DETECTIVE JACK RANCE
Book One
WHO KILLED MAX SCHIP?
(Murder in Whitehall, N.Y.)
S.W. Laro
Logline: A haunted ex-cop and gambler leaves 1950’s Las Vegas for Whitehall N.Y. to help solve a murder case and seek redemption for his past.
JACK RANCE is more than chewed up faded leather – he’s a pock marked lowly pug with both crooked feet in the boneyard and a heart madly in love with one woman.
He KILLS to love & LOVES to kill!
Personal Motto: ‘Life’s a prize fight, ya o’ways know the next round promises more blood.’
A new prototype Noir-cop and drifter lawman with no morals ‘cept that he’s helplessly devoted to Denise, his dolly – the only truth in Rance’s life that keeps him from leaping into oblivion where he’s LEAPT many times, but seldom stayed for long. Classic series ‘dicks’ like Mike Hammer or Rick Diamond, and modern depictions of the desperate private eye and raging detective, don’t compare.
Jack Rance is a one-of-a-kind type of rabid mongoose!
Who is the REAL Jack Rancino?
Det. Jack Rance doesn’t live in the shadows, he IS a shadow – of himself.
QUOTE: Listen ya scug fuck, if I don’t get home to see my dolly, Denise, on time for supper, I’ll be here later n’ give ya the PIPE, you folluh?’
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INTRODUCTION
Italian by blood and Viking berserker of soul, Jack Rancino (Rance) left New Jersey and his aunt STELLA’S house to find work on the west side in Hell’s Kitchen as a beat cop – one of the worst neighborhoods on the west side in the city, pre-W.W. II, where a man could lose his soul and wear a devil’s dog collar. Rance is a lowly pug – a bull rush kind of sadist who enjoys hurting other men for the sting to his loins hearing a perp scream. Book One, ‘Who Killed Max Schip’ takes us from the sins of a young Fremont Street in Vegas to rural America where ultimately, Rance will come face to face with the most terrifying man he would ever know – a W.W. II veteran and psychopath known as RAM.
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“Hell’s Kitchen, the hottest place in the city, even in wintertime,” Rance says.
One of this genre’s most frightening characters, Rance’s nemesis, RAM or his birth name Harvey D’Angelo, THRUSTS Rance back into the abyss of his past during the war when he worked as an Elite Core detective for an underground corporation run out of the O.F.F. (Office of Facts and Figures) O.F.F. Under Hoover’s FBI, the Core was launched as a black-OP using expendable men to protect Manhattan from Nazi spies; Rance, recruited by the police force to work for Elite Core by a mysterious Englishman named Louis Serry, soon becomes one of its most important agents.
It is this haunting backstory that traps Rance’s soul as he had been the agent pursuing a Nazi called ‘Hector’, whose real name was Walter Schmidt. Once that case was solved, Rance is sent to an asylum to ‘dry out’ and mentally recover from the years of violence and evil he witnessed at the hands of Schmidt.
It is at the city sanitarium where RAM comes into Rance’s life – the Vet and hospital orderly who hates Jack Rance as a man and a cop. He dedicates himself to hunting Rance down long after the war.
RAM finds him in Whitehall, a small New York State village, between Vermont and Lake George, where our story soars!
As Rance helps a local detective on the Max Schip homicide, little does he know that he will not only solve the murder but be forced to confront someone as evil as Walter Schmidt was during W.W. II.
Meeting Harvey D’Angelo after so many years is a KILL or be KILLED moment of micro-time Rance must triumph over or else never see his beloved Denise again.
A BRUTAL LOVE STORY?
Or simply another vintage crime thriller…
Both.
Denise, Jack Rance’s beloved ‘dolly’
“I luv ya like my liver Johnny,” Denise said, watching Rance take his slacks off.
“I’m dusty n’ shadows without ya dolly,” replied Rance, trying not to rush her too quickly before his lust blew out the back of his skull.
“Don’t leave me Johnny.”
“N’ go where, huh? The fuckin’ boneyard a ghost…”
“Jus’ don’t ever split on ya dolly, or I’ll KILL ya slow.”
“Sure dolly, sure,” he said, sitting on the sofa pulling on her garter hose. “What is it ya want baby?”
“Whatever’s left of ya soul, Jack. Give it to me or I’ll take it like a dog bone.”
The man known as RAM in the Det. Jack Rance stories – BOOK ONE. Mugshot, Harvey D’Angelo, Philadelphia PD – 1939
Evil men are like LUCK – never know when the nex’ dice roll will come up craps!
In closing, NO Budget, NO crew, NO production team but there are FIVE Det. Jack Rance novels ready to be adapted to screenplays. Offered here is the first script based on Book One:
Who Killed Max Schip? (Murder in Whitehall, N.Y.)
Thank you. Contact Mr. Laro anytime:
802-774-8884 or via scotellarochristopher@gmail.com
Let’s make a movie – soon.
Who Killed Max Schip? (Murder in Whitehall, N.Y.)
The Strange Case of Mowery Skunkton
The Cold Case of Grace Lancaster (and the Rickter Murders)
Jack Rance in Hell’s Kitchen (prequel)
Jack Rance and the Lake George Murders (series ends)
All Rights Reserved
C. 2017-2023, WGA East Coast
all works
by
S.W. Laro
THE HELL'S KITCHEN WRITER 
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