David Edgerley Gates
Photo credit: Justin Sachs
ABOUT
David Edgerley Gates was brought up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and now makes his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He wrote a movie column for the Phoenix, an alternative Boston weekly, in the 1970's, before publishing his first mysteries.
The author of the Placido Geist bounty hunter stories, a series of noir Westerns set on the eve of WWI, a world at the edge of violent and unknowable change, his short fiction has been nominated for the Edgar, the Shamus, the Derringer, and the International Thriller Writers award. He is a regular contributor to the mystery magazines ALFRED HITCHCOCK and ELLERY QUEEN, and has appeared four times in the annual Best American Mystery Stories anthology.
His novel The Bone Harvest, set in the early days of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, is a sequel to his Cold War spy thriller Black Traffic. He is completing a trilogy of novellas: Viper, about a KGB deception in Berlin, at the time of Baader-Meinhof; The Kingdom of Wolves, which takes place during the Battle of the Bulge; and The Misfortunes of Octavio Medina, a murder mystery set in 1917 New Mexico. His next book is Absolute Zero.
DEG was stationed in West Berlin at the height of the Cold War. He was a Russian linguist in the Air Force, targeting the Soviet military in Eastern Europe and the Warsaw Pact satellite services. He’s a member of the Berlin Island Association and the 6912th ESG Veterans, made up of former intelligence personnel who worked in Berlin. The city was itself a tripwire, and the job exacting.
David currently writes two online columns. The first one alternates weeks on SleuthSayers, a mystery-writing blog where authors talk about the craft of storytelling - setting and voice, character, dumb luck, and coincidence. His second column, The School of Night, is baggier and more shaggy dog; a framing device for any number of enthusiasms, history and literature, politics and the personal, spycraft and sleight of hand. It appears twice weekly on Substack.
“Many of my characters seem to me to be accidental, or at least uncalculated. The old bounty hunter, for example, stepped into ‘The Undiscovered Country’ about fifteen pages in, without any warning. I had no idea he was waiting in the wings. Benny Salvador, on the other hand, was more deliberate, because he’s modeled in part on stories my friend David Salazar told me about his grandfather, who was a peace officer up in Rio Arriba county for many years.”
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NOVELS & NOVELLAS
“Let’s review the bidding,” the First Shirt said. “You got Schaefer, you got Axel Stern, and now you got some Limey.”
“Not just any Limey, but SIS,” Andy said.
“I picked up on that up first time around,” Kowalczek said. “You research his workname, VALENTINE?”
“Didn’t get a direct hit, but here’s the skinny,” Andy told him. “This so-called FIREFLY mission was joint US/UK. Our own service cryptologic agencies provided the intelligence, although operationally it was a Brit show.”
“And, fortuitously, you’ve got a contact at Marienfelde.”
Andy smiled. ‘Fortuitously’ was one of those ten-dollar words the First Shirt sprung on you from time to time, just to remind you he wasn’t your run-of-the-mill lifer. Marienfelde was the US Air Force secure site that intercepted Soviet and Warsaw Pact encrypted military communications. “Turns out that American sources hipped the Brits to what they had, after the plane crash. The dive team that went in, one guy was caught underwater in the wreck, drowned, and a second diver got his arm chopped off. VALENTINE was in charge on the surface, and he compromised mission security to rescue the second diver. He’s a pro, but he’s not some heartless scumbag.”
“Heartless scumbags are thick on the ground in this line of work,” Kowalczek said.
The presidential palace was cold and empty. There were KGB or Spetsnaz sentries on the landings, back in Russian uniform, desert camo, but there was no sense of lives being lived in the building. Vlasov’s bootsteps echoed in the marble stairwells. Down a long, deserted corridor, he found Colonel Kirilenko in an abandoned office. There was a wood stove, and Kirilenko was burning broken furniture. The charred upholstery smoldered, and the room was smoky.
“Colonel,” Vlasov said.
Kirilenko nodded. “Back from the dead,” he said.
“Paroled, not pardoned,” Vlasov said.
“No,” the Spetsnaz colonel said. They’d both suffered disgrace, exile, and eventual redemption, but they had little in common. Kirilenko wore the smell of death like smoke.
“When can the president move in?” Vlasov asked.
“Here? How does never sound?”
“I can’t chaperone him twenty-four hours a day.”
Kirilenko shook his head. “Tajbeg palace is being equipped as headquarters, 40th Army,” he said.
“Where does the president go, then?”
“Does your Afghan not understand that he’s a puppet?”
“He needs the pretense of dignity,” Vlasov said.
“Moscow requires a pretense of dignity,” Kirilenko said.
“We understand each other.”
“The residence can be prepared, then.”
“Thank you.”
“Ne stoit,” the colonel said. No cost to him, it meant.
Vlasov turned to leave, but turned back. “What happened to the previous tenants?” he asked the Spetsnaz colonel.
“Food poisoning,” Kirilenko said.
CIA. Berlin Operations Base, in Steglitz.
“The girl is a low-ranking KGB officer, assigned to Karlshorst. The guy is a serious Moscow Center hood, with what you might call coat-tails.” Waldo sorted out the surveillance photographs. “A major named Petrokhin. He flew into Schönefeld yesterday. She met him.”
Chief of Station was a guy named Yarnell. “Okay,” he said. “Anything else?”
“Karlshorst has been asleep, the last couple of years,” the analyst said. “For whatever reason. But they’re waking up.”
“Russians have got something in play,” Yarnell said.
“No other way to read it,” Waldo said.
“What do we have on this Major Petrokhin?”
“He’s shown up, here and there, but he doesn’t leave any handwriting. He’s attached to First Chief Directorate, foreign intelligence, which means everything and nothing. He could be middle management, or internal security. Or he could be a hired gun.”
“Wet Work?”
“If he’s managed leper operations, there’s no footprint.”
“He’s here for a reason, and it can’t be good,” the station chief said.
The sentinel was crusted with ice. He kept his sightless watch in cold silence, unyielding and stern. His flesh was waxen, his limbs stiff enough to snap. He’d been dead for days.
Vogel glassed the long, steep-sided valley below them. This was where the Amblève hooked north, toward Liège, with the Bâleur and the Salm feeding into it. Three rivers. The village itself was called Trois-Ponts.
The morning was dirty and grey, snow squalls blowing off the wooded ridgelines. Visibility was down to a quarter-mile, but it was patchy, breaking apart, the odd clear line of sight before the weather closed in again. He was able to see occasional movement in the town, men and vehicles – but trucks, not armor. They were American engineers, mining the bridges. They weren’t reinforced with tanks. Vogel thought he might have the element of surprise.
One of the Feldwebel from the rifle platoon was standing by. The squad sergeant was regular Army, not SS, only attached to the spearhead in the run-up to the offensive, but Vogel had no reason not to trust him. A good NCO was always an asset. Vogel rehearsed their tactics, and sent him to ready the men.
The rest was in hands of God. Vogel wasn’t religious, but like most soldiers, he had his share of superstition. He studied the frozen sentry, waiting to be relieved. Vogel doubted his own heart would thaw. “Father Christmas,” he murmured, with a small smile, and sketched a salute.
The dead man gave no sign he’d heard.
Blood Money is a collection of the Placido Geist bounty hunter stories, including a previously unpublished novella, "Doubtful Canyon"
Murder, Neat is an anthology from the mystery writers website
SleuthSayers, with a new Mickey Counihan story
Step On a Crack gathers together five period stories featuring Mickey Counihan and two stories with Tommy Meadows
Recent Blogs
My dad went into the Navy during WWII, and served in all three major theaters, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Pacific. Like a lot of other combat vets - and not unlike cops, or firefighters, or EMT's - they only tell the funny stories, usually where they're the butt of the joke.
He went to sea on a Liberty ship, as the commander of a Navy gun crew: the Merchant Marine captain skippered the boat; the Navy officer only took command if the vessel came under attack.
The most specific thing about any writer is voice. This is usually different from story to story, sometimes inviting and intimate, sometimes chilly, or arm's length. Homely and domestic can open out into the epic. Larry McMurtry and Jim Harrison are very unalike, but Lonesome Dove and Legends of the Fall share an almost Arthurian scale of delivery. On the other hand, McMurtry's essays would seem to have nothing in common with Harrison's poetry. Two writers who are utter strangers to each other. (Not if they meet in heaven.)
This is of course reminiscent of the 1920’s and 1930’s, when the Reds and the grievance-filled Right were kicking each other to death in the streets (Horst Wessel was pimping out his girlfriend when he was gunned down by a couple of Communist paramilitary thugs). A horror of Bolshevism solidified reactionary resentments, and led to Fascist militias, the Iron Guard in Romania, the Arrow Cross in Hungary, the Falange in Spain, and the Brownshirts in Germany. Might put you in mind of those Stolz Jungen.
Lawrence of Arabia changed my life. I’m not exaggerating. I’d seen pictures before that affected me deeply, and quite a few I’d gone back to see more than once. I knew vaguely about the auteur theory. I realized movies were made, they didn’t somehow spring from the brow of Zeus. But on the most basic level, I didn’t actually understand that a movie was intentional, that it was calculated and specific.
Every family keeps secrets. Often they're benign, or not even what most of us would even call secrets, in the sense that they're simply common knowledge: all the grownups know the story, and it doesn't occur to them, to explain it to the youngsters; this creates an air of mystery around something easily remedied.
My grandmother's house was haunted. Exaggeration for effect, I can hear you saying, but I mean it literally. I was little, four or five years old, and it made me deeply uneasy to spend the night there. It was dark, and full of heavy furniture, and even the paintings were left over from the turn of the century. And it was chilly - not physically, but a kind of emotional chill, the nursery empty of children's laughter.
MAGAZINES
"Shuffle Off to Buffalo"
- Anthologized in
MURDER, NEAT February 2024
“Second Sight”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK July/August 2020
“I Pray the Lord My Soul To Take”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK July/August 2018
“A Multitude of Sins”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK January/February 2018
“Cabin Fever”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK September/October 2017
- Anthologized in
BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2018
*Available for purchase HERE
“The Devil & The Deep Blue Sea”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK December 2016
“Stone Soup”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK November 2016
“The Kneeling Nun”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK April 2016
“Crow Moon”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK March 2016
“In for a Penny”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK July/August 2015
“A Crown of Thorns”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK April 2015
The Sleep of Death”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK December 2015
Shamus Nomination 2016/Best Story
“Stir Crazy”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK July/August 2014
“The Valley of the Shadow”
- Andrew Scorah’s Anthology May 2014
SHADOWS & LIGHT (UK)
*Available for purchase HERE
“Jack Be Nimble”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK March 2014
“The Faraway Nearby”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK October 2013
“Jackknife”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK April 2013
“Old Man Gloom”
- ELLERY QUEEN December 2012
“Crazy Eights”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK October 2012
“Burning Daylight”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK July/August 2012
“The Devil to Pay”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK April 2012
International Thriller Writers award nominee
- Anthologized in
BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2013
*Available for purchase HERE
“A Crown of Thorns”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK April 2015
“Slipknot”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK November 2011
“Skin and Bones”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK October 2008
Edgar Award Nominee
- Anthologized in
BETWEEN THE DARK AND
THE DAYLIGHT 2009
*Available for purchase HERE
“Set ‘Em Up, Joe”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK March 2008
“Step on a Crack”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK June 2007
*Available as a free download HERE
“Blood Money”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK January/February 2007
“The Cottonwoods”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK October 2006
“Winter Kill”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK March 2004
“Aces and Eights”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK December 2003
Edgar Award Nominee
- Anthologized in
WORLD’S FINEST MYSTERY AND
CRIME STORIES 2004
*Available for purchase HERE
“The Lion of the Chama”
- ELLERY QUEEN December 2003
EQ Annual Readers’ Poll Top Ten
“Smoke Follows a Liar”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK April 2003
“Medicine Water”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK September 2002
“The Devil You Know”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK April 2002
“The Blue Mirror”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK December 2001
- Anthologized in
BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2002
*Available for purchase HERE
“If I Die Before I Wake”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK July/August 2001
“The Navarro Sisters”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK February 2001
“This Little Piggy”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK December 2000
“Compass Rose”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK September 1999
- Anthologized in
BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2000
*Available for purchase HERE
“Cover of Darkness”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK September 1998
*Available as a free download HERE
“Sidewinder”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK July/August 1998
Shamus Award Nominee
“Kick the Can”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK June 1998
“Mile Zero”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK November 1997
“The Undiscovered Country
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK August 1996
“Shroud Cay"
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK March 1993
“How to Electrocute an Elephant”
- STORY Magazine Summer 1992
“Inside Straight”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK October 1991
“China Blue”
- A MATTER OF CRIME 1987
“Dead Giveaway”
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK February 1980
(Written as John Macnab)
LINKS OF INTEREST
ALFRED HITCHCOCK MYSTERY MAGAZINE
http://www.themysteryplace.com/ahmm/
ELLERY QUEEN MYSTERY MAGAZINE
http://www.themysteryplace.com/eqmm/
MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA
http://www.mysterywriters.org/
INTERNATIONAL THRILLER WRITERS
http://thrillerwriters.org/
LEFT COAST CRIME
http://www.leftcoastcrime.org/
LITTLE BIG CRIMES
http://lbcrimes.blogspot.com/
LESA’S BOOK CRITIQUES
http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com/
STOP YOU’RE KILLING ME
http://stopyourekillingme.com/
Contact
Email: davidedgerleygates@gmail.com
LinkedIn: DavidEdgerleyGates
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