Welcome to Richard Banks' Fiction Portfolio

Literary Noir: Short Novel - Dry Humor
Me & Mickey is a darkly comic Midwestern noir about bad luck, worse decisions, and the one friendship that somehow outlasted both. In Our Time meets Fargo.

The narrator, known only as Me, is a quiet, thoughtful ex-con with a low tolerance for bullshit and a lifelong bond with Mickey, the kind of man who always has a scheme, a scam, or a stupid idea he can’t quite pull off. 

When a low-level drug delivery goes sideways during a North Dakota snowstorm, Me and Mickey find themselves on the run with a suitcase filled with drugs, and no idea how to stay ahead of the cops or the far more dangerous people they’ve pissed off.

Their escape weaves through a frozen landscape of strip malls, liquor stores, and bad memories, intersecting with an icy funeral, a recently heartbroken woman trying to change her life, a stolen barbecue grill, and one very unlucky surgeon, who has his own bodies to dispose of , literally. 

The three of them are pulled into the chaos by sheer dumb luck and one bad turn at a red light.

As the story barrels toward its inevitably messy collision — both literal and figurative — Me reflects on the loyalty that bound him to Mickey, the choices that sealed his fate, and the hard truth that not all tragedies are undeserved. Told with bone-dry humor, Coen-esque absurdity, and a strong moral undercurrent, Me and Mickey is a novella about friendship, fate, and the long shadow of one bad night.

(30,000 words)

Novel -UNDER CONSTRUCTION

The genocide is just the beginning, for Rwanda, and for the people sent to help rebuild it.

Set in Rwanda in the summer of 1994, in the uncertain weeks following the genocide. Blue Helmets is told through the eyes of a young American UN volunteer named Toni, and explores the space between bearing witness and taking action, and the cost of trying to do both. Toni may never change the world, but she can stand her ground in it.

(Proposed length 75,000 words)