Tag Archives: Inspector Thomas Sullivan

Announcements

First Glance At The Cover Design For Lies Dead Men Tell

My cover designer, Robin Johnson of Florida Girl Design, has struck again! She’s created the cover for the first installment in the new series featuring your favorite detective and his partner from the future, Thomas Sullivan and Sarah.

The original award-winning cover Robin made for me was for The Predator and The Prey. This story introduced Inspector Thomas Sullivan and his crew.

I am convinced Robin has done it again with her artwork for Lies Dead Men Tell. (Scheduled for release in 2024)

It’s scary how close the depictions of Sully and Sarah are compared to how I pictured them. For Terminator and Terminator 2 fans, Robin’s technique might be a source of concern.

It’ s scary how close the depictions of Sully and Sarah are compared to how I pictured them in my mind. For those of us fans of Terminator and Terminator 2, Robin’s technique might be a source of concern. (We shouldn’t forget Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles either!)

That’s right. Robin used AI to generate the design. She promises me her AI is not evil and in no way related to Skynet.

Lies Dead Men Tell

Let me know what you think of the cover! Drop me an email at: SciFiThriller@kcsivils.com

Inspector Thomas Sullivan, Thoughts on things

Who Is The Real Sully?

I’m not Sully. Really. I’m not even sure I would want to be Sully. I see parts of myself in Sully and we have some similar life experiences.

But I’m not Sully.

Before Sully ever descended the escalator at the Capital City Spaceport with gun in hand and blew away the perp holding a knife to the throat of the daughter of a wealthy crook named Spencer Devereaux I had a vision of who Sully was.

I knew what Sully looked like, what he liked, how he acted, and most important, how he thinks about life 500 years from now.

Sully is a mixture of some of my favorite tough guy characters from books and film. He’s tall like Clint Eastwood but bulkier. His attitude and penchant for violence as a solution to “certain problems” is not unlike one of Eastwood’s most famous characters, Inspector Harry Callahan, AKA “Dirty Harry.”

There’s a bit of Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade in Sully as well. It would seem Sully just can’t help himself at times. Like Spade, Sully feels the need to poke at corrupt authorities and has a weakness for a woman in distress. Even when logic tells Sully to avoid female entanglements.

A man of few words, Sully is not as shallow as his emotional restraint would have one believe. Those the Inspector would call friends are few in number. But to those lucky few, Sully feels a deep sense of responsibility to protect and see to it they flourish as best as possible.

He’s a man with a conscience, who feels guilt over his failings as a man as well as his failures as a cop. Sully is not one who agrees with Tennyson’s quip “Tis better to have loved and lost than to have not loved at all.” The Inspector feels loss with a depth and intensity that can scar a man’s soul.

A long suffering witness to the capacity for evil of both humanity and the individual, it is easy to understand Sully’s ambivalence towards such matters as faith and charity towards his fellow man. For this simple reason, God, who is not done with Sully yet, sends another flawed individual, Father Nathan, to be the thorn in Sully’s side when it comes to matters of faith and ethics.

Father Nathan, a man’s man like Sully, has suffered his share of tragedy and pain in life. In his efforts to make amends for his past, the priest makes Sully into a personal project of sorts. If nothing else, Father Nathan acts as Sully’s conscience at times.

Not much scares Sully.

Those few who know Sully well will tell you with certainty they know what does scare the Inspector. It’s more of a who than a what, though some would argue a clone is precisely that, a what.

Sully’s nightmare has long legs, long brown hair, big brown eyes, a slender but eye-catching figure, and while she stands a full foot shorter than Sully’s intimidating 6’6″ frame, Sarah can be every bit as frightening. A military grade clone with the maturity of a six year old child, Sarah has the looks of a mature woman. Even worse, she’s fully aware of the effects of her charms on men, even if Sarah doesn’t fully understand relationships.

The cybernetic eye and robot hand come from my fascination with the Terminator stories. It allows me a device to show Sully has suffered during his life, that life has harmed him, making him feel less than fully human.

Is there a future for the pair, for Sully and Sarah?

Who knows? Sully frightens Sarah as much as she worries and frightens him. The only difference is Sarah is willing to acknowledge the fact to herself. 

History and Characteristics of Crime Noir, Inspector Thomas Sullivan

Writing the Hardboiled Detective – Where Did Sully Come From?

Unlike the nosy neighbor who snoops into everyone’s business or the ultra observant detective who knows endless amounts of minutia, the hardboiled detective doesn’t usually solve cases with nothing more than his wits. To be sure, sleuthing is involved, but unlike the aforementioned crime busters, the cynical detective is willing to get his hands dirty.

Less concerned with the law and more concerned with justice, the hardboiled detective doesn’t live in a cozy house or in an estate manor. The detective lives in the city, often in the underbelly where crime and violence are a part of daily life. He might frequent nice parts of town and often does when the sordid events of urban life pay visit to those less familiar with the pain these events bring with them.

Life has been the detective’s most valuable teacher. Events have taught the detective life is neither fair nor just and it most certainly has damaged him in profound ways. But life has not broken him and nor will it. He spends his days risking his life to bring justice to those who cannot find it any other way.

Unlike the puzzle-solving investigator of cozy mysteries and cerebral detective stories written the British style, the hardboiled detective lives life in a very real way. His haunts include dirty city streets where the lowly people live, dive bars, seedy hotels, and the industrial district. He knows people in low places as well as the upper crust of society. His acquaintances include bar keeps, prostitutes, petty criminals, and corrupt politicians. Friends are few in number and having them comes with a high price.

Writing hardboiled crime fiction, often known as crime noir, requires a different perspective than required to write other styles of mystery fiction. Violence is ugly. It knows no limitations, visiting the poor and the rich alike, shattering lives. This very ugliness is part of the appeal of hardboiled detective stories. The story is real life in all of its sordid ugliness.

In his essay, The Simple Art of Murder, Raymond Chandler writes at some length about writing mysteries and the differences the author must cope with when writing the hardboiled detective. The likes of Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and the Continental Op are a different breed of man. So much so, Chandler felt it necessary to write about the qualities of such fictional men.

In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things.

He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks—that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.

The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in (Chandler).

My own Inspector Sullivan possesses many of the qualities Chandler believes to be essential in the hardboiled detective. It is unlikely, authors of such caliber as Chandler and Hammett could foresee things like a cybernetic eye and hand or crime on an alien planet. Nonetheless, Sully, were he an Earthbound detective, should fit easily into the cities where Spade and Marlowe practiced their craft.

It is good to have something to aim for. One of my own goals as an author is for my stories somehow to approach the quality of Hammett and Chandler, two of my literary heroes. For that to happen, Sully must bear some resemblance to Spade, Marlowe, and the Operative.

Chandler, Raymond. The Simple Art of Murder (Kindle Locations 262-276). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Inspector Thomas Sullivan, The Universe of Thomas Sullivan

The Inspector’s Eye

E-mail from readers can be interesting for an author. I particularly like e-mails that ask specific questions about why a character did this or why did your story line take this twist, etc. I’d like to use this newsletter to answer one reader’s question in particular.

Why did you give Sully a cybernetic eye?

It’s a good question. At least I think so.

Once I made the decision for the Inspector to not be completely human, to have a few parts that aren’t human attached, I could have given Sully just about anything. Legs that would allow him to run super fast or jump over buildings. Arms that have multiple types of weapons built in. Armor beneath his skin to protect his vital organs. The sky was the limit.

But I chose to give Sully a cybernetic eye.

I based my decision on two primary reasons. Not that I intend to fill my stories with deeply profound hidden meanings, but there are things I build in for readers to catch and ponder. If a reader doesn’t pick up on it, it’s not a big deal. If a reader sees the hidden gem, great!

Sully sees the universe differently. Using his robot eye and not a human one to tell that part of the story brings attention to what Sully sees and thinks. He’s a damaged individual who sees things differently. Being a cynic, he trusts little of what he sees and hears. Actions and motives are what Sully looks to see.

More important than a story telling device is the fact I love the first two Terminator films! My kids and I also loved the short lived television franchise Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

I am convinced the show’s short run was due to the fact the writers and producers did not understand one very important fact. Sarah and John Connor are key elements of any Terminator story. But let’s make one point clear. They are NOT the stars

The Terminator is!

Summer Glau, who brought Cameron to life in the TV show, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who brought the first Terminator and Uncle Bob to life, were the stars of the franchise. Miss Glau did a wonderful job as Cameron and the show would have been better served had the story line evolved around Cameron more.

I digress.

One of the features I found fascinating was the HUD Terminators used within their cybernetic eye, or optics if you prefer. Terminators can replay old memories, access data files, call up protocols, identify objects and individuals, and most importantly, select whether not to terminate a human.

In one episode of TSCC Cameron dressed up in an enticing outfit and visited a bar frequented by employees of a nuclear power plant in order to obtain the bar codes the Connor’s needed to gain access to key parts of the plant. Acting like a naive and unknowing young woman, she flirted with a pair of males from the plant who happened to be playing pool.

It didn’t take Cameron long to get invited to play a game she “didn’t know how to play” and wager money. Like fools the men let Cameron break. She promptly pulled up her HUD, used her targeting software, calculated the optimal break point, and sank four or five balls in the break.

I follow developments in robotics and artificial intelligence. Both technologies are coming whether we like it or not. In some ways these new technologies will be of great benefit to mankind. I can also see the potential for evil and great harm to society. All too often we as humans never stop to ask the question should we. We just plunge ahead and focus on “how do we?”

Given how fast technology advances, I don’t think it’s far fetched for Sully to have a cybernetic eye. I’d even venture to say within a hundred years humans will have the ability to replace a damaged biological eye with a cybernetic eye with some of the same features Sully possesses in his replacement eye.

So now you know.

If you have any questions about any of my characters that you would like to ask, please do! Just drop me an e-mail (SciFiThriller@kcsivils.com) and ask. I might even include the answer in a future issue of The Inspector’s Report.

This was first published in The Inspector’s Report, Volume Two, Number Eight.

History and Characteristics of Crime Noir, Inspector Thomas Sullivan

The Classic Film Noir Protagonist and Inspector Sullivan

Brooding, hard-boiled, anti-social loners who take up the profession of detective. It’s the very definition of the male protagonist in classic film noir productions. Think your job is tough? Compare it to the standard working conditions of the noir male lead. His daily life is spent in the toughest part of towns, usually at night and almost always alone, hunting down dangerous individuals who are just as ready to betray our male lead as kill him. Our detective’s world seems to nothing more than a life filled with crime, betrayal, danger and loneliness. The very city our man lives in dehumanizes him with its tall, concrete buildings, shadowy alleyways and rundown neighborhoods.

Caught up in this confusing moral swamp, the male in the noir story is often filled with inner turmoil. What is right? What is wrong? Thus it is that our male lead becomes by necessity his own man. He lives by his own code. So long as he stays true to his code, he is true to himself and what he believes is right, or in many instances, justice.

Given this grey code of truth, the noir detective is often finds it perfectly acceptable to break the law in order to arrive at the truth, protect his client and if there is such a thing, the innocent.

As with any genre, there is leeway in how a character can be written, so long as the basics are adhered too.

Inspector Sullivan is certainly no exception. His past is filled with violence, betrayal and pain. Pain inflicted both by others and himself. Sullivan stands apart to a small degree from the traditional noir lead for he is a man with a conscience. Not one, but two as I would have it, his own and that of the bothersome Anglican priest, Father Nathan, who befriends Sully whether he wants a friend or not.

Sully is capable of incredible violence, some of which he is perfectly indifferent about and other times troubled by his actions. In his mind the moral difference is determined by whether or not justice was served. The law is nice, but justice is what Sully seeks in his world. In his life he has seen far too much injustice with far too few people who seek to provide justice, particularly for those who cannot defend themselves. That source of injustice could be a single criminal or an entire system aligned against the hapless individual.

Life lived alone means a life that has fewer opportunities to be hurt and more important to Sully, fewer opportunities for others to be hurt. Guilt is Sullys constant companion and belies his tough exterior and attitude of indifference. So is his defined sense of responsibility for those who, for better or worse, become part of his life.

It has been Sullivan’s experience that women are trouble, making him the typical noir protagonist. In the case of the mysterious Sarah, Sullivan is at best confused. She certainly has some of the elements of the femme fatale. Sarah is beautiful, mysterious and as the reader learns, potentially dangerous. It turns out Sarah and Sullivan share a painful secret from their past that tortures them both.

Indifference towards Sarah is not possible for any man. In Sullivan’s case, their relationship is a confusing one on a good day. He feels like a father figure towards the strange, aloof young woman yet cannot help but notice her alluring charms. For her part, Sarah sends as many mixed signals as is possible for a woman, all of which seems to draw Sullivan in deeper and closer to the troubled young woman.

As the series unfolds, the pair grows closer in ways neither could have foreseen.

Despite his desire to live his life alone, Sullivan as a character diverges from the norm for a noir protagonist. He develops a few close friends, excluding Sarah, all of which but one are male. His is a male world and Sully likes it that way.

If you like thrillers and classic noir stories, you’ll like the Inspector Thomas Sullivan series.

Announcements, News and the Latest Goings On

Sign-up For The Inspector’s Report – The Inspector Thomas Sullivan Newsletter!

It has taken me awhile to get things set-up for my author’s newsletter, The Inspector’s Report. I’m not a particularly computer savvy individual so it’s to be expected I suppose.

The Inspector’s Report will be e-mailed periodically. I promise to NEVER share anyone’s e-mail who signs up.

You can unsubscribe at anytime AND you can not feel guilty about it!

The Inspector’s Report will give updates on the availability of the latest offering in the Universe of Inspector Thomas Sullivan and his friends (enemies too). Back history for characters and places on Beta Prime will be provided to answer those nagging questions readers have about this detail or that.

Short stories will be a part of the newsletter on a semi-regular basis and will often feature supporting characters such as Ralph, Alice or Joe.

If you are a fan of science fiction and/or crime noir/mysteries, I will include my thoughts on a regular basis in the form of lists or reviews of books I have read.

I would love it if readers of The Inspector’s Report would ask questions and contribute content as well.

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Beta Prime, The Universe of Thomas Sullivan

Why Is The World of Beta Prime Not As Futuristic As Most SciFi Worlds?

If the movie or TV rights to The Predator and The Prey were purchased, would Capital City look like some fantastic, futuristic vision of urban life?

Probably not.

Parts of the Capital City would certainly appear as if they came from the wildest dreams of architectural fantasy. Certainly the Northwest Quadrant, where the wealthy and politicians make their homes, would appear to be futuristic. The Northeast Quadrant, with its industry, upper middle class and the SpacePort terminal would look futuristic.

But what about the Southern Quadrants? Where the poor and working class live?

Picture the tenements of North American industrial cities, where instead of brick and mortar, the buildings are converted containers left over from colonization with plastisteel facades. Buildings would have the same design and construction as the poured concrete buildings built in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Ugly, cheap to build and made for those considered beneath the ruling elite.

Hovercars require some type of fixed path to travel on requiring roads to be constructed. Perhaps the only advantage of a hovercraft over a wheeled vehicle is the roads will last longer.

There is very little that is truly new. Ideas are recycled all the time. Joe’s Restaurant, with its cliche neon lights, Classic Rock decor and North American comfort food, plus whatever the locals consider solid fare, is an example of retro styling and architecture some 500 years in the future.

Besides, Joe’s is home away from home. It’s an interesting place like Rick’s Cafe American of Casablanca fame is. The locals gather at Joe’s as do all sorts of interesting denizens of Capital City.

Old technology that works fine will be used on many Alliance worlds. As they say, if isn’t broken, there is no need to fix it. Railroads as we know them today, steel wheels on steel rails, are still used on many worlds where issues of climate and expense of construction and maintenance prevent the successful use of more “modern” technologies like Maglev Trains.

On a world like Beta Prime, a visitor would find a curious mix of the old, albeit updated, technology with the new. Soldiers and police would carry modern energy weapons with a variety of capabilities. Some soldiers and police prefer old school projectile weapons. As Inspector Sullivan constantly tells the pup Josephson, “a big exit wound is one way to make sure the perp stops shooting back.”

Fashion is one area where futuristic designs do make sense on a world like Beta Prime. But then again, what has come before often makes its way back through the fashion world. A tourist could expect to see the miners and industrial workers to be dressed in typical coveralls, designed both to protect the worker and keep the worker warm in the freezing environment of Beta Prime.

White collar workers, particularly the so-called elite and politicians would be those more inclined to wear the more daring fashion designs. Middle and working class fashions on Beta Prime tend to resemble those found in the 1940s and 50s with updates in materials. Life is dreary for many on the planet and the dark browns, blacks and blues of clothing reflect this aspect of life.

Classic styles, such as pin stripe suits, tailored to fit perfectly, never go out of style, regardless of the century, planet or city.

Other worlds, with different climate or life support needs, will have different levels of technology. Life on a moon, such as the two moons of Beta Prime, Serenity and Persephone, with no atmosphere, requires a more futuristic vision of the structures. The same is true of a colony on an asteroid of the space station serving as the terminal for large starliners and space freighters.

Why is the world I created for Inspector Sullivan and his companions to inhabit a mix of such commonly found items from today and the hoped and dreamed for technology of tomorrow? Because it is the way man does things.

We still make furniture from wood don’t we?

Still, if you look around, there is plenty to find that is not what one would expect to see in a city today.

Take Sarah. When was the last time you saw a human clone?

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