Bop City Swing: Step into the Time Machine

without a Flux Capacitor

A quote from an early reviewer:

“A wild ride down the neon-lit streets of post-WWII America, with bebop wailing in the nightclub on the corner, the white witch pumping through the veins of the junkie on the barstool, three slugs draining the life from the charismatic politician with a shady past, and enough snappy dialogue to light up the faces of Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain.” (Douglas Lumsden, author of the Alex Southerland Series)

I admire writers of historical fiction. I’m in awe of Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, her brilliant writing and attention to period detail. The reader is physically and emotionally transported to the times of Thomas Cromwell and Anne Boleyn. I also frequently reread Colleen McCullough Masters of Rome Series, it’s superb.

I shiver when I think of the mountains of books and documents these writers had to absorb to achieve that level of realism. The time they devoted to it, the years of research.

Which is why I don’t write historical fiction.

Not really.
Even if I will, occasionally, make forays into the past.

A few months ago I wrote a story for an anthology (edited by Coy Hall, soon to be published by The Scythian Wolf). The theme: Horror Tales of the Scientific Revolution. The time period: between 1500 and 1700 CE. For about two months, I immersed myself in alchemy, herbal remedies, and other arcane pursuits, one historical character leading me to another, and then another, and so on, down the rabbit hole. The research led to a 20-page story set near Cork, Ireland. I enjoyed the deep dive but I can’t picture myself working on a book project that would require that kind of digging, only magnified.

And yet …

Bop City Swing (published by Cowboy Jamboree Press) was released this week. The story, co-written with Russell Thayer, takes place in San Francisco, in 1951.

Neither Russell nor I were alive in ‘51, and although I’ve been to the city many times it has changed somewhat since then. San Francisco and its denizens seventy-five years ago are remote, if not as foreign to me as 1640 Ireland (where I also traveled extensively, just not 350 years ago).

So, is Bop City Swing a historical novel?

Nobody will call it that. I wouldn’t. And I wonder why. Is setting a book 75 years ago too soon for the history label? Do you have to hit 100 to qualify, like antiques? Is it because Bop is a crime novel? I recently read Alex Grecian’s The Yard. Definitely crime, and tagged as a Historical Mystery. The events described in the book happen just after Jack the Ripper’s murderous spree. The 19th century definitely belongs in the historical fiction box. But what about the 20th?

I have a theory.

I believe movies are time’s magic marker.
Let me explain. (And feel free to tell me in the comments that I’m completely off my rocker).

Any story that takes place more than a hundred years ago doesn’t have the benefit of Film.

Writers of pre-1925 fiction have documentary evidence: pictures—photographs, painting, drawing, sculptures—and multiple kinds of written and archeological sources. But nothing that moves and talks. Cinema delivers a degree of reality that no other medium can provide. We see how a dress or suit wraps a body, how clothes are put on (or removed), we see implements being used in a kitchen, we see the potatoes being peeled, we watch somebody cross a street at rush hour, somebody hailing a cab. For real. We don’t need to make so many assumptions about everyday actions. These people on screen feel familiar. In contrast, stories set ‘from before the movies’ are inevitably full of leaps and assumptions, the further away in the past, the bigger the assumptions.

What does it mean for a writer that the “celluloid age” gives us so much data?
Well … despite the closeness that film provides, you can’t skip the homework. Car models, music on the radio, price of a cup of coffee. Thanks to cinema, it’s easier to step into the time machine, but you better have the right banknotes in your wallet or you’ll be exposed as a con artist.

Language is especially fraught with danger. It’s easy to slip. An editor caught me red-handed recently. I used “It freaked me out” in a line of dialogue. Nobody said ‘freak out’ in 1946. Period slang is also tricky. It can be bizarre or obscure. A 2025 reader may not understand what the character is referring to.

And then, a word of caution. Films, for all their advantages, can be misleading—remember the New York apartment in Friends? On a waitress salary? Beware of the ‘too good’ or the ‘too bad’. It looks real but it might not be. And choose the original. Watch the 1947 version of Nightmare Alley, rather than the 2021 remake (it’s a better flick anyway).

This is about tightening the bolts on a period piece, and building a solid basement that the story can rest upon.

Credibility to give the make-believe permission to fly.

So, about Bop City Swing … 1951 was indeed an election year in San Francisco. Mayor Elmer Robinson, a Republican, was up for reelection—no spoiler, he won. The Palace Hotel, where the fundraiser and assassination take place, exists (it’s still there, but the floor plans have changed), the Fillmore District was the city’s jazz beating heart, Tom Keegan drives a ‘36 Ford Sedan, and yes, it’s a beater, definitely not as spiffy as Vivian’s Studebaker Commander. I don’t know for sure if it rained on the night in June when we staged the climactic ending of the book, but it’s San Francisco, there’s a fair chance wet mist rolled in from the sea.

Russel Thayer and I are both fans of film noir and classic crime fiction (so is Frank Vatel who designed the amazing book cover). We have been raised on a steady diet of detectives, criminals, and femmes fatales. We love that stuff and, even if we enjoy playing with the mythology, we take our fedoras seriously.

Step into the time machine with us. Go spend a few hours of reading over there. Turn back the clock. Imagine, no computers and cell phones!

Here’s the link to get the book: https://www.amazon.com/Bop-City-Swing-Proctor-Thayer/dp/B0F4DSSQ9V/. I hope you’ll have as much fun reading it as we had writing it.