'THE LONG FALL' | A review Valley native's second mystery packs in the plot

By JOHN SKENDALL
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
"The Long Fall: A Novel of Crime," by Lynn Kostoff (Carroll & amp; Graf, $24)
YANKEE LAKE -- The two main characters of Hartford-reared Lynn Kostoff's latest novel are modeled after the biblical brothers Cain and Abel, only this time, the reader must figure out who will be the vengeful killer.
Kostoff graduated from Joseph Badger High School in 1972 and went to Bowling Green State University. He was visiting his parents here recently from South Carolina, where he is an English professor at Francis Marion University.
Kostoff offered a glimpse into his writing style and into his new book, "The Long Fall."
In the Bible story, the jealous Cain killed his brother because God did not accept Cain's offering. The situation is clear in Christian teaching: Abel was righteous in God's eyes. Cain acted out of spite.
In Kostoff's new novel, two brothers' father has died, so there is no "God" to determine which brother is in the wrong. From there, the problems escalate into chaos, Kostoff said.
Dark, thrilling twists and turns bring readers of this noir genre book to an unpredictable ending that has pleased critics since its May release.
The 225-page crime mystery novel is Kostoff's second. His last novel, "A Choice of Nightmares," was released in 1991. Kostoff's new book will soon be published in England, France, Germany and Japan.
Like Alfred Hitchcock's films, Kostoff said his books involve normal people whose pressured circumstances lead them to extreme ends.
Said one critic of Kostoff's book, "Every character wants something -- and badly, at that."
The plot
The brothers, Jimmy and Richard Coates, live in Phoenix with seemingly opposite lifestyles.
Jimmy is an ex-con, out from serving two years in prison for trading rare Saguaro cacti on the black market. He is a ne'er-do-well, Kostoff said, a hood who soon finds out two bleak truths: The loan shark he owes $6,000 is out for blood, and his brother has finagled his half of dad's inheritance out from under him.
Richard is a respected, somewhat uptight, businessman who has followed the straight and narrow. He thinks his brother would squander the inherited land, and so he finds a legal loophole to keep it out of Jimmy's hands.
Enter Cain and Abel.
Jimmy is ready to get even and sets out to rob Richard's chain of dry cleaners. But two wrenches are thrown into the works -- an ex-cop Jimmy once testified against is out to revenge the loss of his career, and Jimmy falls in love with Richard's wife, who, longing for excitement, teams up in the dry-cleaning busts.
In the end you wonder if Jimmy is a no-good crook or a tragic hero. You wonder if Richard's uptight nature is a product of clean-shaven virtue or cold-hearted callous.
Kostoff said he takes pride in making stories that read quickly but when it ends, "You have to wonder, 'What's it all add up to?'"
Yet, the chain-reaction plot doesn't use cheap tricks to keep you guessing.
The clues are in front of you the whole time, Kostoff said. Motives add up when you think back to the subtleties.
Using imagination
Kostoff insisted the characters are not modeled after his own life, which he said is dull by comparison to his characters'.
"One of the interesting things is getting to use my imagination," he said.
Kostoff sits down to write every morning from 4:30 to 7:30 a.m., working and reworking his novels.
He calls himself a tireless reviser.
"The Long Fall" was 450 pages in its first draft. Every year he wrote a new draft -- every year it was shorter. The result is a concise and pointed piece of fiction, said a critic from January Magazine, which "packs enough plot for a book twice that length."
Kostoff said Otto Penzler, a well-known mystery novel publisher, read his book and said he wanted absolutely no changes.
The author said he hopes to be known for his outlandish metaphors, such as the demented, maniacal ex-cop having the view that "every heart is a crime scene," or Jimmy's mismanaged life being like "a testament to faulty wiring."
First lines made Kostoff notable to the world of fiction after only his first book. "A Choice of Nightmares" began this way, winning him best opening line of a novel from Publishers Weekly: "Robert Staples kept trying to explain why he threw Heidi in the alligator pit."
"Nightmares" starts with no introduction, Kostoff said. You are pulled right in, catching your bearings as you go. The new novel begins just as abruptly. Both novels by the Trumbull County native took four years to write -- partly because he is busy with a family and a full course load as a professor and partly because he believes in quality over quantity.
"I'd rather have a small number I really crafted the way I wanted," Kostoff said.
jskendall@vindy.com