The Double Life of Tutweiler Buckhead
Miriam Pia
Genre: urban fiction, magical realism,
crime fiction, mystery
Publisher: SBPRA
Date of Publication: 2015
ISBN: 978-1628572254
Number of pages:300
Word Count: 95,000
Book Description:
Frustrated by the audacity of local villains, the sheriff of Marion County turns to the mayor. Urban fiction set in a real city, The Double Life of Tutweiler Buckhead takes some of the charm of vigilante comic book heroism and mixes it with the nitty gritty of contemporary crime fiction.
A band of champions searches for the missing pieces in the evil plot of a local drug kingpin in The Double Life of Tutweiler Buckhead: An Adventure in Indianapolis.
Ideal for those who love events of the outside world and the workings of the mind – characters’ actions and thoughts are portrayed in this contemporary novel – with just a touch of magic.
About the Author:
Miriam Pia has been writing for decades, including over ten years as a professional. Most of her work was done without a byline and as a ghostwriter. This is the author's first published novel.
The Double Life of Tutweiler Buckhead
Setting: For those of you who don't
know, Indianapolis is a big city in the East of the Midwest.
Depending on where you live it could seem like the bright lights and
the glamour of a big city instead of a farming town or you could find
it to be a mellow, laid back place if you are used to a Megalopolis
like NYC, Chicago or LA.
Hence, the story begins: Indianapolis
was striving to become a place that New Yorkers no longer laughed at.
Maybe you have heard of Indianapolis
due to the Motor Speedway or the Indianapolis Colts football team,
since they even won the Super Bowl a few years ago. There are also
sculptures of post-modern art, galleries, artist studios, museums,
horse drawn buggies and paddle wheel boats on a downtown canal.
There are a few skyscrapers and a War Memorial. The state government
for Indiana is right downtown. There are right around 1 million
people living in or near enough to Indianapolis to be included. The
city is surrounded by a highway loop, which is normal nowadays. The
highways that lead people into or out of the city and around it, are
the I65 and 465.
The 1 million people: Well, the city I
grew up in and around has half that many people - or did. Then
again, when I moved to Indianapolis, I moved there from Greater
London which harbors 12 million people- or maybe only 8 million.
Plot: The title may seem misleading to
some, but that suits the whole situation. The protagonists are
striving to prevent a crime during the planning stages. From there
perspective, the villain is a mysterious criminal mastermind hiding
behind a veil of respectability.
Readers are granted the great insight
of having the villain's name, which is one of the most important
pieces of information the protagonists would like to have. The
character's name was developed from inspiration. Working as a
contract writer for a Atlanta Real Estate a few years before I wrote
the novel, I learned about Buckhead, an upscale neighborhood well
known to Atlanteans. It stuck with me and just seemed ideal for the
type of villain starring in this story. I don't even remember how I
came up with Tutweiler aside from the vague resemblance to the name
of the dog breed rotweiler. I wanted the villain to be a well
dressed, tall, probably caucasian man with long brown hair and
excellent shoes right along with good manners and a decent lowr
middle class day job. A corporate man. A contemporary man. A man
who frighteningly resembles one of the mid level managers in nearly
half of the large companies in urban America. He really might have
been one of the men in your office building.
I felt that might add at least a small
tingle of excitement for readers, as they go about their busy urban
days. This is not the same as when the media tries to terrorize the
general public into losing all trust in everyone else, but it is just
that, well, I wanted the identity of the villain to be like that
rather than the sort of undereducated working class ruffian or tough
guy type of villain. Someone not likely to be at either the top or
the bottom of the hierarchy in a large business but probably
management.
Our heroes: I love team work. As a
consequence, the protagonists in The Double Life of Tutweiler
Buckhead, are primarily a team of 4 people backed by the city
government and the law enforcement agencies of the city. The lawyer
does operate as a facilitator type of leader: he organizes team
meetings, he is the direct report to the Mayor, and he writes us the
contracts. Beyond that though, his role does not have the same kind
of 'starring role' that one gets in a novel with one clear main
character nor as the clear starring role in a movie. He does not
even get most of the attention in the novel but he does call every
meeting.
I have enjoyed the classic detectives
of juvenile and adult fiction from both print and visual media. I
read all of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories and still don't
tire of the movies and TV episodes of those tales. Mousier Poirot,
and the gang from Scooby Doo went into my juvenile mind along with
Nancy Drew & the Hardy boys detective tales. Murder She Wrote,
During the couple of years prior to writing the novel I had also
watched some CSI and I liked the way teamwork was portrayed in the
crime solving.
As a consequence, the protagonists in
The Double Life of Tutweiler Buckhead, are primarily a team of 4
people backed by the city government and the law enforcement agencies
of the city. The lawyer does operate as a faciliator type of leader:
he organizes team meetings, he is the direct report to the Mayor, and
he writes us the contracts. Beyond that though, his role does not
have the same kind of 'starring role' that one gets in a novel with
one clear main character nor as the clear starring role in a movie.
He does not even get most of the attention in the novel but he does
call every meeting. The priest mainly serves the Sheriff as an act
of personal service and God through total personal surrender and
service throughout the novel. How a priest makes himself useful in
the unraveling of a plot to build a drug lab in the city is not what
I could call 'predictable'. There is a character who's role is to
be 'the muscle' 'the fighter' for the team. His character represents
what would be the personification of the military soldiers as a
whole, if they were involved. The character is a strong and warm
hearted rather than mean spirited fellow, who is courageous and feels
protective of his fellow man. He also likes weapons. His real name
- I mean, the character's regular name is never used but he is called
by his online screen name throughout the entire novel for reasons not
disclosed. In truth, in real life, I normally use my real name as my
screen name but my son has a screen name or two that he has used for
nearly ten years now. My son is nothing like the character in the
novel who uses only his screen name, but all those who have screen
names - including my son may be what really inspired me to have one
of them going by his screen name in the novel. The other main
character stands out from the others by being: female, left handed,
and a professional criminal. She is most definitely not 'Cat Woman'
but everyone who knows that character will not be able to avoid
seeing the similarities because she is also a career criminal and not
the most moral. Her moral condition by the way, is not due to her
gender.
Areas of experimentation: Some aspects
of this novel resemble experimental fiction, in that, as an author I
tried a few things. The most dramatic quality that sets this novel
apart are the multiple points of view and massive amounts of
character mind reading that goes on. I did it that way to
intentionally create and grant a depth of intimacy with the
characters for readers that mimics how intimacy works in real life.
I would love reader feedback about whether you all loved this - was
that the greatest thing about this whole novel? Or was it only okay,
or even worse? Of course, I hope every reader finds the story great,
but scathing reviews and passionate reports about how wonderful it is
are both better, in my own view, than if it is just drab and not
worth noticing.
Team: having the team of main
characters within the novel is a little bit of an experiment. Again,
I would love feedback about this for future novels.
Magical realism: I wrote magical
realism into the novel. Compared to most fantasy novels that means
the magic is barely discernible. Compared to novels that have no
magic in them whatsoever, there is some. Some of it is wizardry or
witchcraft or sorcery and the rest of it is done by God through that
priest.
If any, some or all of these factors
appeal to you, then definitely check out this great first novel by
Miriam Pia!
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