Anyway, from the beginning I knew that I wanted one particular death in the book to stand out, to resonate, to hurt. For inspiration, I returned to a few literary “last moments” that had moved me over the years.

Savage Night by Jim Thompson
Probably my favorite Thompson novel. The final chapters are particularly hair-raising and, at the same time, heart-rending.

The darkness and myself. Everything else was gone. And the little that was left of me was going, faster and faster.

I began to crawl. I crawled and rolled and inched my way along; and I missed it the first time – the place I was looking for.

I circled the room twice before I found it, and there was hardly any of me then but it was enough. I crawled up over the pile of bottles, and went crashing down the other side.

And she was there, of course.

Death was there.

Warlock by Oakley Hall
A “literary Western,” if you’re one of those who must label. I think it’s just a great damn book, period, and Tom Morgan’s last gasp is one of the reasons why.

He fell forward into the dust. It received him gently. One arm felt a little cramped, and he managed to move it out from under his body. In his eyes there was only dust, which was soft, and strangely wet beneath him. ‘Tom!’ He heard it dimly. ‘Tom!’ He felt a hand upon his back. It caught his shoulder and tried to turn him, Kate’s hand, and he heard Kate sobbing through the swell of a vast singing in his ears. He tried to speak to her, but he choked on blood. The dust pulled him away, and he sank through it gratefully; still he could laugh, but now he could weep as well.

The last words of Dutch Schultz
The Murder Inc. hit man who gunned down the infamous mobster used rusty bullets in the hope of giving him a fatal infection if he somehow survived the shooting. Following unsuccessful surgery to save his life, Schultz ranted and raved for 22 hours while a police stenographer took down every word. This fascinating and strangely moving final ramble was the basis for an unproduced screenplay by William Burroughs. The final portion of the transcript is below, and here’s a short animated film based on Dutch’s deathbed soliloquy:

Detective: Control yourself.
Schultz: But I am dying.
Detective: No, you are not.
Schultz: Come on, mama. All right, dear, you have to get it.
At this point, Schultz’s wife, Frances, was brought to his bedside. She spoke.
Mrs. Schultz: This is Frances.
Schultz: Then pull me out. I am half crazy. They won’t let me get up. They dyed my shoes. Open those shoes. Give me something. I am so sick. Give me some water, the only thing that I want. Open this up and break it so I can touch you. Danny, please get me in the car.
At this point Mrs. Schultz left the room.
Sergeant Conlon: Who shot you?
Schultz: I don’t know. I didn’t even get a look. I don’t know who can have done it. Anybody. Kindly take my shoes off. (He was told that they were off.) No. There is a handcuff on them. The Baron says these things. I know what I am doing here with my collection of papers. It isn’t worth a nickel to two guys like you or me but to a collector it is worth a fortune. It is priceless. I am going to turn it over to… Turn your back to me, please, Henry. I am so sick now. The police are getting many complaints. Look out. I want that G-note. Look out for Jimmy Valentine, for he is an old pal of mine. Come on, come on, Jim. Ok, ok, I am all through. Can’t do another thing. Look out, mama, look out for her. You can’t beat him. Police, mama, Helen, mother, please take me out. I will settle the indictment. Come on, open the soap duckets. The chimney sweeps. Talk to the sword. Shut up. You got a big mouth! Please help me up, Henry. Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone.

Anything by Samuel Beckett
The sound of Tom Waits’ voice singing a ballad immediately brings tears to my eyes, and Beckett’s writing affects me in the same way. There is something so profoundly sad, hopeless, and hatefully true in the Irish writer’s meditations on loneliness, regret, and death. I believe in a universal melancholy, and Beckett has come closest to getting it down on paper. Here’s the last bit of a play called “That Time.”

A: back down to the wharf with the nightbag and the old green greatcoat your father left you trailing the ground and the white hair pouring out down from under the hat till that time came on down neither right nor left not a curse for the old scenes the old names not a thought in your head only get back on board and away to hell out of it and never come back or was that another time all that another time was there ever any other time but that time away to hell out of it all and never come back
C: not a sound only the old breath and the leaves turning and then suddenly this dust whole place suddenly full of dust when you opened your eyes from floor to ceiling nothing only dust and not a sound only what was it it said come and gone was that it something like that come and gone come and gone no one come and gone in no time gone in no time

Richard Lange is the author of the story collection Dead Boys, which received an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the novel This Wicked World. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2004 and 2011. He lives in Los Angeles. Read more about his new novel, Angel Baby.

(Tip: Zoom out on the map to view the pins. Click on the pins for Lange’s descriptions.)

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1

Luz didn’t think things through the first time she tried to get away. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. One night Rolando beat her so badly that she peed blood, and the next morning, as soon as he and his bodyguards left the house, she limped downstairs and out the front door, across the yard, and through the gate in the high concrete fence that surrounded the property.

Barefoot and wearing only panties and a black silk robe, she stumbled down the street, trying to hail a taxi. The drivers slowed and stared, but none would stop. Tears of frustration blurred her vision. She tripped and fell but got quickly back to her feet. Scraped knees and skinned palms wouldn’t keep her from Isabel’s third birthday party. She was determined to be there, no matter what. She’d appear at the front door with a giant pink cake and an armful of gifts and, oh, wouldn’t Isabel be surprised to see her?

Maria, the housekeeper, stuck her head out of the gate and shouted for her to stop. Luz tried to run, but the pills that got her through the day back then made her feel like she was slogging through mud. Maria caught up to her before she reached the corner and grabbed her by the hair. Luz fought back, kicking and clawing, but then El Toro, the house guard, was there too.

“Help me,” Luz called to a man on a bicycle. “Please,” to a woman pushing a stroller, but they, like the taxi drivers, ignored her. This was Tijuana, see, and if you valued your life and the lives of your family, you minded your own business. El Toro and Maria dragged her back to the house. They locked her in her room and laughed at her vows to get even.

Rolando killed her dog when they told him that she’d run away. He stormed into the bedroom and yanked Pepito from her arms, placed the heel of his boot on the toy poodle’s head, and crushed its skull. Then he forced Luz to the floor, twisted her arms up behind her back, and raped her there on the white shag carpet.

“Why do you make me do these things?” he screamed at her when he finished. “Why do you make me hate myself?”

It will be different this time. In the year since she last made a run for it, Luz has been putting together a plan, and now, finally, she’s ready. Isabel turns four next Tuesday, and Mommy will be there to watch her blow out the candles on her birthday cake, or Mommy will die trying.

*

She pretends to be asleep when Rolando comes out of the bathroom. He squeezes her foot through the sheet.

“Hey, Sleepy, time for breakfast.”

“Mmmmm,” Luz says. “Give me a minute.”

He’s dressed for business in a dark suit, white shirt, and shiny black cowboy boots. Luz has consulted the calendar on his desk and committed today’s schedule to memory: An 11 a.m. meeting at Las Rocas Resort with Mr. Volkers from San Diego to talk about opening another KFC franchise. Lunch at the same place with Alvarez, his attorney, then on to Ensenada to see Flaco. Though it says on the calendar that they’ll be discussing horses, the real topic will be a shipment of heroin from Apatzingán. Luz has been listening closely to her husband over the last year and has learned all of his nicknames and code words. So Flaco and the dope, and afterward dinner with the whore he keeps down there. This means he won’t be home until at least nine.

When he goes downstairs, Luz crawls out of bed and walks into the bathroom to wash her face. The room still reeks of his shit. She brushes her long black hair until it shines, lifting it off the back of her neck to glance at the words tattooed there, Angel Baby. She convinced Rolando to let her get the tattoo by telling him it was her pet name for him. In reality, it’s the title of a song she used to sing to Isabel during the year they had together. She’s been careful never to let Rolando find out about the little girl because she knows he’d use anything she loved as a weapon against her or a chain to bind her more tightly to him.

Wrapping herself in a white robe, she leaves the bedroom. Her footsteps echo in the two-story foyer as she walks down the marble staircase. On the street Rolando is known as El Príncipe, the Prince, and this is his palace. A four-thousand-square-foot house with five bedrooms, six bathrooms, faux granite and gold leaf everywhere, leather and stainless steel. Everything is expensive but nothing goes with anything else. Rolando decorated by pointing at pictures in magazines. A fake Picasso hangs above a scorpion made of rusted iron. A $10,000 couch from Milan sits between two La-Z-Boy recliners with massage motors and heated cushions. And the house itself is so poorly constructed, new cracks appear in the walls every day. It’s a stucco-and-laminate fantasy that won’t last much longer than Rolando does.

He stands and pulls out a chair for her when she enters the dining room. Such a gentleman this morning. It’s because she let him fuck her last night and even went to the trouble of thrashing and moaning as if she were enjoying it. She wants him to think  everything is perfect between the two of them when he leaves today. She fumbles with her napkin, yawns, and looks somewhat confused about exactly where she is, playing the stoned princess to the hilt. It’s an act she’s perfected in the six months since she managed to wean herself off the pills, the Xanax and Valium, Vicodin and Oxycontin, that used to keep her from adding up her sins and hanging herself in the shower.

She threw away the dope because she needed a clear head to plan her escape and because she didn’t want to be strung out when she finally got free, but she’s kept Rolando thinking that she’s using. He’d become suspicious if he discovered she’d stopped, and besides, he likes her high. It makes him feel superior.

He returns to his chair across the table from her, and she smiles and asks in a sleepy baby voice when he’s going to take her shopping for the shoes she showed him on TV the other night.

“Shoes?” he says. “You think I have time to think about shoes?”

She plays the game, scrunching her face into a pout and whining, “But you said, Papi. You said I could have them.”

“I did?”

“You know you did. But when?”

“How about when we fly to Acapulco this weekend?”

“Acapulco!” Luz exclaims and claps her hands.

It wasn’t easy quitting the drugs. In fact, to this day there are moments like this when her mind and body beg for the distance they provided. When this happens, she conjures the face of her daughter and prays to it as fervently as a primitive supplicating the only star in a pitch-black sky.

Maria bustles in from the kitchen carrying a platter of pan dulce and a bowl of fruit salad.

“Good morning, señora,” she says to Luz, sweet as can be. They’ve made peace since Luz tried to walk away, or at least Maria thinks they have. Luz has done her best to convince the housekeeper that she barely remembers that day, but she still can’t tell if she’s bought it. The woman is hard to read.

Maria lifts the carafe from the table and fills Luz’s cup with coffee. The sleeve of her blouse slides up to reveal a scar on her arm. It’s from an injury she got in prison, where she did time for fencing stolen goods. She was the mother of one of Rolando’s boyhood friends, a kid named Gato who was killed early in Rolando’s rise. Gato made Rolando swear he’d take care of his mother if anything happened to him, and Rolando kept the promise by hiring the woman to oversee his household.

“Do you need anything else, señora?” Maria asks Luz.

“No, gracias,” Luz replies.

“Señor?”

“No, Maria. Gracias,” Rolando says.

The woman returns to the kitchen, and Rolando spoons fruit salad onto a plate and hands the plate to Luz. One of the parrots he keeps caged in the living room squawks, “My name is Gladiator! My name is Gladiator!”

“Where are you going, all dressed up?” Luz says.

“To fight a bull, what do you think,” Rolando says, then bites into a pastry.

Luz pokes at her fruit. Her stomach is tight with anticipation and worry, but she manages to swallow a piece of pineapple, makes sure Rolando sees her eating.

“And you?” he says with food in his mouth, the fucking pig. “Let me guess: a massage? A manicure?”

“Both,” Luz says with a laugh. “Why not?”

“It’s a good life, no?”

“A good life,” Luz says, the words burning her tongue. She reaches across the table and takes one of Rolando’s hands in both of hers.

Rolando lifts a red rose from the vase on the table and slips it into her hair above her ear. He smiles and starts to say something tender, but then his phone rings, and his eyes go ice-cold. The human thing is all an act. He can turn it on and off like that. What he is inside is a monster, a shark, something soulless and ravenous. He stands and walks out of the room, barks “Qué?” into the phone.

El Toro, the guard who helped drag Luz back last year, lumbers in and grabs a sugary concha off the plate of pastries. Luz can feel the man’s contempt for her, the boss’s dope-fiend whore of a wife, has always felt it.

“Tell El Príncipe the car is ready,” he says before walking back to the kitchen.

Luz passes the message on to Rolando when he finishes the call. He kisses her on the forehead and leaves without another word. She watches from the window as he climbs into the Escalade with Ozzy and Esteban. El Toro opens the heavy iron gate and gives a quick wave as the truck drives out.

And, so, it’s time.

*

Her first stop is the bedroom, where she turns on the television and crawls between the sheets again like she does every morning. Today, though, her fists are clenched and sweaty, her legs tensed to run.

At 10:15 there’s a knock at the door.

“Yes,” she croaks, making her voice froggy.

Maria pokes her head in. “Any laundry, señora?”

Luz motions to the bathroom without looking away from the TV and ignores Maria as she walks in and empties the hamper into a plastic bag and walks out again. She begins counting to thirty after the housekeeper closes the door but only gets to ten before she can’t stand it anymore and pops out of bed.

She has fifteen minutes to make her escape. She knows Maria’s and El Toro’s schedules as well as she knows Rolando’s: Maria will be in the laundry room at the back of the house, and El Toro sneaks off to the garage every day from 10 to 10:30 to watch a soap opera on a little TV he keeps out there.

She dresses quickly in jeans, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes. No makeup, no jewelry. A fleece jacket and a pink baseball cap, nothing more, go into a zebra-striped backpack, something a child would carry to school. She’s traveling fast and light. Anything else she needs she can pick up when she reaches the U.S. Heart pounding, she opens the door and checks the hall, then quietly descends the stairs. A radio plays in the room where Maria is sorting clothes, the DJ telling a dirty joke.

When she reaches the ground floor, she hurries to Rolando’s office and slips inside. On the walls are shelves of books the man has never read, the heads of animals somebody else shot, and paintings of sailing ships and knights in armor bought in bulk by a decorator. The only personal addition is a large framed photograph of a dark-haired woman lying nude on a bed, legs spread wide. Rolando likes to tell people that it reminds him of Luz.

As soon as the door closes behind her, Luz relaxes a bit. She’s been in here on numerous dry runs during the past few months, and now it’s only a matter of following her plan. She goes to the big wooden desk and picks up the letter opener, a German World War II dagger with a swastika engraved on the handle, and uses it to pry open the lock on the top drawer. Inside is a fluorescent green Post-it with the name Angelina and a phone number scrawled on it. Angelina is the name Rolando’s mother gave to a daughter who died more than twenty years ago, the one the whole family now reveres as a stillborn saint, and the number, entered backward, is the combination to the wall safe, which is hidden behind a painting of a wolf hunt: men with fur hats riding in sleds, rifles, bloody snow.

Luz sets the painting on the floor and punches the numbers into the safe’s keypad. The lock clicks, and the safe swings open. Inside are stacks and stacks of rubber-banded U.S. currency, hundreds and twenties, and a shiny silver gun, Rolando’s custom-engraved, silver-plated Colt .45. Snakes twine around skulls on the barrel, and an image of Santa Muerte is carved in ivory on the grip. Luz transfers the money, all of it, to the backpack and lays the gun on top. Bowing her head, she murmurs a childhood prayer, and God’s name is still on her lips as she grabs the pack, stands, and opens the office door.

“You dropped this, señora,” Maria says, holding out the rose that Rolando stuck in Luz’s hair at breakfast. “Out here, in the hallway.”

El Toro stands behind the woman, a mean grin on his ugly face. He’s looking forward to hurting her. Both of them are. And then Rolando will finish the job.

Luz backs up and reaches into the pack for the .45. Rolando taught her how to use it on the house’s basement firing range. At first he had to force her, because she couldn’t stand the sound and the thump in her chest when the gun went off, but over the past year, thinking it was a skill that might come in handy during her escape, she’s practiced whenever she could and become a pretty decent shot.

She racks the slide and points the .45 with both hands, doesn’t flinch at the BOOM BOOM BOOM when she squeezes the trigger. Maria flies backward into El Toro, a jagged black hole under her left eye, a bloody volcano erupting out of the back of her head. The other two rounds hit El Toro in the chest and throat. He and the housekeeper go down together, tangled in death.

The horror of what she’s just done paralyzes Luz for an instant, like an icy hand suddenly gripping her neck. When she can move again, she drops the gun into the backpack and steps over the bodies, being careful not to look down at them. There’s only one thought in her head: Isabel. When the big front door doesn’t open on the first try, she panics and jerks the knob a few times before realizing that the deadbolt is engaged. A second later she’s on the porch. Four seconds later she’s out the gate and on the street. Ten seconds later she’s gone, another scrap swept up in the noisy, stinking whirl of the city.

Richard Lange is the author of the story collection Dead Boys, which received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the novel This Wicked World. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his fiction has appeared in the Best American Mystery Stories 2004 and 2011. He lives in Los Angeles.

It’s the perfect way to gear up for the upcoming Rachel Knight novel, already acclaimed in starred reviews from Publishers Weekly (“suspenseful and gripping…. the best yet in the series”) and Booklist  (“Legal thrillers don’t get much better than this…KILLER AMBITION finds Clark at the top of her game”).

So what are you waiting for? It just might be the best 99 cents you ever spend!

Kindle | Nook | iTunes

Tina Jordan raved of the book in Entertainment Weekly: “MURDER AS A FINE ART is masterful . . . brilliantly plotted . . . evokes 1854 London with such finesse that you’ll hear the hooves clattering on cobblestones, the racket of dustmen, and the shrill call of vendors.” Janet Maslin of the New York Times Book Review remarked of the book: “Morrell writes action scenes like nobody’s business.” And in a rave Associated Press review that ran far and wide, Waka Tsunoda praises the novel as “shockingly real…Morrell’s thorough and erudite research of the people and culture of the British Empire’s heyday informs every page. A literary thriller that pushes the envelope of fear.”

For more MURDER AS A FINE ART, check out the lushly rendered book trailer below, created from original artwork by Tomislav Tikulen, an interview with Morrell on the writing of his Victorian thriller, and an illuminating conversation between Morrell and De Quincey biographer Robert Morrison. You’ll doubtless encounter more great reviews—and in the meantime, visit Morrell’s website to find out when the author will be reading near you!

Happy publication day to David Morrell’s Victorian thriller MURDER AS A FINE ART! A critical darling raved by Douglas Preston, Dan Simmons, and featured in Entertainment Weekly, Morrell’s newest features notorious essayist Thomas De Quincey and his irrepressible daughter, Emily, matching wits with a killer the likes of which London has never seen before. Enjoy an excerpt right here–more on MURDER AS A FINE ART later this week!

From the Journal of Emily De Quincey

Sunday, 10 December 1854

This morning, I discovered Father again pacing the back courtyard. Once more, he had wakened much earlier than I, probably before dawn. Last night, I am certain that I heard his footsteps creaking past the door to my room, descending the stairs so that he could roam the dark streets. He claims that this is the only way he can avoid indulging in laudanum—by distracting himself with the effort of walking as much as fifteen miles each day.

Father’s short stature emphasizes how thin he has become. I worry that his obsessive exercise will harm him more than help. The way he talks also worries me. Before we left our home in Edinburgh to journey here to London and promote his newly collected writings, his practice was to waken groggily no earlier than noon. For a long time, he refused to make the trip at all. Then abruptly he called it essential and surprised me by filling his hours with walking to prepare himself. Soon he wakened at nine. In a matter of weeks, he backed to eight o’clock, to seven, to six. On the train bound for London, he walked in place, his cheeks red from exertion.

“To avoid the laudanum,” he kept insisting, although I know that he hasn’t abandoned it entirely. Two decanters of the wretched liquid are among the clothes and books that he packed.

I was especially troubled when he said, “As my waking hour retreats from five to four to three, I fear that I am backing into yesterday.”

Yesterday, though, is what I am convinced he wants to back into. His journey to London seems about his past more than his collected writings—or perhaps the two are disturbingly intertwined.

Our income from Father’s work is too little for us to afford the splendid town house in which we are staying. A middle-aged woman who serves as maid and cook has been supplied to us as well. Father claims that he doesn’t know who pays the bills, and I believe him. Perhaps one of his old acquaintances secretly provided the means for us to make this journey, although I can’t imagine whom, since so many of those acquaintances, Wordsworth and Coleridge, for example, have passed over, or as Father says, “have joined the majority,” since far more people died over the centuries than are currently alive.

Our lodging is near Russell Square, and after we arrived four days ago, Father puzzled me by asking me to walk with him before we unpacked. Within a few blocks, we reached the Square, where I was delighted to find a wonderful park in the middle of the tumultuous city. A breeze had chased the fog away. In what Father told me was rare December sunlight, he surveyed the grass and the bare trees, the intensity of his blue eyes indicating his memories.

“When I was seventeen,” he said, “I lived on the streets of London.”

I knew that, of course, because Father had included some of those terrible events in his Opium-Eater book.

“I lived on the streets for the entire winter,” he continued.

I knew this, too, but I have learned to let Father say what is on his mind.

“In those days, cows wandered this square. Many nights, a companion and I slept here, a rag that could barely be called a blanket wrapped around us. I’d been lucky enough to find an old bucket. When the udders on the cows were full, I did my best to milk one of them. The warmth of the milk helped us not to shiver.”

Father spoke without looking at me, his attention focused totally on his memories. “So much has changed. Coming from the train station, which didn’t exist then, I hardly recognized much of the city. There are so many places I need to see.”

His tone suggested that he didn’t want to see some of those places, even though he needed to.

“Ann,” he murmured.

My mother’s name was Margaret. Mine is Emily.

“Ann,” he repeated.

*

Remembering that conversation, I watched the intensity with which Father paced the back courtyard.

Our housekeeper, Mrs. Warden, stepped into the kitchen. She wore a solemn bonnet. A hymnbook was under her arm. Bread, butter, strawberry jam, and a pot of tea were on the table.

“I’ll be leaving for church now, Miss De Quincey. I suppose that you and your father will soon be going there also.”

Since our arrival, Mrs. Warden’s manner toward my father has been guarded while her tone toward me has been sympathetic, as if she believes I have a great many burdens.

“Yes. Church,” I responded, hoping that I didn’t sound as if I were lying.

“He seems very religious,” Mrs. Warden continued with reluctant approval, “which, if you don’t mind me being honest, is not what I expected, given the ‘book’ he wrote.”

Father wrote many books over the years, but Mrs. Warden’s emphasis left no doubt which of them she meant.

“Yes, the book,” I said.

“I haven’t read it myself, of course.”

“Of course.”

Again, Father walked past the window, pacing the courtyard from corner to corner to corner to corner. His lean face was tense with exertion. His gaze was on something in his mind far beyond the courtyard wall. He fingered beads in his hands.

“I see how devoted he is to the rosary,” Mrs. Warden said. “Praying while walking improves both the soul and the body.”

The beads that Father clutched had sections of ten. One in each section was blue. The remaining nine were white.

“I haven’t met many Romans.” Mrs. Warden referred to Roman Catholics uncomfortably. “But I’m sure papists can be as religious as Church of Englanders.”

Father, in fact, belongs to the Church of England and often writes about the knotted mysteries of religion. As for the beads, I didn’t know how to explain them without rekindling her suspicions about him, so I merely nodded.

“Well, I’ll be off,” Mrs. Warden said.

“Thank you. Father says not to expect us until late.”

As Mrs. Warden turned to leave, she gave me a look that suggested, if I was indeed going to church, she did not approve of my costume. She herself wore a hooped dress with flounces that made it so wide she had difficulty squeezing through the doorway. I do not exaggerate that she seemed to have a birdcage under her dress. My own preference is for the clothing that Amelia Bloomer recently advocated—long comfortable pants that cuff at my ankles and are hidden beneath my naturally hanging dress. I do not understand the ridicule with which the newspapers greet this way of dressing, referring to the undertrousers as “bloomers,” but I would sooner be mocked for my clothing than be forced to restrict my movements for the sake of convention.

After Mrs. Warden closed the front door, Father came in from the courtyard, as if he had heard her depart. He set his beads on the table. He hadn’t worn a hat. His short brown hair—amazingly not grayed by age—glistened with perspiration, only some of which was from exercise. Much of it was no doubt caused by his need for laudanum.

“How far did you walk?” I asked.

“Only five miles.”

The beads weren’t at all a rosary but instead a system that Father uses to determine how far he proceeds in a small area. When we arrived at the house, he measured the distance along the courtyard’s four walls, which became the equivalent of one white bead. After he walked through nine white beads and a blue bead, he began a new set of ten. In this way, all he needed to do was keep a count of the blue beads and multiply them by ten as well as the distance. He claims this is simple, but when I try to explain this, most people grimace as if they have a sudden headache.

“Father, it’s time for tea,” I said.

“My stomach couldn’t possibly tolerate it, Emily. We must be going.”

“Tea,” I repeated.

“There are many places I need to visit.”

“Bread, butter, and jam,” I said.

*

Since we came to London, Father’s schedule has been occupied by interviews, to which I accompany him to make certain that he remembers to eat and drink. An American version of his collected works is now available along with four volumes of an ongoing British edition, which is one reason Father journeyed here—so that he could speak with booksellers as well as the Fleet Street magazines and newspapers.

It is undignified, but in truth, we need the money. As much as Father is addicted to laudanum, he is addicted to acquiring books. Over the years, no sooner did he cram one cottage with books than he rented another and another. Debts have accumulated to the point that I fear we will end in paupers’ court. This journey to London was indeed essential, although perhaps not in the sense that I believe Father secretly means.

His valiant attempt to earn income for us comes with its own cost. From his youth when one of his brothers bullied him, Father has endured painful difficulty relating to people. His stomach and other digestive organs are seldom at ease except when calmed by laudanum or when I am able to shield him. Now he is forced to greet the world and pretend to welcome it so that people will buy his writings and give him the means to retreat. His brave, humiliating efforts have been successful. Book buyers are eager to meet the infamous Opium-Eater, whose candid details about his drug habit are still a scandal thirty-three years after he first wrote about them.

Recently, Father also added a third installment to his horrid essay, “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” Although I am grateful that the added material promoted sales, I confess that the gruesome descriptions of killings are too shocking for me to finish. People ask if I am afraid to live with Father, given how violent he must be. I tell them that Father is the gentlest man in God’s creation, to which well-wishers give me skeptical looks, as if to say, “We know that you must lie because he is your father, but truly anyone who writes about murder so vividly and with so much blood must secretly be a violent man.”

Today being his first day of leisure, Father and I walked to the nearby British Museum. The area was deserted, everyone attending church, which is why Father chose this time to go onto the streets. The museum was closed, but Father would probably have been too preoccupied to go inside, regardless.

The cold breeze continued to chase the fog. Father stared at the museum’s dramatic forecourt, his jaw muscles flexing with his need for laudanum.

“This didn’t exist the last time I was in London,” he told me. “For twenty-five years, it was the largest construction area in all of Europe, but I never saw it.”

The enormous building made me feel small and vulnerable.

“The cuneiform tablets of Assyria are in there,” Father continued, his tone mournful. “So is the Rosetta stone. Keys to translating the past. But who can translate the ruins in our memories?”

People say that Father has an odd way of speaking, but to me, it is the other way around. Most people are so boring that they lull me nearly to sleep. I do not always understand Father, but I have never found him other than stimulating, even when he exasperates me. Perhaps that is why, at the age of twenty-one, I have not yet found a gentleman with whom I can imagine spending as many years as I have spent with Father.

We hired a cab and went to all the landmarks that had been constructed in the decades since he was away: Buckingham Palace, Belgrade Square, Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery, and the new Houses of Parliament.

But we never stepped out of the cab, and we never lingered. Even though Father was seated, his feet moved as if he were nervously walking. I had the impression that he selected our destinations at random. Eventually I realized that all the places we had seen had been a postponement, that we were finally proceeding toward what Father needed to see and yet did not want to.

In the spirit of Short Story Month—which is, you guessed it, May—we’d like to give you a chance to win this star-studded story collection. Simply comment below with your favorite mystery story for a chance to win. See below for our terms and conditions.

While you’re waiting to the sweepstakes to close, we encourage you to visit our mystery story advent calendar, which recommends a chilling new story every day in May.

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Writers find inspiration everywhere: at the movies, through their headphones, or unfolding before them in real life. Lauren Beukes, whose forthcoming novel The Shining Girls has been recommended by the Evening Standard to those with “a Gone Girl shaped hole in your life,” has assembled here a playlist of songs that brought her book to life. You can listen to all the songs above in the Spotify player.

“Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues” by Skip James (1931)
A song about the Depression and people drifting from door to door.

“Talkshow Host” by Radiohead
I think this is my all-time favourite song. It’s so dark and beautiful. It really captures the mood of the book.

“Torched Song” by Claudia Brucken (feat. The Real Tuesday Weld)
Harper carries a bit of a torch for all his shining girls. And Kirby definitely has one for him.

“Qu’est-ce Que C’est” by Mad Rad
It’s a song that seems to have been written for The Shining Girls. The lyrics are ridiculously perfect.

“Rabbit In Your Headlights” by UNKLE
I love the sense of impending doom, the dark, luscious beauty of the song.

“Private Lawns” by Angus & Julia Stone
Love this sultry remix of Windy City and Chicago’s private lawns, public parks.

“Black Heart” by Calexico
Dark and lovely and haunting and some of the lyrics are perfect: “Scratched in metal, name erodes away / hands are scarred, heart is charred / burnt through, and ashen.”

“The Fragile” by Nine Inch Nails
“She shines in a world full of ugliness… I won’t let you fall apart.” I think Dan Velasquez and Trent Reznor are on the same page, although don’t tell Dan that.

“Splitting the Atom” by Massive Attack
The lyrics pick up on some of the key parts of the novel: the mention of incandescent light at doors, the needle sticks, as on Harper’s gramophone, “We killed the time and I love you dear” and all the talk of particles is very time travel.

“All Hail Me” by Veruca Salt (1994)
I think Kirby would have loved Veruca Salt and Chicago’s alt rock scene in general.

“And He Slayed Her” by Liz Phair (2012)
Murder songs about girls are easy to find, but I love Liz Phair’s “And He Slayed Her,” a vigilante justice song that also questions what kind of man would do this. And hey, another stalwart of the 90s Chicago alternative scene.

The day has finally come–the long-awaited conclusion to the Charlie Hardie series, POINT & SHOOT, is now on sale in bookstores everywhere. Can’t wait until the workday ends to get your fix? Take a sneak peek at the opening pages of the award-winning Hardie trilogy’s slam-bang final chapter. Then go pick up a copy already!

1

This isn’t going to have a happy ending.

Morgan Freeman, Se7en

Near Brokenland Parkway, Columbia, Maryland—Seven Months Ago

A twenty-three-year-old hungover intern with a broken heart saved the day.

The intern’s name was Warren Arbona, and he was in a stuffy warehouse along with five other interns scanning endless pieces of paper and turning them into PDFs that nobody would ever, ever fucking read. The whole operation was strictly cover-your-ass. The interns’ bosses wanted to be able to tell their government liaisons that, yes, every page of the flood of declassified documents they released had been carefully read and scanned by an experienced member of their legal team.

“Experienced” = interns who’d been on the job for at least two months.

The new president had made a big deal about declassifying everything, the shining light of freedom blasting through the deceptions of the previous administration. A democracy requires accountability, he said, and accountability requires transparency. Which sounded awesome.

But before the PDFs could be uploaded, the president’s intelligence advisers insisted that no sensitive secrets harmful to the security of the United States would be leaked to the general public. This still was the real world.

So a white-shoe law firm specializing in government intelligence was retained to painstakingly review every line on every scrap of paper.

Nobody in the firm wanted to deal with that bullshit, so they put the interns on it.

And Warren Arbona, the intern in question, wouldn’t have noticed a thing if it hadn’t been for his cunt ex-girlfriend. He couldn’t help it. The name just jumped out at him.

He stopped the scan and looked at the paper again. Were his eyes playing tricks on him?

Nope. There it was.

Charlie Hardie.

No, it wasn’t Christy’s dad. Her dad was named Bruce or some such shit. Balding. Big asshole. Deviated septum and beady eyes. But this Charlie guy was an uncle, maybe? Some other relative? Warren had no idea.

And really, who the fuck cared. Christy didn’t matter anymore; he’d do best to put her out of his head and finish up with this scanning so he could go home and get good and drunk again.

They were all working inside the abandoned warehouse set of a canceled television show, Baltimore Homicide. The rent was absurdly cheap, and the set already had the delightful bonus of real desks and working electrical outlets, thanks to a subplot featuring a fake daily newspaper office.

So all the law firm had to do was arrange for the reams of paper—nearly three trucks’ worth—to be backed into the building, plug in a bunch of laptops and scanners, and then set the interns loose. See you in September, motherfuckers.

The working conditions were less than ideal. While an industrial AC unit blasted 60,000 BTUs of arctic air into the fake office via ringed funnels, the warehouse itself had diddly-squat in the way of climate management. So every time you left to drag in another set of files, you baked and sweated in the stifling summer heat. And then when you returned, your sweat was flash-frozen on your body. No wonder everybody was sick.

Warren had been fighting a cold since May, when he first started scanning the documents. He believed that if he polluted his body with enough tequila, the cold virus would give up and abandon ship. So far, it hadn’t worked.

But the tequila also helped him forget about Christy Hardie.

Almost.

Now the name popped up, and Warren couldn’t help but be curious. He started to read the document, which was a deposition.

Seems Charlie Hardie was an ex–police consultant turned drunk house sitter who was later accused of snuffing a junkie actress named Lane Madden.

Warren kind of wished someone had snuffed Christy after she confessed that she’d been blowing his best friend for, oh, the entire first year of law school.

Anyway, Warren remembered the Lane Madden story from a bunch of years ago. Apparently she’d been raped and killed by this house sitter guy who used to be a cop and kind of lost his mind. But the rest of the deposition was kind of boring, so Warren stopped reading and fed the pages into the scanner. Yes, they were all supposed to eyeball each page—even the partners weren’t foolish enough to tell the interns to actually read them. But Warren and his colleagues dispensed with the eyeballing crap somewhere in late May. If fingers touched a page, it was considered read. Osmosis, they decided.

Warren looked at the clock. Just two more hours until his brain went south of the border.

But at fifteen minutes until closing, something strange happened.

Warren saw the name again, in another deposition, from another year.

Charlie Hardie.

The same fucking dude!

But a totally different file!

To have the same name pop up…with the same surname as his skanky cunt ex-girlfriend…well, that was too big a goocher to ignore.

There wasn’t time to read it all, so Warren broke a series of federal laws by stuffing the relevant pages into his North Face backpack and slipped out of the building a few minutes early. He made his Jose Cuervo run, put his feet up on a wobbly Ikea coffee table that was improperly assembled, and settled in for an evening of reading.

Now when Warren had started the scanning project, the partners had told him to look out for anything “unusual.” Like what, Warren had asked.

You know, they’d said. Unusual.

This seemed to qualify.

Charlie Hardie, it seemed, had also been involved in a top-secret military project years before he’d been accused of killing that actress. And not just your usual creepy top-secret military project. This one messed around you with at a genetic level and resulted in…well, that was the frightening part. Few survived, and the project was shut down. Dumb fucking luck? Not likely. Warren didn’t believe in synchronicity. Exhibit A seemed pretty clearly linked to Exhibit B.

This made Warren’s night, because all summer he’d been dreading the idea of not reporting a single thing to the partners. This would prove he hadn’t been dicking around all summer (even though he had). This was a genuine catch. This was justification for his summer. For his entire life.

The next morning he pushed the scanner aside and wrote a short memo, including his thoughts on the Charlie Hardie depositions, then copied it and Fed Exed it to the partners.

The partners, also happy to be able to report something to their friends in intelligence, passed it along.

This document would later be known as the Arbona Memorandum. Its shock waves would be felt around the globe.

But at first, it started with a brutal mass slaughter in Philadelphia.

*

One Mile Outside Philadelphia—Now

Of all the shocks Kendra Hardie had endured over the past few hours—the dropped call from her son, the chilling messages on the alarm keypad, the thudding footfalls on the roof, the wrenching sounds in the very guts of her house, the missing gun, and the awful realization of how quickly her situation had become hopeless—none of that compared to the shock of hearing that voice on the other end of the phone line:

“It’s me.”

Kendra’s mind froze. There was a moment of temporal dislocation, distant memory colliding with the present.

Me.

Could that really be…you?

It sounds like you, but…

No.

Can’t be you.

But then how do I know, deep in my soul, that it is you?

“Are you there? Listen to me, Kendra, I know this is going to sound crazy, but you have to listen to me. You and the boy are in serious danger. You need to get out of the house now and just start driving. Drive anywhere. Don’t tell me where, because they’re definitely listening, but just go, go as fast as you can. I’ll find you guys when it’s safe.”

Kendra swallowed hard, looked at the face of the satellite TV receiver. Three thirteen a.m. A little more than four hours since she’d stepped into own home and into a living nightmare. Eighteen hours since she’d last seen her son. And almost eight years since she’d last heard her ex-husband’s voice. Yet there it was on the line, at the very nexus of the nightmare.

“Kendra? Are you there? Can you hear me?”

“I’m here, Charlie. But I can’t leave.”

“You have to leave, Kendra, please just trust me on this…”

“I can’t leave because they’ve already called, and told me I can’t leave.”

*

Earlier in the evening Kendra had been out with a friend downtown, at a Cuban restaurant on Second Street in Old City, but found that she wasn’t really into the food, didn’t want to finish her mojito, and was tired of hearing about her friend’s first-world problems, such as arguments with interior decorators and the headache of maintaining three vacation homes on the Delaware shore. Kendra excused herself and just…left. Paid for half of the tab and split, handed the valet her stub, and drove back to the northern suburbs, leaving poor Derek to complain to somebody else about having too much money. Maybe one of the Cuban exile waiters would give a shit.

It had been that kind of listless, annoyance-filled week, and Kendra now felt foolish for thinking that a night of moderate drinking and inane conversation could turn that around.

During the drive home her son, CJ, called. He told her he was just calling to check in—which was just about as unusual as the president of the United States dropping you an email to see how everything was going. CJ didn’t check in, ever. As CJ grew to manhood, he became increasingly like his father, complete with the delightful ability to cut off all emotional circuitry with the flick of an invisible switch. All the abuse her son had been dishing out over the years hardened her into exactly the kind of mother she’d vowed never to become. The kind of mother who said things like:

“Cut the shit, CJ. What happened?”

“Nothing, Mom. I just…”

Mom. Oooh, that was another red flag. CJ hadn’t called her Mom in…months? CJ barely spoke to her, and when he did, it was little more than a grunt.

Now a tiny ball of worry began to form in Kendra’s stomach. Was he hurt? Was he calling from a hospital or police station? Her body tensed, and she prepared to change direction and gun the accelerator.

“Where are you?”

“I’m at home, everything’s fine. Look, Mom, I know this is going to sound weird, but…what did you do with Dad’s old stuff?”

“What? Why are you asking me about that?’

First Mom, now…Dad!? For the past seven years, CJ hadn’t referred to his father as anything but “asshole” or “cocksucker” or “psycho.” Before Kendra had a chance to hear CJ’s answer, the phone beeped and went dead. no service.

Kendra continued in the same direction but gunned the accelerator just the same, all the way up the Schuylkill Expressway, then the endless traffic lights up Broad Street and finally the hills and curves of Old York Road out to the fringes of Abington Township. Home. She didn’t bother pulling the car into the garage, leaving it parked out on the street. Something in CJ’s voice…no, everything about CJ’s voice was completely wrong. Dad’s old stuff? What was that about? Why did he suddenly want to see the few possessions his father had left behind? The thought that CJ might be drinking crossed Kendra’s mind, but his voice wasn’t slurred. If anything, it was completely clear and focused, in stark contrast to the moody grunts she usually received.

And whenever CJ did go on a binge, his heart filled with raw hate for this father, not fuzzy nostalgia.

“CJ?”

The alarm unit on the wall to the left of the door beeped insistently until Kendra keyed in the code. She closed the door behind her, locked it, then reengaged the system. It beeped again. All set.

“CJ, answer me!”

And then began the nightmare.

No CJ, not anywhere. No trace of him in his room, no tell-tale glasses or dishes in the sink. The house was exactly as Kendra had left it when she left for Old City earlier in the evening. Had CJ even called from home? The call had come from his cell, so he could be anywhere right now.

Not knowing what else to do, Kendra tried him again on her phone, but still—NO SERVICE. What was that about? She could understand a dropped call when speeding down the Schuylkill, as if a guardian angel had interfered with the signal to prevent you from sparking a twelve-car pile-up on the most dangerous road in Philadelphia. But in her own home?

Maybe she could get a better signal outside. Kendra went back to the front door and keyed in the code. Two digits in, however, her finger stopped, and hung in midair before the 6 key.

The digital readout, which usually delivered straightforward messages such as SYSTEM ENGAGED or PLEASE ENTER ACCESS CODE, now told her something else:

STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE

“The fuck?” Kendra muttered, then lowered her finger for a second before blinking hard and stabbing the 6 button anyway, followed by the 2. Which should have disengaged the system. This time, however, there was no reassuring beep. There was nothing at all, except:

KENDRA, THAT WON’T HELP.

Then:

DON’T MAKE A SOUND.

DON’T MOVE.

NOT UNTIL WE CALL YOU.

And Kendra, much to her own disgust, did exactly as she was told, staying perfectly still and silent…

…for about two seconds, before realizing fuck this and grabbing the handle of her front door. She twisted the knob, pulled. The door didn’t move, as if it had been cemented in place. What? She hadn’t put the deadbolts on when she’d come in just a minute ago…

The phone in her hand buzzed to life. There was SERVICE, suddenly. The name on the display: INCOMING CALL / CJ.

Oh thank God. She thumbed the Accept button, expecting to hear her son’s voice, maybe even hoping he’d call her Mom again.

But instead, it was someone else.

*

Now, four agonizing hours later, during which Kendra heard the sounds of her own house being turned against her…she was listening to the voice of her ex-husband—an accused murderer long thought to be dead. And he had the audacity to be grilling her!

“Who told you that? Who told you were dead?”

“They called me and said if I left the house I was dead.”

“Did you call the police? Anyone at all?”

“They told me not to call anyone, or do anything else except wait.”

“Wait for what?”

There was a burst of static on the line, and then another voice came on the line. The one who’d called four hours earlier, from CJ’s phone.

The evil icy-voiced bitch queen who had her son and who claimed to have the house surrounded.

“Hey, Charlie! It’s your old pal Mann here. So good to hear your voice after all this time. Well, that magical day has finally arrived. In about thirty seconds we’re going to kill the phones, and the power, and everything else in your wife’s house. We’ve got her surrounded; I know every square inch of every house in a five-block radius. You, of all people, know how thorough we are.”

Charlie ignored the other voice.

“Kendra, where’s the boy? Where’s Seej?”

Seej: Charlie’s old nickname for CJ—See. Jay. Over time, shortened to Seej.

“Shhhh, now, Charlie, it’s rude to interrupt. You’re wasting precious seconds. Now I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to tell me that if I touch one hair on your family’s head, you’ll rip me apart one limb at a time…or maybe some other colorful metaphor? Well, you know, that’s just not gonna happen. Because you lost this one, Chuck. There’s not going to be any cavalry rushing in, no last-minute saves, no magic escapes. And you know what’s going to happen next?”

*

What should have been going through Kendra’s mind at this moment was something along the lines of:

Charlie, where the hell have you been, and why have you surfaced now? The last time we spoke it was stupid and petty conversation about a late credit card bill and I think the last word I spoke to you before disconnecting was whatever.

Or maybe:

Charlie, why didn’t you call me before tonight? Do you know how many late nights I stared at the ceiling, trying to physically will you to call me? Not to change anything or explain anything, but just to tell me what happened? Do you know how hard the not knowing was? How much it consumed me over the years, digging in deep, way past the regret and guilt and into the very core of me?

But instead Kendra thought:

Goddamn you, Charlie.

Goddamn you for doing this to us.

*

“What’s going to happen next is,” the ice bitch queen continued, “your family’s going to die. And there’s not a fucking thing you can do to stop me.”

If Kendra had any doubts that the voice on the other end of the line belonged to her husband, they vanished when he spoke again. Because his words were infused with a rock-hard defiance that had once been familiar to her, over a decade ago.

Charlie Hardie told the ice bitch queen, “I can stop you.”

J.J. Abrams has created, written, produced, or directed groundbreaking television shows such as the Emmy and Golden Globe Award–winning Lost and Alias, and Felicity and blockbuster films such as Star Trek, Cloverfield, Super 8, and Mission: Impossible. His work is renowned for its sense of wonder and invention, and for helping reshape what’s possible in film and television today.

S., conceived of and developed by Abrams and written by award-winning author Doug Dorst, is Abrams’s first foray into publishing and will be released by Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and Company on October 29, 2013. At the core of this multilayered literary puzzle of love and adventure is a book of mysterious provenance. In the margins, another tale unfolds—through the hand-scribbled notes, questions, and confrontations of two readers. Between the pages, online, and in the real world, you’ll find evidence of their interaction, ephemera that bring this tale vividly to life.

“We are thrilled to be publishing J.J. Abrams, in partnership with someone as critically acclaimed as Doug Dorst,” says Mulholland Books editorial director Josh Kendall. “S. will be a literary event, and is truly a love letter to the printed word.”

Abrams’ production company, Bad Robot, will be promoting the book leading up to and at publication time.

The cover of S. will be released at a later date.

J.J. Abrams is a multiple Emmy Award–winning producer, writer, and director. Doug Dorst is the award-winning author of Alive in Necropolis and The Surf Guru, as well as a former Jeopardy champion, one of only two novelists in the show’s long history.

Preorder S.: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Other Retailers