Writers Tricks of the Trade Issue 2 Volume 8 | Page 24

are not onerous. But there’s no guarantee
that you’ll be able to get a copy.
White Heat takes place in 1992 and
Broken Windows two years later in
1994. Have things changed much from
those tumultuous times?
One of the most interesting things to
me about both Broken Windows and
White Heat is that, though they take place
in the 1990s, the issues they deal with,
immigration and racism, respectively, as
told through mystery-thriller stories, are
still things that top the news today. You
know what they say, the more things
change, the more they stay the same. And
so I think that reading these books gives
us an insight into things that are happen-
ing today through the prism of the recent
past.
Do you have a favorite quote about
Broken Windows?
Because Broken Windows isn’t out
yet, there are no quotes about it. So how
’bout a quote from the book instead: “This
was one of the wettest years L.A.’d had in
a long time. Rain every day, or so it
seemed. Film noir weather. Perfect for
Raymond Chandler’s mean streets. Hell, if
he thought they were mean back then, he
should see them now.”
Tell me a little about the plot.
Private investigator Duke Rogers
takes on the case of Carlos, a murdered
day-laborer, as a favor to his sister Mari-
sol, the housekeeper down the street
from Duke’s house. Duke must figure out
what ties together Carlos’ murder, an ex-
lawyer’s desperate ad and a woman
W RITERS ’ T RICKS OF THE T RADE
jumping from the Hollywood sign. He and
his very unPC sidekick Jack are on the
case. Their mission catapults them
through a labyrinth of murder, intrigue
and corruption of church and state that
hovers around the immigration debate in
this sequel to the Shamus Award-winning
novel White Heat.
So, Duke finds himself in the midst of a
raging storm again. How does he react
to that?
Instead of finding themselves in the
middle of the Rodney King riots and all
the racial turmoil surrounding that, Duke
and Jack are in the center of the storm
caused by California’s anti-illegal alien
Proposition 187. In White Heat, Duke is
trying to redeem himself for his
inadverant role in causing someone’s
death, and in Broken Windows he’s still
doing penance for that act. And Jack is
sort of Duke’s evil twin, not the most po-
litically correct guy around. And he’s defi-
nitely pro 187. Then things get more
complicated when he finds himself falling
for Marisol, the sister of the murdered
undocumented worker whose case he and
Duke are working.
So, is the mystery and the thriller as-
pect the entire scope of the storyline,
or is there more?
No, there’s definitely more. As in
White Heat, there’s a lot going on while
Duke and Jack try to find the killers. Like
White Heat, Broken Windows is a mystery-
thriller that hopefully carries the reader
on a roller coaster ride to the climax. But
along the way, we explore the fiery immi-
gration debate, seeing different sides of
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S UMMER 2018