Today I have a guest blogger, Gayle Bartos-Pool. Her new novel The Johnny Casino Casebook 1: Past Imperfect has just been released. A hot and hard mystery about a P.I. with a past.
A former private detective and once a reporter for a small weekly newspaper, Gayle Bartos-Pool has other published books, including Media Justice, and several short stories in anthologies, LAndmarked for Murder and Little Sisters Volume 1. The former Speakers Bureau Director for Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles, she is also a member of Mystery Writers of America. Her short story appears in the anthology, Dying in a Winter Wonderland, which was voted one of the Top Ten of Softcover Books as selected by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association (IMBA) of 2008.
Welcome Gayle:
Thanks so much for inviting me to join you on your blog, Paul.
I look forward to your Facebook notices of Noir movies coming on the movie channel. I’m addicted to them, too. Maybe that’s why the main character in my
Johnny Casino series is a fan of the genre.
Johnny grew up in a Mob family in New Jersey, so to escape his life he watched old movies on a 13 inch black and white television. Even after he started working for his father, the consigliere for the D’Abruzzo crime family, he still watched those old Noir classics. He took his look from Tyrone Power in the movie
Johnny Apollo. That actually isn’t all that odd. Real life gangster “Crazy Joe” Gallo was said to have dressed like George Raft in dark suits, black shirts and white ties because he thought the movie gangster looked cool. And they say movies don’t influence people.
I got that tidbit from the book,
Five Families, a terrific read about “the rise and decline and resurgence of America’s most powerful Mafia Empires” by Selwyn Raab. It was a great primer in all things Mafioso. What I didn’t get from that book, I got from a guy whose father was in the Greek Mafia. This guy was a cop. I could see the conflict the former cop had because of his family ties. That was what I tried to put into Johnny Casino’s character.
As I delved into Johnny’s past, I wrote what turned out to be the second story in the first Johnny Casino Casebook. It’s called “The Family Business.” I learned a lot about Johnny from writing that story. It showed me where Johnny came from and why he wanted to get away from that early life.
Another problem came up while writing the first book. My agent wanted Johnny to have a girlfriend. That was another reason I wrote that second story. Johnny likes women, he just can’t trust them. This attitude is very much like the characters in those old Noir movies we love. I prefer either the femme fatal or the lady in distress in most of my stories with Johnny, but he did begin his private detective days working for a woman. And he admires this lady, she just loves somebody else. He did have an affair with a Mafia boss’s wife. Obviously, Johnny likes to live dangerously.
At the beginning of this first book, Johnny Casino states that he is a retired private detective with a past, he just hopes it doesn’t catch up with him. This opens the door for ghosts from his former lives to pop up, both his Mafia past and the time he was a P.I. the first time. I can do stories in flashback when I want to explain how Johnny got to be who he is and I can also have some of those earlier characters appear in the present after Johnny gets back in the detective business.
I basically write
The Johnny Casino Casebook stories like a TV series. If you remember the old
Magnum, P.I. TV show, they did flashbacks and brought in characters from his past every so often to give the viewer a full spectrum of his life. I do that with Johnny.
The first book in the series is subtitled
Past Imperfect. Every story concerns someone with a skeleton or two in his or her closet. One story features a famous Hollywood star and a retired Broadway actress. This particular actress has a deadly secret in her closet and she is being blackmailed. The Hollywood actor wants Johnny to help out, but the actor has a few skeletons in his closet, too.
There is a story about politician with a playmate who has disappeared, and another case where Johnny is asked to return a dead body to the man responsible for the deed. Johnny even helps out the local sheriff whose wife has disappeared. This story takes him across the boarder into Mexico with a redhead you won’t soon forget.
Johnny explains how he met the woman who trained him as a detective in another story. You will see why he likes her so much. And the last story takes Johnny to Miami when his “wife” asks for money to keep her mouth shut. Only thing, Johnny doesn’t have a wife. This tale leaves Johnny with a question:
Who the hell am I?
Books two and three are already written, so I know a lot about Johnny Casino. I drop in movie references frequently and Johnny works for various movie stars from time to time. I do change their names, but you might guess who they are. I like these actors too much to associate dead bodies and shenanigans with a real person. It was fun taking their actual time frame and creating a different character around it. I use places where they really lived in some cases and even some of the movies they made, I just changed the titles slightly to keep this fiction. A few come back for guest appearances in other stories later in the series.
Thanks for inviting me to your blog. I hope you enjoy
The Johnny Casino Casebook – Past Imperfect. You can find the book on Amazon or link to it through my website:
www.gbpool.com.
Thank you, Gayle. Good luck with the first Johnny Casino and I look forward to the next one!
Dark Passage (1947) with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, screened on Los Angeles station KCET over Labor Day weekend and on Turner Classics on Wednesday of this week. The screenplay, by Delmer Daves (who also directed), is based on a novel by David Goodis. This is a movie that I like to see at least once a year, both for the story and the terrific San Francisco locations, some of which you can still see today. 
work. 
If I had to pick a favorite Goodis novel it would be Down There, upon which Truffaut's movie Shoot the Piano Player is based. And I know what I'm going to say is heretical to some, but I like the book a lot more than the movie in a lot of ways and, in fact, I don't like the movie much at all, though it's still worth watching. That said, Dark Passage, both the book and the movie are definitely worth checking out. 
