You might have been overlooking Chad Eagleton since he doesn't have a huge beard on a tendency to fight three people at the time in writing workshops, but in that case the mistake is yours. The man's pen is mightier than the AK47. Here are two of his stories available online, GUN MANTRA and THE PRICE OF COPPER.
Several years ago, I found two paperbacks at the library book sale that changed my life: Strega by Andrew Vachss and Dead City by Shane Stevens. Before those two books I wrote stilted horror, clunky sci-fi, and Karl Edward Wagner rip-offs when fancy struck. After those two books, I turned to a different genre with a newfound purpose and drive—crime.
In Strega, his second series outing, Burke, an ex-con and unlicensed private investigator, is hired by a mafia princess to track down a single photograph. The photograph depicts the abuse of a child who is important to the mafiosa. Strega believes the only way for him to heal is to witness the photo’s ritualized destruction and the only one who can find that photo is Burke.
Burke takes the case. It’s what he does and, in the first of instance of Vachss’s ability to predict the fresh hells the criminal mind will construct next, his search leads him to a vile ring of monsters using modems to traffic child porno.
Strega won both the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and The Maltese Falcon Society of Japan’s Falcon Award. The book shook me to my core. It taught me that art was in the purpose. Since then I’ve read everything Vachss has ever written hoping to learn the lesson fully.
Just like with Shane Stevens.
I had been searching for a Shane Steven novel since I read The Dark Half. That’s what made Dead City a remarkable find. I knew Stephen King had borrowed the name Alexis Machine from Stevens’ novel. In his afterward, King praises the book and two others by Stevens, calling them, “three of the finest novels ever written about the dark side of the American Dream.”
And it’s true.
Charley Flowers worked his way up the mob ranks once already. After blowing two big hits, he’s reduced to flophouse living and strong-arm work. Now, he wants to return to real money, to his previous position of power. Charley wants to be somebody that only way he knows how to be anybody.
When the novel opens, Flowers is paired with the new kid, a Vietnam vet named Harry Strega. (Notice the synchronicity.) Harry grew up with few options and an inescapable sense of detachment. The war widened the gulf separating him from the rest of humanity. Freshly stateside, he sees violence and crime as his only road to success, the only road to anything.
Stevens boldly weaves thoughts, memories, fears and flashbacks amongst the action and the narrative. He splatters violence and sex against the cityscape until the city becomes a character, our tour guide through the characters’ private hells and twisted psyches as they search for their share of the American Dream. It all builds to one of the most stunning endings I’ve ever read, a beautiful parallel to the beginning of the novel, twisting back on itself and forming the “closed-system of perfect evil” King praised so highly.
Chad Eagleton is a two time Watery Grave Invitational finalist. His story “Ghostman On Third” was nominated for the Spinetingler Award. His fiction can be found in the print collections KUNG-FU FACTORY and CRIME FACTORY: THE FIRST SHIFT. His story “The Black Friday of Daniel Maddox” is available in the e-book DISCOUNT NOIR. Online his workhas been featured at Powder Burn Flash, A Twist of Noir, Bad Things Pulp Pages, The Pulp Pusher, Beat To A Pulp, Darkness Before the Dawn, Crime Factory and Shotgun Honey.