JOSH PRATT

MODERN NOIR

I remember the moment I wanted to be a writer. I was in Mitchell, South Dakota, outside a cigar store. I’d just bought a John D. MacDonald paperback, The Deep Blue Goodbye. Thirty-five cents off a spinner rack. I stood on Main Street, holding that book in my hands, turning it over, staring at MacDonald’s picture on the back.

John D. wasn’t writing for his health. He did it for a living.

The book had a profound effect on me. It captured my imagination and didn’t let go. I read every Travis McGee novel as it came out, the last with regret. The Lonely Silver Rain wasn’t my favorite, but it was good. Travis McGee was a beach bum who lived on a houseboat he won in a poker game. The Busted Flush. He described himself as a salvage expert. If someone ripped you off and the authorities were useless, McGee would track it down and get it back. He kept half.

You may not know Travis McGee, but you know MacDonald. Paramount has launched the third version of his novel Cape Fear. The first starred Gregory Peck. The second starred Robert Mitchum as Max Cady, the criminal he put in prison on appeal. He was a scary, creepy character. The 1991 version stars Nick Nolte playing the prosecutor and Robert De Niro playing Cady. It’s on one of De Niro’s best films, and Nick Nolte plays a veteran prosecutor who won’t back down. You can’t ask for a better bad guy.

MacDonald’s novels were noir. So were Raymond Chandler’s and Dashiell Hammett’s. Chandler’s Philip Marlowe was a wisecracker. Hammett’s characters were tough, but often even more cynical. “From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From her feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from a distance,” Robert B. Parker’s Spenser was a wisecracker. Travis was a wisecracker.

I talked about understanding story in a previous column. I drew the best storytellers in comics. Before that I worked in the world of comics. I drew my first pages of Nexus, completed them, and showed them to people who understood the business. I learned the hard way that a story needs momentum, clarity, and a real emotional stake.

Steve Rude and I were in the right place at the right time. Capital City Distribution, the second-largest comic distributor in the world, wanted to publish original material. They wanted a superstar. I drew the first two pages of Nexus, created the character design, and then kept going. Because of my work on Nexus and Badger, the Big Two offered me work. Carl Potts asked me to write Punisher, and Mike Gold asked me to write Flash.

I had a long run in comics, writing for many publishers. I bought a house with a swimming pool in Madison and paid it off. I felt out of the industry though nobody’s fault but my own. I didn’t know how to manage a career. I made poor choices. My wife was fine when I was making money. We went to Jamaica every year. When I couldn’t get work, I took any job I could get. I was a janitor. My wife left me when I was in a deep funk. So be it.

I also worked on the road for a while. I was once let go from a job at a packing plant because I had a drinking problem. My life was not always graceful, but it was always lived hard. The road taught me how to survive. That’s useful for a writer.

I wrote what I knew. Bit by bit I got better. I described this in my column, The Long Road to the Mountain Top. A man I knew named Scott Bieser lived in Cheyenne. Scott was a lifelong Libertarian, but I still loved him. His brother created the Big Head Press and published graphic novels including Scott’s magnum opus, Quantum Vibe. They wanted to publish me, and I wrote The Architect for them.

The Architect is a horror story based on the life of Frank Lloyd Wright. If you want something dark, strange, and memorable, it’s one to read. You can find it currently on sale over at BaronComics.com, and it makes a great companion read if you’re already following my newer work.

I wrote Banshees, about a satanic rock band that comes back from the dead. See The Long Road. I have written three horror novels. Skorpios is about a ghost who only appears under a blazing sun. Domain is a haunted-house story involving my Wright surrogate, Roark Dexter Smith.

I’m a lifelong biker. I sold my last motorcycle last year because my legs no longer have the strength the machine requires. I wrote Biker because I was a lifelong biker and thought I got a bum rap in the media. The Wild One, Hell’s Angels on Wheels, Yellowstone — I liked Sons of Anarchy.

I wanted to write noir. Engrossing mysteries take a dark view. I rode to Sturgis in 2000. See Tom’s Road King on my substack. I was riding into Madison when I passed a roadside marker. A bicyclist had been hit by a car. His name was Josh Pratt. I took the name. A reformed motorcycle hoodlum went to prison, found God, and gets determined to turn his life around. He rode with the Bedouins.

Elmer Josh Pratt is an ex-con turned private investigator. Greer Muza, a woman dying of cancer, hires him to find the son she lost as a baby. The child’s father is a sadistic sociopath named Muon who has vowed to kill her and Josh’s girlfriend, Cass, for ratting him out. The trail leads to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and winds into no-man’s land, where Josh learns the monstrous fate of the stolen child.

Although cycle gangs figure in some of the stories, most deal with Josh’s role as a court of last resort. A bodyguard, as in Buffalo Hump. A detective, as in Sons of Privilege. A warrior. Josh doesn’t talk much. He listens. He doesn’t shove his religion in other people’s faces. He prays at night before he goes to bed.

There are ten Biker novels. The latest one, Departure Day, wraps things up in a way that gives Josh hope. It’s about Josh’s plan to peacefully remove the Tere De Agua gangs who have taken over Milwaukee apartment buildings, like they did in Colorado. The ending will come as a complete surprise in retrospect, and it’s inevitable.

Dusty Saddles will publish my novel Bronze Star in August. Wartgate will publish my novel Seer sometime this fall. The former is based on the graphic novel. And a lot more. The latter is about a telepath who goes to Hollywood to expose pedophiles.

You can find my graphic novels at BaronComics.com. Next up: Nexus: Triplets. Three years in the making. Finished. Lettered. Ready to go to the printer with pre-orders starting next month.