PAUL D. MARKS SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW
PAUL D. MARKS SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW
Author Paul D. Marks is an L. A. native, literally born in the heart of Hollywood. You can’ t get much more“ L. A.” than that. He is the multi award-winning author of the Shamus Award-Winning mysterythriller White Heat, Marks’ story and upcoming book Broken Windows.
Paul, what was it like to grow up in L. A.? Have you seen many changes?
L os Angeles is a harsh mistress. She grabs you and doesn’ t let go. Just ask Raymond Chandler or James Ellroy. Or any of the countless other authors who’ ve been seduced by her charms, though I’ m not putting myself in the same league as them. But I am old enough to have grown up in Los Angeles when both Raymond Chandler’ s L. A. and Chandler himself were still around. When I was a kid, L. A. still resembled the city of Chandler’ s“ mean streets,” Ross MacDonald’ s Lew Archer and Cain’ s Double Indemnity. In fact, I grew up in a Spanishstyle house very much like the one that Barbara Stanwyck lives in in the movie version of Double Indemnity. There’ s definitely been a lot of changes since then. L. A.’ s gone from a large, spread out“ small” town to a great cosmopolitan city.
L. A. was a film noir town for a film noir kid. And that certainly had an influence on me and my writing. And a lot of my writing involves Los Angeles, not just as a location but almost as a character in its own right. Of course, we’ re all influenced by our childhoods, where we grew up and the people we knew. And those things, whether conscious or unconscious,
tend to bubble to the surface in our writing like the black pitch bubbling up from the La Brea Tar Pits.
What happened in the mid-90s that inspired your latest thrilling novel?
My new mystery-thriller, Broken Windows, is the sequel to my Shamus Award- Winning novel White Heat. The explosion of the 1992 L. A. riots was the inspiration for White Heat. Publishers Weekly called it a“ taut crime yarn”. Broken Windows takes place a couple years later in 1994 during California’ s notorious anti-illegal alien Proposition 187 campaign. While that storm rages, a young woman climbs to the top of the famous Hollywood sign— and jumps to her death. An undocumented day laborer is murdered. And a disbarred and desperate lawyer in Venice Beach places an ad in a local paper that says:“ Will Do Anything For Money.” P. I. Duke Rogers and his very unPC partner, Jack, have to figure it out and put it all together.
Broken Windows drops September 10, 2018 from Down & Out Books. And you might be able to get an Advanced Reader’ s Copy at NetGalley. It’ s FREE, you just have to agree to their terms and agree to give a fair and honest review. Their terms
SUMMER 2018
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