Story of the Week

Charlie Smith was born in Georgia and served in the Peace Corps before graduating from Duke University and the University of Iowa. His eight poetry collections include Red Roads, selected for the National Poetry Series and Great Lakes New Poets Award; Word Comix , and Headlong (Norton, 2013). Smith has also published seven novels, among them Cheap Ticket to Heaven, Chimney Rock, and Three Delays (Harper Perennial, 2010), as well as a collection of novellas, Crystal River. Two new novels, Men in Miami Hotels and Ginny Gall, will be published by Harper Perennial.

The Dictators

A Novel Excerpt

by Charlie Smith

Loose in the world, temporarily, due to his jail problem, persona non grata at the gallery, Jack starts a project photographing former dictators, Third World generals, and ex-strongmen washed up in Miami. There are a couple dozen of them around, tough mordant souls come down in the world. Maybe he can pick up pointers about sneaky killers, loose snake-eyed ravagers and such, his new métier or fixation, find a way to snare them. Unsolved murders fester in his soul. He goes from dictator to dictator asking questions, letting them tell their stories, arrange themselves in their nooks and cubbyholes for photos. He puts these spreads in one of the arts papers, among special-feature articles they enjoy running because he is an authentic jailbird, and the stories, as the features editor, an old high school friend, says, have a jolt to them.

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