Tuesday, October 24, 2017 | By: The Write Way Cafe

Tuesday Special: The Killer Who Hated Soup with Bill Brier

BILL BRIER



The Internet? Never heard of it. Smart phones? Who you kiddin’? We’re talkin’ 1956.

Energetic and eager to make his mark on what Time magazine called the next great boom town, Bucky Ontario leaves his Louisiana home and hops a bus to Defiance, Oklahoma, a town not particularly averse to murders, just the embarrassment of them. While helping his friend, Kindra search for a ring that once belonged to her dead mother, Bucky is told: “Find the baby, find the ring.”




The Birth of 
THE KILLER WHO HATED SOUP

The car, dripping with sludge, hung from a crane. “Honey, get in here—quick,” I called from the TV room to my wife. In 1957, the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in honor of its fifty years of statehood, put to rest a brand new Plymouth Belvedere under the courthouse lawn, figuring that fifty years later, they’d bring it back to life.

So they thought.

It was now 2007, the state’s one-hundredth birthday, and the whole town came bopping out, nervous as crickets on a dance floor. In the car were hundreds of postcards, on which citizens had written their guesses of the town’s now current census. The person with the closest guess (or, their descendant) would be given a hardy handshake and the keys to the classic automobile.

Unfortunately, the winner got neither. After decades of hibernating in cold, wet darkness, the car that emerged was no more than, well, a rust bucket. The Belvedere’s concrete vault was not up to fifty years of trucks rumbling past on the street above.

As I watched the car lowered to the ground, and the slimy brown covering being peeled back like diseased skin, I thought to myself, There’s a story inside that car’s trunk. Hence, the birth of The Killer Who Hated Soup.

And the title?…that’s story for next time.

About Bill: 
     Bill grew up in California and went to Hollywood High School, then served as an Air Force combat cameraman. After hiring on at Disney Studios as a film loader, he soon advanced and moved on to other film studios. He earned a master’s degree in psychology. A big help when working with Trumpish Hollywood producers.
     During his more than twenty- five years in the movie business as a cameraman, film editor, and general manager, Bill worked on everything from the hilarious, The Love Bug, to the creepy, The Exorcist, to the far out, Star Trek and Battle Star Galactica.
     Eight years ago, Bill switched from reading scripts to writing mysteries and driving racecars. After completing three award- winning novels, he signed with Black Opal Books. His first novel, The Devil Orders Takeout, is a standalone thriller about a devoted father and husband who makes a deal with a real- life devil to protect his golf- prodigy son after his wife and older son are killed in a mysterious accident — and pays hell for it.
    Bill’s second novel, The Killer Who Hated Soup, is Book One in the 1950s The Killer Who mystery series, and is available NOW! Book Two of the mystery series, The Killer Who Wasn’t There, is scheduled for release February 24, 2018!
     Bill writes everyday and golfs infrequently (that damn right knee!). His five children and eight grandchildren keep him busy going to birthday parties, and he never misses a one!
     The Brier Patch is Bill’s wildly entertaining blog about his shameless early days in Hollywood. It’s here on his website, along with a contest linked to The Killer Who Hated Soup, which will award the grand prizewinner $1,000.
     Bill is a member of Mystery Writers of America.

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2 comments:

HiDee said...

Very descriptive! Thanks for being with us today, Bill.

Lynn said...

Your books sounds very intriguing. Thank for being on our blog and good luck!