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    Violence Is the Only Solution: 3 Vic Powers Crime Tales
    Violence Is the Only Solution: 3 Vic Powers Crime Tales
    Violence Is the Only Solution: 3 Vic Powers Crime Tales
    Ebook89 pages1 hour

    Violence Is the Only Solution: 3 Vic Powers Crime Tales

    By Gary Lovisi

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    About this ebook

    These three Vic Powers stories present hard-boiled dysfunctionality at its most intense and brutal best. These are not tales for the easily squeamish, or those who want to spend their hours leisuring in countryclub-style mystery puzzlers. These are the darkest of excursions into taut, tough, nasty crime and noir excesses, featuring a flawed and violent hero whose life leads him on a one-way ride down into the very depths of his own demonic hell! These are the back alleys of the human heart--filled with shadowy recesses, dirty little secrets, and the occasional gallant gesture of a very human man who’s just trying to keep his head above the muck that always is threatening to engulf him. Great crime reading in the 1950s style, where...VIOLENCE IS THE ONLY SOLUTION!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWildside Press
    Release dateFeb 9, 2012
    ISBN9781434449481
    Violence Is the Only Solution: 3 Vic Powers Crime Tales
    Author

    Gary Lovisi

    Gary Lovisi lives in Brooklyn, New York and is a Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award nominated author for his crime fiction, and a Western Writers of America Spur Award Winner as editor. He is the founder of Gryphon Books, editor of Paperback Parade magazine, and the author of over twenty-five books, which include More Secret Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Ramble House); Murder of A Bookman (Wildside Press); and his collection of 23 hard crime stories, Ultra-Boiled (Ramble House). His dark science fiction novel Mars Needs Books! (Wildside Press) and Sherlock Holmes: The Baron’s Revenge (Airship27 Productions) have garnered praise, while his Jon Kirk of Ares Trilogy: #1, The Winged Men, #2 The Invisible Men, and #3 The Space Men is heroic pulp SF series in the tradition of John Carter of Mars. Homicide Harvest continues Lovisi’s chronicles of his hard-boiled tough guys Griff & Fats. Learn more or contact him through the Gryphon Books website: www.gryphonbooks.com.

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      Book preview

      Violence Is the Only Solution - Gary Lovisi

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 1993, 1995, 1999, 2012 by Gary Lovisi

      Published by Wildside Press LLC

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      DEDICATION

      For Lucille, as always

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      Violence Is the Only Solution was first published in Blood in Brooklyn, Do Not Pr, 1995. Copyright © 1995, 2012 by Gary Lovisi.

      Dogs Know was first published in 100 Dastardly Little Detective Stories, edited by Robert Weinberg, Stefan Dziemianowicz, and Martin H. Greenberg, Barnes & Noble, 1993. Copyright © 1993, 2012 by Gary Lovisi.

      Black Vomit was first published in Dirty Dogs: A Wolf-Pack Collection of Vic Powers Crime Stories, Gryphon Books, 1999. Copyright © 1999, 2012 by Gary Lovisi.

      VIOLENCE IS

      THE ONLY SOLUTION

      I believe in homicide.

      I’ve always believed.

      It’s just the way things turned out for me. There was no choice. No alternative I could ever see. The choice was simple, kill the evil or let it devour you. And let me tell you, the evil has one hell of an appetite. Ever since I was a kid. It was always so damn hungry.

      I’ve lived a while, done some things, been involved in some things. Killing has never really bothered me. Not all that much. As long as it was some scumbag who deserved killing that is, and Lord knows there’s plenty of those.

      I am always careful though. Usually. It’s crucial. So I always make sure. Never break my Golden Rule. Never, ever kill an innocent person. Never! That’s the one sure way to damnation. And that’s a road down into Hell you do not want to take.

      My one law is this: if you’re not sure a person is an innocent, then don’t do it. Just don’t do it. Do not do it. Leave them alone. Walk away. If you gotta, run away.

      But that’s all by and by what was on my mind lately.

      I was beginning to get a might testy with my country recently. Stuff I’d found out about the Vietnam MIAs, two different CIAs fighting a secret war with each other and the dirty deals to open trade with the same people in ’Nam who had murdered our soldiers. Others doing worse, selling children for sex in Thailand. To American buyers. Sex tourists. I’d like to crack their heads. The sellers and the buyers. Keep that whole market underground where it belongs, six feet underground.

      I thought of crazy Jack Rodríguez, blasting away at Congress, a man who had originally been imprisoned unjustly, then who had unwittingly discovered a secret book that I had mailed to the Washington Post. A book that had disappeared like it had never existed at all. I mean, Amelia Earhart and Jimmy Hoffa had nothing on disappearances when it came to that damn book being lost and forgotten. And the information in that book? Well, I knew now it would never, ever, see the light of day.

      Then there was Rodney King, the L.A. Riots, Ruby Ridge, Waco, the O.J. fiasco, Oklahoma City, all war cries in certain circles. Then there was a slew of recent court verdicts in trials that split the country right down the middle, splitting Americans against each other, not to mention a presidential campaign and fund-raising scam that was so crooked it made Tricky Dick Nixon look like a novice and a downright honorable SOB by comparison! It was so bad it might even bring down another American president!

      Of course, it was all common sense to see and to figure out, but common sense solutions didn’t seem to matter much in America any more. Talk about the damn Snail Darter? Common sense was the real endangered species in the 1990s in America.

      My country had become a nation where one side was forever at war against the other, and everyone had to choose up sides to survive, and there was no one left honest enough to say the truth. Or powerful enough to say the truth and get away with it. Without getting screwed. So he or she wouldn’t have their life and career destroyed. We were fast becoming a nation of sheep, where racists of every type, politically-correct storm troopers, self-serving hypocrites, and lying demagogues bought their way to power and out of crimes any average Joe or Jane would see serious prison time for. And no one seemed to care or know what to do about it.

      I’d had it with all the bullshit!

      It seemed that everyone from mutant Klan and Nazi morons to anti-White racist Black militants and irate hate-filled Muslin sects was in our face every day lately. Shouting, Kill the evil White Man!

      Kill the damn Blacks!

      Kill the Jews!

      Kill the....

      Well, you can fill in the blank.

      Kill them all! is all too many people only understand. Everyone at each other’s throats. All the problems, all the pain, all the lies—because all the time the implication too often seemed that violence was the only solution to the problems we faced.

      As a nation. As individuals.

      It’s in the news every single day.

      It made me so sick.

      You see, I understand violence.

      That’s why it sickens me.

      Yeah, me, Vic Powers, killer and louse, and a real bad guy. Some say too dangerous to let live. Them that tried to alter that reality are no longer with us. Yeah, so I’m a bad one. Sometimes. But I’m not an evil one.

      And there’s a big difference.

      I admit it. I’ve committed homicide. I believe in homicide. Sometimes it’s the only way to fight the true Evil. Or to fix something that’s gotten way out of hand and needs to be fixed real bad.

      You see, I know Evil too. Evil never gives up. It never goes away. Evil is hungry. Always hungry. Insatiable.

      It never stops.

      See, I don’t believe that Good can ever triumph over Evil like a lot of the fools do. I’ve seen too much not to know how things really work. Evil is just too strong, too incredibly relentless. In any kind of fair fight between Good and Evil, Evil will always win. Evil is tougher, stronger, Evil knows all the dirty tricks and uses them to devastating effect. Good is not single-minded or persistent. When Good guys win they pack it in and go home. The war’s over for them. Good guys don’t understand that while a battle may end, the war never ends. The war is never over. Evil never quits.

      Now let’s say you put up Bad against Evil. Now, that’s a different story. That’s where I come in. Bad will use Evil’s ways against itself. Like I do. Like I use homicide.

      I’m not afraid of taking care of a scumbag who deserves it either. I believe in homicide. So I’ll kill, but only those that deserve it—and there’s a lot deserving, believe me. But I’ll never cross over. Never kill an innocent. Never.

      * * * *

      I wondered who I was kidding. I’m telling myself this

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