PROLOGUE FOR A SHANKS NOVEL in case I ever write one

by Rob Lopresti

PROLOGUE

He had hiked a mile into the woods and the gun was getting heavy.

She was walking ahead, much faster than him, as usual, almost running. Almost as if she sensed what was coming, but it was the way she always moved, full of energy, wanting to stuff an extra minute into each hour, and cram twenty-five hours into every day.

It was the reason he had fallen in love with her. Ironic, now that he thought about it. He shifted the heavy bag from one shoulder to the other. It’s burden was biting into him like a guilty conscience. A bird, something small and dark, flew across their path, calling loudly.

And now she was back, bouncing like a puppy. “Come on! I want to get to the top before sunset.”

He thought about ending it right there. Just pull out the gun and put a stop to this terrible, agonizing prose.

Leopold Longshanks glared at his computer screen. He touched a macro button on his keyboard and sent the current file to an ever-growing folder called TRASH. He hated books with prologues. But his editor – who obviously didn’t know anything or he would be a writer, not an editor, after all – was insisting.

Shanks sighed. He tapped a key and tried again.

PROLOGUE

There is a rule in the publishing industry today that every mystery or suspense novel has to start with a murder. Preferably on the first page, but definitely in the first chapter. If the actual story doesn’t happen to start with death, then the author is expected to begin with a prologue that features some satisfactory violent event, either yanked from later in the book, or dragged forward from some character’s backstory.

This is cheap and stupid. It distorts the book and patronizes the reader.

This novel you are reading does not happen to begin with a murder. There will be deaths a-plenty but none that can be untimely ripped out of their proper niches and wedged into a prologue.

Here’s a suggestion. I’ve been writing these books for a long time. Chances are you’ve read some of mine before and know the kind of books I write.

So let’s have some faith in each other. You trust that I’ll put in some high quality murders when the time is right, and I’ll trust that you’ll read long enough to let the story develop.

We’re grown-ups here. We can do this.

Ready? Begin.