It’s very appropriate that Dan O’Shea’s first collection is called Old School, because Dan is definitely an old school kind of guy. You know, the kind of old school where the approach to life is that you shut up, nut up, and just get on with it.
And from boys on the cusp of manhood to hardened criminals on a mission to fathers willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to provide for their families to a tougher than nails septuagenarian granny, there’s a lot of old school attitude flying around in the fourteen stories that make up this take no prisoners collection.
Sometimes the ‘getting on with it’ is poignant and noble (“Shackleton’s Hootch,” “Exit Interview”), other times it’s nefarious (“Pink Cadillac,” “Thin Mints,” “Two Phones”), and still others it’s just downright necessary (“The Summer of Fishing,” “Absalom,” “Purl Two”). In every instance, however, it’s absolutely pitch-perfect.
For a man that claims he initially found the concept of writing a 1,000 word story impossible (“I’m pretty sure I’ve written sentences that long.”), O’Shea nevertheless proves himself to be a master of the genre, with not a single beat out of place or word wasted. The people in O’Shea’s Old School world are as blunt and brutal as O’Shea’s writing, doing exactly what is required of them with grim acceptance and without a second thought. The result is a collection of stories which demands to be paid attention to, stories whose visceral starkness resonate undeniable truths about the world. And even though that world is often ugly, O’Shea’s writing is always sublime.
Writing “The End” felt great. The story felt good. Seemed I’d pulled off the rather odd inspiration. I was watching The Maltese Falcon (which I do often) and wanted to tell a variant of it. Not the nuts of bolts of it, but the twists and turns and the costly pursuit of something that is revealed to be a lie. I certainly had false starts trying to craft the story, but there I was, done, with a tight narrative around a single character. A sometimes nasty crime novella.
It’s funny that my first officially published work is a collection of short stories. I know that’s how it goes with a lot of writers – they start short and work their way up. You got Frank Bill, who’s critically acclaimed collection Crimes in Southern Indiana precedes his soon to be critically acclaimed novel Donnybrook. I know that Lou Berney, whose debut novel Gutshot Straight is one of my favorite reads of the past few years, he first published a collection of short fiction. Of course, his stories were nominated for Pushcarts and such, so I got no business comparing myself to him. 
I might quote the cool dudes, but I’m a worrier at heart.
“Each of you has made your own decisions in this matter. You each chose money over your husbands’ lives.” – Lady in Black
“The last time a private eye solved a murder was never.” -Ed McBain *
“Turns out things got a bit more complicated.”
“I hear the Permeance is a gift not from God but from the devil.” – Hope Banfield
That’s the bitch about being damned – things rarely shake out your way. – Sam Thornton
