"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. " –Raymond Chandler

Halloween. A high school dance. Inclusive, innocent, trying to be cool.

Rupert Treen, dressed in retro detective garb, and his best friend Jennifer Xuan – JX – Jones, dressed as her favorite timeline-traveling ninja, stand by the punch together commiserating over having been turned down by the same girl.

They watch glittery unicorns, zombies and vampires parade by.

And then a bomb goes off.

In an instant, the black and orange crepe streamers are replaced by smoke and blood. The only clue, after the smoke begins to clear, is the word RAGNAROK painted on a nearby wall..

So it is that Rupert the movie geek, fascinated by all things noir, must assume the role of his alter ego Niles Hollywood, private eye, and, with his pal JX, seek the reason their school was targeted.

That they and all their friends were targeted.

Their search takes them from their everyday world of school, anime, and old movies into a shadow land of right-wing hate and racism that has lain dormant in their town for decades. Now, encouraged to erupt, it is back with a vengeance, bursting out of those shadows, potentially more dangerous and malevolent than ever.

Armed only with Rupert’s dreams of living out the role of an incorruptible detective, and JX’s mighty brain, the two must find their way through an ever-more-dangerous and complex web, one that runs through classrooms and prison visits, cat cemeteries, police stations and school suspensions, old secrets, old movies and even exotic cups of tea. All of it threatening to crash down and explode again, destroying the people they love.

Even at something as innocent as a wedding

Is it possible to find the truth down those mean streets suddenly surrounding them? Where young men, women – or anyone in between – can walk fearlessly into those shadows?

Rupert and JX are determined to find out.

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Note to readers: Doug and I have been writing -- and revising -- this work for awhile now, between other projects, and as we watched headlines creep closer and closer to the "fiction" we were chronicling.

The book is essentially finished, and the wait between pre-order and "book in your hands" will be, as they like to say in the noirs, "short and swift."

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A note about the video, which features Mark talking about the general engagements and travails of a writer’s life: This specific project, and how it was written, gets discussed around minute 26!