A few weekends ago I sat down and jotted out a rough synopsis for a novel I feel the urge to write. This may be a little long, so hats off to those of you who read to the end.
The setting is primarily Memphis, Tennessee, USA between the years 1929-1934, though there will most likely be some action in other locales including Chicago. Our hero is Henry "Hank" Strickland, a young agent with the Department of Investigation (now the FBI), who gets transferred from Chicago to the Prohibition Bureau in Memphis in his home state. He wants to take down Capone and his ilk in the wake of the Valentine's Day Massacre, and it is decided it is safer for him to stop bootleggers and thus help cut off Capone's supply/source of income. With him is his wife Dorothy, a native of Illinois who he met in Chicago.
Not long after they arrive in Memphis Hank meets our heroine Lucy Beaufort, a free-spirited young woman who owns and runs a theatre willed to her by her grandfather. Each is intrigued by the other and before too long they realise they are in love, something Hank struggles with due to being married. They eventually succumb to temptation, and when they realise what they have done they are both racked with guilt so decide to break the affair off. The guilt is further compounded for Hank when his wife is fatally injured in a car accident, even though Lucy tries to save her life. Dorothy, knowing or suspecting feelings between the two of them, asks that Lucy take care of Hank and forgives them as she dies. Lucy offers herself to him, offers to be there for him, and he says he'll come around eventually, but for the time being he needs to mourn. Hank blames himself and becomes depressed and even a little self-destructive, though still functioning at his job. He eventually gets transferred back to the Bureau of Investigation.
Enter a third character, Aaron Craven, a banker, who comes to town having had to flee Birmingham, Alabama after being caught out embezzling his employers. Hank meets him and manages to aid in his arrest (a possible catalyst being Aaron's attempt to bribe him). Hank and Lucy meet again at the trial, and from there their affair starts anew. Meanwhile, Aaron goes to the Alabama State Pen where he falls in with a cadre of criminals, with whom he escapes during the prison fire on November 28, 1932 (one of the crims sets the fire, only intending to create a distraction, but most of the prison is destroyed, providing the perfect distraction). They set off robbing a few places, including banks, going from state to state. They want to join up with the Barker-Karpis gang but get turned down. Between jobs the gang and their women hide out in St. Paul, Minnesota and then Hot Springs, Arkansas.
The Kansas City Massacre on June 17, 1933 sparks the U.S. Government's "War on Crime". Hank practices his firearm techniques and petitions Hoover to allow heavier firepower for agents and adequate training in their use. He is consigned to mostly office work as usual, and is passed up for the Flying Squad (or Dillinger Squad). However, he is one of the agents who assist in the arrest of Machine Gun Kelly. He also ends up catching the girlfriends and wives of Aaron and his gang, and holds his own both in interviewing and in armed confrontations.
Between the changing nature of his job and his relationship with Lucy we see Hank go from quiet, somewhat repressed desk jockey to crime-fighting hero. Conversely, Lucy proves to not be a femme fatale at all, quite the opposite she's a decent person and though she and Hank do the wrong thing initially she is determined to atone and ultimately helps redeem Hank. What I'm especially interested in also is not punishment so much as redemption, at least for Hank and Lucy. I also want to make comment and criticism of the Prohibition (which will still be relevant today, given certain elements taking a hardline anti-alcohol stance) and of consumerism and materialism, relevant both in the 1920s and today. Granted the tale will have some romance elements but also with Hank as something of a noir hero, and I also like the idea of Hank and Lucy as existentialists.
Hank is a nice bloke, intelligent, conscientious, conservative and even somewhat repressed, an eccentric but fun-loving side in him is repressed. He's tall, slim and bespectacled, and depending on one's perspective is either handsome and scholarly or lanky and nerdish. He and his wife love each other, even if Dorothy doesn't entirely understand him and even treats him as quaint, even nerdish. He is a member of a prestigious lawyer family and is fully qualified himself, though his Dad got him a job with the Justice Bureau because he was just too honest to be a lawyer and join the family business. He wanted to be a Texas Ranger as a kid like a favourite uncle of his was, but his overprotective father talked him out of it. He is bored by the bourgeois lifestyle, and despises materialism but is putting up with it because it's what he's supposed to do.
Lucy Beaufort is slim, blonde and gorgeous, a lady but a free spirit and very independent too, dressing like a flapper to screen the true gentlemen from the riff-raff. She is single when we meet her, having been cheated on and dumped by her erstwhile man. She is kind and generous and compassionate, she is also eccentric, fun-loving and free-spirited, is very much a '20s woman when we meet her, and unlike others she encourages him to think different, be himself, be his own man, take more of an interest in the arts and such and he's right, the bourgeois lifestyle is bullshit. She engages and stimulates him intellectually too. She vibes sensuality, non-conformity, but not malevolence. In her Hank finds a kindred spirit.
Of course, there may well be some small deviations between the initial plan and the final product - I guess it all depends on where it takes me - but the above is what I'm aiming for so far and the direction I feel I'm being led. Now to get it underway...
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