Tag Archives: Bad Boy Boogie

Guest post: AC/DC noir

cover-pluck-bad-boy-boogie-600x900pxI am very happy to welcome crime writer Thomas Pluck to Pulp Curry this week. He’s got a new crime novel out called Bad Boy Boogie. He’s based in New Jersey but is also a massive – and I mean massive – fan of the iconic Australia rock band, AC/DC. You reckon the book and the band aren’t connected? You reckon wrong.

I’ll let Thomas explain.

PluckI remember first hearing the snarl of Bon Scott’s voice on the radio in my grandmother’s basement. I promptly wrote “Dirty Deeds – Done Dirt Cheap” on a scrap of lumber and put out my shingle on her desk, waiting for clients who needed whatever help a nine-year-old raised on Encyclopedia Brown could offer.

I didn’t get to give anyone concrete shoes or use TNT. I think my sister hired me to find her imaginary dog. But AC/DC stuck with me. They sounded like no other rock band I’d heard before. And I wasn’t totally sheltered. My uncle ran bars in Manhattan and the jukebox service was mob controlled, so you played what records they gave you and when they swapped them out, he came home with shoeboxes of KISS, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Marvin Gaye, Wings, and Steve Wonder.

But no AC/DC.

I wouldn’t hear much of them again until high school, when I had my own money from delivering papers and occasionally working off the books on construction sites.… Read more