Deadly Lullaby (35 page)

Authors: Robert McClure

BOOK: Deadly Lullaby

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To Nat Sobel

Acknowledgments

For some reason, I wanted to write a father-son story and what I came up with was “My Son,” a short story published in the kick-ass ezine
ThugLit.
The story caught the eye of uber-agent Nat Sobel and he contacted me, said he was a fan (the mere thought of this compliment still blows my mind) and offered representation. No one in human history has accepted an offer any faster. Nat wanted me to write a book and we settled on doing one based on “My Son.” The father-son story I've now come up with is
Deadly Lullaby,
a work that never would have happened without Nat coaching me through many drafts and never accepting a single sentence he didn't consider to be the best I could form. I owe this man an eternal debt of gratitude; as I do Nat's partner Judith Weber, who jumped in the game at crunch time and helped me make crucial decisions that made the book so much leaner and meaner. I often tell Nat and Judith they are the best agents in the world, because they keep proving it, time and time again.

My sincere appreciation also goes out to Dana Isaacson, my editor at Penguin Random House, who acquired
Deadly Lullaby
and used his keen editorial eye to pin-and-hum it to maximum effect. A fiction writer can't go far in this biz without an editor who believes in his work enough to fight for him. In this sense Dana is the bare-knuckle champ of the world. The production and marketing folks at PRH followed Dana's lead and have done a marvelous job rolling out the book. Thank you all.

I must also thank Sobel Weber's star administrator Adia Wright, whose professionalism and kindness eased so many of my concerns and brightened many more of my days. My good friend Gerald Tyrell deserves mention, who was there with me at the very beginning and has stayed there along with his lovely wife, Betsy. Also there with me at the beginning are my friends at Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope Virtual Studios (where I first started to cut my writer's chops), especially Sue O'Neill. The Honorable Fred Cowan, more friend than boss, gave me the flexibility to write this book and cheered me on when others might have insisted upon more work. Lisa Crockett, the sister I never had, and Mark Wilson, my brother by another mother, both cheered me on too, and more than once towed me from the writing mud when I got stuck.

Two of my three biggest fans are my astounding children, Courtney and Nick. They both sacrificed a lot to have their father give up a profitable law practice to chase a living writing crime fiction. They know this, but you wouldn't think they did to talk to them. Their support is unwavering and eternal.

The causal chain that ultimately led to
Deadly Lullaby
really begins some years ago when my biggest fan, my beautiful wife, lover, and friend, Kathie, sat me down, looked me dead in the eye as only she can do and told meâno, ordered meâto quit practicing law and spend all my work time learning to write crime fiction. All Kathie had to base this grand decision on were my earliest scratchings, words strung together on paper you'd be hard pressed to call stories. Crazy. Especially coming from a woman who normally thinks so rationally and analytically. Since that day, Kathie's support and belief in me has never wavered, and though she's tolerated my return to a part-time lawyer job, she won't hear of me practicing law full-time. Kathie, I will love you 'til my bones turn to dust.

A few notes on setting, research, characters. While I'm a proud native of Louisville, I love Los Angeles and the grand role it's played in crime fiction. Most of the places depicted in the book actually exist. Some don'tâthe Venetian Social Club comes to mind, as does Macky McLeod's warehouse in West Covina and Khang Nhou's Brentwood mansionâand are products of my imagination that I invented out of convenience. Real or not, I always tried to stay true to the spirit of Los Angeles and the surrounding region. Along these lines, my depiction of the interrogation room at Rampart Division was based on Richard Ross's inspirational description of those at LAPD Robbery-Homicide Division in his fine work
Architecture of Authority
(Aperture Press, 2007), from which I could not help but borrow liberally, considering the situation in which I'd placed Leo. Also, I adopted the news article depicting Taquan Oliver's supposed suicide from an article I found on the website of the LA CBS affiliate, Channel 2, dated March 4, 2011, from which I also borrowed liberally for the sake of authenticity. Many of the observations I have Babe Crucci make about his time in prison I took directly from the insightful article “
Time and the Prison Experience,”
authored by Azrini Wahidin of University of Central England in Birmingham and published at
Sociological Research Online
on March 31, 2006. Also very helpful in shaping Babe's professional attitude was Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman's scholarly work
On Killing, The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society
(Little, Brown and Company, 1995). Any mistakes in these adaptations are mine and mine alone, and should not reflect on the quality of the original sources. Finally, all characters appearing in this work are fictitious, products of what my editor Dana Isaacson describes as my “twisted” mind. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is therefore purely coincidental.

PHOTO: KATHLEEN MCMAHON/DERBY CITY PHOTOGRAPHY

R
OBERT
M
C
C
LURE
has a B.S. in Criminology from Murray State University and a law degree from the University of Louisville. He is now an attorney and crime-fiction writer who lives and works in Louisville, Kentucky. His story “My Son” appeared in
Best American Mystery Stories 2009,
and he has had other works published in
MudRock Stories & Tales,
Hardboiled,
ThugLit,
and
Plots with Guns.
His “Harlan's Salvation,” published in the '04 summer edition of
MudRock,
placed in the Other Distinguished Stories category of
Best American Mystery Stories 2005.