Guest Post, Excerpt, & #Giveaway: Hard Headed Woman by Howard Gimple
- Archaeolibrarian
- 22 hours ago
- 6 min read
Book Details:
Genre: Mystromedy (a mystery comedy)
Published by: MYSTROMEDY BOOKS
Publication Date: June 22, 2024
Number of Pages: 416
ISBN: 979-8990761513
@authorhowardgimple @partnersincrimevbt
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No one but Hannah Johansson believes her father was murdered. Not even her mother. The doctors say he had a stroke but Hannah knows he was poisoned. She just doesn’t know who did it or why. One thing she does know is that the answers can be found at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, a pristine 9,000 acre nature preserve where her father was superintendent.
When she goes back to the Refuge, instead of answers, all she finds are more questions. Ominous questions. Where are all birds? Why is there a heavily armed guard at the gate? What’s in the mysterious bundles being dropped off there in the middle of the night? When the police won’t investigate, Hannah is determined to find the answers herself and she won’t quit until she learns the truth. Not even after she is shot at, thrown in jail and beat up by a 300-pound lesbian biker.
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Hannah Johansson stood at the lectern in front of 300 people staring at her, waiting for her to say something heartfelt and meaningful. She looked around the room. A room that was unfamiliar to her even though she’d been in it thousands of times. But that was when it was the multipurpose room at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. She played in the large barn-like structure as a child with her dolls and toys and electric trains. She practiced her jumpshot here when her father put up a hoop after she made her junior high team. And when she was a little older, it was where she came when she needed to be alone with her thoughts and her guitar.
But the room that Hannah knew was gone. It was now the Axel Johansson Memorial Auditorium, renamed to honor her father’s memory.
Every seat was filled. The first two rows were reserved for relatives and VIPs. Hannah’s aunt Gilda and cousins Catherine and Phillip were sitting in the middle of the front row, flanked by officials from the Mayor’s Office, the New York City Parks Department, the National Parks Service and local assemblymen and state senators. The second row held representatives from a half-dozen environmental organizations including the Sierra Club, the National Audubon Society and the World Wildlife Fund.
The rest of the packed hall was crammed with children from neighborhood schools, birdwatching enthusiasts from all over the city and beyond, and men and women of all ages and ethnicities who loved the beauty and tranquility of the Refuge and wanted to show their appreciation and gratitude for the man who created and nurtured it.
Michael Leigh, the president of the east coast chapter of the National Environmental Conservancy and the organizer of the event, had just finished the last of a dozen tributes to her father, the man who transformed a rat infested, garbage strewn swamp into one of New York City’s environmental treasures.
Before Leigh left the stage he said, “Our final speaker, Superintendent Johansson’s daughter Hannah, would like to say a few words.”
On one side of the podium an easel held a portrait of her father in his khaki superintendent’s uniform, surrounded by a snowy egret, a great blue heron and a glossy ibis, painted by the celebrated wildlife artist Arthur Singer. On the other side was a wrought iron plant stand, but in place of a plant it held a hand-enameled aluminum urn containing her father’s ashes.
Tiny pearls of sweat formed on Hannah’s forehead. She gripped the lectern for support.
“Thank you all for coming,” she said, fighting to maintain composure. “I know my father meant a lot to you. He meant everything to me. He was my hero. My mentor. My best friend. I loved him more than I could ever possibly say.”
Her face contorted. Her eyes welled up.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I killed him,” she wailed.
MYSTROMEDIES DON’T GET NO RESPECT
Whether you call them action-comedies, funny mysteries, humorous thrillers, or, as I like to call them, mystromedies, people love to watch them. Shows like Columbo and Monk ran for many years atop the ratings. Funny mysteries have been dominating the silver screen forever. From William Powell’s Thin Man to Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau to Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc, moviegoers can’t get enough daffy detectives. Why is it then, when it comes to the printed page or the pixilated ebook screen, mixing jokes and thrills is unkosher, undignified, and unacceptable. A few outliers like Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books and Carl Hiassen’s quirky Florida capers are the exceptions that prove the rule that comedic mysteries are the Rodney Dangerfields of the mystery-thriller genre.
Even Donald E. Westlake, the dean of whodunit humor, said that his Dortmunder series, one of the all-time comedic mystery masterworks, was created by accident. He began writing another book in his Parker series, featuring a tough-as-nails criminal whose exploits wouldn’t come close to engendering a smirk, let alone a smile or, heaven forbid, a guffaw. Parker’s demeanor was so fierce and foreboding that the mere sight of him entering a room would give its occupants shivers.
Westlake said that when he started writing this book, no matter how hard he tried to stick to the usual ominous Parkeresque atmospherics, the story kept veering wackily off course. He decided to temporarily put Parker on the shelf and continue the comedic arc of the story with a new main character. And so John Dortmunder was born. After The Hot Rock, the first Dortmunder book, was finished, Westlake considered it to be a one-off and intended to return to writing hard-boiled mysteries. But the tremendous critical and commercial acclaim it received persuaded him to write another and another and another— fourteen novels and more than a dozen short stories in all.
So why is it that out of Amazon’s 60-odd categories for the Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense genre, from amateur sleuths to witches and wizards, there isn’t a single category for comedy? Do they think that mystery readers have no sense of humor? Is there not room for both thrills and giggles in a 300 page novel? Of course there is. But it may take time for mysteries and comedies to cohabitate on Amazon.
I encountered the same sort of anti-comedy bias when I was a young writer at an ad agency. I was assigned to write ads for an insurance company. Every time I submitted a humorous one, it was summarily rejected. ‘Insurance is serious business, it’s not a laughing matter,’ I was sternly told. And for years, insurance ads were at best dry and at worst, morose. Then Met Life started airing ads featuring Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and the Peanuts gang. Not only was no one put off by this, but their sales increased. And the trend continued. Geico uses a talking gecko with an Australian accent as its spokeslizard, Flo and her gang are doing shtick for Progressive, and a kooky emu is the face of Liberty Mutual.
Let’s do the same for laugh-out-loud mysteries. C’mon, Amazon, give us a category. Maybe even two. It could be the start of the mystromedy revolution. Or at least get us mystromedians a little respect.
Howard Gimple was a writer at Newsday, the editor of a newsletter for the New York Giants football team, and a copywriter and creative director for several New York ad agencies. He has written English dialogue for the American releases of Japanese anime cartoons, reviewed books for the Long Island History Journal, and written movie scripts for a pay-per-view television network.
Howard was Chief Creative Officer at TajMania Entertainment, a film and TV production company dedicated to creating socially conscious programming. He wrote the award-winning documentary, 'The Garbageman,' about a waste management executive who helped save the lives of more than 50,000 children with congenital heart disease. He was a writer and sports editor for the Stony Brook University alumni magazine. He also taught two seminars at the university, 'Rock & Relevance,' about the political influence of 60's rock & roll and 'Filthy Shakespeare, ' exploring the dramatic use of sexual puns and innuendos in the Bard's plays and poems.
He grew up in Brooklyn, lived in Manhattan and Long Island, and now lives in Glendora, California, with his wife and goldendoodle.
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Great guest post! Thanks so much for sharing.