About A Truth Stranger Than Fiction

He’s BACK. Dako­ta Stevens, the tough, wise­crack­ing New York pri­vate eye…

A Truth Stranger Than Fic­tion, the 3rd nov­el in the Dako­ta Stevens Mys­tery Series by Chris Orcutt, delves into the bizarre, inter­con­nect­ed world of for­eign spies and fan­girls, mob­sters and mur­der­ers, gov­ern­ment bureau­crats and cor­po­rate prof­i­teers.

Man­hat­tan PI Dako­ta Stevens has just moved into new offices on Fifth Avenue when a young woman walks in with a prob­lem: her old­er broth­er, a famous sci­ence fic­tion author, has been miss­ing for a week.

Before Dako­ta even has a chance to take the case, he and the young woman are accost­ed by a horde of peo­ple search­ing for the broth­er: gov­ern­ment agents, thugs, mob­sters, and two mys­te­ri­ous Chi­nese men. What could her broth­er pos­si­bly be into?

In a case that leads from the streets of Man­hat­tan to the woods of Upstate New York, to Boston and the shores of Maine, to Wash­ing­ton, D.C. and the Midwest—by foot, train, truck, boat and pri­vate jet—what begins as a sim­ple miss­ing per­sons inves­ti­ga­tion quick­ly devolves into the most dif­fi­cult and per­son­al case of Dako­ta’s career.

In the end, Dako­ta expos­es a secret that lit­er­al­ly has the pow­er to change the world.

And the truth is a truth stranger than fic­tion.

With humor, action, intrigue, and lush writ­ing, A Truth Stranger Than Fic­tion is a com­pelling noir mys­tery in the tra­di­tion of Robert Park­er and Ray­mond Chan­dler.

“Very thought-pro­vok­ing and engag­ing mys­tery with deep­er impli­ca­tions, all wrapped up in humor and action. High­ly enter­tain­ing read (4.5 stars).” — The Portsmouth Review

Buy: Ama­zon

 

 

Excerpt from A Truth Stranger Than Fiction

We passed the slot machines, and the craps and roulette tables, before we reached the black­jack tables. If Svet­lana was in the casi­no, this is where she’d be. We strode past the tables, study­ing the play­ers at each one. There were lots of men in bowl­ing shirts smok­ing cheap cig­ars, and women in risqué blous­es drink­ing white wine, but nobody who even remote­ly resem­bled Svet­lana.

“Not here, huh?” Kelsey said.

“No.”

“I bet she’ll know.”

A cock­tail wait­ress approached with a tray of drinks. She was a mid­dle-aged blonde with after­mar­ket fea­tures and a hyp­not­ic sashay that wasn’t learned at Welles­ley.

“Good idea.” I pulled out a $20 bill and held it up to the wait­ress.

“Oh, hon,” she said, “can I get you on the way back?”

“We don’t need drinks.” I tossed the bill on the tray. “I’m look­ing for a friend. Ukrain­ian woman. Tall, trim, exot­ic look­ing. She’s a spe­cial guest of the hotel, and she plays a lot of black­jack.”

“Oh, yes…I know who you’re talk­ing about.” She point­ed at a room across the casi­no floor. “The high rollers lounge. Can’t miss her.”

“Thank you.”

We crossed the floor, and as Kelsey and I went inside, I ignored the fact that the oth­er men were in suits, a few even in din­ner jack­ets. Mean­while, I looked like a char­ac­ter out of a Jack Lon­don nov­el. A throng of people—mostly men—surrounded the cen­ter table, and were con­cen­trat­ed around one seat in par­tic­u­lar. Although I couldn’t see the per­son, I already knew who it was. Tug­ging on Kelsey’s arm, I par­doned my way to the front and stood at the side of the black­jack table with an unob­struct­ed view of the scene.

Svet­lana Krüsh, in a lit­tle black dress, sat fac­ing the deal­er, while ele­gant, sour-faced women stood in the back, clutch­ing cock­tails and look­ing dag­gers at her. On the green baize in front of Svet­lana was a small city of chips, a red drink in a mar­ti­ni glass, and an iPhone. She was star­ing down the deal­er. I didn’t envy him; as a chess grand­mas­ter with the eyes of a jun­gle preda­tor, she had the most for­mi­da­ble stare I’d ever seen. One of her cards was face-down, and the sec­ond was the Sev­en of Clubs. She tapped the baize with a fire engine red fin­ger­nail, the deal­er placed the Sev­en of Dia­monds in front of her, and she made a tiny wav­ing motion over her cards. The deal­er con­tin­ued past her, and when the cards were all revealed, Svet­lana had three sev­ens and won the hand.

There were two things I knew about black­jack: that the goal was to get to 21, and that Svet­lana Krüsh had the game down to an evil art.

Her hair was down, graz­ing her smooth shoul­ders. I admired her regal pos­ture, her grace­ful neck and lis­some hands—once again mar­veling at how I ever got any­thing done work­ing with her. Svet­lana was one of those rare women so stun­ning and bril­liant, she excit­ed the very air mol­e­cules around her.

 

Where does the title A Truth Stranger Than Fiction come from?

When you read the nov­el, you’ll see that the moon plays a part in the sto­ry, so at first I was play­ing with titles that had “moon” in the title. How­ev­er, even­tu­al­ly I real­ized that I was most inter­est­ed in the con­trast between truth and fic­tion and the believ­abil­i­ty of events, and I remem­bered a quote by Mark Twain:

“Truth is stranger than fic­tion, but it is because Fic­tion is oblig­ed to stick to pos­si­bil­i­ties. Truth isn’t.”

 

What did you do differently in marketing this Dakota Stevens mystery compared to the previous two books?

The major dif­fer­ence this time around is that I real­ly stepped up the pub­lic­i­ty, doing about two dozen radio and print inter­views in a month and a half.

I also wrote, direct­ed and edit­ed a book trail­er for A Truth Stranger Than Fic­tion:

 

Is there any connection between the story in the novel and real life?

Absolute­ly. The main plot of the mys­tery is based on con­sid­er­able sci­en­tif­ic research. When­ev­er I can, I like to write in keep­ing with Aris­totle’s max­im that “prob­a­ble impos­si­bil­i­ties are to be pre­ferred to improb­a­ble pos­si­bil­i­ties.” If you’d like to learn more about the plot of the nov­el, and you don’t mind spoil­ers, check out this blog entry I wrote.

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