Murder in Concrete by Arthur Coburn
After he left the law field, Arthur wrote dramatic educational film scripts, and won a local Emmy for a documentary, then moved to Hollywood, where he edited more than two dozen films, including Spiderman, A Simple Plan and The Cooler. He is a member of Sisters in Crime and MWA. He has written five novels: Murder in Concrete (published in 2024), Murder in Madrona (currently in revision), and several awaiting care and review. He won the Novel Prize at the Southern California Writer’s Conference in June 2005 for Rough Cut,and his short stories, Some Creature I Care About and Backswing, appeared in Sisters in Crime Anthologies: Landmarked for Murder and Ladies Night.
Arthur is a member of the Motion Picture Academy and the Foreign Film Committee for which he watches dozens of domestic films and upward of fifty movies from all over the world in order to vote for best foreign film.
Arthur skis, road bikes, and has a pilots’ license. He also plays a little classical guitar and can improvise on the piano and Hammond organ.
His current novel, Murder in Concrete, was published by The Wild Rose Press in 2024 largely due to the sympathetic eye and efforts of his fabulous editor, Dianne Rich. She saw the novel’s value from the start and guided him past various hurdles to bring it home. He is currently revising another novel and hopes to publish it in 2025.
Murder in Concrete Blurb…
A small town murder unravels a teenage girl’s life as she tries to discover who is responsible for killing her mother and learns that everything she thought she knew might be an illusion.
Charlie Purdue was just another small town teenage girl until she discovered her mother’s dead body at home after school. All signs point to her father, who has disappeared, but his cryptic final words to Charlie have always left her wondering. When she spots him in a film months later, she’s shaken to her core and dead set on going to Los Angeles to find him and unearth the truth of what really happened that horrible day.
What follows is a gripping odyssey through the underbelly of LA’s film industry, where everything Charlie thought she knew about her life is suddenly, and shockingly, brought into question.
This is a spotlight on “Murder in Concrete” by Arthur Coburn
Inspiration to write Murder In Concrete…
I was inspired by an over-active imagination that I developed as an only child making up adventures to play. My other inspiration for Murder in Concrete came from working for twenty-five years on films, from low budget productions to lavish productions. I got to know older actors and young ones, unknown and famous. I hobnobbed with sound recordists, special effects and costume crew people. Plus the grips, gaffers, boom men, cinematographers and accounting staff; and of course producers and directors. A film crew is like a mini city. Working on a film crew is like running away to join a circus.
What can readers expect from this book?
Arthur Coburn’s other works…
My short story Some Creature I Care About appears in a Sisters in Crime Anthology titled Land-marked for Murder, available on Amazon HERE.
My short story Backswing, appeared in a Sisters in Crime Anthology Ladies Night.
Arthur’s favourite scene from Murder in Concrete…
I was strapping my stuffed cougar onto my Raleigh when Dad rushed from the house, shouting, “Charlie, you can’t take that animal to school.”
I grinned. “It’s harmless. Just a way to give the uptight teachers a reason to remember us.”
“Not happening.”
“He attacked a hiker last year. Would have killed someone sooner or later. It was a public service to take him down.”
“You’d upset the school administration, get arrested, and send your mother into a tailspin.”
Crusty eyes, day old beard, hints of bourbon and coffee on his breath—he’d had a tense morning. My parents split the days. Mom up until midnight, doing the books. Dad out of bed at dawn and off to measure, saw, and wrestle thousand-pound logs into place.
I said, “Why are you such a Grinch?”
He pulled the cougar from my bike. “Mind’s on business. Put yours on finding a summer job before they’re all taken.”
At the sound of a distant explosion, Dad stared down the road a long moment. I looked but didn’t see or hear anything special.
He wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “You’re still my favorite daughter.”
“Onlydaughter. That joke hasn’t gotten funnier since second grade.”
“I hope you enjoy the assembly, even without your ferocious trophy.” His grin told me he knew I had something on my mind besides the teachers.
Bringing the cougar into the school might have reduced my chances for admission to Bellingham University in the fall. But when I woke at four, the idea of adding a little fun to our final assembly looked like a winner. A way to get Tony Crane’s attention before we all split.
Dad said, “Do you know how smart and pretty you are?”
“Maybe not.” My grades said I was smart, but nothing in my life told me I was pretty. Not the yearbook picture with my clumpy hair, not the girl with thin lips I viewed in the mirror every morning, not the boys in class who seemed to forget my phone number around prom time. I grabbed a ball and threw it. Scout, our golden lab, bounded off the porch and across two lawns after it.
