MurderLand: A Crime Novel - Softcover

Glazner, Joseph Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1775005852 ISBN 13: 9781775005858

Publisher: Joseph Mark Glazner, 2018

Synopsis

WILL HARRY HOLIDAY BE LUCKY ENOUGH TO GET AWAY WITH THE PERFECT MURDER?Like many of us, Harry has been angry enough at times to think about killing someone. But like most of us, his thoughts were fleeting. The fear of getting caught and his better self always won out.Until now. Now, Harry Holiday’s better self lies in ruins. His world is crumbling around him. Someone tried to murder Harry’s father six months ago and left Dad in a coma. Someone is trying to steal what’s left of the family fortune. Some people very close to him would like to see Harry dead, and they have no scruples about killing him.Harry, a young, likable but out-of-control wheeler-dealer, is so desperate that pulling off the perfect murder seems like his only way out.Can his harebrained scheme actually work? Will he go through with it? Will it save him and the once-famous, now-rundown family business—MurderLand—a museum of gangland and murder-related memorabilia? Or will all his carefully laid plans get wrecked as he stumbles into the middle of another crime in progress…AND accidentally begins to uncover shocking new evidence in the basement of MurderLand that may tie together the building’s past, the plot to assassinate a president, and Harry’s own growing urge to kill.Buy MurderLand now to watch this intense, madcap story unfold.

About this title

About the Author

MurderLand is Joseph Mark Glazner's eighth mystery novel. He has written seven others under his own name and his pen name, Joseph Louis, including the Shamus and Arthur Ellis nominated Madelaine (Bantam Books, NY, 1987). Glazner's new thriller, MurderLand, marks his return to some of his favorite themes-revenge, greed, conspiracy theories, love, hate, and desperate characters willing to commit murder. This time, he writes from inside the head of Harry Holiday, his antihero and most irreverent character yet. Harry is an out-of-control, young businessman, gambler, and ladies' man, planning the perfect murder to save the family's business and himself. The family business-MurderLand-is a landmark but failing museum of murder and gangland exhibitions located in the heart of the old amusement and casino district of Niagara Falls, Canada. The idea for a museum housing a world-class collection of shocking, murder-related objects grew out of memories of Glazner's mother, the beautiful, eldest child of immigrants, who supported her parents and siblings as a Seventh Avenue dress designer and sketcher during the Great Depression. In the late 1940s, after Glazner was born and the family had moved to rural Warrenville, New Jersey, his mother reinvented herself as a businesswoman, small-town politician, civic volunteer, and inveterate collector of antiques, vintage clothes, costume jewelry, art glass, and anything broken that she thought might one day be repaired but never was. Following in his mother's footsteps, young Glazner collected old swords and guns to display on the walls in his basement. He also collected contemporary guns to shoot in the fields and woods around his family's home. Unlike Harry Holiday, he had no heart for hunting or killing. He ruled out the military, left home at eighteen for Los Angeles, and became a writer. The struggles of the small business owner in MurderLand are a backhanded homage to Glazner's father, a charismatic, high-school dropout from the mean streets of Brooklyn, who became a manufacturer of gloves during the Great Depression in New York City. Glazner's father moved the shop to Plainfield, New Jersey when gangsters tried to extort money from the business in the early 1940s. As a teenager, young Glazner worked on the line in the New Jersey shop as a presser and cutter in the early 1960s. From that vantage point, he witnessed firsthand his father's valiant but doomed efforts to keep the business alive while battling early onset Parkinson's disease. Glazner's interest in Niagara Falls as a setting for MurderLand can be traced back to his first visit there when he was ten. On a family trip to the falls, Glazner crossed his first international border and was amazed and intrigued by the little bit of Canada he saw on the other side. Years later after moving to Toronto, he began to visit the Niagara region regularly as an escape from the big city and soon realized it was the perfect place to locate his fictional MurderLand. Niagara was a border region dividing America and Canada, each with its own subtly different but overlapping cultures. Its world-renowned natural wonder-the falls-was both exciting and dangerous. As a tourist region, it catered to the rich-and-famous and commoners alike. The old amusement district at the falls reminded Glazner of the amusement parks, country fairs, traveling carnivals, sideshows, and roadside museums of his youth in America. Glazner is a graduate of the University of Southern California (BA, psychology, magna cum laude, 1967) and a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He lives in Toronto, Canada where he continues to write crime novels and memoirs. His most recent memoir, Life After America, recounts his arrival and his first two years in Canada (1967-1969) as a war resister, FBI fugitive, new Canadian immigrant, and John Lennon's early collaborator on John and Yoko's "War Is Over" peace initiative.

Edition details

• Publisher: Joseph Mark Glazner
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1775005852
• ISBN 13: 9781775005858
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 318