Bleeding In The Eye Of A Brainstorm and Dream of a Falling Eagle were written under a two-book contract with Otto Penzler Books, which had a distribution arrangement with Simon & Schuster. When this arrangement fell apart, S&S ended up cntrolling many books that had been signed up, and they failed to publish many of them. I was lucky. It was also somewhat ironic that the last two Mongos ended up being published by the same company that had published the first three.

The genesis for Dream was an ongoing and abiding anger at the brutal regimes the US has supported, both overtly and covertly, over the years in pursuit of its own agenda.

The genesis for Bleeding was work I had done with very seriously mentally ill children (an experience described in Prism). Most of the powerful anti-psychotic medications these children must take have extreme and very unpleasant side effects. I just started thinking, "What if there were anti-psychotic medications that had unexpected, dramatic and arguably positive side effects?" and away I went.

Mama Spit just hasn't been herself lately. There used to be a time when she'd spew saliva at anyone who passed by her---even those who actually gave her money. And if her mouth was particularly dry that day, she'd at least acknowledge your presence by cursing from underneath her filthy blankets. Everyone knew that she was certifiably mad---including Dr. Robert Frederickson, more commonly known to the world as Mongo the Magnificent. Which is why the private investigator is so bewildered when Margaret Dutton---the former Mama Spit---appears before the Frederickson & Frederickson, Investigations offices one morning. She has no saliva to spew and no vulgarities to roar. She has come to thank him for his kindness and offer her help in his office. Abnormal behavior, indeed, from a madwoman. But Margaret has been transformed by a large black-and-yellow pill a stranger gave her just before he was brutally murdered. To Mongo, these pills are just another cheap street drug and the man another pusher---but to Margaret, these pills are her savior.

Thus begins George C. Chesbro's newest Mongo mystery. And things only get more complicated from here. As Mongo digs deeper, he unearths a conspiracy plot of immense proportions. He discovers that Margaret's savior was an escapee from Rivercliff, a home for the mentally ill. There dozens of patients were given an experimental drug. While the drug eased their insanity, withdrawal from the daily dosage was violent and lethal. But this isn't their most immediate problem---someone has hired professional assassins to scour New York City's streets, alleys, and shelters to find the escaped Rivercliff stragglers and kill them before the secret of the miracle pill is discovered.

Mongo the Magnificent has plenty of enemies and little time, but for the famous dwarf, ex-circus headliner, martial arts expert, and private eye, this is all in a day's work.

• "...in my view, a man or woman who can manage to earn a living, however meager, doing exactly what he or she wants to do---something which he or she would otherwise be doing anyway, for nothing---is a success." -Mongo

• "...knowing that you're going to die if you don't tell the right tall tale does wonders for focusing the mind." -Mongo

• "I'm incorruptible in my quest for truth, justice, and the American Way." -Mongo