Another Niche Publishing House: Hard Case Crime For Every Secret Revealed, Another is More Deeply Hidden

There used to be a second hand bookstore down by the bus depot where the books they sold all had lurid covers, mangled pages and appealed to a certain type of buyer. Oh, they stocked some political polemics there too, but I collected that bit of information from a friend, never having the nerve to do more than furtively glance in the windows and quickly move on. So it was almost in shame that I walked around the past couple of days carrying the paperback by Domenic Stansberry, The Confession, with it garish drawing of a frightened, big-busted red head and the shadowy, darkened hands of her assailant, wielding a tie to choke her.

Stansberry once again sets his story around San Francisco, this time narrated by Jake Danser, a forensic psychologist who usually testifies as to an accused criminal’s insanity. Danser’s knowledge of psychopathic behaviors and his self-aggrandizement, coupled with en pointe phrasing and structure by Stansberry, makes this book a page turner, one that has tension building from the very beginning, and tone that is fast paced and flippant in contrast to the operatic elegy of his Last Days of Il Duce.

Danser writes his story as self-analysis, a report on the mental health of someone who only wants to reveal so much about himself, mostly the attractive angles. His flirtation with a more full disclosure becomes a bit more explicit with the start of chapter seven: “Absent death, the attention flags. Every newspaper editor knows this, as does every writer of lurid tales. Those of you who do not know my story – who missed it as it ran though the tabloids – may find yourself impatient. Of what am I accused? What are my crimes, you wonder, and what is my motive for this so-called confession? To deceive.”

As Danser prepares his expert witness testimony for alleged wife murderer, a defense of situational memory loss, he quotes from Kleindst, that this syndrome is easily feigned among criminal populations and “practiced with great flair by psychopaths and other malingerers.” A few pages later, Danser on the stand displays his own kind of sociopathic behavior: “ … I paused, my eyes skittering over the jurors, drawing in first one, then another. I was flirting with them, I suppose, the way a speaker flirts with a crowd, bestowing a glance here, there (and his oral argument resumes) … But their social dexterity is a mask. Underneath, psychopaths lack compassion …”

By chapter fifteen as Danser continues his treatise, touting his expertise, he opines: “… This kind of memory loss, though, is relatively rare. At leas that is the current thinking. Most of these amnesiacs, in criminal cases, they are liars. In reality, they remember every instant. They relish their crimes. They compose memoirs, elaborate testimonials that feign innocence yet contain within them the secret admission of guilt. When cornered, they place the blame elsewhere – on some associate, perhaps, scheming against them." Okay, here you have the plot in a nutshell: Danser’s dalliance, his mistress herself being strangled, his squaring off against the prosecutor who is seen quite often with Danser’s wife, low-life, seedy private investigators, high-stakes gamblers pursued by the mob -- a cast of usual suspects.

Stansberry advances the story line with almost imperceptible increments – just the right word, an off-hand comment or aside, faint childhood memory – to plant enough doubt and no court room solid way to prove guilt.

Like the other ones of his I’ve read so far, Stansberry is writing about crime or sin or passion as having its roots deep within a person, arising from his family and surroundings. Danser mulls while jogging: “… thinking about the notion that the things that happen to us, they are not just arbitrary, but a reflection of our inner state. The turmoil of the self is the turmoil of the world.”

The Confession won Stansberry another Edgar and I continue to race through his mysteries, reserving yet another two at the library yesterday. But given the other mounds of awards that the books published by Hard Case Crime, I will also look for:

Little Girl Lost by Richard Aleas
Kiss Her Goodbye by Allan Guthrie
Robbie’s Wife by Russell Hill
Money Shot by Christa Faust
Fade to Blonde by Max Phillips