JANUS In Transit

His name is Janus Payette… J-A-N-U-S. His parents had a thing for Roman mythology; Janus was the god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings, and endings and that pretty much spells out Payette's life. In a previous incarnation, he was a detective working narcotics, which is about half a notch above being homeless. As a Narc, you don't have many friends and enemies are behind every door and his connection to the God of doors gave him no special license. Making a long sordid story short, some of his enemies wore badges like his, and when he blew the whistle on a partner taking payoff money from a mob boss the brass sided with his partner, and he was shoved into the gutter. Since then he's been a drunk, a drifter, and the guy on Powell Street holding the sign, "Will Work For Food." It was a pretty good fit. Janus was able, with help, to pick himself up and turn his life around. He became a licensed Private Detective and set off on a series of adventures in and around San Francisco. He even broadened his horizons in search of questions posed by friends and lost loves. Janus is an old-school detective fighting modern-day crime in San Francisco, the Bay Area, and beyond. He is brash, witty, and cunning. Is he dumb enough to enter the dark side? Of course, he is. So, this is "JANUS In Transit" finding himself visiting old haunts and reliving past nightmares. He's churning up trouble in "Venice Beach", tripping over the roots of his past and tracking down racketeers pushing illegal liquor and harassing a long-ago lover. Taking a dangerous tack he then goes on the hunt for a drug lord, "Courting Mary Jane". It ends tragically in the death of his partner in crime. Janus has gone far afield in this latest in the series of "JANUS" crime adventures.

"JANUS In Transit" is the sixth book in the series of "JANUS" detective adventures. In a previous incarnation, he was a detective working narcotics, which is about half a notch above being homeless. As a Narc, you don't have many friends and enemies are behind every door and his connection to the God of doors gave him no special license. Making a long sordid story short, some of his enemies wore badges like his, and when he blew the whistle on a partner taking payoff money from a mob boss the brass sided with his partner, and he was shoved into the gutter. Since then he's been a drunk, a drifter, and the guy on Powell Street holding the sign, "Will Work For Food." With the help of a former policeman friend, Janus turned his life around and became a private detective. This latest tale takes him first to "Venice Beach" at the request of a hippy wingman from his past. A common friend is in trouble and Janus agrees to come to help. Bunny, an old love, is being harassed by a powerful newspaper columnist and grifter. He's got a group of racketeers hustling fabricated and illegally imported liquor and forcing her to sell the bad booze in her bar. Over the course of events, Janus is beaten up, boozed-up by gangsters, shot in the leg, mourns the death of his close friend who pays the price for helping Janus. He is able to unscramble the mess and frees Bunny to keep her bar free of pressure. Janus comes close to death himself when he takes on a drug lord "Courting Mary Jane". Janus is shanghaied and held captive by a drug pusher with delusions of grandeur. After he escapes he revisits the pusher and this stirs up a hornet's nest of bigger fish coming to the states from Mexico. The Mexican drug king is recruiting teenagers and getting them plugged into life on drugs. Janus hunts down the drug king but in the process, his partner Penny is killed during a night of a raucous, hyped-up drug orgy. Janus and the drug king fight and Janus kills him in a knock-down fight. Following that incident Janus descends into the depths of despair over the loss of Penny. For a month he returns to the scenes of his past life on the streets. In his drunken dispair he roams the streets with a gin bottle and coke dust in his beard. He is on the verge of killing himself with liquor and drugs when Gianni Mattioli who once had Janus on retainer rescues him and gets him rehabilitated. Janus finally sees a brighter future and settles in for whatever adventure might come his way.

J.D. Blair wrote and produced commercial and news copy for radio and later moved to television news where he was nominated twice for Emmy Awards for writing and producing documentaries for the NBC affiliate in San Francisco. Later, as an Executive Producer for the PBS affiliate in Sacramento, he was awarded a Chris Award from the Columbus Film and Video Festival and was the recipient of a Telly Award in 1999 for writing and producing the statewide magazine feature program "California Heartland" and was awarded a Knight Fellowship for media coverage of urban development for the program "New Valley". Since 2002 Blair has focused mainly on short fiction, poetry, and playwriting. He has six eBooks in circulation in Apple ibooks, Kindle, and other electronic sales outlets. His short stories and poetry have appeared in literary magazines and he has won competitions in Writer's Journal, Fog City Review, and Carve Magazine. He has adapted several of his short stories into one-act plays. In 2009 his one-act play "Vincent" was produced as a staged reading by the Ross Valley Playhouse, Marin County, and was in full performance in the playhouse in Martinez, CA. Blair lives in Walnut Creek, CA.