The snuff film is an urban legend. There has never been a single one found and the few that have proclaimed to be such have been consistently proven to be fraudulent. However, we only have to take a trip to our local video store or movie theater to be confronted with our society’s fascination with violence and gore. I recall the first time I saw Sam Peckipah’s The Wild Bunch. I had returned from a year serving with the Marines in the Republic of South Vietnam. During the first shooting scene I recall thinking, I just spent a year in a combat zone and didn’t see anything like this! What has followed over the years has made that classic movie seem tame.
Somewhere along the way, our society has come to believe that we have to see the weapon hit home. We seem to overlook the power of our imagination. Truly, one of the most disturbing scenes ever filmed was the infamous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Psycho, based on the 1959 novel by Robert Bloch. Audiences recoil in horror as a deranged Anthony Perkins attacks an obviously nude Janet Leigh as she showers. However, the power of the scene is not in what it shows, but rather in what it doesn’t show and how our imaginations fill in the gaps. For many years, I believed that Hitchcock showed the knife strike; it was only years later when I watched the film as an adult that I realized that nothing could be further from the truth.
However, the fact that there has never been a snuff film made for commercial distribution does not mean that such an event has never been captured on film. (Remember the famous photo from Vietnam of a security officer shooting a Viet Cong in the head? That photo turned the nation against the war.) Each and every day we learn of new levels of depravity inflicted by one human being on another.
I pray that we never find out.
Vaughn C. Hardacker
March 2016
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As is always the case when one finishes a work of fiction, I owe thanks to many people. To list a few: My domestic partner, Jane Hartley. During the course of a long northern Maine winter, when cabin fever threatened to make us both homicidal, she read the finished manuscript (several times) and was always willing to tell me what I needed to hear; not necessarily what I wanted to hear.
Thanks are also owed to Linda (Lockhart) Hamilton and Penny (Monteith) Celino who were there at the beginning. Avid readers of my sophomoric writing in Caribou Junior High School, they cornered me at the thirty-fifth reunion of our high school graduation asking, “Why haven’t we seen any of your books?” I couldn’t answer their question and turned to my wife for support. She said, “Why haven’t they?” So I got off my keester and wrote them. Thank you, ladies; without your encouragement it might never have happened.
To be successful, a new writer needs a strong critique group of writers who are willing to read the bad stuff and to be strong enough to give the writer constructive, honest criticism. I have been fortunate to be involved with the Breathe group in Maine. Thanks are due to Wendy, Heather, Vince, Larry, and Michelle for their invaluable feedback and input.
Thanks are also owed to several former members of law enforcement and authors in their own right, Brian Thiem (former commander of the Homicide Section of the Oakland, California PD), Bruce Hoffman (fellow Marine, who served with me in Vietnam, Captain on the Hillsborough County Florida Sheriff’s Office), Paul Doyle (retired DEA agent), and Lee Lofland (former police detective). Paul’s memoir of his years as an undercover DEA agent in Boston (Heavy Shots and Heavy Hits: Tales of An Undercover Drug Agent) is a fascinating look into the life of an undercover agent. It helped me to understand the many challenges faced by the men and women who perform this vital function, not to mention the stress they face daily (both personal and professional). Lee’s Police Procedure & Investigation: A Guide for Writers didn’t leave my side as I worked through the manuscript … It is a must have for anyone who writes crime and thriller fiction.
Special thanks are owed to my agent, Paula Munier, and my editor and her team at Skyhorse Publishing, who spent a great deal of time and effort overcoming my love for ellipses while copyediting the work. You’ve got to hand it to a couple of women who will tell you to delete that wonderful scene you wrote (but that truthfully belongs in another book) and when you balk say: “Just do it!”—especially when you’re working overtime trying to find ways out of it!
This book is a work of fiction and any mistakes within are entirely the fault of the writer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The following listed sources were of invaluable assistance to me in the writing of this novel:
1. Private Eyes: A Writer’s Guide To Private Investigators, Hal Blythe, Charlie Sweet, and John Landreth, ©1993, Writer’s Digest Books, an imprint of F&W Publications, Inc.
2. FM 3-19, Law Enforcement Investigations, January 2005, Department of The Army, Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited.
3. Police Procedure & Investigation: A Guide for Writers, Lee Lofland, © 2007, Writer’s Digest Books, an imprint of F&W Publications, Inc.
4. Heavy Shots and Heavy Hits: Tales of An Undercover Drug Agent, Paul E. Doyle, © 2004, Northeastern University Press.
5. STP 21-1-SMCT, Soldier’s Manual of Common Tasks, October 1987. Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited.
6. The Tempest, William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, ©1994 Barnes & Noble Books.
7. The Art Of War, Sun Tzu, Translated and with an introduction by Samuel B. Griffith, © 1963, Oxford University Press.
8. Clicking Mics, Bruce Hoffman, ©2015, Hoffman Books.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vaughn C. Hardacker has published three novels and numerous short stories. He is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, The International Thriller Writers, and the Maine Writers and Publisher’s Alliance. His first two novels, Sniper (a finalist for the 2015 Maine Literary Award, in the Crime Fiction category) and The Fisherman were published by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. and are available through all outlets.
He is a veteran of the US Marines and served in Vietnam. He holds degrees from Northern Maine Community College, the University of Maine, and Southern New Hampshire University.
He lives in Maine and at this time, is working on another Ed Traynor thriller.
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