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By Root 706 0

coming up, and trading our favorites back and forth via e-book readers or direct mental implants or whatever. David was literally the second person (after my own agent) to congratulate me on my Mulholland deal, which was appropriate, because David’s been there from the beginning. Literally. Whenever I meet someone who’s read my stuff, more often than not—and I am not exaggerating here—it’s because David Thompson put one of my books in their hands and said, “I think you’ll really like this.” I can hear him speaking those words now, in that wonderful Texas accent of his. He spoke those words often; he was a tireless promoter and supporter of crime fiction, and had this uncanny ability to match reader with novel. I don’t say this lightly: I owe my career to him.

So of course I couldn’t wait to send David an early peek of Fun and Games. I was still writing the first draft when he died; I finished it in a Houston hotel room the weekend of his memorial service (which was packed with family, friends, and a veritable who’s who of mystery and crime fiction). This novel is dedicated to David not because he’s gone; it’s because he was my ideal reader, and forever will be. There’s no replacing him. There will never be anyone else like him.

Someday I hope to tell the whippersnappers all about him.

… and what about Charlie Hardie?

In October 2011, Charlie Hardie’s story continues in Hell and Gone, Book Two of the Hardie Trilogy. Following is an excerpt from the novel’s opening pages.

Dear Julie,

This is going to be hard to explain, but—

She had crossed to the other side. She was part of the land. She

was wearing her culottes, her pink sweater, and a necklace of

human tongues.

—Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

JULIE LIPPMAN woke up early the day her boyfriend died. As she forced her eyes open and searched her memory banks for the date, she was relieved to discover it was Sunday, last day of Christmas break, and she had absolutely nothing to do until that evening, when a bus would (hopefully) bring Bobby back to campus. Nothing to do was good, because she was hungover to the point of active nausea, and her head throbbed from all of the blow and lack of sleep. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. A kind of exorcism, a final wiping of the slate before a return to what she prayed was normalcy. God, what a fucking week.

She hadn’t seen Bobby since the day before break. He had left in the middle of the night without a word the day before Christmas Eve. She had been vaguely aware of him kissing her forehead before slipping downstairs and out the town house door into the brisk December morning, leaving nothing but the start of a lame good-bye note that she later fished out of the wastepaper basket in his dorm room.

At the time, though, she thought he was being a dick.

Still, Julie was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the semester has stressed Bobby out and he needed a little time to himself. So she decided to be a good girl the first week. Went home, did the Christmas thing. Got mildly buzzed on some good white wine—like her father would ever miss it?—watched cable TV, even tried to read a little of next semester’s lit anthology.

But by New Year’s Eve, she’d grown bored of the good girl thing. Was she supposed to live like a nun just because Bobby was off somewhere with his panties in a bunch? So she agreed to hang out with Chrissy Giannini, and that led them to a rooftop party somewhere, and that led her to a white-tile bathroom with a group of people she didn’t know, and that led to a toilet lid with a line of blow on it. She was drunk enough to get down on her knees, feeling the cold tile through her black stockings. Drunk enough to lean forward and snort. And with that first hard snort, the good girl inside her settled down for a long winter’s nap.

Week two was all very Less Than Zero—Julie could practically hear the fucking Bangles singing about a ha-zy shade of pure blow. Only she was coming back East from school out West, and Main Line Philadelphia was not exactly L.A. Her