Greatest Hits: The Chemist Series

By Janson Mancheski

The Chemist Series – Greatest Hits is a compilation of some of the most interesting, frightening scenes and episodes from Janson Mancheski’s first 3 books of The Chemist Series: The Chemist (2009), Trail of Evil (2011) and Mask of Bone (2012).
In this book, Janson Mancheski gives a breakdown of the story progression, highlighting characters and episodes in movie review fashion without giving away any spoilers.
The author is aided by two cutting-edge fiction editors who interject their own commentary on the various episodes. At the conclusion, all three give summations and commentary on how the series arrived at this point, several stand-out characters, and where the series is likely going . . . much in the fashion of directors and writers discussing the production of a TV movie series.

This book is a standalone but can be enjoyed along with the Chemist Series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Janson Mancheski
• Release date: Feb 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781370276202

Janson Mancheski

Janson Mancheski is the author of three previous crime novels set in Green Bay, Wisconsin: The Chemist, Trail of Evil and Mask of Bone all feature Green Bay homicide detective Cale Van Waring. His fourth novel Shoot For the Stars is a work of historical fiction that explores the Green Bay Packers from the team's founding in 1919 to the hiring of Vince Lombardi. It explores the characters of Curly Lambeau, Tom Hearden, Johnny Blood McNally, and other historical Packers’ figures. Janson has won multiple writing awards. His screenplay Nuck was a Writer's Digest award winner in 2008. The Chemist won first place in the fiction category of the 2010 Sharp Writ Book Awards. The screenplay version of Shoot For the Stars was a finalist in the Writer's Digest 2012 Fiction Contest, and movie script of The Chemist is up for option by Voyage Media Productions. His latest novel The Scrub, a YA memoir, has just been released on 12/10/17. Janson is a University of Wisconsin - Green Bay graduate. He was awarded his optometric degree from Illinois College of Optometry in Chicago. From 1990 - 2002, he functioned as team eye doctor for the Green Bay Packers. From 1985 - 2005 he worked with the UW-Green Bay Men and Women's basketball teams in a similar capacity. An avid Packers fan, Janson lives in Green Bay and works in Shawano, Wisconsin. He enjoys biking, suspense movies and mystery novels, as well as the sport of competitive fencing. His favorite authors are Richard Montanari, Raymond Chandler, and E.A. Poe. He is currently at work on a fourth Cale Van Waring detective thriller.

Book preview

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THE CHEMIST SERIES

GREATEST HITS

Killers, Traffickers, Liars and Perverts

JANSON MANCHESKI

Movie poster art by Jacob Arden McClure

(courtesy Voyage Media Productions, Inc.)

ALSO BY JANSON MANCHESKI

The Chemist

Trail of Evil

Mask of Bone

Shoot For the Stars

The Scrub

DEDICATION

To William Bill Gates, Grant Cousineau, Richard Bronson, and the late Hugh Hefner; without their inspirational support, it is doubtful that I could have ever attained the heights I’ve reached today.

INTRODUCTION

Hi. I’m Janson Mancheski. Nice to meet you, I said, smiling at the lady in the purple hat. We were at a recent writer’s conference, and I was giving a presentation on a three-person panel on police procedurals. In essence, how not to make yourself (as a novelist) look like a dummy in describing the ins-and-outs of how law enforcement reacts when the call of a crime comes in.

Hello. I’m one of your readers. I love your mystery books so much.

Thanks, I said engagingly. Do you have a favorite?

We were standing alongside the presenter’s table up front, and she nearly blushed. "The Chemist, she said. I just enjoy the love story between Maggie and Cale."

This was an exchange I’d had recently, and it helped provide impetus in the writing of this brief book. After penning five novels now, numerous short stories, and a couple of award-winning screenplays, I decided that there was one thing missing: I’d been writing, for the most part, in a vacuum for the past ten years. With little interest in marketing or advertising, or promoting myself as a writer, I realized that I’d been writing as if entombed in a crusty cocoon. I needed to get out with the public more, change my tactics, engage with more people. I needed to promote my books rather than being shy about marketing, selling, and that whole shebang.

In my darkest hours, I pictured myself as a writer’s version of Grandma Moses. Some might recall who she was: She was an elderly grandmother who had begun an art career at the age of 75 and painted masterpiece works in her attic until her death, only to be discovered by the general public, beyond the ritzy art world, long after she had passed.

In other words, she had become a world-renowned artist but, sadly, only post-mortem. 

One might imagine the heartbreak carried by this poor lady, as she lived for seventy years with all that artistic talent bottled inside her, giving it little release. In my mind, it seemed that’s where I was headed. So many stories to be told, and all being written in a vacuum. Unless . . . unless I changed tactics and became more pro-active. So that’s what this book is: An effort to highlight some of my previous works in the crime/suspense/thriller genre. The Chemist Series, by name.

And what prompted such a turn in the road in the first place? I believe my epiphany came when I was contacted by a movie production company last year. They inquired about turning my first novel, The Chemist, into a motion picture. Even though the book had captured first place in the Fiction category, winning the national Sharp Writ Book Awards, outside of my circle of family and friends, it was seldom read and gained little notoriety. After about six or seven years of meager sales, I began to see it fading into obsolescence.

But a movie? Of my novel? Why, yes. That seemed to kindle a new spark in me. I agreed to the terms that Voyage Media Productions was offering, and after a few months of negotiation, they also allowed me the chance to write my own version of the screenplay, which has been met—I add shyly—with great enthusiasm from those who’ve had a chance to read it.

Now that the movie has moved to the pre-production phase, with investors being solicitated, and A-list actors being lined up, I have decided to re-issue The Chemist novel with a new cover design, created in line with the movie poster cover. To refresh the novel, as it were.

What this eBook is designed to do is to reacquaint previous readers to The Chemist Series and to perhaps generate new fans into the fold. I hope it works, but if not, well, my keyboard and screen are drumming their figurative fingers, awaiting my return up to my dark and lonely attic. Where my poster of Grandma Moses awaits hanging on the wall, her self-portrait smirking at me knowingly.

— Janson Mancheski, writer, storyteller

Life is what we make of it. Always has been. Always will be.

— Grandma Moses

Table of Contents

DEDICATION

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

AUTHOR’S CLOSING NOTE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER 1

One of the questions I’m asked at book fairs, talks, festivals and signings is: When did you decide to become a writer? Years have passed, and I’ve written five novels, numerous short stories, and my movie script for The Chemist; the movie is currently in pre-production. Yet I still don’t have a snappy or concise response for the above question.

Here’s my theory as to why: The key word asked is When? I guess it boils down to the good old nature versus nurture argument. Are writers born? Where some genetic instinct to produce/create stories is imprinted in our DNA? Where one day we just pick up a pen or sit at a keyboard—ala eight-year-old Beethoven—and begin to write?

Or are writers made? Where after years and years of reading, studying methods and techniques, accumulating levels of education, some light bulb finally goes off and a voice in our heads