Review: For Boys Who Struggle With Darkness
September 23, 2024
CW Hawes is a playwright; award-winning poet; and a fictioneer, with three bestselling novels. He’s also an armchair philosopher, political theorist, social commentator, and traveler. He loves a good cup of tea and agrees that everything’s better with pizza.
Book of the Moment
Death Makes a House Call
I love Tina and Harry Wright. And one of my favorite books in the Justinia Wright Private Investigator Mysteries is Death Makes a House Call.
If you’re familiar with the series, you know ace Minneapolis private detective Justinia (“Tina”) Wright doesn’t like to work. But her brother, Harry, definitely likes a paycheck. So when Tina sends Dr. Merkman away, Harry decides he’ll take on the doctor’s case.
But when Merkman ends up dead, and Tina’s detective business is threatened, she accepts Lt. Swenson’s invite to consult on the case.
While there are plenty of suspects, none seem to have a motive. And the investigation quickly turns into a game of motive, motive, who has a motive?
Tina, though, has to find one and quick. Because Merkman’s brother and sister want answers and they want them fast. And if they don’t get them, they’ve vowed to make life very difficult for the ace detective. And they have the means to do so.
If you like the classic slow-burn private detective story, the cerebral game of following the clues and identifying the killer, where the tension and suspense keep ratcheting up until the explosive climax, then Death Makes a House Call is the book for you.
You can get yourself a copy on Amazon.
What People are Saying About Death Makes a House Call
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Spotlight on Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles
Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles
Book 28 has just dropped: For Boys Who Struggle with Darkness by Richard Schwindt.
It’s a fabulous psychological mystery suspense novel. You can read my review here. Pick yourself up a copy on Amazon.
Spotlight
Big Sale and a Book Launch
It’s a triple play today through Thursday.
Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles
And get the rest of the books in the series for only 99¢ each.
Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles: Season 2
And get the rest of the books in the series for only 99¢ each.
MBCC Book Launch
Book 27 of the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles is now live. The Ransom Enigma. Written by the dynamic duo of Breakfield & Burkey.
Justinia Wright Private Investigator Mysteries
I’ve put the Justinia Wright series on sale through Thursday to give you extra crime fiction reading. Now is the time to stock up on the books you’re missing before I start adding more books to the series. Minnesota’s answer to Nero Wolfe is available on
Improving with Age
Any writer worth his salt is going to improve the more he writes and the longer he writes. When I look at my earliest poems and compare them to poems written 20 or more years later, I often cringe. “How on earth did I have the guts to show that to someone?” I ask myself.
Yet I did. Those early poems, as “bad” as I tend to think they are, were the best I could do.
The good thing is I didn’t give up. And 20 intensive years of writing poetry and writing well over 1500 poems enabled me to become a decent poet.
It is the same with my fiction. My earlier fiction, while I think it provides a decent read, isn’t as good as my current fiction.
For me, my novels and short stories have gone from good to much better, and hopefully in the future they will move to the very best I will ever be capable of.
Enter Justinia Wright and the Traditional Mystery
When I was young, I didn’t read mysteries. Except for Sherlock Holmes and the occasional Thinking Machine story. I much preferred science fiction, horror, and sea adventures. It wasn’t until I was around 30 that I truly discovered mysteries and fell in love with them. Thanks to a librarian named Marilyn Gray, who was an avid mystery reader. She is the one who introduced me to Nero Wolfe. And I am forever grateful. For me, it was love at first read. I loved the characters. The stories were intriguing. And the writing style of Rex Stout was superlative. Only Raymond Chandler could give him a run for his money. When I decided to get serious about writing fiction, it was the classic whodunit I set out to write. The result was Festival of Death. Justinia “Tina” Wright and her brother, Harry, were inspired in part by Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Author Richard Schwindt observed: “…why would someone do that most difficult of pastiches, Nero Wolfe, as perfected by Rex Stout? Why not take that format and create it afresh, as CW Hawes has done…” To capture the essence of a fictional world, and recreate it into something fresh is a difficult task. The easy route is the pastiche. I am very pleased that not only Mr. Schwindt, but others have caught on to what I attempted and pronounced it satisfactory. Justinia Wright has become a win for me, the writer, and a win for those readers who like the classic slow burn thriller.
Demons in the Dunes: A Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation
Next week Pierce Mostyn and the OUP gang ride again, in another terrifyingly action-packed tale of cosmic horror. The Rub’ al Khali, or the Empty Quarter, is a fascinating place. I find it almost as intriguing as Antarctica. What makes the Rub’ al Khali so interesting? It is the largest sand desert in the world. It covers some 250,000 square miles of the southern Arabian Peninsula. The desert is larger than France and somewhat smaller than Texas. This vast expanse of sand is home to the lost city of Iram, which is mentioned in the Qur’an, and may have been an important city in the ancient frankincense trade. The Empty Quarter is the setting for Lovecraft’s story “The Nameless City”, and is also the setting for Demons in the Dunes, Pierce Mostyn’s newest adventure. Did Lovecraft’s story play any part in the origin of Demons in the Dunes? It did. HPL’s story gave me the idea to set an adventure in the Empty Quarter, with Iram as the focal point. However, the Nameless City of Lovecraft’s story is clearly not Iram. Consequently, the story line of Demons has no direct influence from Lovecraft. Although it is Lovecraftian to a degree. Little is known about the actual city of Iram. It may have been located on the frankincense caravan route. Legend has it that it was built by giants to challenge God by creating a paradise on earth greater then God’s paradise. God, of course, destroyed the giants and the city. Iram is called Iram of the Pillars, but we don’t know why. One Internet source, attributed mystical connections to the city. According to this view, Iram actually occupies several planes of existence, and, in accordance with the mystical position, an alternate reading of the city’s title is Iram of the Old Ones. No self-respecting Cthulhu Mythos aficionado can walk away from that tidbit of info and not have the cogs whirring in his brain! Out of those seeds, Demons in the Dunes grew. I had great fun writing it. I hope you have great fun reading it.
Read More
Special Agent in Charge Pierce Mostyn, of the Office of Unidentified Phenomena, is in the Arabian Empty Quarter and soon finds it’s not empty at all. Will he and his team escape?
“…mummies, flesh-eating beetles, and fanatics trying to wake the Great Old Ones. Non-stop action and a great read.”
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