Investigative
reporter Carter Ross is trapped on the fifteenth floor of a [Newark]
office building, having unlocked the secrets of a major drug
smuggling operation. He is being systematically hunted by an armed
psychopath. And all he has for protection is a ficus plant.
Something
like this in a query letter would have been the smart way to entice a
literary agent for Brad Parks's debut novel, Faces
of the Gone.
Parks offers this retrospective in a tips piece he wrote for his Web
site on how to become “well published.” He doesn't reveal the
presumably dumb ways he tried to get an agent—if, in fact, he got
one—but we do know Faces
of the Gone
did get published, and in a big way. And we know Carter Ross somehow
manages to elude certain doom in this novel, as its success brings
him back five more times to star in novels that quickly follow.
Faces
of the Gone
hit the streets in 2009. The following year it won two major literary
awards: The Private-Eye Writers of America's Shamus
Award
for best first novel, and the Nero Wolfe Society's Nero
Award
for Best American Mystery. It was (and may still be) the only novel
to win both awards. And (we're not done with the awards yet) with his
third Carter Ross adventure Parks added the Lefty
Award,
for best humorous mystery, to his trophy shelf, thus becoming the
first novelist in civilized history to win all three of the
aforementioned awards. The fourth in the series (the following year)
won Parks another
Lefty and another
Shamus, the latter for Best Hardcover Novel.
Mainstream
critics compare him favorably with crime writers Michael Connelly and
Janet Evanovich, and with famed humor columnist Dave Barry and—deep
breath—the previously inimitable Mark Twain. (I'd have put a
“!” after that last, except “!”s, alas, have fallen from
stylistic favor.)
It
is, however, to gasp. All this and the guy's only 41, and—hang
on—he writes his novels sitting at the corner table in the Hardee's
in a Middlesex County, Va. crossroads town while his two kids are in
school and his psychologist wife is at her job.
