Jack Albert's New Stories:
Death Row Follies The Inquisition The Cheat Byron The Long Wait
Jack Albert's Column "My Villain Is Badder than Your Villain"
Tell Jack What You Think Jack Albert's Favorite Sites

Wherever you may be, you are now able to listen to Jack Albert read his short stories on the air. All you have to do is go to LUVER [http://www.luver.com] ("Love Underground Visionary Revolution"), the white hot spot on the Web. It's what Internet Webcast was meant to be.

The "Unicorn Coffee House" program airs on LUVER Webcast from 6pm-7pm Pacific Standard Time (same as 9pm-10pm Eastern Standard Time) and features Jack Albert reading the following stories:

Future readings will be also announced here.

To listen to Jack Albert, go to http://www.luver.com and click on any one of the power buttons. You will need the current version of the Real Player. This Player is available from http://www.real.com, and the FREE version (it's called Real Player 8 Basic) is not easy to find. But look carefully through the site and you will find it. After you load and test the Player, prepare yourself to take in some of today's top literature.

"Death Row Follies" is a short story by Jack Albert that was published in the August 2000 (vol. 74) issue of "Crystal Drum." About the story, and what went on in the author's mind and caused him to write it, Jack Albert has this to say.

I don't care if you call this one a fantasy. Or would you prefer to call it a "nightmare?" All I know is that if I wait any longer to tell you about it, it's likely to be in yesterday's news. Who knows, these days? Is this an accurate depiction of life in one of those antiterrorist prisons? It's up to the boldest thinkers amongst you to guess. At any rate, the story happens to be about the misadventures of a poor soul named Josh Adley, presently a prison inmate.

Let me describe for you how Adley got there. As a start, this guy happens to be madly in love with his wife, a familiar story, right? One day, he discovers that she's been meeting with one of her old cohorts, a man that exudes bad vibes and deeply into drugs, porn and sex. Josh confronts his wife, but she denies any wrongdoing, saying that she just wanted to help an old friend in his time of emotional need. Nonetheless, Josh follows her to her male friend's place to find her drugged and taking part in a wild three-couple orgy.

Unable to control himself, he goes home and looks for a weapon. Reappearing on the scene armed with a machete, he kills everyone there. His life a total mess, he just hangs around the crime scene in a catatonic state, to be picked up by the law and put in jail. Josh just doesn't care, and allows his fate to be put in the hands of a court-appointed attorney. The inexperienced lawyer makes one mistake after the other. As a result, Adley is sentenced to murder one.

Adley resigns himself to his fate. His wife, the love of his life, is dead and he has nothing to live for. Months go by in jail, and the passage of time does its thing. Josh starts to show signs of healing. He finally realizes that he is in a pickle, even tries to get the warden to help him avoid the death sentence. As his luck would have it, he is in one of those "modern" prisons, where they're trying new ways of doing things. The warden tells him he's going to try and help.

As the story opens, Josh is awakened, given a good meal and prepared for what appears to be his execution. But he notices that they're following a different procedure. Does this mean that the warden is keeping his promise? What is Josh being prepared for and why all the secrecy? A number of interesting questions. You can start to find answers when you CLICK HERE and sample the rest of the story. Jack Albert read this story on San Francisco's LUVER Web Radio on Tuesday, 19 September 2000.

Fans of good rock 'n roll music and of engrossing fiction, be on the look-out. "Lucid Moon" is planning to publish a new work entitled "The Inquisition" in their April 2000 issue (issue #39), written by Jack Albert and Harold Black. Those who've read it report their genuine pleasure at finally coming across people who know how to weave a good story.

Honestly, folks, let's face it: whenever someone mentions rock fiction to me, I instinctively start to yawn. It's more than I can handle. You say your story's got riffs on the electric guitar, bashes and cymbal crashes? Neato. You say you've got groupies hot to trot, coke heads and rolls of bread? Please do go on, and excuse my absence. Not for me, mate: I'm late, I'm late for a very important date.

But "The Inquisition," dear friends, that's a totally different matter. It's a story with cajones, a story that grabs you and does not let go. Since writing it, the authors have been besieged by people who, having read "The Inquisition," want to hear about a sequel. Harold Black is very enthused at the prospect, he's jumped on the next plane to La-La Land to spot our next location. Late last night, sounding very excited, he called in to say that he already had a title for the new story. He wants to call it "Murder at the Inquisition."

Me, I don't know. Certainly, I like the characters since I was the one who came up with them in the first place. But do I really want to spend the next several years penning one sequel after the other? Here, friend, start reading "The Inquisition." CLICK HERE and see for yourself. When you're done, please tell me what you think. Go ahead and write, you've got my e-mail address: sequel or no sequel? I thank you for your help.

"The Cheat" by Jack Albert is an original short story that appeared in the May 1999 issue (issue #33) of the literary magazine "Lucid Moon."

A gloomy working class suburb in today's French capital is the setting for this most unusual story. There, you will meet Albert Goussin, the dedicated but curmudgeon high school teacher, a man who has spent his career guiding and helping his students take their first steps in life. At this point in the story, Goussin has to face the consequences of the tragic loss of his dear wife, an event which has left him on the edge of depression.

On advice of his doctor, Goussin plans to take a needed vacation fishing the blue waters off the coast of Spain. That is when he happens to overhear bits of a conversation that lead him to suspect that two of his students are planning a complex scheme to cheat at an upcoming exam. The teacher becomes a sleuth in search of the truth, and the story takes on the air of a "noir" courtroom drama.

"Top fiction by a gifted master," one reader commented. "I have been deeply moved by 'The Cheat.' Please tell me where I can find more of Jack Albert's stories."

"I loved the story," another said. "Wasn't this the plot of a recent foreign film? If it wasn't, then maybe someone ought to quickly make it into one ... "

Read "The Cheat" in the May 1999 issue of "Lucid Moon" and find out if you agree with these readers. "Lucid Moon" is a top notch magazine that has won many literary awards and published works by Allen Ginsberg and Jim Morrison. You can read this story in it's entirety at the following link. When done, be sure to come back here by clicking your browser's BACK button. CLICK HERE to read "The Cheat.".

Over the years, the collection of "Cat Crimes" books has gained a considerable following. Cat mystery fans will be pleased to hear that a new installment is out under the title of "Cat Crimes Through Time," a 1999 hardcover mystery collection edited by Ed Gorman, Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Segriff, and published by Carroll and Graf ISBN 0-7867-0555-8.

Like its predecessors, this volume is destined to become a genre classic and was received with enthusiastic critical reviews. The stories in the book were written by some of today's top writers of mystery fiction. One story in particular is attracting a great deal of attention because of its original setting and the uncompromising style and pace of its narrative. The piece is entitled "Byron" and was written by Jack Albert.

"Byron" takes place during the 1958 Lebanese civil war. An Englishwoman named Lynn and her cat Byron cross over from the Christian zone to the Muslim side of Beirut. She has been sent there by a Christian Commander, with orders to find and kill Rustom, head of a Muslim militia group. Lynn has her own reason for going there. Her husband, leader of a Lebanese Christian militia has been ambushed and is rumored to be imprisoned by Rustom.

Lynn spreads the word that she is a reporter assigned to cover the civil war for "The London Times." But events move fast and she finds herself stranded in the middle of an artillery battle between the warring sides. A night of sheer terror follows, during which she is kidnapped and held for ransom. As she weighs the possibility that she may be tortured and killed, she ponders her chances to come out alive and accomplish her mission. Or should she drop her mission and go looking for her missing husband? For a taste of this superb story, CLICK HERE.

Praise for the "Cat Crimes" series:
"A grand collection indeed ... Scary, funny, clever, and traditional, each story has its own special flavor." -- "Mostly Murder"

"The Long Wait" appeared in vol. 3, No. 6 of "The Veneration Quarterly" (1996). A very fine magazine, "The Veneration Quarterly" is available from Perry Terrell Publishing, M. A. Green Shopping Center, Inc., Metairie Bank Building, 7809 Airline Highway, Suite 215-A, Metairie, LA 70003. Phone:(504)737-7781.

"The Long Wait" is the story of Fred Zale, a former soldier with a checkered past who is trying for a comeback by working as a driver for a corporation that manufactures videotaped movies. Fred's sexy female boss pressures him into making an urgent delivery to a downtown warehouse without the benefit of the usual security team. Feeling in no position to turn her down, he takes on the task. But no sooner is he on the road that his van loses all its brakes and he is immobilized on a bridge, near a crime-infested city neighborhood.

From his cellular phone, Fred calls his boss and asks her for help. She promises to send someone but the rescue is slow in coming. As darkness falls and a cold wind starts to howl on the bridge, a number of strange characters appear on the scene, showing interest in Fred's immobilized van and in its cargo.

Out of what seems like an ordinary traffic incident, Jack Albert manages to shape a memorable thriller that ends in a surprising way. Reading "The Long Wait" is an act of pure enjoyment. You can read this story in it's entirety at the following link. When done, be sure to come back here by clicking your browser's BACK button. CLICK HERE to read "The Long Wait.".

I have a weak spot for a good villain. Back in the serial movie days, the message expressed by Hollywood was that villains were probably like anybody else, that is, human. What made one man a criminal was to be born on the wrong side of the tracks, in the wrong family or under the wrong financial circumstances. "There but for fortune," as the song says, "go you or go I..." And in order to make sure people understood that you were a bad guy, you were dressed in black.

"Noir" movies undertook to expose these unfortunate circumstances, thus sometimes making the bad guy likable. I remember a whole theater rooting for Jimmy Cagney when, near the end of "White Heat" it became clear he was going to meet with a sad end (...I'm on top of the world, Ma'!!...). Yes, those were the days, when film-makers did not have the techno wizardry of today and all they could rely on was a good story full of imagination, a terrific script and good acting. In those days, whenever Hollywood needed to hire somebody of the stature of a Faulkner or a Fitzgerald, they got them. In many cases they had no idea what to do with them, but they got them just the same.

Then came the digital age of the nineteen ninetees. (Notice by the way, that I see myself forced to emphasize that it was the nineteen ninetees, during the last century, and not say the eighteen eightees. Might as well?) During the ninetees, as I wrote, movies started to feature villains that were much less human and much more like cartoons. How sophisticated can the average sixteen year old moviegoer be? This is all right, as long as the graphics are good and the public does not give the film makers any grief. "What? You don't appreciate how many Silicon Graphics workstations were used to make this flick?" The great movie of this period was "Pulp Fiction," and I still don't see what this movie is all about.

Next, Hollywood gave us villains that were real monsters and representatives of a new type of pathology: the serial killer. When the movie was the first of its genre and when in addition to that it was well written, such as for instance "The Silence of the Lambs," you had an entertaining show. So what do you do for an encore? Do you like a serial killer? Well, I'm gonna give you not one, not even two, but three! And that's how we got "Kiss the Girls," and an ending that I shall not reveal for the sake of those who still want to see that highly forgettable movie.

So we've had serial killers syndicates. I hope that this fad is over, because it has the problem of what do you do for an encore? I also wish that Hollywood would go back to presenting us marvellously complex inner souls for the bad and also for the good guys. I have a sneaking suspicion that there still may be some life left in the serial killer villain. After all, how can you go wrong when you have such historical models to work with as Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot, or even Papa Joe Stalin, just to mention a few?