Irish-born, Cleveland cop Jimmy Hanrahan is my most-frequently re-visited,
fictional sidekick, not just in the Hector Lassiter series, but in my books about Lassiter forerunner
Chris Lyon, journalist-turned-novelist-turned-vigilante and uneasy family man.
In ROLL THE CREDITS, Jimmy’s third of his five significant
appearances in my fictional universe, reciting from government files, OSS agent
Duff Sexton at last gives a little official background on the man:
“James
Butler Hanrahan,” Duff said. “Born March 17, 1902, to Stephen and Molly
Hanrahan in Rathgar, Ireland. Your father was an English professor who moved
the family to the States when he accepted a teaching position at Western
Reserve University in Ohio in—”
That tells
you at least a little more about the man.
Actually,
in a fictional sense, Jimmy was born about 1990 when I was writing my first
novel—not first-published novel mind you—called PARTS UNKNOWN.
After many
years lost ala Hector, struggling to
write the literary novels I thought I was obligated to write but which I was
not particularly passionate about, sparked by James Ellroy’s THE BIG NOWHERE, I
at last turned my hand to so-called “crime fiction.”
For
subject matter, I cast back to a historical fiend who stalked northern Ohio
during the hard years of the Depression, a homicidal whack-job dubbed variously
the “Torso Slayer” and the “Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run.”
Taking two
actual cops who chased the Mad Butcher—one of those detectives did so long-past
his official badge-carrying days—I melded the two men into Irish cop Jimmy
Hanrahan.
Jimmy was
tarnished reporter Chris Lyon’s sidekick in two long-ago written novels a solid
decade before he shouldered his way into three Lassiter novels, including ROLL THE CREDITS, THE RUNNING KIND (coming soon) and PRINT THE LEGEND.
(If you
look closely, you’ll catch a glimpse of him in the latter pages of the
forthcoming HEAD GAMES graphic novel.)
There’s a Website
I’ve contributed more than a few pieces to, called MY BOOK, THE MOVIE. If I was
to write a piece about Jimmy for that site, my ideal actor to play the role would
have been Charles Durning. When I write Jimmy, when I hear his voice in his
head, it’s Durning I’m seeing and hearing.
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