Do You Love Mysteries?

By Carl Austin Image courtesy flickr For centuries it was said that the Moon made men crazy.   In fact, the word lunacy is defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary as being of unsound mind or around the bend.   The term also has at its core the word Luna, Latin for the Moon.   So, why is it that the current crop of billionaires along with millions of adoring fans and astronaut wannabes are crazy about going to the red planet?   It beats me, so I thought I’d better point out a few flies in the ointment.

By Carl Austin Image courtesy flickr As I write this blog there’s only one week left before Halloween.   I can still remember going door to door to collect candy when I was a kid growing up in Philly.   Living in a section of the city dominated by rowhouses meant having a door to knock on every ten feet.   Talk about being a kid in a candy store.   Within a few years I learned to trick or treat like a pro while ditching the traditional paper bag for a pillowcase that made it easier to hall away more sweet swag.   It’s amazing I still have all my teeth.

Russian spies working on Wall Street?   FBI agents swooping in to round up soviet operatives and diplomats whose aim is to crash the Stock Market?   It sounds like the plot for a Tom Clancy novel, doesn’t it?   But I’m afraid the conspiracy was all too real.   Even worse, the majority of the American public was totally unaware of how close this diabolical plan came to succeeding, much less what it means to the security of the country’s financial markets.

by Carl Austin Image courtesy flickr As my readers know, most of my novels take place in San Francisco and involve fictionalized accounts of the SFPD.   What most don’t know is that while works of fiction, I inject into every story elements of historical fact.   One of the facts that deserves mentioning is a little known but nevertheless fascinating incident that was later deemed  Fajitagate  by the San Francisco Chronicle.

By Carl Austin Image courtesy flickr As many of you know, I set most of my novels in San Francisco.  While doing research for one of them, I happened upon a news story that I first thought was fake news.  After a little digging, I came to realize it was all too real.  The story involves an upscale townhouse just off Telegraph Hill, a bevy of beauties and an intelligence operative who was prepared to use them and drugs to advance the course of mind control technology during the height of the Cold War.

By Carl Austin Image courtesy flickr Since the US recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, I thought I'd tell you about the little remembered mission that paved the way. I’m sure all you baby boomers out there can remember where you were on Christmas eve 1968.   That’s because it was the night the crew of Apollo 8 made history by beating the Russians to the Moon. While the 3-man crew of Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders never set foot on the lunar surface, they couldn’t if they wanted to since the Lunar Module wasn’t even aboard at the time of their flight.   But they were the first men to orbit to the Moon.   Not many people remember Apollo 8, since it was overshadowed by the first Moon landing as well as by the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission which almost ended in disaster. (It too included Jim Lovell aboard as spacecraft commander.)

By Carl Austin Are you familiar with the old adage, “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all?”   Well, that pretty much sums up Inspector Dennis Delaney’s situation in a nutshell.   For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of reading some or all of the four crime novels in which he’s been prominently featured, Dennis has had his share of bad luck.   Since the very first book, he’s not only been called onto the carpet by his superior, clubbed into submission by a Chinese gang member and brainwashed by a lovely lady librarian, but his finances are such that it’s a miracle he can keep a roof over his head.