The Radio Murders: The Collectors

"Sometimes you gotta be dead before anybody knows you’re alive."
- Gene Minues,
Talk Radio Caller

 

It All Goes Wrong

When I set out to write The Radio Murders, I held radio in contempt. I’ll admit it. I had spent nearly 30 years learning, practicing really, a craft that had changed tremendously. At the time I felt it was not a change for the better.

I had not spent a lot of time with talk radio, but following September 11, 2001 the format and the people who performed it changed dramatically. There were many of the same names, many of the same stations, but the shows created a new kind of room. They took sides, in the words of George W. Bush, you were with them or against them.

In Cleveland radio there was a man named Gary Dee. He may have been one of a kind. He was outrageous by design. He know all the triggers, all the buttons to push to get a city with a terminal inferiority complex to stand up and scream, mostly at Dee’s antics.

Fast forward to the era of Rush and Howard; one-named superstars who, like Gary Dee, found a way to rise above the noise only they became national institutions. Behind these men were hundreds, maybe thousands of imitators. Some worked hard to provide serious or seriously funny content. Most took the easy way out and stacked stupid stunts on top of dumber dialogue.  In many ways the first electronic medium hit a new low.

It wasn’t much of a reach to imagine a man like Crash Kradich letting the flow of time and events to bring him to the point of airing murder on a regular basis. The trick was to do it while staying out of court, jail or the morgue. That’s where the story gets interesting.

 

Inside The Radio Murders

 

The Radio Murders: The Collectors has plenty of victims. But this is just a story, drawn from the imagination of a writer, nothing more. Sadly, there are real victims in our society because there is real evil. With that in mind the author and publisher of The Radio Murders: The Collectors have agreed to donate a dollar of every hardback and half that for trade paperback sold.

So Who Wrote TRM?

Sitting down and writing a full-feature mystery novel, or anything for the public, takes certain assumptions.

We are all storytellers in one way or another. But what makes this storyteller think this tale is worth your time?

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The Book

A Simple Idea

The Radio Murders is a simple idea; a radio talk show about real-time murder, As It Happens with a deadly twist.  How could such a thing exist? More importantly, how could it become an entertainment vehicle?

The latter is not so difficult to conceive. We have a bloodlust evident from the beginning. It took four short chapters of The Bible before we had our first murder mystery. It was predicated only by sex and betrayal. Sex has been regulated almost out of radio except in the most nuanced terms. Betrayal is a side dish at best.

So what’s left?

The Radio Murders: The Collectors vividly illustrates how greed, revenge and vanity deconstructs a suburban Chicago family, and draws a relative, a Chicago talk show host, into their deadly pursuits. As a result a home invasion and murder is actually aired, live during Bill "Crash" Kradich’s broadcast. The event is a ratings winner and sends some staff at radio station KCI on a mission to create and "own" the concept.

As part of the Janich family’s near demise, another group of men become involved. Known only as The Collectors, these men take greed to epic heights and will not stop until they acquire some very special items. The Radio Murders: The Collectors tells both stories as they move along parallel runaway courses only to collide in a stunning climax.

Are You Ready?

The Radio Murders is not for everyone. There is plenty of action in this story and it is adult in nature.

The Collectors is not a Romance, not a Cozy Mystery or light reading. "This is not a two-dimensional story," said one reader. "There are layers, each more interesting than the last." The Radio Murders is at times a story about desperate people doing desperate things. And the people you find here do what people do. There is sex, harsh language and graphic scenes of crime and murder.

If you enjoy the work of James Patterson, Michael Connelly, Tami Hoag, Jeffery Deaver, Patricia Cornwell and others who are not affraid to tell a difficult story, then you are exactly the person I am writing for.  The Radio Murders: The Collectors is not a story for the easily offended.

Just thought you should know.

-Chuck Collins

Coming Soon to Amazon.com

The Radio Murders will debut at on-line stores everywhere in December.

 

Now Available at Barns&Noble.com

The Radio Murders: The Collectors is now available at one of the nations' leading booksellers.

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