Three creative writing experiments: stories written in the hardboiled style.

The Big Sweep

The following story was a light-hearted attempt to write hardboiled fiction for heads of education technology in schools. To some extent it seems a little dated now, because many schools invest in laptops and tablets rather than suites of computers. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy reading it.

In case you’re wondering what a hardboiled story is doing on a blog about writing, the answer is simple. I think it’s important for writers to not only read widely, but also write widely. By trying out different styles and genres, you can start to see how they work. Hence my project, Experiments in Style, which you may also enjoy reading.

A hardboiled character, by Terry Freedman

Jack Alibi knew how to work. He also knew how to work a scam. Sure, going legit was good, but it took time. Lack of time was something Alibi had plenty of.

He knew from the wire that the local school was being rebuilt, and that they were looking to put in a heap of technology. As far as Alibi was concerned, selling computers was like a licence to print money.

He staked out the school and got to know the movements of the big cheese, a classy dish who barely looked old enough to have left school, let alone run one. One night he waited in a doorway for her to pass.

As she did he started walking and brought himself up alongside her.

"Hey, honey", he grinned. "How about a little coffee?"

She didn't respond, except maybe her pace stepped up a notch.

Alibi went into phase two of his plan.

"I hear you're looking for high tech stuff. Maybe I can cut you a sweet deal."

She ignored him, but he continued.

"That stuff costs a lot of lettuce. That means less to spend on a fancy office and all the trimmings. Maybe I can help out."

She stopped and glared at him.

"Oh yeah?", she said. "And why would you wanna be helping someone you don't even know?"

"On account that I'm community-minded. Besides, I'd hate to see a classy dame like you being taken for a ride. I can get what you need at a whole lot less."

She remained motionless, but a quick glint in her eye let Alibi know she was interested.

"OK", she said. "Let's suppose I'm interested, which I ain't. But let's be hypothetical. What are you offering, and what's your rake-off?"

Alibi was ready for that: he'd done his homework.

"I get all the tech you need, on a no questions asked basis. Hypothetically. As for me, I work on commission, 5% of the value of the merchandise. That hardly pays my rent. But Like I said, I'm community-minded."

She looked at him like he was something that was tossed out in the garbage the night before.

"Yeah, I can see you're all heart. OK, muscle head, you talk big, but maybe that's all you do? Talk, I mean. My guess is that this ‘merchandise' is old cast-off junk, right? That ain't no use to me. I just took over running this joint, see? I'm the new broom around here, and there's gonna be one hell of a big sweep. No jackass like you is gonna louse things up for me."

"OK, sister, I get the picture, but you got me all wrong. I tell ya, lady, this stuff is so new it uses technology that ain't even been invented yet."

She reached inside her bag. Alibi's hand went instinctively to inside his coat. She pulled out a packet of gaspers, put one to her lips. He lit it for her.

"I tell you what I'm gonna do", she purred. "I'm gonna think about it."

She drew on the butt and let out a plume of smoke.

"Well, I thought about it. No."

"No? How come?"

"Well, Buster, I just remembered the advice my daddy gave me when I was knee-high to a cricket."

"Oh yeah? And what might that be?"

"Never accept suites from strangers."

Thanks to William Denton for his Dictionary of Hardboiled Slang.

Cindie Reller meets The Prince

This is my response to a writing prompt published by Valorie Clark. The prompt was:

Cinderella went to the ball to kill the prince.

I’ve taken some liberties with my interpretation of the prompt, and have written the story in the style of 1950s hardboiled fiction, but with a New Age guru and a sort of good vibes business centre at its heart. I don’t know, but I think maybe this kind of mashing up might be an example of postmodernism. I hope not. Anyway, enjoy, and bear in mind the warning that the likes of Talking Pictures TV (which shows ancient films and television programmes) announces at the start: the following story exhibits attitudes that were prevalent at the time.

Jason Fox looked at his watch. Two am. He'd hardly noticed the hours crawl by as he was working on his latest case — a series of murders with no apparent motive, but all with two things in common: one, all the victims had been guys just starting their own business; two, they'd all been students at some joint called the Be Centered Center.

A couple weeks back he'd enrolled on a course at the Center. He thought maybe the guy who ran it was in a numbers racket or maybe that it was just a good old-fashioned rip-off scam. But the only thing the guy was really into was colors. Kept muttering stuff about "green energy" and "orange level". The guy was weird alright — he even called himself The Prince — but not the murdering kind of weird. Still, Fox told himself, you never can tell. He thought back to the Corelli case, where the guy was a top hit man for the Mob, posing as a Baroque composer.

Fox looked over at his assistant, Grimwald, who was typing up the report on the Menelli case. He'd been at the typewriter for a couple days now, and still hadn't finished the first page. "Good kid" thought Fox. "If it hadn't been for Grimwald, Menelli might be in Florida by now. But good thing he didn't have to earn his living as a secretary, or he'd be on Welfare."

"Hey, buddy", Fox rasped. If anyone wants me, I ain't around. If you want me, I'm getting a drink."

"Sure thing, boss" replied Grimwald as he reached for the second bottle of Tippex1.

Jason Fox stepped out into the neon-lit city night. He paused in a doorway to light his cigarette before dragging himself to the speakeasy across the street.

The bartender nodded towards Fox. "What'll it be, Mister?".

"Gimme two shots of Bourbon, no ice," Fox gritted. "And make it snappy."

Fox suddenly became aware of a dame in a red dress standing next to him. Her perfume was like the scent of nectar in a city of broken dreams. Fox took himself another cigarette and then, almost as an afterthought, motioned the pack towards her. She took one.

"What's your label, honey?" Fox grated.

"Say" she cooed in a voice like a mink coat in the frozen wastes of Alaska. "You don't waste any time”, do you?"

"OK, sugar" Fox grunted. "Cut the cackle. This ain't no chance meeting. Who sent you here and what do they want?"

She lowered her eyelids and half smiled, like a schoolkid being asked out on a date for the first time. "Well since you ask so nicely" she said in a voice that could stimulate a corpse, "I thought maybe we could talk about business. You look like the kind of guy who wants to branch out on his own. That's the kind of guy I like."

This was the chance he'd been waiting for. Maybe this was all a coincidence, but Fox didn't believe in coincidence. He decided to play along.

"Sure, baby" he muttered. “Let's go to your place and get down to business.”

As he followed her down Manhattan, Fox suddenly realised that he hadn't left word with Grimwald about where he was going. “Still”, Fox mused. “What can a dame do?”

Ten minutes later they were at her pad. As she poured him a Bourbon, Fox noticed the filofax on the coffee table. It bore the name Cindie Reller.

She brought him, his drink, and smiled at him. "Guess I'll just go and change into something more comfortable", she whispered as she "accidentally" brushed past him on her way to the bedroom.

"Yeah" Fox grated.

While she was out of the room, Fox flicked through the filofax. There was something screwy about it, but he couldn't quite make it out. He turned to today's date. The entry for this evening read "Dinner with Mike". He heard the bedroom door open, and quickly shut the filofax.

"Nice place you got here" he grunted:' "Yours?"

"Why not?" she cooed. He turned to look at her. She'd poured herself into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Fox approved.

"So tell me, honey" Fox gritted. "Where you been tonight, and how come you were in that bar? That ain't no place for a classy dame like you."

"I know what you must be thinking"she replied, "but it ain't the way it looks. I just got kind of lonesome sitting here reading about marketing and stuff.”

That was the clue Fox had been waiting for. Now all he had to do was get proof. She was the murderess alright. The proof wasn't long in coming.

She sat next to him on the sofa and snuggled up to him. Their lips met like they'd been lovers for a long time, but Fox wasn't taking any chances. He kept his eyes open.

As they kissed, her hand reached into her bag. She pulled out a small brown dropper bottle. He'd seen one just like it at the Be Centered Center, but it hadn't meant anything to him then.

He broke off the embrace and pulled the bottle away from her. "What's this?" he demanded.

She looked phased, but only for a second. "That's Rescue Remedy2" she smiled. "It makes me feel relaxed. Maybe it could ease some of your tension too?"

"Rescue Remedy, huh?" Fox snarled. "Let's see what this stuff can do."

He undid the top and poured the contents over a plant. It died instantly.

"OK, baby" he rasped. I know you're the dame behind all those murders. Why d'you do it?"

"Why? Why?” she screamed. She was hysterical now. "Because I got sick and tired of all those smart asses who knew exactly what they wanted. Me? I'm confused. I done a Transformation workshop and some nut I know tried to turn me on to the I Ching3. And you know something? I got even more confused. So I decided to avenge myself. If you hadn’t shown up tonite I’d already be giving The Prince what’s coming to him. After all, he’s the Big Cheese around here. Anyway, I did the guys I bumped off a favor, cos they won't ever be confused like I was. But how did you know it was me?"

"The filofax, honey," Fox grunted. “It had things in it you hadn't done, like having dinner with Mike, and it didn't have things in it that you had done, like visiting the speakeasy. You kept the filofax to keep the cops off your tail. But you gotta remember, baby: if you fake a filofax, you oughtta keep another one somewhere just to remind yourself of what you're really doing."

~~~~~Fox walked into his office. It was 5am. Grimwald was just starting the second page of the Menelli report.

"Say, boss. You, were gone quite a while."

"Yeah", said Fox as he opened his Tarot pack. "Quite a while"

A Deadly Game

One of the things I’ve been trying out is reworking a piece of text into a completely different style. A full exposition and explanation are given here:

Eclecticism: Reflections on literature and life

Experimenting with styles

Introduction A good way of improving your writing skills is to try reworking texts into a completely different style or genre. To some extent this overlaps with parody writing, which I intend to explore in a separate post, but as a quick example, consider this. In Brand X Fiction, a collection of parodies of fiction writers…

2 years ago · 2 likes · 6 comments · Terry Freedman

In today’s experiment I’d like to tell the story in the style of a hardboiled detective/private eye story. First, though, here is the original text on which these experiments or transformations are based:

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The original (template) text

In the middle of the night, I woke up (if you can call being semi-conscious being awake), walked purposefully towards the door to go to the bathroom — and almost knocked myself out.

The reason was that in the twin states of entire darkness and semi-somnambulance I was facing in a different direction from the one I thought I was facing. As a result, instead of walking through the door, I tried to walk through the wall.

The next few days brought nausea and headaches. After much prevarication I went to Accident and Emergency, where I waited petrified among people for whom “social distancing” means not quite touching you, and who wore their masks as a chin-warmer.

An hour and a half later I emerged into the twilight, secure in the knowledge that I had nothing more serious than mild concussion. I failed to do much writing, but I was pleased to have read a further 17% of my book.

Hardboiled version

A deadly game

TRIGGER WARNING

THIS STORY INCLUDES EXPRESSIONS AND ATTITUDES THAT SOME READERS MAY FIND OFFENSIVE.

The author, drawn by Terry Freedman

Two am. Night enfolded the city like a cobra, the silence pierced by a few bored neon lights, a lonely automobile horn and the occasional scream. It was the kind of night where the only people not safely tucked up in bed were broads, bums and Brunos. And private dicks.

I’d been working on a case, trying to crack the conundrum of how to nail a flim-flammer they called The Fiddler. Real name Tony Vivaldi. I needed the bathroom.

I figured the light from the speakeasy across the street would be enough to see by. I figured wrong. Maybe it was the bourbon, maybe it was not sleeping too good, but I took a wrong turn. Next thing I knew I was trying to drill a hole in the wall with my head. I felt like I’d been hit by a tank.

For the next few days I was like a grizzly with a sore noodle, literally. In the end the old lady said, “Quit your beefing and go see the croaker.”

I hailed a hack. “Hospital.” I gritted. “And step on it.” I gave the cabby the fare, and five berries on top.

“Anyone comes asking, you ain’t seen me, right?” I grated.

“Far as I’m concerned, you’re the invisible man.”

I walked into the hospital, a real dive. Nobody was keeping their distance or wearing a mask. Maybe they figured they were in the last chance saloon anyway, so what the hell? A bull was loafing around nursing a gasper.

“Hey buddy”, I said. “How about you earn your money and tell these bums to obey the rules?”

“How about you shaddup or scram?”, be batted back.

I was about to have a real friendly discussion with him when a dame in a nurse’s uniform shimmied up. I reckoned she was in the region of 36-23-36 – just my kind of region1. She told me to follow her. I wasn’t gonna argue.

We went into a room and she closed the door, and started to move my arms around.

“Why don’t we do this at your place?”, I said. “We could put on some mood music and get real cosy.”

“I’m gonna have to take your blood pressure”, she replied.

“Don’t bother”, I said. “I can already tell you that it’s maxed out.”

She asked me how I got the bruise. I was too embarrassed to come clean about it, so I told her I’d been dry-gulched.

“I think someone slugged me on the back of my head with a 45.”, I told her.

“So how come the bruise is on the front of your head?”, she asked.

“I got a flexible skull”, I answered.

She laughed, then threw me out, telling me to take it easy.

A sedan flew by right through a puddle. It was like being under Niagara Falls.

“Hey, wise guy!”, I shouted.

But he was long gone.

I turned my collar up against a wind that must have been on vacation from Alaska. Just then, as I walked past the mortuary, my phone buzzed. In the blue glow the name Tony Vivaldi lit up.

It was gonna be a long night.