A Bit of Noir on Wry — STEVEN HARDESTY

All right, yes, I confess! The great and fabulous (those are his words, not mine) Harry Seaburn made me do it. Write seven thriller novels in a row about a guy who does the crimes no other crooks dare try.

But he can’t keep the fortunes he steals or the women he loves (my, my, how he falls in dreamy love with every woman he meets). And the Miami mafia, who hate any competition, hungers to have Harry join them – after he’s pickled in Everglades brine.

He tells his own story himself, of course, because who else could or would want to? About blowing up yachts stuffed with million$ in counterfeit modern art, raiding villages jammed with billionaires and fighting off swamp men and swamp women and their gator hordes.

Oh, yes, and rescuing damsels from suicide among sharks or from sinking swamp submarines overloaded with coke or from disintegrating homemade helicopters.

All sounds like grand fun, you say? Ah, well, you don’t know Harry. He’s a thief up and down the famed Tamiami Trail of Florida, all right, but what really drives him is his search for that one girl meant just for him.

She may have blue hair and an enticing smile, like the sniper girl sent to kill him. Or the leggy Mafia queen who wants his head in a swamp watermelon. Or the trapeze artist who sets him up to fight a cannibal across the top of a circus tent. Or his landlady, a lesbian stripper called The Feathered Virgin always ready to evict him for nonpayment of rent.

And then there are the retired circus elephants wandering angry through the Everglades and the swamp pythons snapping at Harry’s airboat and a truly mad cracker named Chester Droon, but I’ve already said too much.

Yes, yes, Harry wants me to say more – about his refusal to shoot anyone except when absolutely necessary (and how often is “necessary,” dear Harry?). And about his mentor Bitter Bob with his leg full of cancer and still the world’s last true romantic. About the Supergeek who hates humans but loves Harry (because he considers thieves superior to all other human creatures). And, oh, that’s enough, Harry. Really enough.

If I can get a line in edgeways, let me say I wrote the seven novels telling the whole of Harry’s great and fabulous (his words again) criminal career in a furious few months, having so much fun writing them I barely noticed Harry at my shoulder egging me on (well, shoving, kicking and pushing me on).

And now I wish I hadn’t written them at all. Or maybe I wish I could forget them. Because I’d like to open the first in the series – The Feathered Virgin - and read them all the way through to the last book – The Cracker Kingdom – fresh. To get the full bang! of noir on wry that is Harry’s rollercoaster life story.

Or maybe that’s ham on wry, dear Harry?