like back it up or something?
No.
But, like, I?m?that wasn?t an admission. Er, right?
No.
Okay. Cool. What was I saying?
?difference between the days?
Right! You?re outside the stream! Sure, it may suck outside the stream most of the time, but you?re hanging on for that one percent. That?s what it?s all about. The one percent.
Did it ever come?
Yeah. Laugh.
Fuck. Here I am, after all! Do I look like I?m in the stream to you?
I assume this is where the story really begins?
Yeah, you got the background. Let?s kick this bitch off. So, we?re sitting around the office one day, me and Jez, and the bills aren?t adding up, we?ve got work, but we still aren?t making enough to even begin to repay the debt. We?re not even covering the interest. I was down about it, but Jez was downright depressed. He was mid-life crisising at age thirty. I don?t know what was going on at home with him and Samantha, but it wasn?t good and you could see it etched into his face like hieroglyphics with a skin-chisel. I remember the day pretty well, it was warming up, April, I think. That kind of cold sunshine that makes the edges on everything seem really sharp. Then in walks Keri Colmes.
Who I am going to assume is?
Ayup. Saul Colmes? wife.
This is a 
'Let's kick this bitch off' - love it :)
Things always start happening when the broad walks into the detective's office, eh?
You're ending these chapters rather well, leaving the reader excited to find out more, to keep reading.
Keep it up, punk.
Still a very good read; the main speaker is wonderfully vivid and the psychologist complements him nicely.
Since Adrian is giving sensible criticism, I noticed the following:
"Contingent on that is that you answer my question." would be an odd thing for her to say, since the converse is more likely: 'that [her report] is contingent on him answering the question'
'Canary Charf'? ;-p
There was a line break just before 'Canary Charf'?
Apparently I was supposed to use two.
Charf fixed! Boh.
Not sure I follow the other thing. You think I should change it to:
Mr. McKinley, I can assure you I have no desire to do anything other than to assess your psychological condition. That is contingent on you answering my questions.
I feel there is a big discontinuity between the chapters. Like the last chapter didn't end and the next one didn't start. I was like "what the fuck". There is a flow problem between the chapters.
Also, for English characters, I get the feeling they are American. I feel I am watching an American movie. They talk like they are in an American movie. The whole English things jars with how the take. Especially the bloke.
You're overplaying the Google thing. I feel referring to Google and blogs and shit makes the book to date sensitive. Abstract it, so that it could as easily been 10 years into the future and 10 years into the past. Don't write it as if its 2005, but make it more abstract. Talk of the net, or online or whatever but don't mention specifics. Same with the sharper image. Just talk about it being a catalogue.
Also you are overplaying how easy it is to do research on the net. Smacks of being unrealistic or idealised. Put some more flesh around that so it looks like they did some basic detective work and didn't just sit on the net, where without hacking into stuff, what you can find out about a person is still just the simple stuff. Where they live, where they work, where they hang out. That stuff you can find out anyway pretty easily. Put some more flesh into it. Think of some actual detective stuff they could have done, which wasn't that much effort but extend beyond using a net search. Add some stuff about knowing where to do land registry searches, or how to get their credit history, or stuff that requires a little work over just searching on a name, which has limited real value. That section needs a lot more fleshing out.
The coincidence stuff and the cheating stuff is very good.
To answer that question, I have to tell the stories of a couple of people. A liar. A whore. A coward. A lover. A wife. We?re all tied together, and to hear one story, you kind of need to hear them all. We each killed Saul, in our own way. Oh, and the guy who actually killed him., isn't so good. Sounds very very scripted and staged. Sounds like how I would write if I was trying to write s movie script. And I write badly. Look at the bit about the cheating and look at this bit. The cheating bit looks real, like a guy would tell you in a bar. This bit doesn't.
I don't know whether you should change it; it depends what was intended.
To say that 'Contingent on [her writing the report], is that [he] will answer the question' (i.e. I'm writing the report so you will answer the question) is unusually forceful compared to the patient 'So let me hear about that' style she's shown so far. I was wondering whether instead you meant that her being able to finish the report was contingent on him answering the question.
I agree with Adrian on using those specifics. While giving that extra bit of detail buys you a little more depth, it's those little details that will date it and make it jar with people in a few years' time, or perhaps even with people who know more about those specifics than you.
The English thing is a little ropey. While the main guy is clearly from elsewhere (somewhere in the previous chapter there was a reference to his arrival, I think), if he went to school in England and is now in his thirties he probably wouldn't be quite so obvious in his Americanisms (or wherever they are; I'm bad at such things). The 'England' card is a good way to get out of that whole Hollywood rut, but it needs to be played carefully and consistently.
Agreed, the PI stories are great, just like the school anecdotes from the last chapter.
I feel that you could do with a little more consistency in the way the main speaker articulates himself; either that or you want to include something else to reinforce the 'educated slob' effect that you get when he lets go of his abruptness and is suddenly very eloquent for a paragraph at a time. I can't tell whether that's in his character, or whether it's because you aren't being consistent.
But still, these are niggles: keep up the good work.
Point-by-point:
This is supposed to be the next day, but I'm not sure that it matters. Trying to fit the beginning and end of each chapter into a start-stop format will get real old real fast, I'm guessing.
Dalent isn't English, he's from New Guinea! So he can talk like that. Patricia speaks very good English. Can't you tell? I can only write Dalent how he sounds in my head, which may well be the product of too many American cop shows, but so be it. Any attempt to Anglocize him will sound false.
The book is set in 2005. Cultural indicators of the day make it seem more real. Neil Gaiman discusses this here.
The actual detective stuff comes in later, and is being written as we speak- Dalent was trying to convey that the majority of detective work is stuff people can find out for themselves, if they know where to look.
The opening section is Dalent trying to make an impression. If it sound scripted it's because it IS scripted- he wrote it the previous night because he's been thinking on it and dwelling on it and now he comes out with something to say. However point taken! I'll try and rephrase it in the second draft.
Thank you for the comments, they're all very useful.
Dalent is meant to be smart but grumpy- he's not in the mood to talk initally so gives a gruff impression, but he's actually a clever, articulate guy. He mentioned he travelled, so maybe he lived in American for a spell.
It's set in London because I live in London- no other reason. If I lived in Texas, it'd be set there.
I don't think you need to fit a beginning and an end, just some way to indicate each of these chapters is a new day. Otherwise my head is trying to fit them together and that doesn't work.
All I'm saying is that is sounds American but is set in London, and this creates a mismatch. He doesn't talk the way anyone in London talks, he talks the way people talk in American movies.My head keeps trying to wrap the two together and it breaks me out of being in the book and into reading words about a story.
I'm not a big fan of cultural indicators, as I think they can date. But if you are going to use cultural indicators I think you are attributing too much power to google, and that today google can only provide so much information for random people. I then find it unrealistic that a PI can use google to find sufficient information on a person to satisfy even one client let alone several.
Dalent comes across as smart and grumpy. Sometimes very well, sometimes a bit too staged. I'm sure as the story flows this will come across more naturally.
That last part of Adrian's last one I don't quite agree with. I like the idea of the staging as part of his character, just like his character is potentially enriched by the contrast between his terse grumpy answers and the ones he makes when she can get a full paragraph out of him.
I look forward to seeing these things repeated and built upon to prove to the casual reader (i.e. those who aren't getting the word straight from Dan) that these traits were deliberately inserted by the author, since they could also have been generated by accident.
You've chosen a very challenging style in having only dialogue, and you may need slightly more contrived lines here and there to suggest things like the passage of time. The start of chapter 2 works neatly in a serial, because I've passed a day since I read the previous chapter, and I wasn't sure enough of where the previous one had ended. Had I instead passed the time taken to turn the page, I might have got the same feeling as Adrian.
The format is ripped wholesale from one of my favourite novels, The Manticore by Robertson Davies.
I listen to a lot of audiobooks, and they always make me think: Where is this story coming from? Who's telling it? The best novels, such as Memoirs of a Geisha, are someone telling a story about themselves, and I think this is a good format for it.
It's also a very easy style to write (it suits me because I write, ah, more or less how I talk) and, more importantly, a very easy style to read, even if it prevents me from going off on descriptive eye-of-God tangents to explain things the narrator can't necessarily see. But I don't like those anyhow.
Once it's all written I might make an audiobook version as well, since that's a format I am a huge fan of....I assure you that if someone British reads these lines, they'll sound perfectly "London".
I've never tried an audiobook. I prefer hearing the voices in my head.
I just wish the voices in your head would stop telling you to do the bad things.
I think that while all constructive criticism is valuable, that you shouldn't take them to heart in such an earlyy stage of this novel, Dan - you have plenty of time to edit and rephrase later. The fact that you've got an idea that enables you to churn out more than 2500 words a day is reward enough at this stage - don't second guess your writing right now, just express your ideas.
I wish the voice in my head would stop telling me 'you're too drunk to function at work right now'.
Ah crap, thought I'd got away with it without any spelling errors! Stupid sober-reliant language.
Ah, drunk at work on a Wednesday....hang on a second, drunk at work on a Wednesday?!? Rock `n roll!
Haven't read the second chapter yet, but to critiscise you, it seems to be a dialogue for a film rather than a novel. Don't get me wrong, but the dialogue is great - i loved the first chapter - but I don't know what the main guy looks like, what his actions are within the room, how he's sitting, what room is he in etc...
But then again - I know nothing about writing a novel - or a script for that matter.
Coop,
Good point about the format and not one I've been incognizant to. However I should say that the actual story is narrated by the main guy, who will (hopefully!) describe things like faces and locations in much the same manner a normal novel would (however if you ever want something desribed, let me know and I'll add in a description). The first two chapters are mainly establishing a framework for this narration, because the idea of someone in these circumstances just writing their story into a book for kicks seems somehow false to me.
How the main guy appears is largely up to you.
Um, this is the second chapter Coop.
Hi Danzor,
good work mate, it's a really good read. I kind of like the conversation-only thing, I think you kind of make an image in your mind of what things look like anyway? the psychologist is really fit right? and blonde and tall? and the guy is tall and doesn't look like he should be in prison??
Yeah and then the psychologist and the guy start shagging, right there on the table. And the guy pushes her roughly down and she grabs at his shirt and ...
[see you're not even published yet, and you've got fan fiction]
"I have to tell the stories of a couple of people..."
Must disagree with Adrian, I really liked this paragraph, a great hook about more stories to come...