Mystery author evolves with true crime

Chuck Greaves wrote “Hush Money,” a well-received Los Angeles-based mystery published earlier this year.

C. Joseph Greaves is the author of the new crime novel “Hard Twisted.” It has been compared to the fiction of Cormac McCarthy.

Two novels, same Greaves.

	“Hard Twisted” by C. Joseph Greaves Bloomsbury, $25, 291 pp.

“I didn’t want to create reader confusion using the same name. We concluded that I can use variances on my real name,” Greaves said in a phone interview from his home near Cortez, Colo.

“Hard Twisted” is set in the Great Depression and centers on a drifter named Clint Palmer, recently released from a federal prison. He lures a homeless man and his young daughter into his web. The father mysteriously disappears and the daughter, Lucile, is held captive by Palmer in a yearlong crime and killing spree.

The novel is based on a true story. In 1994 Greaves, a Pasadena, Calif., trial lawyer, was hiking in a remote Utah canyon while on vacation. He stumbled onto two human skulls. That encounter led him to years of investigation into the remains and into a murder case.

“It was sort of a hobby because my wife (Lynda Larsen) and I were interested in the facts of the case. We started writing letters and collecting material as best as we could from LA. At one point we flew to Texas … and visited quite a few of the locations mentioned in the book,” Greaves said.

He said his wife helped research the case that inspired his novel.

When he left the law in 2006, Greaves did so with the idea of writing this book. “When I sat down to actually write it, I thought I would be better served if it was something that would sell. So I wrote the legal thriller ‘Hush Money’ first,” he said.

Three years later Greaves had two completed manuscripts, but no agent and no publisher. So he entered both manuscripts in SouthWest Writers’ 2010 international writing contest. Good things happened. “Hush Money” won Best Mystery and “Hard Twisted” won Best Historical Novel in the contest.

There’s more good news. For the SWW contest’s Grand Prize, “Hush Money” came in first and “Hard Twisted” second.

Within two weeks, he landed a literary agent and within two weeks after that, “Hush Money” and its to-be-published sequel, “Green-Eyed Lady,” were sold to Minotaur Books. A few months later “Hard Twisted” was sold to Bloomsbury, Greaves said.

He wrote all three manuscripts while living in Santa Fe. Greaves and his wife now live in southern Colorado to be near friends and to run a small vineyard.