Knox resident Paul Shackelford offers an impressive two-part story about crime and questionable punishment with his published debut Haunting Memories (2001) and its sequel A Writer's Nightmare (2002). In A Writer's Nightmare, beginning in the fall of 1997 and ending in the spring of 1999, Shackelford continues to disguise himself as the Donny Johnson character. Having moved to the Bass Lake area of Knox, Indiana, Donny and his wife Susan and his young son Eric are trying to enjoy the simpler life, away from Illinois and the hustle-and-bustle of the Chicago suburbs, when Donny tries to keep working while his book is being published. Yet, Donny has a self-professed problem of not being able to keep a job for very long; therefore, the Johnsons' financial situation starts to suffer. So, Susan takes it upon herself to support the family while Donny chases his dream of being a big-time author, with hopes that his book Haunting Memories, having been published in the spring of 1998, will make the Bestsellers list. But then, just when things couldn't get any worse financially for the Johnson family, Donny's father passes away, leaving a portion of his estate to Donny, totaling $203, 000, so the Johnsons are soon relieved of their money problems. Although Donny's "fictional" novel does become fairly famous pretty quickly, Donny begins to face the negative repercussions of his labor of love, since the book becomes the only piece of evidence that connects the Wendel brothers, Tom and Gene, to the double homicide of Jim and Abbey Smith back in the summer of 1976.
Aside from the fact that Donny has committed a felony by withholding vital information that would have helped the police to solve the Smiths' double homicide years earlier had he come forward with what he knew and had found out over the years, try as he might, Donny wants to convince people that his book is in no way condoning the actions of Tom and Gene, or is exploiting what had happened to Jim and Abbey. The way Donny perceives it, Haunting Memories is nothing more than his way of using his above-average writing ability to express what had occurred over twenty years earlier in a way to make it accessible for everyone who might be intrigued by such "a perfect crime." What's more, the purpose behind Donny's book is, as he alleges, nothing more than an avenue through which he was able to express his thoughts and feelings about such a horrendous issue as the Smiths' homicide was (and still is, since it was never officially forgotten), along with the current stand of the American justice system. While Donny believes in what he published, he realizes that he should have included more fiction and less fact in the book (and as if that weren't enough, unbelievably, he didn't bother to even changes the main characters' names), but by then it's too late to change anything. Consequently, his life is turned upside and is almost taken from him due, in part, to the first amendment of the Constitution: the freedom of speech. The entire mess that Tom and Gene initiated over twenty years earlier does come to an end; however, when Gene attempts to do away with Donny for having written Haunting Memories, the consequences of the book take an ironic turn. As a result, A Writer's Nightmare is the second "fictional" novel that Donny (who finds himself still trying to hold down a regular job until his writing career takes off) writes, which conveys all that happened due to Haunting Memories, with the moral being: no crime, regardless of its age and no matter how precisely plotted and perfectly carried out it was, goes unpunished. Moreover, as this two-part story attests to, there isn't really such a thing as getting off scot-free; Tom and Gene were able to escape justice for quite a long time, but they both ultimately paid the price for what they did. Unfortunately, though, several lives were forever changed because they tried to get away with murder.
Granted, Paul Shackelford's two books aren't flawless (there are mistakes and surface errors aplenty, along with a surprising amount of rough language), but the overall story is solid and well developed. In fact, Shackelford's disguising himself as the author character in A Writer's Nightmare / Haunting Memories reminds me of Stephen King and of how he's famous for employing novel-writing characters in his works. Overall, A Writer's Nightmare / Haunting Memories is a good pair of books. While he clearly is still finding his feet with these two novels, I feel that Shackelford has what it takes to make it as an author. A lot of times the sequel to a book isn't as good as the original; however, in the case of A Writer's Nightmare / Haunting Memories, I felt that the sequel was actually better than Shackelford's debut. Still, in order for the overall story to be completely understandable, Haunting Memories must be read before A Writer's Nightmare.
With the duo of A Writer's Nightmare and Haunting Memories, I will gladly admit that Paul Shackelford succeeds in offering readers a decent two-part crime mystery story.