The Long Count: A John Q Mystery

by JM Gulvin

Overview

A page-turning psychological puzzle for fans of Shutter Island and True Detective

'The detail is unerring ... and this magisterial grasp of time and place lends the story vivid veracity. The characters leap off the page and the plotting is faultless.' JOHN BOORMAN (Director of Point Blank and Deliverance)

'I loved this book: it has such a subtle sense of place, the clear writing pulls you in right from the start, and its ingenious plot line is both shocking and inevitable.' ANN CLEEVES

In the late 1960s, with America at war in Vietnam, John Q is an old school Texas Ranger - a gun on each hip and quick on the draw. Called to the apparent suicide of a fellow war veteran, John Q suspects all is not as it seems, and very soon faces a desperate race across state as he starts to uncover just how dark some secrets can be.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780571323807
Publisher:	Faber and Faber
Publication date:	05/03/2016
Series:	A John Q mystery , #1
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	300
File size:	417 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Born in the UK, JM Gulvin divides his time between Wales and the western United States. He is the author of many previous novels, as well as Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's bestselling travel book Long Way Down. The Long Count is his first John Q mystery and he is currently at work on the follow up. He is married and has two daughters.
Long Way Down. The Long Count is his first John Q mystery and will be followed by The Contract in Spring 2017.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Some people who were born here don't know the West, and others come here from very far away and find home for the first time. The West is its own place and Jim Gulvin knows it very well — a dandy book that is well written, well plotted, well everything — a great read." - Peter Bowen, Author of the Gabriel Du Pre' mysteries

Interviews

Q&A with JM Gulvin, author of THE LONG COUNT

What is a "long count?" Why that phrase for the title?
I made the title up. I'd been watching a TV program about hand-fishermen and heard a comment about how long someone can stay underwater. Given the early scene on The Red River, it was perfect.


This is your first crime fiction novel about John Quarrie — John Q — a Texas Ranger. Why make him a Ranger and not just a regular detective?
I wanted to combine a crime series with Old West values and I wanted the landscape to be part of that series. Back in the sixties the Rangers weren't quite the modern police force they are today, so that was the right role for John Q. Rangers respond to calls for assistance whereas most detectives specialize. Because of that Rangers investigate everything, so that gives the series the scope I'm looking for.


Can you tell us a little about your writing process — does the story come to you out of the blue or do you get to the end through writing? Do you have a writing routine?
It varies. I always know the end before I begin, but the story evolves as I work. I tend to write so much then go back to the beginning, go through it all again and write some more. I continue this way till I finally push for the summit.


The suspect in the book has escaped from a mental hospital — how much research did you do regarding mental health and crime?
I knew about the condition because I'd experienced it when I worked as a volunteer with mental health patients 20 years ago. I didn't do too much paper research as the condition is still not really recognized in the UK, though it is in the US. My approach was through the people I'd worked with.


John Q is a single father. His relationship with his son seems to inform his decency as a detective — he genuinely cares about the people he can help through the cases he solves. Who or what was your inspiration for his character?
The single father aspect came from me. I have two daughters I brought up on my own, and tried to instill a decent, can-do approach to life. He was also partially inspired by real-life Wyoming police officer Ed Cantrell.


You're British and yet you're writing about the American west — what brings you to that subject?
I grew up watching westerns on TV. By the time, I saw "A Fistful of Dollars" I was steeped in classic series such as The High Chaparral and Alias Smith & Jones. There was something about the landscape and the nature of the people I could identify with. I started to think I'd been born in the wrong place at the wrong time — then in the early 1990's I read "All The Pretty Horses" and that was it for me. From that moment, I started to build towards what I'm doing now. Perhaps as I'm not "on the ground" all the time — so to speak — I'm able to add something to the genre.


Who are your favorite crime fiction writers?
I don't read a lot of crime for fear of inadvertently pinching someone else's ideas. That said there are few writers out there better than Dennis LeHane.


What is the one book everyone knows that you wish you had written? "All The Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy


Was there anything that surprised you while you were writing THE LONG COUNT?
How natural it seemed given I'm not American, but British. My agent told me that after all these years I'd found my literary voice. He reminded me that one of the most read western writers of all time was JT Edson, from the UK. ###

Editorial Reviews

"At first blush, readers will think they’re meeting another leathery cowboy hero. He’s a Texas Ranger; his name is John Quarrie —he goes by John Q—and he taps his Camels on the base of his thumb and tells you that even if you have him covered, he can draw and kill you before you pull the trigger. 'It’s something I study on,' he says offhandedly. But a few pages in, we learn that John Q, like this novel, is different. He can glance at a supposed suicide and know it was murder because of the skin around the wound. He can study boot prints and tell you when that particular boot was adopted by the military. He’s confronted by a crime spun out of the biblical story of Ishmael and Isaac and promptly books up on dissociative identity disorder. Gulvin tells the story in terse noir prose salted with odd but effective inversions —'almost absently he seemed to stare'—and takes his time approaching the startling revelations in the finale. A challenging but rewarding read." - Booklist

"Set in 1967, Gulvin’s tightly plotted first mystery, a series launch, introduces Texas Ranger John Quarrie, a man of few words. During the investigation of a brutal beating of a cop, Quarrie visits the rural home of Ike Bowen. Bowen is dead, hunched over his desk, a gun in his hand. Judging by the powder burns on his face, Quarrie decides it’s a homicide made to look like a suicide. Bowen’s son Isaac, who just returned from Vietnam, insists that his father would never have killed him- self. Meanwhile, a killer is on the move, and the victims lead Quarrie to Trinity Hospital, an asylum for the criminally insane, which has just burned down. Isaac’s twin brother, Ishmael, was committed there and is one of those missing after the fire. Ishmael’s doctor is hiding something, and answers may lie in the remains of Trinity. Gulvin’s narrative has a distinctly cinematic feel, and his setting—the windswept plains and desolate highways of Texas—lends an eeriness that lingers throughout. The final twist is a doozy, and the devil is in the story’s cleverly seeded details." - Publisher's Weekly

"It’s the start of a hot Texas summer in 1967. Ranger John Quarrie is asked to take the long drive over to Marion County, where local police need his help in solving the brutal beating of a cop. John Q’s dispatcher interrupts the drive with a call to check on another “incident” not far out of the way. The incident looks like the suicide of a middle-aged military veteran, though John Q does not buy it. The dead man’s young son, Isaac, returns home after three tours of duty in Vietnam intending to surprise his now suddenly dead father. John Q and Isaac set out to find the killer or killers.
Strange little discoveries pull John Q and readers forward. More dead bodies turn up. The hunt accelerates and grows both more complex and ominous. John Q sees connections in the killings. Suspicion falls on Isaac’s twin brother, Ishmael, believed to have died in the fire of a local asylum for the insane but perhaps not.
Gulvin’s portrayal of widower and single father John Q works well. The crime details and settings ring true. Lesser characters are intensely human and interesting. The main plot and several subplots challenge logic but come together in a rousing ending that will surprise some readers and cause others to shout, “I knew it!”’
— The Historical Novel Society

From the Publisher