The following excerpt is the first chapter of an upcoming Al Pennyback mystery, Deadly Intentions, which will be published soon.  Reader comments are welcome.  Check my other titles at http://charlesaray.blogspot.com/

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I've been busy adding to the Al Pennyback series, and in those I follow the rules of mystery writing; a crime, a criminal and victim, lots of clues, and a protoganist who faces long odds but prevails in the end.  A good mystery story, though, doesn't always have to be about a crime.  In my latest short story, Sour Note, a continuation of a series of stories about Louis Dumkowski, a born loser who…

March 24, Oakland, CA

     The sun, just rising, made the hills around San Francisco look like green jewels, and the Golden Gate Bridge gleamed in the early morning light, as the Christina B out of Hong Kong made her way slowly through the bay, heading for a dock at Oakland terminal.

     Captain Chow Hung Fat, a slender Chinese with close-cropped iron gray hair, felt every one of his sixty years as he stood at the front of the wheelhouse, watching the…

I cut my teeth reading pulp fiction.  You know, the dime novels of the forties and fifties.  Now, the term pulp fiction is often used disparangly, but these were stories that kept you turning the page.  Who can ever forget Spillane's "I, the Jury" or the action stories by L. Ron Hubbard.  They might not be taught in college literature classes, but people read and enjoyed them.  When I started the Al Pennyback mystery series, I initially tried for a 'literary' feel, but it just didn't 'feel'…