Yancey, Richard

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Yancey, Richard

(Rick Yancey)

Personal

Born in FL; married; wife's name Sandy; children: Jonathan, Joshua (stepsons), Jacob. Education: Roosevelt University, B.A.

Addresses

Home—Gainesville, FL. Agent—Brian DeFiore, DeFiore & Company, 72 Spring St., Ste. 304, New York, NY 10012.

Career

Internal Revenue Service, former revenue officer; columnist and theater critic for Lakeland, FL, Ledger. Also worked as a typesetter, drama teacher, actor, ranch hand, playwright, and telemarketer.

Member

Screenwriters Guild of America, Authors Guild.

Awards, Honors

Best Books for Children selection, Publishers Weekly, 2005, and Carnegie Medal nominee, Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, 2006, both for The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp.

Writings

A Burning in Homeland (novel), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2003.

Confessions of a Tax Collector: One Man's Tour of Duty inside the IRS (memoir), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2004.

The Highly Effective Detective: A Teddy Ruzak Novel, Thomas Dunne Books (New York, NY), 2006.

The Highly Effective Detective Goes to the Dogs, St. Martin's Minotaur (New York, NY), 2008.

Also author of screenplays, including The Orbit of Venus and The Cricket.

"ALFRED KROPP" SERIES; FOR YOUNG ADULTS; UNDER NAME RICK YANCEY

The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2005.

The Seal of Solomon, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2007.

The Thirteenth Skull, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2008.

Adaptations

The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp was optioned for film by Warner Bros. Pictures, 2006.

Sidelights

A former employee of the Internal Revenue Service, Richard Yancey mines his experiences working for this much-maligned government agency in his memoir Confessions of a Tax Collector: One Man's Tour of Duty inside the IRS. Moving from fact to fiction, he has also written several adult novels in addition to penning the "Alfred Kropp" books for a younger readership, the latter published under the name Rick Yancey. "Yancey is an honest, uningratiating writer, whose characters are grittily convincing, though rarely charming," commented a Publishers Weekly critic in appraising the author's adult novel A Burning in Homeland.

A Burning in Homeland, a Southern gothic, begins in 1960 and reaches back to the 1940s in its complex storyline. Set in Homeland, Florida, Yancey's story is narrated by three characters: Robert Lee "Shiny" Parker, a precocious seven year old; Mavis, a Baptist preacher's wife; and Mavis's strange daughter, Sharon-Rose, all of whom come to live with the Parkers after the preacher's house suspiciously burns to the ground and its owner is hospitalized. In another part of town, Halley Martin re- flects on the last twenty years he spent pining for Mavis while he was in prison for the murder of Walter Hughes, who was accused of raping Mavis. Through the help of Ned Jeffries, a young Baptist preacher from Homeland who acts as prison chaplain, Halley writes to Mavis. Once again, however, Halley loses his love: through her letters, Mavis reveals the reasons she has decided to marry Ned, even though she still loves Halley.

A Kirkus Reviews contributor dubbed A Burning in Homeland "a beguiling, old-fashioned tale of desperate love and cruelty." In Booklist Kaite Mediatore wrote of the novel: "Dripping with atmosphere and drama, it's a pleasure as guilty as a third helping of pecan pie." Valerie Sayers commented in the New York Times Book Review on the character of Shiny, writing that although his voice does not sound like that of a seven year old, "we suspend our disbelief because that voice is so appealing. Shiny wins us over because of his glorious anxiety, his crying fits and especially his terror of Mavis's daughter, Sharon-Rose, a great fictional misfit, a deter-

mined pursuer of boys and a good comic foil to her mother, that faded object of desire." Sayers noted that Yancey includes black characters as servants and that a black named Elias first informs Halley of Mavis's rape, a reversal of the stereotypical scene, in which the black man is accused of rape and a white man takes the first steps toward revenge.

Geared for teen readers, Yancey's novel The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp is the story of a sixteen-year-old boy who is involved in a scheme to steal Excalibur, the sword of King Arthur. Yancey described his relationship with the character in an interview posted on the Bloomsbury Publishing Web site: "Growing up, I often felt like an outcast, kind of a loner like Alfred. I feel connected to Alfred's story, because it was written at a time when I was going through some professional challenges (becoming a full-time writer)."

The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp begins as the orphaned Alfred is sent to live with his Uncle Farrell, a security guard who works the nightshift. An extraordinarily large boy, Alfred frequently feels like a loser, performing poorly in school and in sports. Offered a million dollars to retrieve a sword, Uncle Farrell readily accepts the task and enlists the help of his reluctant nephew. Retrieving the sword turns out to be quite easy and Alfred readily gives the object to the evil Mogart. Upon becoming aware that he has actually handed over Excalibur, the famed weapon of King Arthur, to an evil ex-knight looking to rule the world, Alfred undertakes to help Bennacio, an ancestor to a knight of the Round Table, in his efforts to recapture the powerful weapon.

Many critics found Yancey's hero to be an endearing character and predicted that adventure fans will find The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp a good choice. "Alfred's naivete and basic good nature … make this pageturner stand out in the crowded fantasy adventure genre," claimed a Publishers Weekly critic. School Library Journal contributor Hillias J. Martin similarly called the volume "lighthearted, entertaining, occasionally half-witted, but by and large fun," while Booklist reviewer Michael Cart described The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp as "a white-knuckle, page-turning read."

Alfred returns in The Seal of Solomon, "a rip-roaring story that teens will love and won't be able to put down," according to June H. Keuhn in School Library Journal. When a fired member of the Office of Interdimensional Paradoxes and Extraordinary Phenomenon (OIPEP) steals one of King Solomon's rings along with a vessel said to contain trapped demons, OIPEP Operative Nine seeks the help of Alfred to track down the thief. Noting that The Seal of Solomon also works as a stand-alone title, Booklist contributor Todd Morning added that Yancey combines "action-packed scenes with tongue-in-cheek humor and occasional heart-on-sleeve sincerity" in Alfred's second adventure.

In 2006, Yancey also began a series of detective novels for adult readers. Left with a small inheritance, gumshoe Teddy Ruzak opens a private investigating agency in The Highly Effective Detective: A Teddy Ruzak Novel, despite having no training or experience in the field. Looking into a seemingly minor case of goslings killed by a speeding motorist, Ruzak stumbles upon a murder mystery involving a missing spouse. The book was described as "an adorably quixotic adventure from mystery first-timer Yancey" by a Kirkus Reviews critic. In Publishers Weekly a contributor also found much to like, suggesting that Yancey's "narrative takes unforeseen, utterly believable twists that wind to an extremely satisfying close."

Yancey's follow-up novel featuring Ruzak, The Highly Effective Detective Goes to the Dogs, also earned praise from reviewers as the unlicensed private investigator searches for the killer of a homeless man. As the only one who believes Cadillac Joe was murdered, Ruzak looks for the culprit in a second installment that is "even funnier than the first," according to Booklist reviewer David Pitt. Also finding The Highly Effective Detective Goes to the Dogs enjoyable, a contributor to Publishers Weekly predicted that the detective's "distinctive voice … will endear this surprisingly effective bumbler" to mystery fans.

Confessions of a Tax Collector recounts Yancey's twelve-year stint at the Internal Revenue Service working as a revenue officer (RO). Discussing actual cases in which identities have been protected, he describes how he confiscated property to satisfy back taxes owed to the government and examines what he describes as "the ‘cowboy’ attitude of the old days," before the Revenue Restructuring Act of 1998 cut back on the extreme tactics and harassment that RO's employed. Yancey also recounts the dangers he encountered in facing delinquent taxpayers and of his isolation and obsession with his job. The story has a happy ending, however. Yancey married his supervisor and then quit the job at about the time his writing career began to take off. Library Journal contributor Richard Drezen described the memoir as "an engaging insider's account of life inside the dreaded IRS."

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Yancey, Richard, Confessions of a Tax Collector: One Man's Tour of Duty inside the IRS (memoir), Harper-Collins (New York, NY), 2004.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, January 1, 2003, Kaite Mediatore, review of A Burning in Homeland, p. 854; November 15, 2003, David Pitt, review of Confessions of a Tax Collector, p. 546; August, 2005, Michael Cart, review of The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp, p. 2019; March 15, 2006, David Pitt, review of The Highly Effective Detective: A Teddy Ruzak Novel, p. 32; May 15, 2007, Todd Morning, review of The Seal of Solomon, p. 54; June 1, 2008, David Pitt, review of The Highly Effective Detective Goes to the Dogs, p. 50.

Entertainment Weekly, July 21, 2006, Tina Jordan, review of The Highly Effective Detective, p. 74.

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2002, review of A Burning in Homeland, p. 1656; December 15, 2003, review of Confessions of a Tax Collector, p. 1444; May 15, 2006, review of The Highly Effective Detective, p. 501; July 1, 2008, review of The Highly Effective Detective Goes to the Dogs.

Library Journal, March 15, 2003, Rebecca Sturm Kelm, review of A Burning in Homeland, p. 118; December, 2003, Richard Drezen, review of Confessions of a Tax Collector, p. 134.

New York Times Book Review, March 2, 2003, Valerie Sayers, review of A Burning in Homeland, p. 30; April 5, 2004, Janet Maslin, review of Confessions of a Tax Collector, p. E8.

Publishers Weekly, December 2, 2002, review of A Burning in Homeland, p. 31; January 19, 2004, review of Confessions of a Tax Collector, p. 60; August 29, 2005, review of The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp, p. 57; April 10, 2006, review of The Highly Effective Detective, p. 48; April 2, 2007, review of The Seal of Solomon, p. 57; June 23, 2008, review of The Highly Effective Detective Goes to the Dogs, p. 40.

School Library Journal, October, 2005, Hillias J. Martin, review of The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp, p. 178; June, 2006, Francisca Goldsmith, review of The Highly Effective Detective, p. 192; June, 2007, June H. Keuhn, review of The Seal of Solomon, p. 165.

USA Today, April 12, 2004, Carol Knopes, "Ex-Repo Man for IRS Tells It with a Smile," review of Confessions of a Tax Collector, p. B11.

Washington Post, March 7, 2004, Nancy McKeon, "A Tax Dodger Meets the Man" (interview), p. F1.