A Huey Zinc Murder Mystery
The French Quarter is a filthy place. This historic old section of New Orleans is overrun by raucous sports fans, goggling conventioneers, and rowdy college kids. Prostitutes preen on the corners, homosexuals loiter on the stoops, and drunken wretches form human speed bumps along the sidewalks. Half-clad strippers and raspy-voiced hawkers in cheap suits beckon from darkened interiors. Pickpockets work the crowds, and assailants lurk in dim alleyways. There is litter everywhere — cups, cans, bags, spilled drinks, half-eaten sandwiches, horse manure, pigeon droppings, vomit, and blood. The streets reek with the smell of sweat, boiled seafood, and stale beer. Amplified jazz and rock and roll blare from the club doors, battering the eardrums of passersby with discordant combinations. At night, the noise, the smell, and the filth are even more revolting. That’s what Murray loves about it. — Quick, Quick, Slow, F.R. Duplantier
Bayou Christmas, 1912 Main St., New Iberia (1991)
Like a crazy uncle, I spent Christmas 1991 — indeed, the whole month of December — locked in the attic of our little Cajun cottage on the banks of Bayou Teche in New Iberia, Louisiana. I must have been crazy, too, spending all that time in a sweltering attic when I could have been enjoying myself with a book or a crossword puzzle in one hand and a cuba libre in the other, relaxing in a cool breeze and a hammock under a giant oak tree in the backyard overlooking the bayou. But I had less than 30 days to complete a 90-page novella that I thought was guaranteed publication.
I was between jobs, as usual, and eking out a free-lance existence when I came across a new publishing house called Dime Novels that promised a flat fee for a finished manuscript in a specified genre: romance, western, fantasy, etc. I followed all of their guidelines — submitting a synopsis, first chapter, outlines for the other chapters, character sketches, etc. — and got the go-ahead for a mystery story called Quick, Quick, Slow (alternate title: Murder on her Feet). It was set in a New Orleans ballroom dance studio (something I know quite a lot about) and featured two girl-crazy guys patterned on me and an old friend from the ad biz.
But the arch in archconservative got the best of me, and the novella wound up being more of a screwball comedy — or a screwball mystery, anyway — and was ultimately rejected. Too bad, too, because I needed the money and had plans for several sequels, all featuring the same two main characters (Huey Zinc and Murray Gold) and taking place in settings modeled on the crazy places I’ve worked over the years: a parasitical dance studio, a wacky advertising agency, a paranoid fringe conservative group, etc.
Pronounced dead on arrival, the first and last Huey Zinc mystery was placed in a manila envelope and interred in a file cabinet for several years, until the internet offered a chance for resurrection.
With a review like the one above, you wouldn’t think I’d have been delighted to receive the first season of Sledge Hammer as a Christmas gift from my daugther Ida, but I was. My nutshell review was based solely on the first episode, before all the comic elements had gelled in the show, or in my perception of it. I was intrigued by the program, however, kept watching, and was soon hooked. When the first season ended with Sledge accidentally detonating a nuclear bomb that destroyed the entire city (the show’s creator was convinced that it would not be renewed and wanted to go out with a bang), I was among the hardcore fans who wondered all summer long how the show would be “revived” in the second season. The solution proved to be ingeniously simple: the words “Five years earlier” supered on the first frame.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came for testimony, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light. The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. (John bore witness to him, and cried, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, for he was before me.’”) And from his fulness have we all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known. — John: 1 1-18
