One Eyed Jack by Christopher J. Lynch:
“I make my living keeping secrets. Actually, I make it by letting others keep theirs. That’s right. I’m that guy. The blackmailer…,” begins Christopher J. Lynch’s first crime novel One Eyed Jack.
Ten years ago, the self-deprecating opening might have put off readers. But with the popularity of cable characters such as Dexter, Walter White, and Amanda Clark, readers and viewers are no longer resistant to identifying with people they would shun in real life.
A trend One Eyed Jack shares with contemporary fiction is the South Bay. His mark in the opening chapter is an adulteress couple shacking up at a Hawthorne Hotel, could be around the corner from the Hawthorne Grill in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction.”
One Eyed Jack, the blackmailer Jack Sharp, lives in a Redondo Beach apartment overlooking the ocean. It’s just bike ride south of the Manhattan Beach oceanfront apartment private eye Doc Sportello calls home in Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice, and a bike ride north of Palos Verdes, home retired LAPD detective turned crime novelist to Sawyer Black, in Stephen Smoke’s the Prince of Palos Verdes.
There is a lowly, but undeniable reader appeal in fiction that accurately describes a reader’s hometown.
The reclusive Pynchon lived in El Porto in his youth and Smoke, a best selling author with HarperCollins before he ventured into self publishing, lives in Palos Verdes. Lynch, a Hawthorne resident, also comes by his knowledge of the South Bay legitimately.
Lynch said he spent two years writing One Eyed Jack, which was a nominee for the 2013 Shamus Award, presented by the Private Eye Writers of America.
He had previously written for a variety of publications, including an article on surf mats for this publication. He recently completed Russian Roulette, a sequel to One Eyed Jack, and is working on an authorized biography of Eddie Haskel of “Leave it to Beaver.”
“I was writing what I thought other people would want to read. But at some point I decided to write something that I’d want to read,” he said in explaining his motive for writing a crime novel.
Lynch is aware of the growing popularity of protagonists who are not just deeply flawed, but deeply evil.
“The days of the squeaky clean protagonists are over,” he said.
“Everyone has a bit of voyeurism in them and likes to discover other people’s secrets,” he said.
One Eyed Jack’s voyeurism at the Hawthorne hotel opens the door to a house of mirrors where the blackmailer becomes the blackmailed and the secret is market manipulation of the gasoline market.
South Bay refineries play a central role in the plot, a twist Lynch writes about convincingly. His day job is at Chevron, where he is an instrumentation instructor.
A promotional trailer for One Eyed Jack may be viewed at ChristioperJLynch.com and at easyreadernews.com
One Eyed Jack. 247 pages. $9.89. Available at Pages in Manhattan Beach.
