Maple Leaf mystery author unveils new book

A new crime novel by Maple Leaf resident Jack Remick is due in stores today and receiving good reviews.

“The prose style crackles. The insights bite deep. The story surges forward with a rush of blood,” writes mystery author Robert J. Ray, author of the Matt Murdock mysteries, in a review on Amazon.com. Ray and Remick have written books and taught writing together.

You can hear Remick reading from Blood in this video (caution – strong language).

In his Amazon.com bio, Remick writes:

“I’m a novelist and poet. My lastest novel is Blood. You can read about me and what I went through to write that novel on this blog: blood.camelpress.com. You can also check out my writing blog at bob and jack’s writing blog for some ideas on what I put my students through when I taught writing with Bob Ray. I don’t have animals and I don’t write about fish, trees, or birds.

Want to know more of the novel’s plot?

Writing for the Lambada Literary Agency, columnist Wayne Gunn says:

For an author to choose as his explicit models Camus’s L’Etranger, Genet’s Notre Dame des Fleurs, and Sade’s Les 120 Journées de Sodom (all of which he has obviously read in French) and to earn the right to be mentioned in their company is quite a goal to strive for: one that only time will verify but that perhaps Jack Remick has indeed achieved.

Narrated by the sociopath Hank Mitchell, imprisoned for stealing women’s underwear from laundromats, this intensely poetic novel recounts his compulsive endeavor to record on paper his sordid life as a mercenary in Latin America, a hitman in France, a professional killer working for huge American corporations that hold themselves above the law.

Congratulations to Remick, a long-time neighborhood resident who has taught certificate programs at the University of Washington and is involved in a local writing group that meets at Louisa’s Cafe on Eastlake Avenue. He can often be seen in Maple Leaf around noon, walking Arrow the Wonder Dog.