Guest Post: The Story behind Last Puffs

The Story behind Last Puffs

(450 words) by Harley Mazuk

Last Puffs is a pulp fiction tale of war, love, betrayal, revenge, and murder. It is a noir-ish private eye story, with a love triangle, tough guys, lying dames, some murders, greed, lust, jealousy, and nefarious schemes. It’s the kind of stuff I like to read. It’s the kind of stuff I like to write.

There were two primary motivations for me to write Last Puffs. The first was a scene in my head. I once heard a feature on National Public Radio about cigar factories, where a lector reads to the workers while they hand-roll the cigars. The fact that it was quiet enough in a factory to read to the employees appealed to me--no machinery noise! I decided I wanted to write a scene in which a beautiful dark-eyed, dark-haired woman rolls cigars on her tawny bare thigh while the lector reads.

But that was just one scene. The other motivation was my admiration for Dashiell Hammett and Black Mask. Hammett, of course, wrote many wonderful short stories for Black Mask magazine, many featuring the Continental Op. Did you know his first four novels ran as serials in Black Mask, generally in four consecutive issues, each with a 15,000 word chunk? My “short story” writing has been running to that sort of length.

Hammett’s second novel, The Dain Curse, was a Continental Op case, in which each of the monthly segments was like a short story. Hammett connected them by using recurring major characters—the Op, Gabrielle Dain, Owen Fitzstephan. The structure fit what I was doing with Last Puffs, (with characters Frank Swiver, Amanda Zingaro, Max Rabinowitz, and Joan Spring). In the first three sections of Dain Curse, the Op would be called in on a case involving the Dains. At the end of each section, it appears that the Op has completed his task—solved the case. But then there’s need to rehire him in the next section. Events in The Dain Curse often turn out to be something other than they seem. And there’s an unseen force that is responsible for all that happens. 

So it goes in Last Puffs.

Another thing about Hammett that appeals to me is that he sets stories in places where there has been a breakdown of civil and social order. Violence and power replace law and society. I think this sort of setting is a great opportunity for the detective writer to keep tension running high. Throughout Last Puffs, protagonist Frank Swiver, his buddy Max Rabinowitz, and Amanda Zingaro find themselves in environments where civil rule no longer applies. If they want to get out alive, they have to be tough.  

Harley Mazuk [http://www.harleymazuk.com/] is a mystery writer living in Maryland. His second novel, Last Puffs http://www.newpulppress.com/bookpage/lastpuffs.html is out now, from New Pulp Press.