Shoot the Moon (and more)

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Shoot the Moon (my alternate title was Wynning Streak), was written in the first phase of my career. When I wrote the novel, I had already sold Bait Money, No Cure for Death, Quarry, Blood Money, and The Baby Blue Rip-off.

Between contracts, I decided to try something different. I was very much in the sway of Donald E. Westlake at the time, and my first novel (Bait Money, and its sequels as well) might be fairly termed “Richard Stark” pastiches. Before I knew that Westlake and Stark were the same writer, they were my two favorite contemporary crime fiction writers — indeed, they were the last two crime fiction writers to influence me in any major way. Their works sat on the same shelf, with a bookend separating them. When I learned Westlake was Stark, I simply removed the bookend. (Don loved that story.)

On its most basic level, Shoot the Moon was an attempt to do the kind of comic crime caper Don was known for, under his own name. He was mentoring me at the time, and I now wonder if he was irritated that I had chosen to imitate him yet again, in another fashion. When he read Shoot the Moon, he was not enthusiastic, and suggested I had gone overboard with the discursive approach. The version in this collection reflects a cutting and revision based on Don’s generous notes (the original doesn’t seem to exist).

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