Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind

Pick yourself up, dust yourself off

2004-06-01T00:00:00.000-04:00

And start all over again at the new, the improved blog, located at the easy-to-remember URL of http://www.sarahweinman.com. So what's so great about the new digs? Well, you'll just have to see for yourselves.

So goodbye, Blogger--it's been a swell seven-plus months. But now it's time to move on.

How to make this girl very happy

2004-05-31T10:00:00.000-04:00

Write a retrospective on Ross Thomas, as Richard Giller did yesterday for the Boston Globe. Instead of listening to me wax rhapsodic, let Giller explain what made Thomas's novels so wonderful:

[The] novels provide quintessential windows into the world of Thomas. It's a shadowy place where political power and big money intersect, and where all the important plays are made behind the scenes. The adversaries -- morally compromised heroes confronting irredeemable villains -- are invariably brilliant, treacherous, and cynical. Deception is the order of the day, or rather night, since an inordinate amount of the action occurs between midnight and dawn. Thomas takes you into the hotel rooms, corporate suites, and political offices of the people who know the score, the way the game is played, and exactly which levers to pull.

Make no mistake. For all their worldliness, these are not the burnt-out cases one finds in the pages of Graham Greene or John le Carr. Tough as nails, these guys (and not a few gals) run the gamut from congressmen to con men, political fixers to third-world dictators. They combine an outsize appetite for life with an eye locked steadily on the prize, and they play the game with a zest that is refreshing, inventive, and bold.

The two novels Giller cites--BRIARPATCH and OUT ON THE RIM--are fine places to start, although I'm also partial to the most recent reissue, 1983's MISSIONARY STEW (with an introduction from this fine blogger) because it's about the lead-up to an election year and the various machinations, blackmail, and murder (of course) that results from it. Cynical, world-weary, but ultimately idealistic--that's why I love him.

And how to make this girl extremely happy--reissue the rest of his novels! Earth to St. Martin's Press...

There's perverse, and then there's this

2004-05-31T09:00:00.000-04:00

A 15-YEAR-old schoolboy has become the first person in Britain to be convicted of inciting somebody to murder him.

The boy, who may only be identified by the pseudonym John, invented a cast of characters in an Internet chat room as part of an elaborate plan to commission his own killing, the Manchester Crown Court heard this week.

He was 14 when he fell in love with Mark, a boy two years older, and, in a bizarre online deception, adopted the guise of a female secret service agent to order Mark to stab him in a suburban alley.

The older boy was meant to end John's life with the words, "I love you, bro."

Mark carried out the stabbing in Altrincham, Cheshire, shortly before 8pm on June 29 last year. He knifed John in the chest and abdomen. The second blow cut into his kidney, liver and gall bladder, nearly killing him.

Some things should just stand alone without comment.

The last day of May

2004-05-31T08:20:00.000-04:00

And god, where does the time go? It's practically summer, and some part of me thinks it's still, I dunno, February or something. I don't get it. Anyway:

Oh my gawd, Patrick Anderson truly has the Line of the Week with the opening phrases of his review of Michael Fredrikson's new book A DEFENSE FOR THE DEAD: "The serial-killer thriller is the cicada of popular fiction. The damn things are everywhere." Accordingly, the review is an extended rant about the subgenre and only at the very end does Anderson review--sort of--the book.

Although Janet Maslin seems to take umbrage with the whole concept of "literary re-animation," she does like Colm Toibin's novel of Henry James, THE MASTER.

What's up with the historical novel, and why is it such a popular fictional genre these days? TheGlobe and Mail isn't exactly sure but they turn to two popular authors, Bernard Cornwell and Sarah Dunant, for some answers.

Even though I get all the titles mixed up, plenty of other folks don't and devour John Sandford's thrillers with ease. He's interviewed by Linda Wertheimer at NPR's All Things Considered.

Boris Akunin, who's threatening to conquer the English-speaking world in the same manner that he's taken over most every European country with his Erast Fandorin novels, talks to the Philly Inquirer about why he, an academic trained in philology, gravitated towards crime fiction.

Ooops--Jane Jakeman, who is both a crime writer and a historian, nitpicks about the overall premise of THE RULE OF FOUR--it seems somebody has published a layman's version of the Hypnerotomachia which figures so strongly in the year's "runaway" success.

And I must wonder--did Ron Bernas and I read the same book? His review of Mark Billingham's LAZYBONES seems so...cursory, somehow.

The Oregonian's review of the ENEMY is fairly standard but for this--no, no, The Rock cannot be Reacher. And why must people imagine their favorite characters in a movie version anyway? Another rant for another time....

And finally, J.K. Rowling gives her blessing to the exponentially growing subculture of Harry Potter fan fiction. Well, the G-rated no-sex kind, I think all the slash stuff might not exactly curry favor with the lady (but then again...)

It's all about the interviews

2004-05-30T10:30:00.000-04:00

Joe Bloggs, the outpost for the UK-based 3AM Magazine, has been conducting a spate of interviews with some of the leading lights of the litblogging community. Now, here's mine.

The online mags speak out

2004-05-30T09:30:00.000-04:00

First up: a shiny new issue of Plots With Guns, with the usual mix of great stories, insane interviews, and other things that make it such a special magazine. Like Trev Maviano's conversation with Mark T. Conard--noir author, philosopher, and judging from this interview, an all around freak who bests and is bested only by the freakishness of Maviano. The co-editor calms down some in his Earful to talk about just how horrible and depressing the world can get--a cold, but necessary dose of reality that sometimes gets lost. As for the stories, they include the likes of Pat Lambe, the superhuman Stephen D. Rogers (how many hundred stories has he written now?) Stacey Cochran, and Tim Wohlforth, who gets away with as cool an opening line I've seen in ages.

Once you're done devouring the new PWG, go check out issue six of Shred of Evidence. Editrix Megan Powell has put together a cracking collection of stories from the likes of Gerald So, Ed Lynskey, and the aforementioned Messrs Cochran and Rogers.

Hey hey, it's the update

2004-05-30T09:00:00.000-04:00

And first, for those who wrote in after Friday's kvetch-inflected post, thank you. It finally hit me what the problem is--I'm not very good at reacting to cars that honk at me or are otherwise in the way when I'm in the middle of parking. Throws me off my rhythm or something. Anyway, having pinpointed the problem, I do believe I will solve it--or else, another five years of clawing my way through driver exam hell awaits...

But you all want links. So, without further adieu:

I'm a teeny-tiny bit disappointed with the NYT Book Review this weekend--not sure why, and perhaps it's just me. But what's there to see this time around? Hmm....Michael Wood's puzzling over a book that compares/contrasts film critic Pauline Kael and general critic Susan Sontag. I'm confused too--how did the book proposal work, exactly? Also, Neil Bremel finds the parts of Peter Esterhazy's CELESTIAL HARMONIES to be greater than the sum, and Jodi Kantor is underwhelmed by Maureen Orth's delving into the cult of celebrity worship.

Moving to the Book World, it focuses much of its attention on WWII-based books--timely, as it's the 60th anniversary of D-Day (already? Wasn't the 50th not that long ago? God, time flies...) Otherwise, Jennifer Howard struggles with Claire Tristram's AFTER, a novel of taboos and terrorism; Alice K. Turner has some fun with THE RULE OF FOUR; Ron Chernow grapples with his addiction to research, an affliction I am ridiculously in the throes of myself; and Darryl Lorenzo Wellington is on board the PUSHKIN AND THE QUEEN OF SPADES bandwagon.

The Guardian Review has some choice crime fiction-y stuff, like Robert Edric's severe disappointment with Susan Hill's foray into the genre after 30+ years of writing ghost stories. It seems she's gone for the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" formula of serial killer/thriller. Ah well. Meanwhile, Matthew Lewin rounds up the newest thrillers by Jonathan Nasaw, Jonathan Kellerman, Jeffery Deaver and Robert Goddard. In more mainstream fare, there's the already hotlinked piece on the late, lamented B.S. Johnson, Maya Jaggi's lengthy profile of Jeanette Winterson, the painstaking process of restoring William Blake to rightful glory, and Nicholas Clee goes gaga for Gerard Jones' GINNY GOOD, albeit with an acknowledgement that the book is "difficult to market."

The Observer is, quite simply, All About Robert McCrum. Not that I'm complaining in the slightest, as his recollection of 25 years in the book publishing world is funny, timely, and bloody well-written. Then there's his Top Ten books of all time, given in honor of the ongoing Hay Festival. Sure, it's a fairly traditional list, but hell, it's a good starting point. Also, Rachel Cooke looks at the B.S. Johnson biography and declares that as a "book about a man who cares about novels by a man who cares about novels, you should run out and buy it if you care too."

Over at the oh-so-lovely G&M, Margaret Cannon offers up a slightly sparser-than-usual crime column. Included in the roundup are new novels by Mary Higgins Clark, Nicci French, Jeffrey Miller, and Yasido Uchida, as well as an interesting compendium of female characters in crime fiction and film, HARDBOILED AND HIGH-HEELED, that Cannon really raves about. Meanwhile, Rebecca Caldwell interviews the judges of the Griffin Prize to figure out how the hell they can sift through so much poetry and judge who's the best; Martin Levin suffers from Bush Burnout, considering how many books on the current prez are being published on a daily (it seems) basis; and Morley Callaghan's complete stories, now collected all together for the first time, garner some nice notices.

The best of the rest:

Perhaps the Big Interview of the weekend is with Val McDermid, whose latest Tony Hill/Carol Jordan bestseller (hey, check the Sunday Times list in a couple of weeks and you'll see) THE TORMENT OF OTHERS is just out in the UK. The Sunday Herald profile looks at her hard-won success, how raising a child may (or may not) affect the graphic subject matter of many of her books, and the difficult breakup she had with her partner of 11 years.

Mark Billingham, who is about to embark on his longest (and strangest, according to his itinerary--Austin to NYC to Phoenix in 48 hours??) book tour yet, is interviewed by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review about the usual things, mostly about his new-to-the-US Tom Thorne novel, LAZYBONES.

Randy Wayne White gets the Q&A treatment by one of his semi-local papers, the Southwest Florida News-Press.

Cosmo editor and mystery novelist Kate White, whose books I keep turning to when I want an instant dose of enjoyable brain candy, is interviewed in the Times-Dispatch.

David Montgomery rounds up some of the newest up-and-coming writers on the crime fiction scene, like P.J. Tracy, Ace Atkins, Denise Hamilton, Jonathon King and Chris Mooney.

Another day, another profile of Hari Kunzru. This one actually names his girlfriend. Aside from that, it's fairly boilerplate, methinks.

Oh, bloody hell--I'd totally forgotten that Helen Fielding's new book, OLIVIA JOULES AND THE OVERACTIVE IMAGINATION, is just about to be released in the US. To "celebrate" this momentous occasion, the Albuquerque Journal interviews Fielding on the change of pace. Meanwhile, I'll just sob quietly that more deserving authors can't get the same amount of press coverage.

Dan Pope (whose byline is curiously absent from the piece) details a far-too-common affliction for debut novelists--the curse of the second novel.

And anyone who reads this blog long enough knows that the book industry is a tough nut to crack--but the Bradenton Herald decides to take a whack at that old chestnut by talking to a few people about how it's oh so hard to make it.

Looking for mysteries in any city, any town? Carole Barrowman of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel lists a dizzying variety of books for your reading pleasure, whether you're looking to read about Manhattan, LA, or Peoria. OK, I made the last one up, because as far as I know, there are no mysteries set in that town...but if I'm wrong, well...?

Orhan Pamuk's SNOW is getting reviewed in a lot of places, but the one at Scotland on Sunday seems to sum things up quite nicely, deeming the new work a "stirring read."

I'm not exactly sure why Dorman Shindler needs to slag off the thriller genre as a whole in his review of Lee Child's THE ENEMY, but I suppose it's just too much work to leave a primarily positive review as is instead of justifying it somehow.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer gets on the RULE OF FOUR bandwagon, and call for the inevitable--a sequel. Ah, but don't you know such a thing will either a) be a while or b) never see the light of day if you reference that earlier "curse of the second novel" article?

Self-help books....for kids? That does seem to be the new trend, according to Eva Gzowska of the Independent. Bloody hell, what's next, self-help primers for pets? Oh, wait....

And finally, Emily Maguire, I love you. Thank you for writing this, really.

Dormancy

2004-05-28T11:12:00.000-04:00

Your humble correspondent, for lack of a better term, is feeling rather blah this morning. Of course, failing a driving test for the third time in a row with only one more chance before the license gets revoked will often cause such feelings to emerge. So, because the only thoughts that seem to turn over in her brain seem to start with "Why?" and end with "WHY?" she's taking the rest of the day off.

And for the forseeable future, too; all the other cool kids have two-day weekends, but since I do like to post those Massive Weekend Updates on Sundays, the only day left to be silent was Friday. And so it shall be.

See you Sunday.

Yardley goes mental

2004-05-27T09:23:00.000-04:00

I've loved Jonathan Yardley's reviews for quite some time, but his latest offers up a whole host of cheap shots, er, biting gems. Taking on Rachel Pastan's THIS SIDE OF MARRIED, she--nor her background--doesn't exactly emerge unscathed:

"Rachel Pastan received her undergraduate degree from Harvard College and an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her short stories have been published in Mademoiselle, Threepenny Review and Arts and Letters. She has received the Arts and Letters Fiction Prize, the PEN Syndicated Fiction award and fellowships from the Wisconsin Arts Board and the Delaware Arts Council. In addition, Ms. Pastan has taught writing at Edgewood College, the Writers' Place in Madison, Wisconsin, and Swarthmore College."

All that for this? All those hours in class, critiquing and being critiqued; all those piddling prizes; all those teaching sinecures -- all that forced marching through literary apprenticeship as it's now defined in this country to produce a novel that has approximately as much heft as an episode of "Friends" or "Sex and the City"? Is that what they're teaching in the writing schools and lavishing awards upon -- Sitcom 101?

So you get the drift. He doesn't like it. Then there's the closing paragraph:

The whole enterprise, which means to be light, even frothy, never rises above the labored. If this is what the writing schools are handing out MFAs for these days -- and there's plenty of evidence elsewhere to suggest it is -- then the keys to the joint should just be turned over to "As the World Turns."

Now, now. ATWT isn't exactly the soap to slag, seeing as it's one of the better ones on the air right now (GH? Another story. DAYS OF OUR LIVES? Way too over the top. Etc., etc.,) with some degree of writing talent. For all I know, some of them might even have MFAs. But it does make me wonder who got the clever idea to match Yardley up with what essentially amounts to a chick-lit novel. Shouldn't anyone have twigged this wouldn't exactly be his cuppa?

Smatterings

2004-05-27T09:00:00.000-04:00

Oh, those Minots (as in MINE-it, not the French pronunciation.) So many siblings, so many writers all trying to tell the same tortured family history in a different way. Not surprisingly, they fight a lot. Current round: eldest brother George, whose new novel tells the same family incident but may or may not tarnish the rep of second oldest brother Simon. My head hurt after reading this.

You know, part of me wants to find some trace snarky element in this, but I can't--I think it's great that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar loves history and seems to write it pretty well, too. And he wants to emulate Paul Robeson, who was quite the guy (and a favorite singer of mine.) What's not to love?

Timothy Harris's two Kyd novels were held up as prime examples of how PI fiction was moving forward in the 1970s, updating the Hammett/Chandler vision. Then Harris stopped writing books--until now. With a third Kyd book in stores now, after a 25 year layoff, Tom Nolan catches up with the writer in this interview for January Magazine.

Roger Straus, the longtime founder of the high-falutin' pubishing house Farrar, Straus & Giroux, has died at the age of 87.

It looks like an arrest is imminent in the case of literary agent Rod Hall, who was stabbed to death over the weekend. A man in his 20s--no other details available--is being questioned.

Noel "Razor" Smith was once a hardened criminal. Now he's writing about his former life, and speaks to the Guardian about the transition from robber to writer.

Louise Rennison's books have made a huge impact in the United States--especially for its slang. The Guardian looks into the effect of "Britishisms" creeping their way into the way American teens talk. The next trend: when this particular patois goes global....

Blah blah blah Bill Clinton memoir blah blah June 22 blah blah blah. Actually what strikes me is that it's a year, almost to the DAY, that some other juggernaut was published. Is there something about the first day of summer that screams blockbuster? Hell if I know...

And finally, oh, if only I had a serious amount of money, then I could buy some of this. Seeing as he is one of my all-time favorite painters....

Helen DeWitt found safe

2004-05-26T20:46:00.000-04:00

Thankfully, the missing novelist has turned up in Niagara Falls, where she's been known to haunt previously:

Missing novelist Helen DeWitt turned up Wednesday in Niagara Falls, N.Y., after vanishing from her Staten Island home, police said.

Dewitt, who had been described as suicidal, was found in good condition, New York police said. She was to be taken to a hospital for evaluation.

Niagara Falls Police Department officers had been asked by New York City police to watch out for DeWitt, who wrote the critically acclaimed "The Last Samurai," Niagara Lt. Joe Morrison said.

"She had a history here," said Morrison, who had no details about how she was found.

Wonderful news, and here's hoping she can get the rest and help she needs.

Shouts and Murmurs

2004-05-26T17:49:00.000-04:00

To Maud: What Lizzie said. I'd rather a happy, healthy, not-so-prolific writer and regular person than a harried, stressed out, beholden-to-your-audience blogger.

To Terry: Get well soonest.

Beyond the Truth/Stranger/Fiction continuum

2004-05-26T14:54:00.000-04:00

This is the story of Ernest Di Falco, who just wanted to rob a bank but managed to get every detail wrong:

Di Falco, who is unemployed, entered the bank, approached a teller and displayed the phony gun, authorities said.

"This is a holdup," he announced. "Fill up the bag."

Once the bag was full, Di Falco amazingly asked the teller for a ride to his car, saying it was parked down the street.

The teller refused and called a cab.

Di Falco waited — with the bag of stolen cash, said FBI agent John Turkington.

"He waits patiently for the cab to arrive," he said. "People are coming and going."

As a disguise, Di Falco was wearing a long brown wig, sunglasses and a business suit. But a bank employee recognized him immediately.

When the cab arrived, another employee took down the license plate and gave it to cops, who broadcast it on the state police emergency network.

I swear, they should have training courses on this sort of thing. Rule one: don't call a freakin' cab!

When it rains, it pours

2004-05-26T13:32:00.000-04:00

This is probably getting boring, but anyway, my latest review. I was very impressed and promptly bought up Norman Green's backlist. Considering who I read and what I read, I'm just as surprised I didn't read him before now. But now I will.

A smorgasbord of interviews

2004-05-26T10:33:00.000-04:00

Yankee Pot Roast, who manage to up the humor quotient on a regular basis, continue their "Interviews with Interviewers" series with blog favorite Robert Birnbaum, whose style I someday hope to emulate. Previous installments have cast the Q&A lens on Claire Zulkey and the Black Table's A.J. Daulerio. (link from TMFTML.)

For some reason, I cannot find the Globe and Mail's lengthy interview with Hari Kunzru that ran in the print edition; but the Sunday Telegraph has its own, with Helen Brown trying to overcompensate for some unfortunate choices:

His new novel, Transmission, about a young Indian computer programmer's attempts to succeed in America, also centres on characters whose dreams and identities are subsumed by cultural surfaces. It is ironic, then, that lifestyle gurus from Channel 4's The Gay Team advised a reporter from The Telegraph to place Kunzru's books on his coffee table to help create a more convincing "metrosexual'' identity.

"I thought that was very, very funny," chuckles Kunzru, when I meet him for lunch at his publisher's whitewashed private club beneath the Strand. "I'm an urban lifestyle accessory!"

Thankfully, Helen Brown, the Telegraph's interviewer, does move on to talk about more weighty matters like Kunzru's rejection of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize that stirred up controversy late last year.

Brown also interviewed Eoin Colfer of ARTEMIS BROWN fame for the same paper, and it's the usual sort of thing, explaining what attracts children to his work, although it seems Colfer is a bit out of touch with what the kiddies are actually watching:

Colfer's work elegantly subverts our traditional perception of the little people. You thought you knew what a leprechaun was, didn't you? Jigging green midgets in tights? Forget it. In the world of Artemis Fowl, LEPrecon stands for "Lower Elements Police Reconnaissance". Colfer's fairies are a hi-tech bunch, whose enviable gadgetry helps them to stay beneath the radar of us "Mud people". Colfer twists traditional Celtic mythology in order to reflect his native Ireland. There's an old theory that tales of tricksy fairy folk thrive among subjugated races, that stories can represent the way in which the indigenous people and culture are forced underground by their conquerors. Ireland's recent economic resurgence, based largely on the IT boom of the 1990s, is mirrored in Colfer's canny fairies, who have mastered technology far superior to that of the clumsy, polluting humans.

Children love it, perhaps because they're also like fairies, darting about beneath adult surveillance. They may have to abide by some inexplicable adult rules, but they're normally far more adept in the world of microchips and basic video-programming than their parents. "I'm very keen on not writing down to children," says Colfer. "They all use computers and watch Ally McBeal."

Ally McBeal? That was cancelled a zillion years ago, right? The kids I know are a hell of a lot more likely to be watching Chapelle's Show....

More ConnellyWatch(TM)

2004-05-26T09:18:00.000-04:00

I'm surprised the Washington Post took so long to review THE NARROWS, but maybe it took that much time to line up the reviewer in question, I don't know. Anyway, John Katzenbach (who has a new book out later this year, I believe) gets the job and seems to like it as much as practically everyone else does, although he makes a very good point:

"The Narrows" is very much a sequel, and in that respect it has a little trouble standing on its own. Connelly frequently refers to the events of the preceding book, and just as often relies on the reader's knowledge of "Blood Work" and the Eastwood film. It is perhaps unfair to judge a sequel by the same standards applied to a conventional novel. In all likelihood, readers familiar with these prior works would be frustrated by much explication, either of plot or of character, that they might consider repetitive. Consequently, there isn't much background -- "The Narrows" simply sails right off into its story. This makes it a tricky read for those coming to Connelly for the first time. They will discover that he has an attractive rapid-fire writing style and that he skillfully deliversthekey pieces of evidence that tie the strands of the story together. But his reliance on information from previous books means that appreciating this one is something of a challenge.

The thing is, how many people are really going to pick this book up as their first Michael Connelly? A few, I suppose, but if I were still working in a bookshop and a customer told me they'd never read Michael Connelly but had heard so much great stuff about him, I'd give the customer one of a) THE POET b) BLOOD WORK c) THE CONCRETE BLONDE (because that to me was a stronger book than THE BLACK ECHO, and was, incidentally, the first book of Connelly's I read.) I suppose one could read THE NARROWS and figure things out, but what fun is that? Especially with all the little inside jokes and meta-references, it helps to have read prior books.

Does it mean THE NARROWS isn't as strong a book because it doesn't "stand alone"? Hard to say, except perhaps the concept is somewhat overrated. It's bloody hard work to continue a series, let alone ensure that each work can be viewed as a separate entity. And sometimes, it might just be a better idea to work on resolving threads, creating new ones, and write the book that's supposed to be written, and not worry so much about whether a potential new fan is going to be annoyed because the book doesn't explain previous events very well.

So you want some links, well here they are

2004-05-26T08:52:00.000-04:00

And I must, absolutely must start off with the stabbing death of literary agent Rod Hall, who represented a whole host of people via his eponymous agency. The police have no leads as of yet.

And yet more bad news, alas: Helen DeWitt, the author of THE LAST SAMURAI, was reported missing yesterday by the landlord of her Staten Island home. She was last seen in the Saint George section. Thoughts and prayers are with her family and loved ones.

Now, to some less weighty matters: as Publishers Lunch reported yesterday, Random House seems to love reorganizing, so they're doing it again. Jonathan Karp (who edits the likes of David Liss and Claire Berlinski) gets promoted to editor-in-chief of the Random House imprint, while Nancy Miller moves up to editorial director.

The New York Times profiles Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, the two authors responsible for what may turn out to be this year's THE DA VINCI CODE (but better written, I hope, and so others tell me),THE RULE OF FOUR.

What on earth is going on at the Walrus, Canada's allegedly leading literary magazine? A second editor has quit the mag after only 4 months on the job. Hello, stability?

Anneli Rufus rounds up the latest news with Bay Area authors like Leonard Chang, Dylan Shaffer, and Nichelle Tramble, whose long awaited second installment in the Maceo Redfield series, THE LAST KING, is out next month.

Jim Knipfel offers his summer reading list, but not surprisingly, it's kind of geared towards the morose and depressing. I, too, cringe at the Pattersons and the Clancys and the Grisham, but dude, can't you compromise a little bit?

Deryn Rees-Jones, who has written a "murder mystery poem" that's getting some play in Northern England, is interviewed by the Liverpool Echo.

Rick Kleffel snags Tom Perrotta for an hour and interviews him about LITTLE CHILDREN, what's really going on in the suburbs, and oh yeah, those goldfish....

It can't be a trend yet, but first Irvine Welsh was seen boxing in San Francisco, and now women's fiction writer Santa Montefiore has taken up the cause of pugilism. I guess the repetitive aspect is good for staying on course as a writer...?

And finally, Spike Milligan manages to have the last laugh after all after death--but only for those who understand Irish Gaelic....

Lehmann to New York Mag?

2004-05-25T17:00:00.000-04:00

If what Gawker says is true, then Chris Lehmann, deputy editor of Book World, will jump ship to become a features editor at New York Magazine. No word on when this job change would happen, though it's expected to be fairly shortly. My mind's whirring at this bit of news but if I can calm myself a little bit I'll focus on the following points:

A. Lehmann was one of the strongest reviewers, a proponent of good literature and a very sharp critic. His voice would certainly be missed, and Book World will have a huge hole to fill--never mind that there will have to be someone to take over Lehmann's weekly review column on Tuesdays.

B. He's also known rather good-naturedly as "Mr. Wonkette," aka the husband of celebrity political blogger Ana Marie Cox. No word on whether Lehmann's new job will require him to move back to New York (where he and Cox were based before he took the Book World job) but if so, will Cox go with him?

C. And if Cox does move back to the city, what does the future hold for Wonkette? Can she sustain the blog if she has to operate it from outside of Washington? Will the sensibility change if she does so? Or will someone else fill the role? (Our pick for the hypothetical "Wonkette II" would have to be this young lady.)

Suffice it to say that enquiring minds want to know and the story is, well, DEVELOPING...

UPDATE, 10:45 AM EDT: In a nutshell, Lehmann is moving to New York to start at the magazine fairly shortly, and Cox, as she states this morning in light of Page Six's item, "[won't be] noving to NY; Mr. Wonkette is going to commute."

Slaking the noir craving

2004-05-25T10:00:00.000-04:00

Hardluck Stories has updated with its spring edition, guest edited by Charlie Stella. It's a killer issue, and I'd say this even if I weren't in it. I'll let Charlie introduce the story:

Remember all those big mouths used to talk trash and could never walk the walk? A quiet woman with a lifelong desire (some might call it a dark one—but not me) has no reason (not anymore) not to fulfill all her wishes and prove the old adage about which ones to watch out for.

I wrote the first draft of "Keely Sings the Blues" in a near-gulp a few months ago after the first line popped into my head. You get a line like that, you have to figure out what happens next. The story is also, in its own way, the most personal I've published to date.

But that's my contribution. As for the rest of the issue, there's Duane Swierczynski's must-read gonzo interview of Ken Bruen, stories from some of my favorite new writers like Trev Maviano, Stephen D. Rogers, and Patrick Lambe (along with Charlie Stella's prequel to his novel JIMMY BENCH-PRESS), and much more. Like I said, this issue kicks serious ass.

Blog that Name

2004-05-25T09:30:00.000-04:00

It's no surprise whatsoever that yesterday's "Talk of the Town" article on ICM agent Kate Lee has produced an inevitable backlash, seen most visibly here and here. The gist of the griping is that somehow there's this "clique" of bloggers that namecheck and reference each other so much that people can't join in and are thus shut out and unloved.

Hmm, does this sound at all familiar?

Considering the right hand side of my blogroll, my words should be taken with many grains of salt. Besides, as I've said before, voice wins out, both in getting noticed and finding colleagues, drinking buddies, and close friends. And frankly, I'm far more interested in what could be a more serious question: what does this all mean for Kate Lee?

From what I gather, agents take on authors and projects they believe will sell, but their choices are varied. More and more of them are making their client lists available, so one can guage what kind of work each is particular to. Darley Anderson, for example, is best known for selling thrillers by UK authors like Lee Child, Martina Cole, and John Connolly. His two newest finds are Sheila Quigley, whose work is in the vein of Cole, and Alex Barclay, who appears to be a female Connolly. But Anderson doesn't only take thriller writers; however, those have proven to be the authors who yield him the kind of advances he's near-legendary for obtaining, and if an author submits work that can potentially sell in the way those other writers can, he'll take him or her on.

Other agents' tastes aren't necessarily so cut and dry; like any reader or editor, if he or she likes a work and believes in it, such work will be taken under the agent's wing. But playing the game of "like gravitates towards like" may not necessarily work. Matching an author to an agent is, at best, a crapshoot--one hopes for a perfect match, but that's difficult to come by.

In any case, though taste is arbitrary and there can be similarities in the kinds of authors an agent signs up, I've never seen the kind of "branding" that Kate Lee seems to be starting. And I worry that by signing up so many bloggers (although it's important to point out that of those bloggers listed, the vast majority haven't even completed their magnum opuses, let alone obtained book deals for them) they will all be viewed as a collective, and that each work cannot be judged individually, and potential editors will react accordingly.

Lindsay Robertson, in a comment left at the Gothamist thread, said as follows: "My point is that Kate is not capitalizing on a fly-by-night trend as much as she's using the internet as a gigantic slush pile. So these books that may or may not come out will (hopefully at least) not have anything to do with blogging! Nothing. Not even a url mention in the author bio. Mine certainly wouldn't."

That's all well and good, and in my estimation, the right tack to take--but should Robertson land a deal, will it be as the author of a book, or as a blogger? How would such a deal be reported in Publisher's Lunch? What would the marketing plans be for such a book? Because her blog is so personality-driven, the personality and voice--not necessarily the finished product--is what will likely come to mind when they hear the book deal pitch, and will affect the decision accordingly.

The rules may not necessarily apply to others namechecked, especially those that have had numerous print and online bylines (like Claire Zulkey or Old Hag) or have published short fiction and are known for their fiction writing in some form or another (like Maud.) But considering how much bloggers pride themselves on individuality and iconoclasm, being lumped together under the auspices of a single agent may well prove a hindrance, not a boon.

Having said that, I think it's a good thing that Lee's "branching out" by signing up other up-and-coming writers who are not bloggers. If she can sell their work, it may well erase any idea in people's minds that she's just the "Blogger Agent" instead of someone who happens to cater to her own tastes and whims--and then turn around and ensure that such tastes find a home with a publishing house.

Will Wonders Never Cease

2004-05-25T08:30:00.000-04:00

Deadly Pleasures reports that finally, amazingly, Rennie Airth's THE BLOOD-DIMMED TIDE will actually be published--and this year, at that. As reported by Ralph Spurrier, the owner of the mail order-only bookshop Postmortem Books, the book will be out on November 5 from Macmillan.

So why is this news? Because as George Easter (editor of DP) points out, Airth's new book has been delayed a whole host of times since news of its arrival was first announced, oh, back in about 2001 or so. THE BLOOD-DIMMED TIDE is the sequel to 1999's RIVER OF DARKNESS, a psychological thriller set in the aftermath of WWI that actually managed to make a real point about the nature of serial killing in a time when such creatures were far rarer, alas. Reviewers and fans--myself included--went gaga over the book, and it was nominated for a slew of awards, and even won a couple. But what of the sequel? Delay. Then another, and another. It got to the point where I coined a phrase in its honor to describe the series of postponements a book's publication date can undergo. (The current titleholder of Rennie Airth Syndrome is Robert Crais's THE FORGOTTEN MAN, but that was another post at another time.)

Anyway, the number of delays meant that after a time, folks pretty much gave up hope there'd ever be a book. Airth has published three novels previously: besides '99's RIVER OF DARKNESS, he wrote SNATCH, a caper novel published in 1969, and ONCE A SPY, published in 1981. In other words, he's a rather slow writer, so perhaps it was a little foolish of his publisher to expect he'd deliver the book so soon after the publication of an earlier one. But in the end, they won, and the book will actually see release--or so Macmillan's leading us to believe. For all we know, there will be disappointment once again.

As I said in my piece about Crais last month, I really wonder when the negative buzz surrounding a multitude of delays affects book sales when--or if--the book sees the light of day. What's an "optimal" wait time, and how much can, or should, fans stay patient? It's just another wrinkle in the biz that makes everyone nervous, for good reason--because any kind of negativity, even a mere flicker, can be lethal for a writer's future career.

Never mind that in Airth's case, the level of sustained hype is such that it will likely create some seriously unrealistic expectations (see Dunning, John for an example of how hype and reality don't always mesh, even though THE BOOKMAN'S PROMISE did hit the NYT list.) Will it deliver? Only time will tell, of course.

Assuming there is such a book ready in November....

Links for your Tuesday

2004-05-25T08:00:00.000-04:00

No doubt some folks will pounce eagerly upon this news and expound at length, but I'm just going to report that Gregory Rabassa, who's translated a whole host of literary giants, is now writing his own book about--what else?--the vagaries of translating books. Sounds like it'll be a must-read.

Maud's latest "Making Book" interview is with blog favorite Jonathan Ames, who divulges a wealth of information about what really goes on in writer's colonies--some writing, but much more drinking. As a veteran of three Bouchercons, all I have to say is--well, duh...

Meanwhile, Julian Rathbone is interviewed at the Times' business section about the nitty-gritty and economics of writing. I wish more writers would go public with this sort of thing. (link from Ed.)

Crap. The Bookseller is going subscriber-only, which means that there's one source I rely on a regular basis that is essentially wiped out.

Robert B. Parker's new book, DOUBLE PLAY, gets the review treatment at USA TODAY. They like it, but find it a bit too frothy considering the subject matter--Jackie Robinson in 1947--could have had a deeper treatment. Me, I just got annoyed because Putnam did that whole wide margin/increased font business. Can we stop this madness already? If the book's only 60,000 words, then treat it as such, not like a 100,000 word novel....

Thriller writer John Weisman, whose new conspiracy novel JACK IN THE BOX was reviewed in yesterday's Washington Post, is interviewed in the Winchester Star.

Speaking of the WaPo, Chris Lehmann advises those who might have thought that Paul Cody would be a good novel to read if you're a fan of Jim Thompson's THE KILLER INSIDE ME to "move along. Nothing to see here." Ouch.

Oh good god, it's a new trend starting--books compressed into text message language. The first victim, er, candidate is Homer's THE ILIAD. I have to wonder how FINNEGANS WAKE would do after being translated--I suspect it would be more comprehensible....

And finally, ConnellyWatch takes a slightly bizarre turn as he's the latest crime writer to be interviewed at Bankrate.com. Find out all about the menial jobs he's held, the advance he got for THE BLACK ECHO (higher than I'd realized), and his addiction to buying computers:

I feel guilty all the time about what I spend money on, but on the work side, I go through computers very quickly because I am just fascinated by technology. If I see a computer that has something new that mine can't accomplish, I just get it without any real thought. I have these really big shelves that I built in my garage for my old computers because I also don't want to get rid of them. I upgrade computers at least once a year. I think it helps spur me on to start a new book with a new computer.

As someone who's been the beneficiary of new gadgets and computer upgrades through the years (thanks, dad) I just have to ask: isn't it easier just to upgrade parts instead of entire computers?

The Curious Case of Elizabeth Short

2004-05-24T16:52:00.000-04:00

Aldo reports on a most interesting development with regards to the Black Dahlia, whose real name was, of course, Ms. Short. She's fascinated a whole host of people, but the most famous devotees are James Ellroy and Steve Hodel. Ellroy wrote a novel about the case back in 1988, and Hodel claimed in his book, published last year, that his father was the killer. Ellroy didn't buy it then--but in the just-released (and updated) paperback edition, guess who's written the introduction? As Steve Lopez reports, Ellroy finally came on board after coming across a particularly damning document:

"I was impressed with the scholarship but not entirely convinced," he said of his first reading of Hodel's book. "Then of course I read the revised version, which had the file you yourself turned up at the D.A.'s office."

Those files, which are the subject of an addendum in the paperback version of "Avenger," included bugging transcripts. D.A. investigators had concealed a microphone in Dr. Hodel's Los Feliz house, and here's the line that jumped off the page when I first saw it a year ago:

"Supposin' I did kill the Black Dahlia," the doctor says. "They couldn't prove it now. They can't talk to my secretary anymore because she's dead."

No doubt people will be debating the question for years to come, since they have been doing so ever since Short's death in 1947. But it's certainly interesting to see a convergence of opinion between Ellroy and Hodel. Whether it stays that way is another matter entirely.

When Metablogging goes insane

2004-05-24T09:43:00.000-04:00

The New Yorker (!!!!) profiles Kate Lee, a twentysomething agent with ICM who has developed quite the niche market: bloggers with book deals:

Two years from now—give or take—Elizabeth Spiers, the founding editor of the gossip Web sites Gawker and The Kicker, will publish her first novel. Around the same time, Glenn Reynolds, who writes the political Web log Instapundit, will also have a book in stores. So, too, may writers from the blogs Hit & Run, The Black Table, Dong Resin, Zulkey, Low Culture, Lindsayism, Megnut, Maud Newton, MemeFirst, Old Hag, PressThink, I Keep a Diary, Buzz Machine, Engadget, and Eurotrash. Suddenly, books by bloggers will be a trend, a cultural phenomenon. You will probably read about it in the Sunday Times. And when that happens the person to thank—or blame—will be Kate Lee, who is currently a twenty-seven-year-old assistant at International Creative Management.

Well, considering how freaking talented a whole host of these namechecked individuals are (including a certain pseudonymous blogger, no matter how much he wants to deflect attention away from him) no wonder they are taking over.

And once they do, pub parties will never quite be the same again...

UPDATE: Choire's got some harsh truths for those bloggers who see stars in the publishing world:

It only takes most publishers 18 to 24 months to publish a book! They also have these innovative ideas of promotion -- for instance, as a Published Author, you might be allowed to fly yourself to Chicago and/or Miami to read to an audience of 12 or 13 people at a Barnes and Noble! And when your Kirkus and/or Publisher's Weekly reviews come out, and their wild praise contains one critical note, suddenly the PR people at your publisher are occupied with other projects -- and your $20,000 advance doesn't earn out and everyone scratches their heads in puzzlement.

It's the most retarded shell game on earth -- and the most technophobic, ass-backwards, financially-dumb-headed industry in the world. Our prediction: first blogger book: $140K advance. Second blogger book: $700K advance. Third blogger book: $15K advance. None earn out, the shark gets jumped, and then it's contract publishing gigs for all, and some God-awful ghost-writing gigs, which results in yet more bitter alcoholic blather on weblogs. Enjoy the hype, little bloggers. Take your advances and buy stock in Halliburton while you can.

Quick: anyone know how much this man got for an advance? We already know how much she got (somewhere in the vicinity of a "nice deal") and this man's book will be out in September, so it seems like the Gawker theory of advances might be a little bit flawed at this point in time.

J.K. Rowling's new habit

2004-05-24T09:30:00.000-04:00

So it seems that La Rowling trolls chat rooms. Who'd have thunk it?

JK ROWLING is so secretive about the plots to the Harry Potter books that she keeps notes in a shoebox in bank vault.

But when the multi-millionaire went ‘undercover’ to share her suggestions about the seventh and final novel in the series in an internet chatroom, young fans dismissed her ideas.

The bestselling author had anonymously logged on to a fan website devoted to the boy wizard, but her hints about the final book were not liked.

Of course they weren't interested--as long as the Harry series stays G-rated and nobody gets any action in the books, people will retreat to their little lust-filled cubbyholes to cook up even more unappetizing (or inappropriate) pairings, especially of the slash variety.*

Rowling also denies that Book Six, which may or may not be due out in 2005, will be titled HARRY POTTER AND THE GREEN FLAME TORCH. Dunno about you, but that screams "interim" to me....

And as it happens, she's just launched an official website to rebut rumors, give tidbits of her life, and whatnot--though the biography part is a little creepy as you click on a book labelled "1965-2004." Er, J.K., you trying to tell your fans something there?

*Memo to the movie guys: do not, under any circumstances whatsoever, cast Orlando Bloom in any role in any of the Potter movies to come. The fangirls might explode, or implode--or both.

The Victoria Day Update

2004-05-24T09:00:00.000-04:00

Yes folks, today's a holiday that's unique to my fair country, but because I'm a) a dork b) taking off way too much time lately or c) a lazy girl who's taken off much time lately, I'm working from home. Really, I am. Can't you tell? Oh, the levels of justification I must go through to prove that I should draw a paycheck. Anyway:

There are too many books published. I went into some of the mystery shops over the weekend and saw about ten books I wanted to read, but my eyes glazed over at the prospect of lugging all those little bastards home (customs: "you spent 800 dollars on books?" me: "er, well, yeah."). But oddly enough the one book I didn't see was this new one by John Weisman, which is reviewed in the WaPo by Patrick Anderson. Too bad, because anything that's "Award-Worthy" (you'll see what I mean) might be worth checking out for a few minutes here and there. Although I must ask Mr. Anderson this: are you sure you should be giving out your award so early in the game? Never know if there'll be other candidates that top this....

Abigail Vona, whose upcoming memoir BAD GIRL:CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE DELINQUENT is due to be published in August, is embroiled in quite the mess. Let's see if I get this straight: the 19 year old was dating 48 year old Douglas Dechert, but when she dumped him, he tossed her clothes out on the street and then fired off an email to her publisher, impersonating his ex, to say that they were sabotaging things and just generally making muck. He claims he's due 15 percent of everything that is ever associated with the book. Ah, sordid book stories....

I like publisher catalogs. A lot. But evidently, Penguin UK has decided that mailing them out is just too much of an expense so they are doing away with them, and will only make the information available online.

As teens move away from books and more towards well, other stuff, teachers are fighting back by teaching contemporary literature and non-fiction in the classroom. The funny thing is, this might work--and maybe kids will discover classics and realize they are actually good reads instead of dissecting them every which way...(link first seen at Beatrice.)

Louis de Bernieres, in Sydney for the Writer's Festival, has some fun looking at signs with bad grammar and making fun of Mills & Boon novels. Although considering his "favorite phrase," I'm inclined to agree with the mocking....

Evidently writing a biography of P.G. Wodehouse is no piece of cake, as Robert McCrum, whose tome about the famed comic author will be out on September 2nd (and will be thrown on the TBR pile in due course), is finding out. Related to this, Jaime expounds on a point that many Wodehouse readers and fans may have missed: how much a sense of parody pervaded his work.

What? Something about Dan Brown I did not know? (Actually, there's a lot I probably don't know but since I've long stopped caring about much to do with THE DA VINCI CODE, perhaps I'm just not paying attention.) Evidently, he was the author of the 1996 song "Peace in Our Time" that was performed at the Atlanta Olympics. No word if Eric Rudolph heard the song and factored that into his decision....

A couple of items that Jiro has reported on: Lowen Clausen has won the Spotted Owl Award given by the Pacific Northwest-located Friends of Mystery; and Sue Grafton has won the Marlowe Award from the SoCal MWA chapter. More importantly, for those who still read her Kinsey Millhone books, R IS FOR RICOCHET will be out later this summer.

Irvine Welsh goes house hunting? Evidently that is the case, as he was spotted in the New Town area of Edinburgh with some papers and looking at "to let" signs.

And finally, yes, my country is responsible for unleashing her upon the US. Not that she's bad or anything, just....ever-present. Meet the woman Canadians have known for years from her "Sex with Sue" show.

A moment in the sun

2004-05-23T15:05:00.000-04:00

I'm officially convinced: bloggers are taking over the book reviews. For, you see, Lizzie's not the only one whose byline appears in a newspaper this week. It's a bit of a change of direction for me, but a welcome one--especially since I'm still haunted by some of the stories weeks after I finished reading them. See what I mean for yourselves.

A belated Massive Weekend Update

2004-05-23T15:00:00.000-04:00

No doubt you will all understand, but I've been a little bit busy (and a lot social) of late. Ergo, the MWU is delayed till now, as I've only becun to recover some of the inherent fogginess that's been clouding my brain over the weekend. And so it goes:

I must say that it's taking me a little while to get used to the Tanenhaus vision of the NYTBR, but you know what....I kind of like it. If a complete overhaul is what it takes for Marilyn Stasio to actually write reviews that have some degree of clarity, then the new editor is obviously doing something right. I still wish there were five reviews like there once was, but ah, we can't have everything. Anyway, Stasio spends the bulk of her time on Robert B. Parker's new historical baseball novel DOUBLE PLAY, then makes quick work of the latest by Lee Child, (insert author here), and Barbara Seranella (likes it, but wishes Munch would get back some of the edge she had a few books ago; although I thought UNWILLING ACCOMPLICE was quite excellent, I do see Stasio's point here)

Otherwise at the PoR (that's Paper of Record for the jargon-challenged), Emily Nussbaum looks at literary sex writing in some new releases (no doubt Natalee Caple's MACKEREL SKY would have been an excellent candidate, but it's a Canadian-only book), Walter Kirn puzzles over Hari Kunzru's TRANSMISSION, and good lord, that Skurnick woman's a total star. If I were by nature a competitive person, I'd be ridiculously jealous. But frankly, that involves too much effort and negativity and so I'd rather just keep wondering why she's not a weekly fixture at the Book Review. Then I'd totally believe in the Tanenhaus vision...

At Book World, Chris Lehmann waxes enthusiastic about THE HAMILTON CASE, David Liss is genuinely puzzled at the overseas success of Luther Blissett's Q, which he dubs an inordinately long inside joke, and Michael Dirda pokes some (perhaps) well-deserved holes in Lynne Truss's EATS, SHOOTS AND LEAVES (which I keep wanting to change to HE, SHOOTS HE SCORES)

The Globe and Mail's big interview is with Larry Frolick, who's done a whole lot of travel writing--talk about an apt last name! Also, Julian Fellowes' upper-class novel SNOBS actually gets a good review, a "novel in stories" about Montreal ca. the 1995 referendum gets a mixed reaction, and if you ever wanted to know the inside scoop on how money laundering really works, well, Chris Mathers' book is the one for you.

Over at the Guardian Review, it's all Hay-on-Wye, all the time. The literary festival kicks off a column by Catherine Lockerbie on such festivals as a whole, but she seems to neglect the bottom line: it's all about the alcohol. Otherwise, there's a gigantic profile of John Updike (who'll be at the Hay festival), David Mitchell's fond tribute to the writing of Italo Calvino, and Barbara Trapido confesses that her first novel was a big distraction--from finishing her PhD thesis. Oh yeah, I bet there are a lot of folks who get that, at least the latter part....

Then there's the sister Sunday paper, where Robert McCrum talks about blogs (!) although in the context of using the Internet to write and publicize fiction or something like that. Come on, Robert, why don't you spend an entire column writing about blogs like, well, mine. Or some of the other fine folks I usually mention. Anyway, the rest of the Observer: there's a new book about the battle of Troy (just in time for the crappy movie's release!) Marian Keyes is interviewed about her latest book, a satire on publishing, book tours, and other things that, alas, didn't need 650 pages to tell the story, and Stephen Bayley argues that the amazingly (and artificially, several times over) endowed Katie Price--better known to those Brit folks as Jordan--is a relevant figure in the UK's contemporary culture. Dude, it's a trashy biography, OK? I bet if you went and said this to Jordan, she wouldn't even have a clue what you meant....

Moving north, the Scotsman interviews filmmaker Neil Jordan about his newest project--a novel. It's a ghost story of sorts, but with some particularly weird twists, but considering Jordan's affinity for helming films based on books, I suppose it's not that much of a surprise he returned to writing books. Otherwise, the shortlist for the paper's Short Story contest has been announced, and Percival Everett's GLYPH--narrated from a baby's POV--gets reissued to acclaim.

At the Sunday edition, comedian Jo Brand is just the latest of her field to pen a novel, which gets a reasonably positive review, and spy novelist Henry Porter answers the usual questions.

In other news:

Oline Cogdill's read the new Randy Wayne White novel, TAMPA BURN, and alas, she's not so enthused about it, saying that the pace and plotline doesn't really kick in until the end, when it's too late to save the book. Ouch.

Another of my favorite mystery critics, Dick Adler, is the latest to get in on ConnellyWatch, though he's a bit put off by the "insider cuteness." Hey, a writer has to amuse himself, after all. Other authors getting ink include P.J. Tracy, Boris Akunin, the Rule of Four kids, and Jamie Metzl, who gets a review so glowing that it makes me wonder why I haven't heard of the book--oh wait, because St. Martin's published it and it got lost in the shuffle. Sigh.

Speaking of Akunin, he's the recipient of a nice write-up by Elaine Blair of Newsday, who digs MURDER ON THE LEVIATHAN, Akunin's homage to Agatha Christie and locked-room mysteries in general.

Linda Fairstein's new book, THE KILLS, got a lot of good press in both North America and England. Now that it's out in Australia, she's profiled in the Sydney Morning Herald about the origins of her books, how her husband's suggestion changed how she wrote, and being a full-time writer after 30 years on the job as a prosecutor.

The Dallas Morning news presents a rather lengthy crime fiction roundup from Laurie Trimble. Getting nods are Mark Cohen, Barbara Seranella, Dick Cady, Jennifer Patrick, David Housewright and Laura Joh Rowland.

Over at the Wichita Eagle, they concentrate on giving out good reviews to the big guns like Michael Connelly, Lee Child and John Sandford.

The Toronto Star interviews Colm Toibin, whose novel about Henry James is just racking up accolades everywhere. Not surprisingly, the piece focuses primarily on what fascinated Toibin so much to write about the earlier novelist.

Need some beach reads for the summer? Then check out Sun-Times book editor Henry Kisor's list, ranging from the vapid to the stimulating, airport thrillers to literary masterpieces. It's certainly an interesting selection...

The Fayetteville Observer looks at the still-burgeoning phenomenon of book clubs, which are springing up all over the place, catering to almost any whim. I wonder what's next--Book Clubs for Babies? Alert me if such a thing exists, for it would amuse me....

And finally--a picture of Salam Pax? There has been one published before, right, or has there? I can't keep track. Anyway, the Sydney Morning Herald talks to the Baghdad Blogger about his new movie deal.

What Author's Fiction Are You?

2004-05-21T09:11:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm not sure if it's totally accurate, but it's pretty damned close....

Flannery O'Connor wrote your book. Not much escapes
your notice.

Which Author's Fiction are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

(thanks to all the Cabana Boys for the link)

The interview merry-go-round

2004-05-20T08:30:00.000-04:00

In the last six months, including the one I'm embarking on later today, I've interviewed for eight positions in four different cities on both sides of the border. Some were in-person, some were by phone; some I faced only one person, some involved a group; sometimes the panel was all together in one room, other times I saw each person in sequence. While I wouldn't presume to say that I have the actual interviewing portion down to a fine art or some kind of template-with-variations, I'm far more blase about that part of the process than I was a year ago. The same questions get asked, and I'm allowed to ramble about my qualities, credentials, so on and so forth. It's all a blur.

Thing is, the fun only starts when people stop talking, and I move on to the supplemental portion of the interviewing process. Frankly, some of the tasks I've been asked to do range from amusing to vaguely relevant to downright puzzling. I'm sorry, but how is transcribing a Microsoft Word document in its entirety, complete with different fonts, bullet points, tables and graphs, supposed to demonstrate that I can work in a forensic DNA lab?* So, I thought I'd offer up some of the tasks I've been asked to do in the name of determining my suitability for a desired job, then open the floor to you all--either in the backblogs or by dropping me a line.

Aside from the aforementioned transcription, the oddest series of tasks were classified as "manual dexterity tests", specifically designed to quantify my ability to carry out laboratory exercises that make use of fine motor skills. Frankly, I think they were designed with the specific intent to confuse the candidate.

Task one: a pencil and a sheet of paper with a series of boxes sit on the table before me. I am asked to draw two vertical lines on top of one horizontal line in each box, repeating the task for as many boxes until time runs out. I get a practice run, then they time me for 60 seconds. Conclusion: I manage 87 boxes in that time, but I have no idea if this is good or not--since they aren't telling me anything.

Task two: A double sided grid full of holes. The first one holds a series of pegs, all colored yellow (this is important for later.) The second grid is empty. I must move a peg from grid one to the exact position on grid two. If I miss, I can't correct and must move on to the next peg. Again this is timed. I get three tries, 15 seconds each. I think I improve each time, but frankly, I'm too busy hearing the rhythm in my head and responding to it. Similar premise to Task Three, except that I must turn the pegs upside down, so that the yellow color becomes red, and keep it in the same hole it was in before. Flip flop, flip flop. It's all very entertaining, but suddenly, a newly reissued old favorite book pops into my mind as having new relevance.

There were more tasks, but writing about them would not only cure my insomnia, it would probably cure all of yours, too. But suffice it to say that it got even more arcane, and the one saving grace was that the two examiners were very nice guys. Whom I felt extremely sorry for, because they still had another five or six candidates to go that day and several dozen more overall.

And I'm still wondering how doing all these things is supposed to prove I'll be an ideal forensic biologist....

*Actually, when I thought about it sometime later, I did figure out how it would be relevant, but that would mean that the task is completely ingenious, and somehow, I doubt it.

Richard and Judy's Summer Reads

2004-05-20T08:00:00.000-04:00

As announced on the talk show that wields as much influence on UK publishing as Oprah does in the US, the list is as follows:

A Gathering Light - Jennifer Donnelly (Bloomsbury)
Want To Play? (aka MONKEERWRENCH) - P. J. Tracy (Penguin)
PS, I Love You - Cecelia Ahern (HarperCollins)
Liars and Saints - Maile Meloy (John Murray)
The Mermaid and the Drunks - Ben Richards - (Phoenix)
Hunting Unicorns - Bella Pollen (Pan Macmillan)

All of these books are available in paperback, and all should, no doubt, sell like hotcakes.

ConnellyWatch (TM) Update

2004-05-19T21:33:00.000-04:00

I'm firmly esconced in the Apple, so on and so forth, and what hits the transom but a rather revealing interview of Michael Connelly that's in Thursday's Independent. Oh sure, it has all the usual biographical information, but what makes this profile different from the others is that Adam Lee-Potter actually manages to dig a little deeper and gets some insight into Connelly's family life, both present and past. The thing is, Lee-Potter does so in a way that seems vaguely admonishing, like he was trying to cast the author in a pre-conceived light and it didn't quite work. See for yourself:

Few authors happily disclose the autobiographical elements they use to shape their work, but Connelly is refreshingly transparent. He uses everything. "It all comes out of my life," he says. "Bosch is my point man, the guy in the jungle. I use him to exorcise my demons. Angels Flight, for example, where he investigates the murder of a little girl. I wrote that book when my daughter was two years old. The nightmares of parenting were just awakening in me. I wrote a book about the worst thing that could happen to a parent. I thought it would help, but it didn't. That fear can never go away."

Perhaps the simpler truth is that Connelly has to use everything because he doesn't have that much to use. He has few friends, his parents are dead and his brothers and sisters are scattered across the country, from Seattle to Boston. "We're not that close."

Add to that some comments about Connelly's "ruthless" nature in delaying having his daughter until well into his marriage to his wife Linda and some perceived surprise at the fact that he's a "loner" and an "introvert" and I have to ask: what exactly did Lee-Potter expect here? I mean, writers are a fairly solitary lot. They spend hours a day at their desks writing, or many more hours letting their imaginations roam free with characters living inside their brains. Besides, a simple search would have turned up a whole host of prior interviews where it would have been obvious that Connelly's not exactly a flashy persona.

So he's not close to his extended family, whatever there's left. Big deal. Essentially, it seems that Connelly's the Pete Sampras of crime fiction: perceived as "boring" and "uninteresting" because he's not extroverted and isn't a tortured soul. But he writes great books every time out, sells awfully well and has a huge fan base. And will probably be remembered several decades down the line as one of the greats. Capiche?

There she goes

2004-05-19T14:46:00.000-04:00

In a few minutes, I'll be heading to the airport to travel to a Secure Undisclosed Location (otherwise known as Manhattan.) No guest blogger this time, so expect sporadic dispatches of the essay-driven sort, when the mood strikes. And for those who weren't wondering, yes, airports are my new best friend (although the jury's still out on customs agents.) A bientot.

Raison D'Etre

2004-05-19T11:59:00.000-04:00

The New Straits Times, a Malaysia-based newspaper, has an interesting article that asks a seemingly simple but really very complex question: what attracts people, both readers and writers, to crime fiction? Not surprisingly, there are a myriad of reasons:

"Crime is a great way to talk about society," said novelist Ian Rankin in an interview with the New Straits Times last year. Rankin currently has two books in bookshop Kinokuniya's list of top 10 crime bestsellers.

"Where are the books that talk about the here and now - the problems we have: unemployment, drugs, prostitution, the fact that people live in fear of criminal activity? Where are the books that address these issues? Crime fiction."

Crime fiction, he added, has "very serious" antecedents: "People like Fyodor Dostoevsky and Charles Dickens, for example, used detectives, crime and murder as a way of exploring the human condition."

While the crime fiction social novel has certainly grown in leaps and bounds thanks to some of Rankin's peers like Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Walter Mosley, and many others, there are more basic reasons for the attraction to the genre:

Roy Chan, 67, has been a voracious reader since retiring from teaching over a decade ago. His tastes vary from popular fiction and thrillers (such as the novels of Jeffrey Archer) to "true crime" accounts and biographies.

"I also read a lot of crime fiction. There's something in it that appeals to the curious in me, just like we're always curious about murders and scandals in the newspapers.

"I suppose it's just a part of human nature to be fascinated by events that could conceivably happen to us too, but what I enjoy most about crime fiction observing the range of human actions that can be criminal."

Modern life can't be divided neatly into little parcels distinct from each other, Chan said. "Many issues we must deal with today are related, for example: crime and poverty links the law to economics."

I'd say I've been a serious crime fiction reader for about five years now, although in my formative years I read my fair share of Agatha Christie, some Nero Wolfe, Walter Mosley's early Easy Rawlins books, Edna Buchanan's Britt Montero books, and both of the Kellermans. But it was around the summer of '99 that I discovered Harlan Coben, Robert Crais, Michael Connelly, and Dennis Lehane, and they still embody my "idee fixe" of what I like best about crime fiction. I've moved in different directions since then, adding many more authors to my "must-have" list, especially from the UK and other foreign countries. But the hardboiled/noir/social novel school (it's a broad spectrum, but a spectrum nonetheless) is what I gravitate towards, rather than the amateur sleuth/traditional stuff.

So what is it about the genre that I love so much? Many things of course, but ultimately it boils down to the tension between order and chaos. Sometimes, chaos is resolved into order. Other times, order gets broken down into chaos (the hallmark of noir novels.) Sometimes chaos persists throughout, and other times there's a constant mixture. Add in, at least in the best examples, great characters, good writing, and a reasonably cohesive plot and there are the necessary ingredients for a good book.

It's occurred to me at various points to wonder if I'll ever get tired of reading within the genre, and occasionally, I do have to take breaks with non-fiction and other types of fiction. But I always come back, because I must have my order/chaos fix that isn't quite fulfilled anywhere else. And luckily, though the constraints are there, the possibilities are ever-expanding for what's acceptable within a crime novel. As long as people have imagination and a questioning mind, crime fiction will continue to go down the dark alleys and secret pathways that other types of fiction wouldn't dare touch.

And sometimes, it's a good idea to remember exactly why we read, why we love this genre.

The Wednesday Link Dump

2004-05-19T08:00:00.000-04:00

Interesting--I start a new job, and suddenly I have more time to blog. Either that's a violation of the time-space continuum, or...well, I don't want to admit what the alternative is. Anyway:

Top story, no question: Billy Joel jumping on the children's book bandwagon. The first book is called, innocuously enough, GOODNIGHT MY ANGEL. The second? Oh boy....NEW YORK STATE OF MIND.

Jeff Guinn at the Dallas Fort-Worth Star-Telegraph rounds up the must-reads (and the buzzworthy) for this summer. More important is Janet Evanovich's author photo, where she has finally aged to the point where she was at about ten years ago (before fame made her take this detour)

Neal Stephenson is the winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for his novel QUICKSILVER. It also happens to be the longest entry, especially since it's really only 1/3 of a book....

Meanwhile, Louisa Waugh takes home the Ondaatje Prize for her novel HEARING BIRDS FLY, which "best evokes the spirit of a place." Contrary to popular belief, the winning entry is not a ghost story.

J.K. Rowling offers up a progress report on Book Six, saying it's "well under way." No word on the potential title for the still very much unfinished book, although I suspect my suggestion of "Harry Potter and the Six Bunnie-Wunnies" won't make the shortlist...

If there's anything from reading the recent accounts of the sale of Arthur Conan Doyle's collection shows, it's that it would make a hell of a book--betrayal, suspicious deaths, playboy sons, careless relatives. Somebody get this tortured mess a book deal!

Continuing ConnellyWatch (TM), this time, a review at USA Today. Hey, I'm not consciously trying to keep track of this stuff, I just keep finding them...

Anthony Rainone gives a thumbs-up to Terrill Lankford's Hollywood noir satire, EARTHQUAKE WEATHER, for January Magazine.

Crime Time has updated their website with a slew of new reviews, including the latest from Caroline Carver, Freda Davies and Walter Mosley, and a nice feature by Natasha Cooper on the upsurge in translated crime fiction.

And finally, Best. Interview. Ever.

One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Gold Fish

2004-05-18T17:27:00.000-04:00

Another in the "all over the 'sphere" files: Tom Perrotta's LITTLE CHILDREN (a book that's languished on Mt. TBR for a while) was released way back at the end of March, got a boatload of great reviews, cracked the New York Times list, and has gone back to press six times. Slight snafu: the goldfish on the original cover are actually Goldfish (TM), as manufactured by Pepperidge Farm, the company responsible for Nantucket, Sausalito, and all those other too-hard cookies that really kind of suck, if you ask me. Anyway, they got pissed and demanded the cover be changed. And so, even though the new version is still unavailable online, it will have--instead of those lonely little fish--a couple of homemade chocolate chip cookies:

And this time [Dori] Weintraub, [associate director of St. Martin's Press] made sure those cookies wouldn't make any trouble. "I baked them myself," she says.

Coming soon: complaints from the person who created the recipe Weintraub used to make the cookies, demanding a new cover because the cookies do not accurately reflect the recipe in question. It's a hard, litigious world out there, you know...

Continuing the Detroit Theme

2004-05-18T15:57:00.000-04:00

Just over the Publisher's Marketplace transom:

Mitchell Bartoy's debut noir novel THE DEVIL'S OWN RAG DOLL, the first in a series set in WWII Detroit featuring a troubled detective who must solve a murder to stave off a race riot, learning the hard way that friends are rarely what they seem, family ties are often deceptive, and the bravest thing a man can do is think for himself, to Ben Sevier at St. Martin's Minotaur in a nice deal, for two books, by Andrea Somberg at Vigliano Associates (NA).

Hmm, Walter Mosley meets Loren Estelman, or thereabouts? Anyway, it certainly sounds intriguing. A quick search shows that Bartoy graduated at the end 2002 with an M.A. in English literature from Wayne State University, which would make sense, seeing as it's located in the city he's basing his series.

Adding to the blogroll

2004-05-18T15:23:00.000-04:00

If you ever care to cast your eyes at the right hand side, I've tweaked the blogroll a little bit, the most notable addition being a new blog by Elliot Feldman, who authored one of my favorite "below the radar" books of 2003, SITTING SHIVA. I like to think of it as the closest a book can get to my utopian "Yid Noir" concept, never mind that it's an especially poignant look at a boy's Jewish upbringing in 1960s Detroit (which may, or may not, interest some of you.) Feldman's blog, Detroit Crazy, is, well, centered around the city of his birth and upbringing, and also highlights his side career as a cartoonist.

The nitty-gritty of book signings

2004-05-18T13:48:00.000-04:00

This piece from the WSJ about how to prepare for book signings by bigtime celebrities has been linked in all sorts of places (I first saw it on Publisher's Lunch). Not surprisingly, something akin to an emergeny response plan has to be in place to control the crowd and make sure they are only after a signature, nothing more:

The memorabilia problem is particularly nettlesome when dealing with an author whose fame derives from achievement on the playing fields or pop charts. Inevitably, there coming through the line will be a tsunami of programs, apparel and CDs, items that have absolutely nothing to do with the business at hand. "In the interests of letting all the people who attend have an audience with the celebrity, you have to put a cap on what will and won't be signed," says Mr. Bogaards.

Signature management is similarly problematic for perennial bestseller types like John Grisham, Tom Clancy and Jan Karon, author of the wildly popular "Mitford" series. "Some of them, like Anne Rice, have a backlist of five or 10 or 20 books, and we could have a reader coming through the line wanting her to sign all of them and also wanting her to sign some body parts," adds Mr. Bogaards, declining to get specific about the body parts in question. "So now at her signings we say she'll sign one thing from the backlist plus the new book. Everybody walks away happy."

OK first of all..."signature management"? Is that like an official career field or something? Jokes aside, these are the kind of events that have me just a bit disenfranchised with the whole signing etiquette as a whole. Long lines for a simple signature? I'll pass, thank you very much, especially considering the print runs are so enormous that a simple signature's not going to be worth a hell of a lot anyway. Sure, fans like "the touch" as Bogaards puts it at the article's close, but is it really worth it in the end?

Still, considering how pervasive signing events are as a means of publicizing a book, it is important to have protocols in place. Especially when those collectors show up...

Watching CSI: New York

2004-05-18T08:30:00.000-04:00

9:45 PM last night: "Sarah, the CSI pilot is on in fifteen minutes."

My dad had reminded me of something I'd meant to do but kept forgetting about: watch the pilot episode of CBS's upcoming hit spinoff, CSI: New York, which would air as one of the Miami episodes. Now, every time the whole forensic science degree comes up in conversation, the Number One Question I get asked is, "ooh, so is it like CSI?" To which my stock answer is, "well, no, not exactly. Two main differences: One, CSIs would never interrogate suspects. And two, we'd kill for the kind of equipment they get to use." Which is, of course, why non-profit ventures like the Crime Lab Project get started. But I digress. Point is, I had a vested interest in watching the pilot ep because I went to grad school in the city, know the ME's Office reasonably well (the NYPD to a much lesser extent) and of course, have a pretty good working knowledge of how forensic science operates and is regulated within the confines of New York. I'd venture to guess I'm not the only John Jay graduate or student who watched the show (although none of us would ever admit it; and no, my class (at least) didn't watch any of the CSI shows during our time in school. What was the point?)

So my thoughts? Well...

To my credit, I watched the whole thing, but had to give up on making any sense of it about halfway through. So my comments will be limited to bullet notes:

-Wow, I didn't know the morgue in the ME's Office had turrets.

-The real NYPD would kill to have the kind of equipment the tv ones do.

-I've never seen anyone wear a "NY:CSI" jacket, especially since the real unit is called, well, the Crime Scene Unit, is stationed all the way out in lonely Jamaica, and takes their sweet time getting to crime scenes unless it's a major league Red Alert type of thing. And even then, they are late.

-I'm not exactly sure David Caruso could waltz into a crime scene and not get his ass booted out for crossing jurisdiction lines.

-The less said about any interrogation scenes involving a combination of Caruso, Gary Sinise, Melina Kanakaredes, or anyone else who isn't a real cop, the better.

What finally made me give up was the geographic discontinuity. So...the morgue's in the basement of a hospital, OK that's sort of true. There is a morgue in Bellevue, but only natural cause or highly unsuspicious deaths get to park themselves there--the rest go up the street to the OCME. And the NYPD crime lab is supposed to be in the premises? Well OK, suspension of disbelief, but then they show the Queensboro Bridge and I think, "hey wait, maybe the lab IS in Jamaica!" But then it's back to being in Manhattan again, and I scratch my head.

But of course, this is TV, and realism doesn't make for good TV most of the time. Problem is, the dialogue and storyline was crap. Caruso looking into the teen girl's eyes after her parents have been killed and promising her to "get the killer" no matter what, even if it means the department has to fork over a wad of money to send him to NYC? Cheese. Pure cheese.

I used to like Gary Sinise too, but he came across as stiff and stilted, phoning in a performance. Kanakaredes looked about as confused as I did (is she a CSI? an MLI? I have no idea) and worst of all, New York looked weird and fake, this artificial darkness creeping in to signify "hey, this is New York." Feh.

I know to much, I really do. But hey, I tried.

Tuesday Snippets

2004-05-18T08:00:00.000-04:00

The top story has to be that of Howard Rotberg, who was conducing a booksigning at the Kitchener, ON Indigo bookstore when a Palistinian and a Kurdish national rushed into the shop and started shouting epithets at him. The author of THE SECOND CATASTROPHE was understandably furious, and it looks like events in Toronto will be cancelled.

Murder on the Beach, which moved locations from Ft. Lauderdale to Delray Beach about a year and a half ago, is profiled in the Palm Beach Post. It illuminates how difficult it is to run a bookshop, which is something any prospective owner should keep in mind, because it almost never moves further than a labor of love...

I don't know what's more impressive--that Martin Clark has had a couple of novels published by the age of 44, or that he's been a judge for ELEVEN years in his native Florida. The Floridian profiles this overachiever.

The Associated Press takes a look at C.J. Box, whose Joe Pickett mysteries are picking up quite the following since the first, OPEN SEASON, was nominated for a slew of awards back in 2001. The fourth installment, TROPHY HUNT, will be out next month.

The hype for Harrogate has just begun--at least locally, where they give a nice rundown on who's going to be at the summer crime fiction festival and what to expect.

Newsday interviews E.L. Doctorow, who's just out with his first collection of short stories in over 20 years.

Brian Castro is the winner of the NSW Literary Prize, a mere 2 years after losing out hope his book, SHANGHAI DANCING, would ever find a publisher.

Oh bloody hell--do we really need another historical novel about Jane Austen? Even if this one's mostly about her complex relationship with her sister Cassandra, who had the temerity to burn Jane's letters after her death. Though honestly, I kind of doubt anyone was thinking about posterity at the time, let alone that Austen would be beloved by some 200-odd years later...

Dean Koontz, the horror-meister who has never publicly answered for the mysterious reappearance of his hair, answers questions at ABCNews.com.

I'm a little confused--I thought TROLL: A LOVE STORY came out last year? Or perhaps the original-language version did, but no matter, Chris Lehmann reviews it and likes it quite a lot.

Writing a children's book? Think you're award-worthy? Then go enter the Smarties Book Prize, which will award a host of prizes to the best in children's lit for many ages. Further information here.

And finally, I'm only linking to this article about a man's quest to find out who's really selling BEING JORDAN for the hilarious idea that Hatchards would even touch this book with any kind of pole, let alone a ten-foot-one.

And more on the short side

2004-05-17T13:00:00.000-04:00

Continuing the theme of today's blogging, Maud points to a fairly in-depth article by Kelly Jane Torrance about where short stories fit in today's world, and why it's so difficult to get them published in magazines:

Looking for proof of life in that American institution, the short story, can seem like a fool's errand. Few magazines publish short stories. Few Americans read them—you won't find any collections in the New York Times bestseller lists. Even those in the short story business don't seem to want to talk about the short story.

I called the headquarters of a number of America's best-regarded short story contests and discovered a curious indifference. Sure, they will tell you the names of their famous guest judges. They will reel off statistics about how many entries they receive and how much they pay out in prizes. But just try to engage them in a discussion of the literary form for which they are the standard-bearers.

“I don't read the stories,” confesses Krista Halverson, managing editor at Zoetrope , a well-known literary magazine that sponsors an annual short story contest. Reaching the offices of the Boston Review , I told editorial assistant Brad Plumer that I'd like to talk to someone about the decline of the short story and their own short story contest. Well, he said, “our office is pretty tiny.”

How did we get to where even staffers at literary magazines seem unwilling to stand up for the short story?

Rather scary, if you think about it. The future, as Maud says in the article, is something I've long believed (and espoused) myself: the Internet:

If the short story has a future, it may reside in new technology. “My sense with the short-story market is that it's a matter of failure to fill demand, rather than lack of demand,” Maud Newton says. “I think the mainstream publications resist innovation and that the better stories generally are being published outside their pages. Some of the most vital short stories are published on the Internet these days.”

Torrance only speaks of literary fiction, but I certainly think the same applies in the crime fiction world. Need I bring up such upstart magazines as Plots With Guns, Hardluck Stories, SDO Detective, Thrilling Detective, Shred of Evidence, and SHOTS? All are places where rising stars merge with established veterans, especially as their professionalism and attitude attracts more quality writers, which breeds further respect and reputation for these 'zines.

The Long and the Short of it

2004-05-17T11:00:00.000-04:00

On one of the many mailing lists I subscribe to, DetecToday, there's a spirited discussion happening of late about short fiction, and the pros and cons of writing and reading them. As someone who's written short stories and continues to do so (the next one goes up in a few weeks' time) it's a debate that never ceases to intrigue me, mostly because I seem to go against the grain of many a crime fiction writer and fan.

If there's a consensus opinion, it's as follows: writers tend to gravitate towards novel-writing because they have the room to fully develop characters, explore conflicts, make plots as complex as they like, and have a large canvas to work out their craft issues and flesh out hidden (or not so hidden) meanings. Short stories, on the other hand, meet with less approval because the writer doesn't have enough time and space to construct a solid mystery, deepen characterization, etc.--the limitations of the format are seen as a hindrance.

For fans, the consensus appears to be that they prefer reading novels so they can sink their teeth into a character they can grow to like, get immersed in plot and conflict, and have a (reasonably) satisfactory solution. Short stories don't meet these requirements because they skimp on character, the plot is rushed, and the ending tends to disappoint.

I can safely say that if the above two paragraphs are, indeed, the consensus opinion, I don't share it and never will.

First, I'll put on my reader hat. I love reading short fiction because, when done well, it takes an idea, maybe two, and runs with it. The best stories move fast (or at least, at a sustainable pace) and engage me with a strong main character, snappy dialogue, a great twist at the end, an illumination of a particular idea or premise. Whatever it is, if it works, I'm sold. And I don't have to invest as much time as I would a novel.

Short stories are a wonderful way to see a writer's true voice in action, and sustained throughout. The range of voices are so different, from Sherman Alexie's sadness-tinged humor in his collections (like the recent TEN LITTLE INDIANS) to Angela Carter's wondrously delicious redefinition of old fairy tales (THE BLOODY CHAMBER) to Jincy Willett's razor-sharp observations of human nature (JENNY AND THE JAWS OF LIFE) to Eugene McCabe's startlingly sad depictions of Ireland through many generations (HEAVEN LIES ABOUT US). Take P.G. Wodehouse's madcap shorts, or L.M. Montgomery's depictions of orphans struggling to find family against all odds. Alice Munro, who is quite simply one of the finest short fiction writers alive. And on and on.

That being said, maybe it's no accident that the writers who leap to my mind are not crime writers, although some of the genre stories I've read in the last couple of years have certainly stuck with me, like most of the entries in the TART NOIR anthology, the all-star issue of Plots With Guns last fall, Dave White's "Closure" (one of the best "9/11 aftermath" stories, period) and Dave Zeltserman's "More than a Scam," (which takes the Nigerian spam thing and mutates it into a chilling noir piece), to name just a select few. These stories fulfilled my internal criteria, and that's why I enjoyed them. But most are not "mystery" stories per se; crime stories certainly, but they don't necessarily adhere to the classic structure and construction...only to disappoint at the end. Rather, they take a theme, a character, a premise, mix them all up, and create something special in the process.

Which is what I try very hard to when I write them. So now I'll look at shorts from a writer's perspective.

Frankly, the idea of writing a novel terrifies me at this point, and it's in part because of the way my writing process works at the moment. It's sporadic, anarchic, and damned inconsistent, a combination of weeks of laziness and spurts of inspiration. For some reason, all the stories I've written that "worked" (i.e. that I've been reasonably satisfied with or have been published somewhere) involved me having a "eureka" moment of some sort, rushing home, and banging out a first draft in a matter of hours. Fast and furious, but I cannot stop till the draft's done. Then I leave it for a few days and start to tinker. But every time I've been methodical about a story, done a set word limit or thereabouts, the stories invariably disappoint me (and, unsurprisingly, are the ones that get rejected.)

This can't last, because it's really not a healthy way to write. I do want to write a novel someday, but I can't do an entire draft in a night, let alone a month. That's just far too taxing. But until I can learn how to manage my time, develop some stamina, if you will, I think I'm going to be writing short fiction for the forseeable future.

Which doesn't bother me in the least, because I love doing so. As Gerald said on the list, "For all they demand of the writer, finishing [a short story]--having written something that rings true to readers despite the constraints--is a great reward." And ultimately, whether writing a lengthy or short work, that's what it's about--writing something that rings true, and has some level of satisfaction for both the writer and the reader.

The Booklist Top Ten

2004-05-17T09:28:00.000-04:00

Bill Ott, writing for one of the influential trade mags, compiles the Top Ten Mysteries of late 2003/early 2004:

ABSOLUTE FRIENDS .... John le Carre
DEAD I WILL MAY BE .... Adrian McKinty
THE DELICATE STORM.... Giles Blunt
HARD RESOLUTION .... George Pelecanos
HAUNTED GROUND .... Erin Hart
HAVANA .... Stephen Hunter
HEAT SHOCK .... Robert Greer
SHADOW MEN .... Jonathon King
A SPECTACLE OF CORRUPTION ... David Liss
SUNSET AND SAWDUST .... Joe Lansdale

Definitely a strong list, and a lot of my own personal favorites are on it (though I haven't read about half the books yet.) What also interests me are the sub-listings:

Runners-Up
* Charlie Opera, by Charlie Stella.
* The Queen of the South, by Arturo Perez-Reverte.
* Spiral, by Joseph Geary.
* Unwilling Accomplice, by Barbara Seranella.
* Winterkill, by C. J. Box.

Unforunately, Booklist really falls down when it comes to their "Best First Novels" list:

* A Cruel Season for Dying, by Harker Moore.
* Dead I Well May Be, by Adrian McKinty.
* Haunted Ground, by Erin Hart.
* The Hundredth Man, by Jack Kerley.
* Mission Flats, by William Landay.
* The Night of the Dance, by James Hime.
* Quantico Rules, by Gene Riehl.
* Relative Danger, by Charles Benoit.
* Weeping, by Shelly Reuben.
* Where the Truth Lies, by Rupert Holmes.

The list itself is fine, but McKinty's book was his second novel (after 1996's ORANGE RHYMES WITH EVERYTHING), while A CRUEL SEASON FOR DYING is the work of a pseudonymous author who has, evidently, written several books previously (though Moore's identity isn't known at the moment. Believe me, I've asked around.) I also believe Shelley Reuben has written several novels before WEEPING, too. Is it so hard to fact-check these things?

Still, congratulations to all the authors who made the big list or the sub-lists. There were some fantastic reads last year and so far this year, and no doubt the trend will continue till year's end.

Monday morning QB

2004-05-17T08:22:00.000-04:00

It's the start of a new week, and what have we here? More insanity. For it seems the gods have decided that I must, absolutely must, take another trip later this week, and that two major job interviews must happen within 48 hours of each other, 1000+ miles apart. For all I know, it'll come to nought, and I'll just end up back to my former life as a broke unemployed freelancer. But I kind of doubt it.

Enough preamble. Time for the links:

Let the buzz begin: Hari Kunzru's long-awaited second novel, TRANSMISSION, is finally available, and who should have the first word? Why, only Ms. Maslin, who calls the book "wickedly astute" and thoroughly enjoys this tale of man and machine.

There's Ian Rankin, making the news yet again (hot on the heels of finishing up the manuscript for his new novel), this time in harsh criticism of the Scottish executive's grand plan for a Cultural Commission. Rankin, along with fellow authors Janice Galloway and Michel Faber, take issue with the proposed commission for being consumer-driven and not artist-friendly. I have to admit, the use of the term "verbal sludge" was what intrigued me the most...

The Boston Globe interviews Andrew Taylor, the author of the Historical Dagger-winning AN UNPARDONABLE CRIME (I've done the whole "also...blah blah blah" thing too many times, you should all get my drift by now) and likely a contender for next year's Best Novel Edgar. I mean, it would be too perfect, right? A novel about Edgar Allan Poe being nominated the year the MWA has its 60th anniversary? Luckily the book more than deserves that hypothetical nom....

Mark Sarvas (of Elegant Variation fame) delivers on his long-awaited Q&A with Andrew Sean Greer, the author of THE CONFESSIONS OF MAX TIVOLI, which is racking up praise every which way (and fwiw, Faber will publish the UK edition of the book this fall.)

Patrick Anderson uses Lincoln Child's new futuristic thriller DEATH MATCH as a means to...expound upon the perfect marriage? Seriously, although he does find the book to be extremely derivative and slick.

Beryl Bainbridge is something of a doyenne in Britain, but she's at a crossroads: writer's block, and giving up her beloved smoking in order to ward of death? In any case, she speaks to the Independent about battling her demons.

The Denver Post is ecstatic to have Tres Navarre, the wisecracking English lit prof/PI hero of Rick Riordan's novels, back after a one-book hiatus. In other words, SOUTHTOWN gets a very, very nice review indeed.

On the muted enthusiasm front, there's David Hellman's review of Michael Andre Bernstein's CONSPIRATORS. Hellman admires the book for its intelligent approach to the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but ultimately feels the novel falls short because it's "too ponderous." Well, light reading it certainly ain't...

Holy crap--Jordan's biography is doing amazingly well, as her publisher, John Blake, has just ordered up a reprint of 100,000 copies. I freely admit to finding the phenomenon of Ms. Price terribly fascinating, because she really hasn't done anything to merit her fame, and would get laughed out of LA or New York in about six seconds, whereas it took about fifteen to have the same effect on the Beckhams. Or something like that.

Maud Newton wins the caption contest at Bookninja! Huge congrats, as it was extremely funny. (My own entry: "I didn't mean to take funding away from 826 Valencia!" )

And finally, I suppose it had to happen. They stock CDs, so why shouldn't you be able to buy a book with your venti chai soy latte? Yes, it seems that Starbucks is getting into the books racket. Great, just what I need--copies of the latest bestsellers available in each of the chain shops that dot practically every corner on the Upper West Side (and yes, I can make a list. Please don't ask, it's scary that I can even do this.)

Conversing with Lee Child

2004-05-16T10:21:00.000-04:00

Now that his latest novel, THE ENEMY, is out and attempts to climb up the big bestseller lists, Lee Child's well into the promo circuit, and is currently on tour for the book. On the date of the book's publication, he spoke with C.M. McDonald about the impetus for writing a prequel, switching between third and first person for different books, and his contribution to the "thriller task force" convened post 9/11 to come up with possible ideas for terrorist attacks that the government could plan for:

McDonald: A number of writers, immediately after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — and people in the Hollywood industry — were pulled in by government agencies to supply ideas for attacks that the FBI and others could then program against. Were you one of those?

Child: I was actually, yeah. I contributed a few scenarios. Frankly, the main one that I was worried about, nothing's been done about it yet.

McDonald: I guess then I won't ask you to elaborate if there is a big hole out there to be exploited.

Child: There is. Hopefully they'll get around to it in the end.

And of course, McDonald had to ask the inevitable "what's next" question (my own favorite of the Usual Author Interview Questions, as it happens) and the premise for the next Reacher novel, ONE SHOT, sounds most intriguing:

The next one is already finished. As I said, we work a year in advance. It's a current day story, set in Indiana — in a medium-size, unnamed city in Indiana. It starts with a sniper outrage. Some kind of psycho hides in a parking garage and shoots down into a crowd. Random bystanders are killed. The guy is very quickly arrested thanks to good police work. Six hours after the first shot, he is in custody. He refuses to talk. They give him a lawyer and he still refuses to talk until the lawyer says, "C'mon, you've gotta say something." Whereupon the guy says only one sentence: "Get Jack Reacher for me."

Definitely in the one picture, thousand words category

2004-05-16T10:05:00.000-04:00

As described in an earlier post, Lawrence Block received the CWA's Cartier Diamond Dagger Award last Wednesday. There's no question that after seeing this picture, he was more than thrilled to receive the honor. (The article ran in The Times over the weekend.)

UPDATE: Ali alerts me to Mark Lawson's short interview with Larry from Thursday's BBC Front Row program. They talk about his early pulp days, September 11, and of course, the Diamond Dagger honor.

Just another Massive Weekend Update

2004-05-16T10:00:00.000-04:00

No rants this weekend, just links, links, and more links. Going around the horn:

The big Book of the Week, obviously, is Neil Lanctot's NEGRO LEAGUE BASEBALL, the fascinating account of the league that made stars of the likes of Satchel Paige and Cool Papa Bell. The New York Times adored the book, while the Washington Post was just as laudatory. You better believe I'll be reading this book--although I'm still waiting for an account, even a short one, of Jackie Robinson's Montreal days...

Otherwise, the Grey Lady features a whole sub-section on children's books, which I'll just link to en masse, Benedict Nightingale's take on John Gielgud's letters (anxiously awaiting being plucked from my own TBR pile) and an interesting (though not-quite-positive) review of Michael Kruger's THE CELLO PLAYER.

And at the WaPo, Dennis Drabelle rounds up the latest in mystery fiction, choosing to give good reviews to the new Anne Perry, Boris Akunin, Richard Barre and Katharine V. Forrest, while extolling less enthusiasm for David Housewright's return to print.

The Guardian review is rather swell this week, but mostly for Ali Smith's appreciation of Angela Carter, who happens to be one of my all-time favorite writers. THE BLOODY CHAMBER? A beautifully brilliant collection of short stories that modernize fairy tales in new and startling ways. THE MAGIC TOYSHOP? Full of wonder and horror with the kind of prose you can literally sink your teeth into and taste all sorts of merry delights. I suspect I'll be tackling Smith's favorite, THE INFERNAL DESIRE MACHINES OF DOCTOR HOFFMAN, fairly soon. Also in the Review is Adam Thorpe's explanation of why he works best under pressure, an abridged excerpt of Peter Ackroyd's new introduction to Henry Fielding's JONATHAN WILD THE GREAT, and Nicholas Clee namechecks our friends at the Literary Saloon. Very cool!

After the Guardian, there must be the Observer, which has a long feature on Hari Kunzru and how he overcame the weight of being a Bonus Baby to produce a second novel, TRANSMISSION, that's vastly different from the first and still pretty good, according to Rachel Cooke. Also, James Wood, who recently had a little tete-a-tete with The Reading Experience, gets a nice review for his new collection of essays, and Robert McCrum gets snarky--well, as snarky as he'll ever get--about a call for a "Poetry Olympiad." All I have to say is....oy gevalt.

I'll start my Globe and Mail roundup with, of course, Margaret Cannon's crime column. Even if she actually likes the new Rita Mae and Sneaky Pie Brown book. But one has to forgive these sort of things. She also reviews new releases from Sylvian Hamilton, Anne Perry, David Rotenberg, Thomas Wheeler, and Stephen White. Otherwise, there's a blistering rant about a new short fiction collection by writers under the age of 25, Martin Levin's analysis of a new book that tries out a little revisionist history with major events, and Annabel Lyon's take on Booker shortlist favorite Colm Toibin's THE MASTER.

On the Australian front, David Sedaris gets quite the lovely write-up at the Sydney Morning Herald, as he'll have a new book coming out fairly soon. Never realized his popularity was global, but there you have it. The paper also takes a look at a newly reissued book, LIVING ALONE AND LIKING IT, that still resonates with women today, almost 70 years after its initial publication. While at the Age, Sue Turnbull positively sniffs at Michael Connelly's THE NARROWS for being too "gimmicky" and basically having too many Easter Eggs. Hey, I guess not everyone's happy he was basically saying a big "f**k you* to the movie of BLOOD WORK....

And in the roundup-free news:

Jim Born, whose upcoming debut novel WALKING MONEY will be out next month (and has some major-league buzz attached to it) is interviewed in his hometown paper, the Palm Beach Post. He's got an interesting background as an investigator for the DEA, and as an adviser to people like Elmore Leonard and the folks at the late, lamented Karen Sisco. The article doesn't mention that Born made a whole host of new friends during Edgar Week, but hey, they can't reveal everything...

Somehow I missed Oline Cogdill's column from last week, when she gave nice reviews out to John Sandford and David Hiltbrand, whose debut KILLER SOLO is about rock tours, groupies, sex, drugs--in other words, a book I definitely want to read, and soon. This week she takes on Terrill Lankford's EARTHQUAKE WEATHER and is suitably impressed by the book's style, pace and subject matter.

Sir Walter Scott's home attracts many visitors, but now that his last descendant has died, there are questions as to what will happen to the ancestral lodging. The Sunday Herald makes a visit and tries to ascertain the future of the house.

The Arthur Conan Doyle archives will likely get a pretty penny when they are auctioned off on Wednesday--$3.5 M, it looks like--but in the meantime, a bigtime Holmes scholar's death gets the inquest treatment, since the man did die in rather bizarre circumstances...

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel adds its voice to the consensus that Lee Child's THE ENEMY is a damned good thriller, although the reviewer really seems to harp on the whole genre/formula thing. Dude, it's a cleverly written ass-kicking book. What else are you looking for? And only thirteen more books before we must mourn Reacher's passing....

Lara McClintock, the sleuth of Lyn Hamilton's archeology mysteries, is back for an eighth installment, much to the liking of the Toronto Star's Jack Batten.

A few mysteries are collected together in the roundup by the Grand Forks Herald: John Sandford's latest Lucas Davenport novel (I can't be the only one who's totally lost track of which title is which) gets a nice nod, as do new releases from David Hiltbrand and P.J. Tracy.

Speaking of the pseudonymous Tracy, the duo--Patricia and Traci Lambrecht, that is--are profiled in the Albuquerque Journal, where they reveal how the plot for book #3, MILK RUN was formulated as they drove along a completely deserted small-town street.

More from the Michael Connelly publicity racket: he's interviewed in a fairly boilerplate Q&A fashion by Connie Ogle of the Miami Herald.

Les Roberts picks up two mysteries for his column in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Richard Barre's ECHO BAY gets his seal of approval, but Dick Cady's THE EXECUTIONER'S MASK doesn't get quite the same level of praise.

And finally, who'd have thought that Being Jordan would be so, well, difficult? Actually, the Scotsman reviewer of Katie Price's over-the-top autobiography isn't so sure about that--and doesn't find much in the way of redeeming values about the book, either.....

A Forensic Conundrum

2004-05-14T16:15:00.000-04:00

As a would-be forensic biologist, one subject that interests me, and occasionally galls me, is the assumption that DNA is the "magic bullet" of forensic science, that it will solve all and quickly at that. Then there are cases like this:

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) - Police thought they had solved a 4 1/2-year-old rape case when DNA evidence from the assailant matched that of a prison inmate.

Then they realized the inmate, Jerome Cooper, had a twin brother who could have the same DNA.

Both Jerome and Tyrone Cooper, 36, were in the Grand Rapids area at the time of the 1999 rape of a college student, and both are convicted sex offenders.
Since matching Jerome Cooper's DNA, police have been searching for Tyrone Cooper to determine whether the twins are fraternal or identical, and if they have the same DNA. A warrant has been issued for Tyrone Cooper's arrest, charging him with failing to update his address on the state's sex offender registry.

"Our big hope in this case is they are fraternal," police Sgt. Timothy Williams told The Grand Rapids Press.

As the article indicates, identical twins have 100% concordance in their DNA sequence, and so if it turns out the Cooper brothers are identical, the cops are stuck. Same DNA--two different people. How do they get around this?

That the answer might prove to be a difficult find shows that there are severe disadvantages to making forensic science a technology-based, or database-intensive, discipline. My former professor, Peter De Forest, always waxed eloquent, both in class and outside, about how criminalistics--the field of gathering physical evidence and the fundamental science that every other forensic discipline is based on--is in decline, its techniques losing its impact in the wake of new technologies, new toys, and databases. The first time I heard his line of thinking, I blanched, because hey, I loved DNA and thought it to be practically god-like. Thankfully, I came around to De Forest's way of thinking as time went on, and came to the realization that a case cannot be solved by tools alone; there must be an overall framework and context, something that is dynamic and subject to constant change.

So what of the identical twins and how to distinguish between them? The answer, perhaps, lies in a powerful field, but one that has taken a severe beating in the courts in the last little while: fingerprints. Until otherwise proven, each individual has his or her own unique set of prints--even identical twins. So if the original crime scene techs were smart, and the evidence had been kept in storage all this time, perhaps some useful prints were obtained back in 1999. There's also the old-fashioned gumshoe approach, interviewing people, accounting for each of the twins' whereabouts before, during, and after the crime took place.

But chances are, alas, the resolution of this case will hinge on finding that other twin and waiting for the DNA test to show--one way or another--if they are fraternal or identical.

And if it turns out to be the latter situation--well then, things might just get a little more difficult.

It runs in the family

2004-05-14T11:33:00.000-04:00

After much poking, prodding, begging and pleading--mostly by me--my brother, Jaime J. Weinman, has joined the 'sphere. His blog, "Something Old, Nothing New" looks at all sorts of popular and unpopular culture, as filtered through his own personal tastes. In other words, if you think I'm idiosyncratic, well, there's a damned good reason--I learned it all from him.* Anyway, feel free to check it out.

*And we both gleaned much of our own cultural oddities from my father and his monumental record collection. He's threatening to start a blog as well. It could get rather crowded...

You can never get enough kitsch in your life

2004-05-14T11:00:00.000-04:00

In one of the recent backblogs, the conversation has somehow degenerated into a discussion of horrible movies we've seen recently. Olen chimed in with his viewing of Van Wilder (or maybe it was the sequel? Perish the thought) and I dredged up a should-have-been-forgotten memory of watching one of Pauly Shore's lesser efforts*. And since, no doubt, this kind of discussion might fire up your brain to remember all the terrible schlock you have viewed at some point, allow me to make this task all the easier, thanks to the demented genius that is Seanbaby, a Portland, Oregon-based writer (well, he's got a voice, albeit of the anarchic, insane variety) who loves, and I mean LOVES, the 80s in all its horrendous glory. He also has a semi-regular column for THE WAVE, one of the free weeklies over there, which manages to mine the most obscure, outlandish topics into long pieces, ranging from funny to side-splitting.

My favorite, in keeping with this particular discussion, is "The 10 Eightiest Movies," where Seanbaby goes into excrutiating detail on movies that should really be locked in a drawer with the key thrown away:

8. Breakin’, 1984

“For the break of your life! Push it to pop it! Rock it to lock it! Break it to make it!”
This is one of the first films that focused on break dancing and the troubled rec centers that surround it. It’s the story of Turbo and Ozone, played of course by Boogaloo Shrimp and Shabba-Doo, and the trials they go through to not only defeat the evil Electro-Rock breakers, but to be accepted by the established dance community. They’re helped along the way by Kelly, a classically trained dancer who embraces their savage street movements to recreate most of the second half of Flashdance. What made this movie so daring, though, is that it risked angering elitist ballet instructor villains of the world by having an ending where the group’s break dancing saves the community from socially intolerant oppression.

And it just gets worse. On Seanbaby's home site, he has a ridiculously detailed, terribly analytical review of Mr. T's "Be Somebody or Be Somebody's Fool," an idea so lame and silly that, well, it could only have happened in the 80s.

So hunt through this archive. Dredge up those long-forgotten memories. And then, it might be a good idea to imbibe copious amounts of alcohol afterwards.

*UPDATE, 11:30 EDT: Overheard in the ladies' bathroom at work ten minutes ago:

A: Did you ever see that Pauly Shore movie?

B: Which one is that? I don't see a lot of movies, eh.

A: It's that one, THE IN-LAWS, I think? Where he's at the house of the girl he's engaged to?

B: SON-IN-LAW! Yeah I did see that, it was so funny.

A: It's one of the funniest movies I've ever seen, eh. So good.

The Diamond Dagger Award Ceremony

2004-05-14T10:35:00.000-04:00

On May 12, at the Savoy Hotel, Lawrence Block became the latest recepient--and only the third American author--of the CWA's Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement in Crime Fiction. Presenting the award and making a speech was Simon Kernick, a self-professed "huge fan" whose own work is greatly influenced by Block's ouevre. Block, who attended with his wife Lynne, himself gave a speech which was warmly received by the crowd. In attendance were fellow authors like Mark Billingham, John Harvey, CWA President Hilary Bonner, Simon Brett, the gang from SHOTS (Mike Stotter, Ali Karim, Ayo Ontade, Liz Hatherell and her consort Myles Allfrey) and Thalia Proctor, manager of Goldsboro Books. Pictures of the event will, no doubt, be made available in a forthcoming issue of SHOTS, which I'm looking forward to if only to see how dressed up everybody was!

Again, huge congratulations to Larry for the award.

Interview with the #1 Bestselling author in the UK

2004-05-14T08:40:00.000-04:00

And who would this person be? Why, none other than Harlan Coben, whose new standalone JUST ONE LOOK stormed up the charts all the way to the top. In this interview with the Independent, he talks about the new book, New Jersey, and oh yeah, some series characters he may or may not have left behind for good. It's actually a fairly thoughtful piece that puts the standalones in an interesting context (albeit one that, I suspect, might be more "meaningful" than they ought to be:)

One of the differences between Coben's early, slick thrillers about Myron Bolitar and these later ones is the age of their protagonists. Myron was a young man in the sense that he was hoping to settle down, whereas the lead characters of the New Jersey sequence are all people who have reached that level of personal maturity at which you have something serious to lose: the loved ones who are hostages to fortune. What they have in common with Myron is heart, a fundamental decency that means that he and they don't just knock down the ant hills of the lives around them for the sake of it. If they flounder in the course of finding the truth, they do so without malice aforethought. All of Coben's viewpoint characters have a sense of themselves as flawed that stops them acting out of self-righteousness even when they know they are being victimised. No one is more surprised than David Beck in Tell No One to find himself on the run: when he knocks down a policeman, he retains the good moral sense to be sorry for what was a necessity.

I do wonder if this kind of profile would ever be written for a US publication. Just goes to show how differently books--even standalone thrillers--are viewed on both sides of the pond.

Returning to the Stomping Grounds

2004-05-14T08:28:00.000-04:00

First, a heartfelt thank-you to Olen for a marvellous job over the past few days--there was some extremely thought-provoking posts that he put up, stuff that I'm still mulling over and may yet respond to in a fuller fashion--we shall see. As for me, I'm still getting used to being in an enclosed space (behind secure doors, I might add),added responsibilities and completely new surroundings, while juggling yet more interviews and more travel time in the days and weeks to come.

Anyway, some choice links, although fewer than usual:

Newsday's book coverage leads off with a nice interview of Bolivian-American writer Emanuel Paz Soldan, one of many up-and-coming South American writers trying to get out from the long shadow cast by Gabriel Garcia Marquez--although Soldan's a fan of the elder statesman.

I keep forgetting that Michiko's a baseball nut until she comes back with a new review of a baseball-themed book. This time it's Michael Sokolove's THE TICKET OUT, a chronicle of Daryl Strawberry and his fellow teammates on the 1979 Crenshaw High Cougars. I wonder if La Kakutani will tackle Jeff Pearlman's upcoming expose of the seamy side of the 1986 Mets? (A book, incidentally, that I am extremely excited to read.)

Harvey Weinstein will write his memoirs, and the publication date is 2006. I dunno, I think I'd rather read what his brother Bob has to say. Besides, it's not like Harvey's gonna dish about all the starlets he got to play Casting Couch with...

One of these days, I'm going to do a ridiculously long rant about my completely irrational hatred for Plum Sykes and how she's at the forefront of a completely different subgenre. But until then, there's the Independent's take on BERGDORF BLONDES, adorning the book with grudging praise.

One has less-than-high hopes for a profile that immediately begins with an ode to the author's "masses of hair," but that's the price to pay for reading this interview with Jodi Picoult in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Lord knows I've spent enough time here talking about Michael Connelly's THE NARROWS, but this article in the LA Times could not be passed up--as Steve Harvey's "only in L.A." column is devoted to the surreal take on the BLOOD WORK movie, and how Connelly manages to use his characters to voice opinions the author probably couldn't.

Michael Marshall Smith wrote some hybrid SF/thrillers before dropping the last name, writing conspiracy thrillers like THE STRAW MEN and THE LONELY DEAD and becoming a household name in the UK (while languishing in PBO in the US. Go figure) Anyway, he's about to appear in Manchester so the Evening News does a little profile on him.

After only six issues since its launch in November, Ink Magazine has closed up shop due, predictably, to problems in recovering start-up costs.

How'd you like to spend 42 minutes listening to Joe Lansdale expound on whatever comes to mind, especially his new book, SUNSET & SAWDUST? Now you can, thanks to Rick Kleffel's recent interview of the Edgar award-winning author.

And finally, get ready for the newest heir to the HypeMonster (TM) throne: Susannah Clarke, whose 800-page novel JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL is deemed by Bloomsbury as "Harry Potter for grown-ups." Well, they would, since they publish Potter in the UK, and lord knows they can't have too many cash cows--or potential ones....

No, I'm not really back till tomorrow, but...

2004-05-13T16:22:00.000-04:00

..it behooved me to break in and report that after all the hype, the careful doling out of review copies (and shutting down any possibility of obtaining advance copies months before the publication date) the spiffy DVD (which I finally viewed a few days ago, and it is very nicely put together), and the fervent hope that the book would finally, finally do what no other of his books had done before, the news is finally in:

And goddamnit, that DA VINCI CODE is one tough nut to crack.

So THE NARROWS debuts at #2 on the NYT List. Which, incidentally, is Michael Connelly's best debut in three years (A DARKNESS MORE THAN NIGHT reached the same pinnacle), but in the end, it wasn't quite enough.

Maybe next week...

One Last Gasp

2004-05-13T12:26:00.000-04:00

...before I sign off. Tomorrow, rest assured, that goddess of the criminal netherworld will return to satisfy your daily need for wit and information. It's been fun, but I tell you, it ain't as easy as it looks, and now it's time for me to get back to my day job.

But before I go, I'll draw your attention to three articles -- all, remarkably, from USA Today. The first is a piece on How Israel Lost, by Richard Ben Cramer. No comments necessary, this sort of topic generates its own instant chatter.

The second is simply because I love the man's writing, and even once rashly proclaimed him the greatest living novelist. I'm perhaps too much of a list-maker. It's a look, twenty years later, at Milan Kundera's masterpiece, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

And finally, USA Today makes an attempt to help rejuvenate the sales of mysteries that have slipped off the top-50.

Best to all, it's been a gas.

How Long is too Long?

2004-05-13T07:55:00.000-04:00

In earlier backblog posts, a conversation went on about writing open-ended series as opposed to stand-alones. What does the reader want? How long can an author keep it up with the originality that began the series? A review of Anne Perry's The Shifting Tide in Monday's Boston Globe even asks, with this 14th installment of her William Monk series, "Could Anne Perry be tiring of crime?" January Magazine's 1998 interview with Perry brought up the fact that crime is a personal matter for her, a personal matter brought to the screen in Heavenly Creatures. If she is, in fact, tiring of crime, I don't think anyone could blame her.

I'm not generally a reader of series mysteries, which became clear in the backblogs when I questioned how someone could conceivably keep up good work. In answer, a litany of names were cited that I had to admit I hadn't read. I'm doing a series myself, but with a pre-defined end-point--5, or 6 at the most, books. Knowing where I'm going to end is important for me, because I then know the arc of the whole meta-story that connects all the books. (Also, my books cover a pre-defined historical period that simply has to end.)

Perhaps some series authors can chime in here, and tell us how they view their series. Is there an arc to the whole series? Or is it like a rope with a series of knots, each book its own arc?

Sorry if I'm being vague or tedious, but these are the kinds of questions writers fret over, and perhaps some interesting answers will arise.

Them Other Languages

2004-05-12T08:10:00.000-04:00

In an email exchange with Sarah, she thought it might be interesting for me to talk a little about translations. So I'll give it a shot.

At this point, I'm being published in three other languages--Swedish, French, and Japanese. Someone as fine as Jason Starr has enough for a whole page devoted to foreign editions. Yet Rebecca Pawel, winner of the Edgar for First Novel, hasn't a single foreign edition under her belt. Not even in Spain, the country she writes about. Sarah and I were shocked when she told us this. (The Edgar, though, should right this wrong.) Similarly, Adam LeBor, whose Milosevic biography I mentioned below, has a slew of foreign editions going, but none in Croatian -- a country that would be happy to read a tough retelling of that man's criminal life.

Getting foreign deals seems pretty random to me. The way it works is that I have an excellent agent in New York -- Matt Williams at the Gernert Company. He takes care of all American contracts. He works with a co-agent based out of London, Andrew Nurnberg Associates, Ltd. Nurnberg, in turn, has agents placed in strategic locations throughout the world. So, for example, a Nurnberg agent based here in Budapest covers Hungary and the ex-Yugoslav countries. And the quality of these local agents varies wildly. From what Adam LeBor and I can tell, the woman who's our local agent is doing as little as humanly possible. She hasn't secured him a Croatian deal, and I even gave her number to a publisher I met in a bar here. The publisher left messages on her machine, because she wanted to do a Hungarian edition, but my agent didn't reply. After weeks of trying to coordinate this thing, I finally gave up in frustration.

These frontier agents don't (as far as I've been able to tell) go out and hunt down local publishers. They wait to be contacted. And a publisher only contacts them if they've had the good fortune of running across an English-language edition and loving it, having read that it's made some waves in the States or the UK, or are contacted by freelance scouts who bridge the gap between the publisher and the agent. My agent in NY is contacted now and then by scouts, who have carried my books to Italy and Germany, so far without success.

But there seem to be variations to the whole process. The English edition of Natsuo Kirino's Edgar-nominated Out, I see from looking at my copy, was published by a Japanese publisher, in Japan. They skipped the whole local-publisher route altogether and just went with local distributors. (A friend remarked that the Japanese government subsidizes the translation of authors in other languages, which may explain this.)

Recently, with my French edition, I was surprised by the liberties that foreign publishers can take. Liana Levi, my Paris publishers, have changed the titles of all my books. The Bridge of Sighs is now Cher Camarade, while The Confession is now Niet Camarade. Now, I understand that different markets require different titles to catch the local eye, but the shock was that I was never consulted. In my English editions I'd gone out of my way to come up with titles that didn't reek of the communist motif I use in my stories, because to me the communism is secondary to the characters and their story; but in France they've gone out of their way to do just the opposite.

Can I complain? Yes. Does it do any good? It hasn't, not yet.

So then you have the deal. You're excited. How long do you have to wait before you get to hold that volume you can't understand? Well, I just received my Swedish and French copies this morning. The Swedish edition took a year and a month from signing to book; the French took a mere four months. The Japanese I'm still waiting on, and it's been over two years!

Answer: There's just no telling.

Since I'm new to this, I don't know what follows the foreign publication. Maybe some of the more experienced writers out there can comment on their experiences with the foreign press and perhaps even book tours. (All I know is that I was told that if I didn't speak French, the French press would not interview me. Which does seem strange...kind of.) And maybe there's an agent out there who wants to clear up some of the mistakes I've no doubt made.

Yes, books...

2004-05-11T20:59:00.000-04:00

Today I'm gonna try (ineptly, compared to our beloved maven) to do a proper Confessions post -- i.e. focus on books:

On Saturday, the Boston Globe ran a piece on...guess what?...The Da Vinci Code, which stated a -- to me -- shocking figure:

The theological thriller by New Hampshire's Dan Brown is still [after a year] selling an astonishing 80,000 to 90,000 hard-cover copies per week. Last week, the book went into its 56th printing, bringing the number of copies in print to 7.35 million.

Now, I certainly have dreams of becoming what's termed a "best-seller". However, these kinds of numbers were beyond my imagining. I also lived a year in Florence, and I imagine these kinds of figures would have sent Signore Da Vinci into convulsions of ecstasy.

The Seattle Times has a chat with Morning Edition's Bob Edwards (oh, that voice I remember so well!) about his Edward R Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism. One point he makes is about a bad habit Murrow had: his long silences during interviews. Last year I went with a journalist friend to interview an American officer training Iraqi resistance here in Hungary just before the war began, and I noticed he did the same thing. To me it looked like bad behavior, and I wanted to fill those silences. But then I saw his technique: it was to make the interviewee nervous, to fill the silences in just the way I wanted to do. Did it work with this officer? I'm afraid it didn't.

This is a little old, but I ran across a Houston Chronicle interview with John Grisham about his new film, Mickey, in which Grisham tells, among other things, why this story is a screenplay and not a film:

I wrote about three pages as a novel and found it very difficult to capture in prose the action on a baseball field. A ground ball to short, a sharp curveball that buckles a guy's knees, a long fly ball to center -- it's too visual. The story itself is too visual.

I'm interested in this (even if the answer is rather brief) because I'm in the midst of this sort of decision-making these days. I began work on a screenplay that a friend convinced me was a novel, and then decided that a novella I'd been batting back and forth for years was actually a screenplay. Why did one become the other? My answer would be that it's about the arc of the story, and how it's best represented in the individual scenes. One series of scenes works in a visual medium, the other just doesn't.

And on a different tangent, the San Francisco Chronicle reviews Dark Age Ahead, a treatise on the dangers of modern living by Toronto 80-something Jane Jacobs with the message that "Lazy thinking and a lack of accountability could combine to unhinge many of the advances that fuel our modern life." Another over-the-hill doom-speaker? John King thinks not.

Drew "Bundini" Brown

2004-05-11T12:08:00.000-04:00

Last night I watched the original Shaft for the umpteenth time, and was once again amazingly entertained. Later, I googled the movie, and learned that my favorite character, Bumpy's side-kick, Willie (who uttered such memorable lines as "That's some cold shit, throwing my man Leroy out the window. Just picked my man up and threw him out the goddam window."--and in Shaft's Big Score! his lines are even better), was played by Drew Bundini Brown. (See him facing off with Richard Rountree in the second picture here.) Who is Drew Bundini Brown? Well, he, it turns out, was one of Muhammad Ali's trainers, as well as a speech-writer, credited with "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee". This was news to me (as was the fact that in the Will Smith Ali, Drew was played by Jamie Foxx). Maybe this is old news to everyone else (I imagine it is), but it's enlightenment to me.

Something disjointed, on the Balkans

2004-05-11T11:06:00.000-04:00

(Donna, don't read!)

During my first full day in New York, I went to the W Hotel's "underbar" at Union Square. A friend had told me that it was de rigeur if I wanted a very good martini, which I did. (He also gave a soliloquy on the waitresses there, but that's another subject.) I brought my notebook (later lost, sadly), and sitting at the bar I scribbled notes for the next book, sometimes chatting with the bartender, but generally remaining antisocial. It was afternoon (and these drinks were prepping me for the Partners & Crime Edgars Party, which was a hoot) and the bar was pretty empty. Enter a stocky man, soberly dressed, who joined me at the bar. He seemed to want to chat, but no one (least of all me) was giving him the time of day. So upon ordering my second martini, I finally gave him a smile and we began to chat. His name was Benny. He had an accent, so I asked where he was from.

"From a long way away."

"Yeah, but where?"

"Europe."

"Ok, right. Where in Europe?"

He looked at me strangely, then said, "Kosovo."

Which was a coincidence, because over the previous couple weeks I'd talked a lot with my girlfriend (as mentioned below, a Vojvodina Serb) about Kosovo. I don't know if the US papers carried it, but there was a spate of violence in that southern ex-Yugoslav province, in which local Serbs were attacked and churches burned to the ground. The provocation? An allegation that six Serbian men with dogs drowned three ethnic Albanian children in a lake in mid-March. The violence that followed killed nearly 30 people and drove 3,200 from their homes. Since then, a UN probe has been unable to find evidence that this actually occurred. (See the UN Mission in Kosovo news page.)

Now, the Balkans are a tough thing to get hold of, so I was interested in discussing it with Benny. But he admitted it was just as hard for him to understand, despite having grown up there. History rules the present in the Balkans, and to say that the violence happened simply because of these six men is just foolishness. In reaction, violence pops up everywhere, even in my girlfriend's quite liberal hometown of Novi Sad, where ethnic Serbs attacked Hungarian shops. "Why Hungarian shops?" I asked her. Because, she told me, there weren't any Kosovars around, and at least the Hungarians were "foreign" (despite having lived there all their lives).

The provocation for this recent spate of violence reminded me of an incident cited in the 1990s (which I read about in--shameless plug, I know the guy--Adam LeBor's Milosevic) as a provocation by Serbs: A 56-year-old farmer was injured by a broken bottle while in his field. The story in the Serb papers was that he'd been attacked by ethnic Albanians, who forced him to use the bottle on himself sexually. Later, though, the farmer, upset by the press, admitted that he'd done it to himself, alone. However, this revised news didn't make most of the papers.

Benny's contention is that the UN will never create peace in this region because they refuse to understand that the past cannot be simply cleared away. These grotesque "provocations" are, and have always been, excuses for those who want to see history (or history as they view it) rewritten, to erase a past national shame they feel personally. (And the countries around Hungary feel similar animosity against the long-dead Autro-Hungarian Empire, just as Hungarians proudly point out that back in 15th Century they had "three seas".) As an American, this kind of logic is beyond me. I'm used to cutting away the past when it suits me, which is probably why I move around so much. It's also the luxury of affluence to ignore the past. My girlfriend, though, is seldom surprised, though she's often disappointed, by such outbreaks of Balkan violence. She shrugs and says to me, "What else would you expect them to do?"

And I don't have an answer for that.

The New World in a Bottle

2004-05-11T08:36:00.000-04:00

On May 1, Hungary joined the EU. At the time, I was in New York, and wondered what magical changes I'd return to. At Ferihegy Airport I eyed the passport control behind her glass, suspicious that she'd now point me to a back room to be grilled by sinister intelligence officers. No, that didn't happen. I took the mini-bus service back to my apartment, but on the way the buildings looked the same (though something had been added to the Elizabeth Bridge). My girlfriend still spoke in her heavily accented English (a Vojvodina Serb accent, not a Hungarian one), and only told me that on May 1 she was frustrated because she wanted to get back home, but all the busses and subways were closed during the firework celebrations. And over the next week of going out with friends it's all seemed the same. But today, while browsing the news, I've finally found the meat of the difference, perhaps even the "why" of EU succession. And it can all be boiled down into a single glass I just can't wait to get a taste of.

That Dreaded Subject

2004-05-10T12:06:00.000-04:00

I was reading a piece from the New Republic, on Le Carre's Absolute Friends, which ends up being a critique of his career. The central question: Is he a "literary master", or just a very good genre writer whose works "were so enthusiastically mistaken for literary novels"? James Wood goes for the latter option.

Now I know most readers would immediately toss this off as the superiority complex of academic fiction whenever it turns its head to look at anything with an exciting plot. As a fan of Le Carre, particularly his earlier books, that was my reaction as well.

But I think Wood makes some interesting points.

One is reminded of Arnold Bennet's contention, with which Virginia Woolf had such play, that Sherlock Holmes was a real and rounded literary character. Woolf was right to point out that, in any deep sense, Holmes is just a "sack filled with straw." He functions perfectly, vividly indeed, within the modest requirements of his genre, which is why his characteristics barely change. Le Carré has said that George Smiley changes over the course of the several books in which he appears, but in truth his character remains exactly the same, and is limited to two or three essential elements: he is calm, he is donnish, he is gently crafty.

This kind of critique of character is what he uses, in part, to bash Absolute Friends. I haven't read it myself, so I can't comment. But I've read enough Le Carre to try and consider the critique of his oeuvre. I'm not entirely convinced, but on the other hand I think that, if any novelist is considered part of the elusive literary canon, he or she must be treated roughly by critics.

I recently re-read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. I was excited, as I hadn't read it since before I began writing crime fiction, and it had made a lasting impression. It's extremely good, there's no doubt, but is it "literature"? I simply couldn't say. I had criticisms I didn't have before, and some sections felt, of all things, a bit sentimental (though to be fair it was written in a time where it couldn't have been viewed as sentimental, but on the other hand "literature" that lasts is not allowed this kind of excuse).

I bring all this up because it's an obsession with me, this definition of high literature, and because I'm hoping to get others' thoughts on the backblog. I went to grad school with professors and peers who did look down on crime fiction; it took me a while to clearly see their arrogance, and to get rid of my own. But despite my move into crime fiction, the basic impulse to create something lasting has remained, and I think most writers feel similarly.

I suppose my only point, if there is one, is that while it sometimes hurts, if we want our books to last, crime writers should be open to the rigors of intense and sometimes unfair criticism -- this is what all literature must face. We simply have an extra hurdle to deal with, unlike those writing in the accepted domain of academic fiction. But maybe that means we'll be writing better than them when our work makes it "over there". It certainly means that, if we're interested in those kinds of accolades, we'll have to try.

Eastern Bloc Scribblers

2004-05-10T08:39:00.000-04:00

When I've visited the States, I'm often asked about that mysterious netherworld I've just flown from -- namely, Hungary. After the embarrassing question (Do you speak Hungarian well? Uh, no, hardly at all.), I'm asked about the literary scene here. There's a lore around Eastern Europe, comparing it to Paris in the 1920s, which isn't exactly appropriate. There are expat writers here, sure, but not as many as you'd expect.

Attempting to look at this scene, and to see if it even exists, my friend Erik D'Amato (pictured with his wife, Janet) wrote about it in his Budapest Times column, "The Stink". You might be interested in checking out part one, and then part two. The links are to Erik's site, because for some reason they make you sign in to even look at the Budapest Times front page.

The Glamorous Life

2004-05-10T07:23:00.000-04:00

I should probably start my guest-blogging by answering a question that's floated around the back blogs here and over at 4MysteryAddicts since I first showed my face at the Edgars ceremony: What happened to Olen after we all got tired and went home...and why did he not show his face again that week? Did something...untoward happen between him and Ken Bruen that first evening?

(I added the last bit -- I don't think it crossed anyone's minds.)

You can see from Sarah's earlier post what happened up to the time everyone left for home that evening. Afterward, Ken and I remained rooted at the Collins Bar, chatting with the bartender (an Irish camaraderie grew between him and Ken) and stepping outside now and then for cigarettes. While outside, we conversed with some interesting gentlemen who were unable to draw us in on their business propositions, but were pragmatic enough not to let this upset them. Ken and I closed the bar, found a late-night coffee spot, and then stumbled to our respective hotels.

By then, it was 6 in the morning.

The next day I was due to check out of the Grand Hyatt by noon and move to a more affordable place on the Upper West Side. Groggy, hungover, and a little confused, I did just this. I lugged my bags through the subway, getting lost once, and finally made it to a place that, on the web page, looked like a charming, affordable corner of the Great City.

Looks, as we all know, can be misleading.

I should've been clued in when the front desk told me they would only accept cash for the room, up-front -- but I was tired. I began to mutter that I didn't know if I had enough cash, and the man quickly pointed over my shoulder; I looked. An ATM machine sat behind me. So I paid for two nights and, exhausted, took the elevator to my floor. A dark, decrepit corridor faced me, lined with doors that seemed to be falling free of their frames. Then I found my home-away-from-home.

Afterward, I had the distinct feeling people felt I was exaggerating. But I wasn't. It was the kind of room I'd only seen in films, the one that houses the heroin addict. A bed, a television bolted to the wall, and that's it. No table, dresser, phone or chair. There was a visibly grimy, lumpy carpet stapled to the base of the wall, and the wall itself was covered in a sickly-green paint that was, quite literally, peeling. Cracks shuddered through the door and the window, and above me a single fluorescent tube offered illumination. The thing is, it was a heroin addict's room, but without the one advantage of that lifestyle -- I wasn't on heroin.

It was a tough weekend for lodging in New York. The Tribeca Film Festival, psychiatry conventions, and numerous other gatherings had filled the hotels to the brim. So when I went back downtown and lunched with my editor, Kelley Ragland, she made a lot of fruitless calls to full hotels. But at least she was able to feed me. And that gave me the strength to walk many blocks to the Mansfield Hotel, where I knew Ken was staying. It turned out they had a room for me for one night. So I returned to my Upper West Side room, packed again, and asked sweetly at the front desk if I could at least get a refund for the second night. They pointed to a sign on the counter with the rules of the house. A highlighted line said, "No Refunds for Early Check-Outs". This is obviously a recurring theme for them.

The clouds seemed to part once I was back at the Mansfield, though I didn't see them. After a shower I rested in their M Bar, drinking until Ken, predictably, arrived. The night was looking up, but exhaustion caught up with me and I stayed in and slept while the rest of the world went out. The next day, after searching for more lodging, buying jeans and sitting in the Blue Bar at the Algonquin to protect my bald head from the sun, I returned to the M, where (who would've guessed?) I ran into Ken again. That crowd grew, and I had some good talks with Jason Starr (whose stories about Halle Berry kept us all mesmerized), but when they decamped for dinner I again stayed behind, waiting for the car to the Marriott out at JFK, from where I'd be flying home the next day.

And the Marriott was as you'd expect.

The surprising thing was that my stamina for...well, everything...paled next to Ken Bruen's. He's a firecracker, that one, and I look forward to testing my limits with him again. Hopefully next time I'll be up to the challenge.

OK, enough about me. Just wanted to get that out of the way.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

2004-05-09T16:00:00.000-04:00

Amazing what can happen in the course of a few days, but tomorrow morning at a bright and early hour, I report for duty at--gulp--my new day job. While it doesn't mean I haven't stopped looking (especially because this is not my much-desired forensic lab position), it's probably a lot better to consider future options while making money than while not earning a paycheck. So suffice it to say, the amount of content many of you have no doubt become so accustomed to will take a hit over the next little while--at least until I figure out how to blog surreptitiously from work...

But since the turnaround time from job application to interview to start date was a little less than two weeks, there's a considerable learning curve I must succumb to. So, I'm taking this coming week off and handing over the keys to Olen Steinhauer, who has kindly agreed to step in.

To make a long story short, he's the author of two highly acclaimed (and damned well-written) historical crime novels, THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS and THE CONFESSION, the latter obtaining a lovely review in today's Los Angeles Times. An American who's lived in a whole host of places around the world, Olen now lives in Budapest, and I'm always intrigued by the stories people have when they live in places that are foreign to them and vice versa. I should think he'll share a few. Or maybe he'll say more about his adventures in New York during Edgar Week. Or whatever comes into his head. In any case, I'm looking forward to what he has to say.

UPDATE: So Blogger seems to have completely stolen features from MT, er, metamorphosed while I wasn't looking. Comments! RSS feed that actually works! New templates! And more importantly, each post can now be permalinked! Anyway, much as I'm tempted to try a brand spanking new template out, well, that wouldn't be a nice thing to do to one's guest blogger. But hell--PERMALINKS! I feel so grownup now. Anyway, enjoy.

Otto Penzler vs. cozies

2004-05-09T14:09:00.000-04:00

Normally, if a link is a week old or more when I first come across it, I don't put it up here. But because this story caused so much controversy in the mystery world when it first ran--probably in part because hardly anyone reads the New York Sun anyway--I thought it a good idea to share.

Otto Penzler, proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop, former publisher, editor of numerous anthologies (and Maxim Jakubowski's Good Twin) has a weekly column in the NY Sun where he talks shop and sundry. Most of the time his opinings are of a benign nature, but in the April 21 column, things get a little more heated:

The books stacked in front of me are the finalists for the Agatha award, given at the annual Malice Domestic conference. This event honors books written in the mode of Agatha Christie, loosely defined as those that contain no explicit sex, excessive gore, or gratuitous violence. Unstated, but clearly of equal importance, is that they must contain not a scintilla of style, originality, or depth. They must have the texture and nuance of an infomercial, lacking only its philosophical power.

My fiancée (ed. now his wife, though I've yet to track down any announcement in the NY Times as I'd expected to), as kind and generous as she is beautiful, defended them briefly by comparing them to television sitcoms, to be read as pure escapism. “They’re throw-away books,” she says. I agree. We just disagree about timing, as I think they should be thrown away before they are read.

And then he names names. No wonder people got pissed off:

Margaret Maron: “Last Lessons of Summer.” One of the first things an editor tells a writer, and maybe the most important thing a writer will ever hear, is to get the attention of the reader right away. But here, after a prologue about spiders hatching (I’m not making this up), there are numerous chapters about various members of a family squabbling over an inheritance and long-past insults that continue to resonate. I wouldn’t find this remotely interesting if it were my own family,much less this bunch.

Yikes. Although it must be said that Penzler's rant loses some credibility when the title of Jerrilyn Farmer is misspelled, and when (although I'm not totally sure and cannot check this at the moment) Maron's book was a top pick for one of Mysterious's collecting clubs upon its release last year. Never mind that it just reeks of sour grapes--what's the point of it, especially when Penzler goes on to admit in another piece that despite his dislike of cozies, he's still selling them in his shop?

Still, despite his distaste for the genre, Penzler often places culinary mysteries at ''point of purchase'' locations in his store. ''The market for these books is extremely strong,'' he says.

And who does this market consist of? ''I think the books are aimed at a very specific audience -- women, essentially,'' he says. ``. . . They're looking for slight entertainment the way someone else might watch TV or video. There's not anything wrong with that, it's just not my taste.'

Hell, I hardly read cozies myself, so I can't argue with his ultimate point, that it's not to his taste. But I wouldn't exactly use column space to trash folks--by name--in what essentially constitutes an ad hominem attack on an entire subgenre.

(thanks to Michael for pointing me to the NY Sun article.)

Reading the Reader

2004-05-09T10:47:00.000-04:00

Terry Teachout, who has been otherwise incommunicado for the last few days, gets a very nice write-up in the Baltimore Sun for his new collection of essays, THE TERRY TEACHOUT READER. This is the paragraph that jumped out at me:

If Teachout has one consistent topic it is genius - great (Louis Armstrong), middling (Dawn Powell) and small (Randolph Scott) - and the majority of pieces collected here - essays, profiles, reviews - reflect that attraction. One charming trait of Teachout the cultural critic is he appears to genuinely want his readers to enjoy what he enjoys (those who read criticism know how rare that is in a critic) or at the very least understand why he so enjoys it.

Victoria Brownworth, who wrote this review, truly hits the nail on the head with this last sentence. While I may be somewhat biased, that quality of showcasing enthusiasm for a particular work and sharing it with everyone around was what originally hooked me on Terry's blog many months ago, back when I only had a passing awareness of who he was and what he did in the first place. A lot of critics seem to derive pleasure only from coding their reviews, taking great care in covering tracks and almost hiding the fact that they might like a book. In some ways, that's taking the easy way out. I suppose it is also easy to be enthusiastic, but it's quite difficult to go beyond mere praise and excitement and convey why the book, musician, work or art, or whatever is being critiqued merits such enthusiasm.

I wish more critics would put themselves on the line and do that. And from perusing The READER essay by essay, I'm trying to dissect how he does it time and time again so I can put more of that quality in my own critiques.

A Very Special Weekend Update

2004-05-09T09:57:00.000-04:00

Before I launch into the link parade, and even before I launch into the opening rant--Happy Mother's Day to all moms (or those with moms) reading here this morning. Not to get overly sentimental or anything, but it's not been the easiest year for my own, and so I'm glad to be able to celebrate the holiday with her in every way I can.

Now, the rant: what the hell is up with the review convergence at the New York Times? Monday--Janet Maslin reviews Michael Connelly's THE NARROWS. Thursday--she reviews THE RULE OF FOUR. Now along comes Marilyn Stasio with her crime column and oh gee, guess which two books comprise the bulk of the column? In fact, her review of THE NARROWS may be the longest critique she's written of a book in some time, while the other three books (the new Anne Perry and Boris Akunin as well) barely merit a paragraph each. I've never been able to understand why a book that is reviewed during the weekday would get reviewed again on the weekend. Convergence between The Guardian and the Observer? Fine, because technically they do have different staff and freelancers. But any paper that has a Sunday edition (Times, Independent, Telegraph, Scotsman, Herald, etc.) doesn't have to repeat itself, because by doing so, another book gets left out, and lord knows there's a premium on review space in newspapers these days. I wonder how many more times I have to repeat this gripe before someone pays attention. Probably a few hundred more...

Oh, and all those nasty spoilers--Marilyn, oh dear Marilyn, could it be just the teeniest, tiniest bit possible that you were trying to be--gasp!--deliberate in revealing all those plot points? Are you trying to give poor Mr. Connelly a heart attack when he tried so hard to keep all those spoilers under wraps? Although others have suggested you go and stand in a particularly lonely corner of the city, my only suggestion is to take a look at oh, Oline Cogdill's review of the same book--gets all the necessary information out there, with nary a spoiler in sight. See? It's possible!

And speaking of Connelly, check out this long feature in the New York Times Magazine on the man, his creation, and his love of LA from a distance (even though the story ran a week later than scheduled; the May 2 edition of the magazine was, I think, suppose to run the story because it was given out to every Edgar attendee--but oops, it wasn't there.)

Otherwise at the paper of record, I must admit I thoroughly enjoyed Laura Miller's new column about giving up on books--it's hard to do, but frankly, I learned the hard way that it's really no great loss to let a book go after reading 50-odd pages instead of gritting my teeth through the entire thing. Some of my attitude is in part because I read so many books, but no doubt it's a big dilemma for those who only read a select number per year. And then there's Thomas Berger (author of LITTLE BIG MAN and other fine works) who has a new volume out, ADVENTURES OF AN ARTIFICIAL WOMAN--which is skillfully reviewed by one Donald E. Westlake. Maybe some folks here have heard the name before.

Next up: Book World, where Andrew Wylie expounds, and then natters on some more, about how he became a Superagent and takes a global approach to poaching, er, taking on writers' backlists and frontlists and selling them to publishers at exorbitant advances. Or something like that. Snarkiness aside, Wylie does have a point--which is that one can't just look to one nation or one market to get the word out--but it does seem to get lost in his own ego somehow. Otherwise, Les Roberts (author of the Cleveland-based Milan Jacovich PI novels) looks at Jim Lehrer's new book FLYING CROWS, Stephanie Wilkinson rounds up some Mother's Day-related books (albeit, some relate in a very tenuous manner) and THE BONE WOMAN, Clea Koff's fascinating memoir of forensic anthropology in the midst of the Balkan war, gets a nice nod as well.

Over at the Guardian, there's a healthy dose of crime fiction reviewed, starting with Chris Petit's slightly sarcastic take on Mo Hayder's TOKYO. He likes parts of it "very much" and ultimately approves of the book, but there's something about this--and Petit's reviewing style in general--that rubs me the wrong way. Then there's Maxim Jakubowski's roundup of raves, as he looks at new releases from Colin Harrison, George Pelecanos, John Harvey and Boris Akunin. And shockingly, I actually agree with Maxim on one point--I'm also looking forward to Akunin's homage to the Chandler/Hammett visions of crime fiction, too. And finally, E. Annie Proulx offers up a tribute to Edward Hopper, whose work is getting a nice retrospective at the Tate Gallery soon.

I'd immediately move on to the Observer but honestly, there isn't a lot of note--even Robert McCrum's column is all Clinton all the time, and while that's noteworthy and all, well, eh. So next up: the Globe and Mail, where crime columnist Margaret Cannon gets the chance to write a standalone review of Alexander McCall Smith's THE FULL CUPBOARD OF LIFE. Of course she loves it--did you even think otherwise? Other notable reviews at the Canadian PoR include Camilla Gibb's examination of THE SHADOW OF THE WIND, Jane Juska's ode to three maligned moms in literature, and Jessa Crispin, stretching her freelance wings across the border, taking aim at THE MOMMY MYTH.

In the news that doesn't fit the roundups:

The Philadelphia Inquirer loves, I mean LOVES, Rebecca Pawel and her books. Which is as it should be, since she's a fine writer who puts a lot of older, more experienced folks to shame. The paper's review of her newest book, LAW OF RETURN, is full of rhapsodizing and accolades.

I'm a bit surprised to see an article on culinary mysteries now--I thought they were somewhat passe. But evidently, they aren't, and the Miami Herald takes a look at the current practitioners of the subgenre--and even wrings out some cranky quotes from the just-married Otto Penzler (NB: anyone see his takedown of cozies in the New York Sun? Hardly anyone else did, either, but I want a copy...)

As evident by the success of Natsuo Kirino's OUT, which was nominated for the Edgar for Best Novel, Japanese novels in translation attract quite a healthy audience overseas, and the Japan Times examines this new phenomenon in some detail.

ZZ Packer's well-acclaimed debut collection DRINKING COFFEE ELSEWHERE (which has been on my TBR for a while) is now published in Australia, and she speaks to the Sydney Morning Herald about her long road to "overnight success."

Hitler's favorite actress, Olga Chekhova, was the niece of playwright Anton Chekhov--but did she also spy for the Russians? Antony Beevor's biography of Chekhova is fascinating, according to the Scotland on Sunday, but the spy angle isn't the reason for reading the book--her life is.

The Minnesota Crime Wave is a group of area crime writers who have been touring together for years. The Brainerd-Dispatch covers a recent event the group--comprised of Ellen Hart, Carl Brookins, Deborah Woodworth, and William Kent Krueger--appeared at a few days ago.

Rick Riordan's new Tres Navarre thriller, SOUTHTOWN, inspires a mighty nice review in the San Jose Mercury News.

I get the feeling that this review of Donald Westlake's THE ROAD TO RUIN in the Dallas-Fort Worth Star Telegram kind of misses the boat. Westlake as blockbuster? Does he really have to be? He's funny and brilliant and writes awfully well. But overall it's a good review, so I guess that's good. Les Roberts' review in his roundup for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, on the other hand, just tells it like it is, calling the book "funnier than anything else in crime fiction right now."

Speaking of blockbusters, Ann Hellmuth rounds them up for the Orlando Sentinel, including what may be the first North American review of Lee Child's THE ENEMY, which certainly deserves such an accolade.

The Oregonian takes a different approach in reviewing THE NARROWS--no spoilers, but the piece spends much of its time putting the book in context, and how by following up THE POET (which caused much hand-wringing and debate and even provoked Connelly to answer his critics on Amazon) perhaps the writer has put things to right.

And finally, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has a fairly benign interview of Connelly--although there is his acknowledgement of how "surreal" THE NARROWS gets at times:

This incursion of reality into the narrative provides some surrealistic moments. Clint Eastwood, who portrayed McCaleb in the film version of "Blood Work," attends the character's funeral. Another character complains about his portrayal in the movie, and Connelly also references three of his peers -- Ian Rankin, Dean Koontz and George Pelecanos -- in the book.

Connelly says he made a conscious effort to break the "fourth wall" between fiction and reality. Because of a previous novel, "Angels Flight," he was left with no choice. In that book, Harry Bosch talks about an upcoming movie with Eastwood and his portrayal of McCaleb. It was a throwaway line, just banter between two cops.

Then the film version of "Blood Work" appeared in 2002.

"That meant, in my fictional universe, there was a movie about Terry McCaleb in which Clint Eastwood played him," Connelly says. "So in 'The Narrows,' I had to carry that forward. I had to acknowledge there was a movie, so I went with the real movie, and the real movie changed my fictional story quite a bit. It had a different bad guy and a different ending, but I thought that was stuff that should be commented on."

Oh yeah, I'll say they did. Some of the funniest moments in the book, too.

Gag me

2004-05-07T16:11:00.000-04:00

I'm a little surprised that Trixie isn't on this, but no matter. If the thought of a Pride and Prejudice remake with Brad Pitt as Mr. Darcy wasn't enough to make you retch, this will:

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Comic actor Steve Martin will star as a new Inspector Clouseau in a fresh "Pink Panther" movie due out next summer, the film's makers said on Friday.

Martin, who will be starring alongside Beyonce and Oscar-winner Kevin Kline, said he was intimidated at first by the thought of following in actor Peter Sellers' stumbling footsteps as the hapless Clouseau, but he got over it.

"They have different James Bonds," he quipped at a news conference on Friday.

But here's the money paragraph, the one that convinced me most of all that this is a bad, bad, BAD idea:

Director Shawn Levy, who steered Martin through the commercially successful comedy, "Cheaper by the Dozen," promised the "Pink Panther" would be updated for contemporary viewers.

"Clouseau is still this bumbling, absurd character, but he now is at the mercy of today's technology, things that weren't around 30 or 40 years ago. There are a lot of new play things for Clouseau to screw up," Levy said.

Oh god. Now, I'm not that big a fan of the Panther canon (25 words or less: The Pink Panther was funny, A Shot in the Dark is a classic, the rest can all go hang) but this is just dog poop. It makes the Benigni remake seem like an artistic triumph. Why is Clouseau getting a love interest who's a third his age? Why can't Steve Martin be as funny as he was 20-25 years ago? Why does every good--and worse, bad--idea have to be remade?

Excuse me. I believe there's a paper bag with my name on it.

The hostess with the mostest

2004-05-07T13:03:00.000-04:00

Normally I don't link to pieces at The Times, because it's behind a subscriber-only registration firewall. But Ali Karim passed on this story of Mo Hayder, whose new novel TOKYO was based on her former life as a hostess in a Japanese club, as well as a recent return to the country upon the murder of Lucie Blackman, a young hostess who bore a striking resemblance to Hayder:

Her return to Japan took Hayder to the club where Lucie met Joji Obara, the Armani-wearing millionaire who is currently on trial for her murder. And it inspired her latest novel, Tokyo, a thriller which draws together hostess bar culture, the yakuza mafia and the 1937 massacre of 300,000 Chinese when the Japanese Imperial Army invaded Nanking. It will also make you think hard before taking Chinese medicine.

There's a good reason why Hayder's novel, as well as her previous books (BIRDMAN and THE TREATMENT) are written in graphically violent detail:

Hayder finds the "cosy crime" of Ruth Rendell and Agatha Christie dishonest: "The whole engine in a crime book is the violent act, yet you never see the violence. That is where I came up with my manifesto, that I was going to describe everything in detail."

As Hayder ventured back into her past, she found that things had changed considerably since 1989, when she felt she was in "the safest place on earth":

Hayder found the club where Lucie Blackman had worked - no easy task when one skyscraper contains 100 bars and the Casablanca, shamed by the publicity, had changed its name to the Green Grass. At 41, Hayder had not expected to be offered a job among the gap-year girls ? but she was, provided she obeyed a list of new rules.

"Trousers were banned--which surprised me since at the El Manon you could wear jeans--and you had to wear high heels," says Hayder.

But the most significant change was how much kyaku-hiki (customer-pulling) the girls were expected to perform. Hostesses were sent to the base of the tower blocks to drum up trade, making them look like streetwalkers. Girls would scrabble for customers' business cards, then, on quiet nights, phone or even write to former clients, saying how much they missed them.

But the principal rule was that every week a girl must do a set number of dohans, ie, go to dinner with a customer and then bring him into the club. Any hostess not making her quota would suffer a large drop in salary. These dohans made girls more likely to compromise their safety.

Chilling stuff, and no doubt good fodder for TOKYO, which has already received some glowing reviews in the UK press. For whatever reason, I've held off on trying Hayder's work--perhaps it's too gory even for the likes of me--but this book I want to read.

A Savvy Marketer

2004-05-07T07:30:00.001-04:00

Karin Slaughter is the best-selling author of the Grant County series set in rural Georgia. The books have done fairly well in the US, but they are unqualified successes in the UK. The Bookseller catches up with the writer and asks her about her series (the fourth book, INDELIBLE, will be published on both sides of the Atlantic this fall) and touches upon what might be the singular reason for Slaughter's success in general:

Slaughter's success with the trade has been helped by the fact that she understands the vital importance of marketing and promotion to the success of her books. Before deciding to try writing as a career, she ran her own business in Atlanta, as a sign-painter. "It was the best preparation ever for understanding that, as passionate as I feel about writing, once I finish my book that's when the hard work begins--the jacketing and the marketing," she explains.

Considering the current climate of publishing, truer words were never spoken, and Slaughter's one of the most driven and ambitious proponents of self-marketing in the crime genre. Not surprisingly, such a single-minded focus is not exactly universally beloved, but then again, neither is the level of her success. How many writers, after only three published books to her credit, could convince publishers on both sides of the Atlantic to take on an anthology of linked stories that has, at best, a limited fan base?

Never mind that the marketing plans are far from the saturation point; no doubt that when INDELIBLE is released, trade shows, book reps, booksellers (and eventually, fans) will seeing and hearing a whole lot more of Slaughter. And the cycle continues...

A bloody good friday

2004-05-07T07:00:00.001-04:00

Has it been six weeks since Janet Maslin's last "Crowd Pleasers" column, where she spends a good portion of ink on books that don't deserve it? Indeed it has, and indeed she does.

It's all Jeanette Winterson, all the time, as her new novel LIGHTHOUSEKEEPING is finally published. The Independent interviews her and finds that she's managed to "find the plot" after some years away, but the Telegraph isn't so sure. I think I tried a Winterson novel some years back, and didn't care for it, but I'm intrigued by the comparisons--just or not--to Angela Carter, who is one of my favorite writers (and who died far, far too young.)

Boyd Tonkin, writing in his current "Week in Books" column for the Independent, is nonplussed by the latest trend in "crossover lit"--books that are published in adult and children's editions, such as THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME.

Newsday seems to be quite impressed with Martin Clark's new noirish novel, PLAIN HEATHEN MISCHIEF, essentially saying Clark gives Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen a serious run for their money. Interesting, but do either of those guys write 400-page crime novels? Didn't think so...

Tod Goldberg writes about his less-than-smooth experiences at the LA Times Book Festival a couple of weeks ago. One story will make some crime fiction fans keel over and collapse...(link from his brother Lee)

There's a spirited discussion going on at The Elegant Variation about the merits (or lack thereof) of Steve Almond, now that his ode to all things saccharin, CANDYFREAK, is just out. If you're a regular reader, you know I'm a fan; others are less charitable.

Click here for the shortlists of the British Sport Book Awards. Boy, there were a lot of those published last year...although I wonder if David Beckham will get the nod.

Jane Jakeman, who hasn't reviewed for the Independent in ages it seems, finally does, and adores John Harvey's new series launch FLESH AND BLOOD.

And finally, Craig McDonald enjoyed Michael Connelly's THE NARROWS, but his article focuses more on the strategy that Little, Brown has employed to market the book, namely the spiffy companion DVD. McDonald also interviewed Connelly, who speaks out about the reason there were no ARCs of the book:

"It's my 14th book," Connelly said. "For 13 previous books, I put out galleys as much as six to eight months ahead of time. There was a valid use in doing that then, but I've reached a point where I don't know what the value is now ... They become the instigators of Internet chatter. Stuff in the book is given away. I've been saying for a couple of years, 'Let's stop doing galleys. And, this time, with this book, I really mean it -- no galleys because there's a lot of interesting, surprising stuff in this book and it's all going to be out there six months ahead of time.'''

Coming soon to a medical journal near you

2004-05-06T17:07:00.000-04:00

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- A construction worker had six nails driven into his head in an accident with a high-powered nail gun, but doctors said Wednesday they expect him to make a full recovery.

Three nails penetrated Isidro Mejia's brain, and one entered his spine below the base of his skull. Doctors said the nails barely missed his brain stem and spinal cord, preventing paralysis or death.

Jesus. The x-ray is an amazing sight.

Along Came a Santa

2004-05-06T16:49:00.000-04:00

As if the book industry weren't polluted with further outings by James Patterson and his Merrie Men, now the word comes (via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer) that he's written a children's book, which will be published this fall.

Amazingly, Ed Champion has managed to procure an exclusive preview of SANTAKID, due in stores November 1:

Beautiful pearly teeth filled her mouth. She was ready. Really ready. Everything was good, really damn good, about this smile.

Kimberly the Elf was a North Pole trainee. It was her first day.

"It's a good smile," Rufus the Elf whispered. "I wouldn't change a single thing about it."

They had come to the toy factory to work and to smile. They had three hundred gifts to wrap and send out. Three hundred gifts, and if they were feeling really good, maybe they'd have three hundred and one.

Rufus the Elf had to smile. He had already smiled twice that morning, and he knew he would smile again.

"Tough business," Kimberly admitted. "But we'll make it through."

"Just keep smiling," he said to her. "It's the right thing to do."

Kimberly had imagined this moment, this tremendous new life, so many times. It became easier to smile as the toys poured out the chute like a coins flying from a Vegas jackpot. God, she loved smiling and wrapping toys.

Rufus looked at Kimberly. Kimberly looked at Rufus.

There was work to do, and it was good work. As good as the smiles they rode in on.

No doubt that though only 48 pages long, SANTAKID will have at least fifty chapters.

Arthur Ellis Award Nominations

2004-05-06T09:03:00.000-04:00

The Crime Writers of Canada has announced their shortlist for the best in Canadian mystery:

BEST NOVEL:
Giles Blunt, The Delicate Storm (Random House Canada)
Mary Jane Maffini, Lament for a Lounge Lizard (RendezVous Press)
Kim Moritsugu, The Glenwood Treasure (Simon & Pierre, Dundurn)
David Rotenberg, The Hua Shan Hospital Murders (McArthur & Company)
Peter Robinson, The Summer that Never Was (M&S)

BEST FIRST NOVEL:
Anthony Bidulka, Amuse Bouche (Insomniac)
Michael Johansen, Confession in Moscow (Breakwater)
Jan Rehner, Just Murder (Sumach)
Michael E. Rose, Mazovia Legacy (McArthur & Company)
Barbara J. Stewart, The Sleeping Boy (Anchor Canada, RHC)

BEST CRIME WRITING IN FRENCH:
Chrystine Brouillet, Indesirables (La Courte Echelle)
Maxime Houde, La Salaire de la honte (Alire)
Jean Lemieux, On finit toujours par payer (La Courte Echelle)
Andre Marois, Les effets sont secondaires (La Courte Echelle)
Maryse Rouy, Au nom de Compostelle (Quebec Amerique)

BEST SHORT STORY:
Therese Greenwood, "A Christmas Bauble" in The Kingston Whig-Standard (December 24, 2003)
Dennis Murphy, "Dead in the Water" in Storyteller (Summer 2003)
Liz Palmer, "When Laura Smiles" in The Kingston Whig-Standard (December 24, 2003)
Vern Smith, "The Gimmick" in Hard Boiled Love (Insomniac)
Gregory Ward, "Dead Wood" in Hard Boiled Love (Insomniac)

BEST NON-FICTION:
"Jane Doe," The Story of Jane Doe (Random House Canada)
Mike McIntyre, Nowhere to Run: The Killing of Constable Dennis Strongquill (Great Plains Publications)
Jeffrey Miller, Where There's Life, There's Lawsuits (ECW)
Julian Sher & William Marsden, The Road to Hell (Knopf Canada)

BEST JUVENILE:
Barbara Haworth-Attard, Theories of Relativity (Harper Trophy Canada)
Tanya Lloyd Kyi, Truth (Orca Book Publishers)
Peggy Dymond Leavey, The Deep End Gang (Napoleon)
Norah McClintock, No Escape (Scholastic Canada)
Graham McNamee, Acceleration (Wendy Lamb Books, RHC)

The 2004 AE winners will be announced at the gala 21st anniversary Arthur Ellis Awards dinner on Wednesday, June 9, at the Ontario Club in Toronto. (link first seen at Jiro's wonderful Gumshoe Site.)

Won't you take me to Uglytown

2004-05-06T08:35:00.000-04:00

Rick Kleffel (of Agony Column Fame) has a new interview with the Tom Fassbender & Jim Pascoe, impresarios of one of my favorite small press imprints, Uglytown Press. They go through their early publishing days, how they got together, how they picked up such great folks as Sean Doolittle, Victor Gischler, and Mark T. Conard, and expound on their love of comics.

Spewing out the links

2004-05-06T08:00:00.000-04:00

It's pretty easy to figure out where I'll lead off, so I'll just get right to it: Dennis Lehane not only has a short story, "Until Gwen," in the new issue of the Atlantic Monthly, but he's interviewed there as well. And it's one of the better interviews with Lehane I've seen with a while, as he talks about the challenge of writing a short story in the second person POV (!), how writing MYSTIC RIVER changed things, and how crime novels fit into (or out of) the literary divide.

So THE RULE OF FOUR, the new HypeMonster (TM) thriller that's been getting a ton of press of late, is supposed to be a cleverer version of THE DA VINCI CODE? Granted, it wouldn't take much, but no matter--it causes Janet Maslin to go into near-palpitations, whcih is always, um, interesting.

A somewhat more cool article in the Times is Sharon Waxman's feature on the first volume of the Peanuts Compendium--which may not have been what Charles Schulz wanted, but boy, did fans demand it. Only 12 and a half more years till the last volume is out!

Uh oh---I'm not sure whose idea it was to assign Jonathan Yardley to review Steve Almond's CANDYFREAK, but let's just say the fit isn't exactly the best one.

How book events and prizes have changed. Once, authors could barely expect a free meal and a couple of drinks--now they are getting all-expenses-paid trips to Mauritius and staying in five-star-hotels to vie for literary prizes given out by said hotels. Very nice.

Animator Mike Joens has crossed over into the mystery genre with his debut novel AN ANIMATED DEATH IN BURBANK. He gets the review treatment from Animation World Magazine, and they give the book a thumbs-up.

William Lashner is the latest in a long line of lawyers-turned-legal thriller writers whose books are rocketing up the bestseller charts. The Philadelphia Inquirer catches up with its native son.

Irshad Manji, whose book about challenging the tenets of fundamentalist Islam has created a stir in her native Canada and the US, talks to the Independent, revealing that the book has, not surprisingly, led to death threats.

Simon Houpt at the Globe & Mail profiles Doug Pepper, the Canadian book editor who cut his teeth in New York publishing but is now returning to Toronto to take the editorial helm of McLelland & Stewart, one of the country's oldest and most storied publishers.

And finally, OK, I reckon the premise of CONFESSIONS OF A SLACKER MOM has some (read: a lot) of merit, but I'm just having trouble with the author's name. Muffy? Who the hell is named Muffy, except if they are a puppet on a kids' show who had the most deplorable habit of speaking in rhyme? Or living on the Upper East Side and starring in BERGDORF BLONDES?

Hangin' Around with Mr. B

2004-05-05T12:16:00.000-04:00

Beatrice beat me to the punch, but Kevin Burton Smith's long--and I do mean long--awaited interview with Lawrence Block is finally up at January Magazine. He talks about his long career wearing many hats, the CWA Diamond Dagger honor, his thoughts on blogging, and interestingly, his lone foray into science fiction.

Drinking with Crime Writers

2004-05-05T10:40:00.000-04:00

I have long joked that if I ever decided to write a memoir of these past few years, "Drinking with Crime Writers" would be my working title. That being said, it looks like noir writer Charlie Stella has made a pre-emptive strike in writing down his own such tales, as evident by his most recent "Knucksline" newsletter. Read on about a recent night of carousing involving himself, his lovely wife Anne Marie, Reed Coleman (and his wife Rosanne), Jason Starr, and current It Boy Ken Bruen, who actually demonstrated signs of eating this time--something I certainly never saw throughout Edgar Week, either...

Colleen McCullough's next project

2004-05-05T10:15:00.000-04:00

The Australian author has already spent decades researching and writing her epic historical series about Ancient Rome; she made millions weep with THE THORN BIRDS (now, only the sight of Richard Chamberlain's face causes people to do that.) She's even plagiarized Lucy Maud Montgomery (though nobody knows what the settlement deal was.) So what's next for the bestselling author? Why....a murder mystery?

"It is a classical whodunit," McCullough said from her Norfolk Island home. "It is a genre that I haven't written before and I have had enormous fun writing this book because it is a genre that I love to read but have never tried to write."

The novel is set in the US in 1965 and has a working title which McCullough is keeping secret.

Interesting. Kudos for trying something new, but of course, we'll see if it's a successful venture for her.

News for the Wednesday morning

2004-05-05T10:00:00.000-04:00

If I'm just a little bit later in posting these tasty links this morning, it's because the Post-Trip Letdown (TM) that almost always happens after I travel kicked in later than usual, and the extra hour or so of sleep was very welcome.

So first, the Telegraph, which finally posts a whole lot of crime fiction content that ran in the Sunday edition a few days back. First, Susanna Yager's roundup, featuring a bumper-crop of choice reviews of the latest by John Harvey, Lee Child, George Pelecanos, Jenny Siler, Cormac Miller (more Irish thrillers! It's a spreading disease that I like!), Henning Mankell, Nicci French, Canadian James Nichol, and Lee Jackson. Then Andrew Martin takes on Harlan Coben's new standalone JUST ONE LOOK, which finds that though enjoyable, Coben seems to be "trying too hard" to rein in his natural humor and that....gasp! He likes the Myron Bolitar series books better.

Then, finally, Rachel Simhon is fairly bowled over by Mo Hayder's new novel TOKYO, which is graphic and chilling and "fascinating and very moving."

Speaking of the Telegraph, Jasper Rees writes a lengthy piece on the history of book parody and where it's headed now, as it seems lampooning bestselling works is a hot new trend in UK publishing. And while I don't think it all started with BORED OF THE RINGS (a favorite of most of my college crowd, I have to say, though not being a Tolkeinite in the slightest, I haven't touched it) that certainly seemed to have an influence.

The Rancho Santa Fe Book Club in San Diego might be one of the more unique clubs around--because big-name authors are the ones who lead the discussions. The upcoming discussion will be led by Thomas Perry, whose first two books, THE BUTCHER'S BOY and METZGER'S DOG, were reissued last year and are truly amongst the best thrillers published. And it's the same club that Alexander McCall Smith spoke to some months back, entertaining an audience that included the Red Hot Chili Peppers' bassist Flea.

Blake Crouch's debut suspense novel, DESERT PLACES, has attracted quite a number of nice notices (including one from myself) since its release back in January. Now his hometown paper, the Durango Herald, talks to the author about the process of getting published and how he's handling his newfound life as a published writer.

The Scotsman interviews Elizabeth George, whose latest book is a how-to primer about writing and the writing life.

The latest interview at Professor Barnhardt's Journal is Craig Clevenger, the author of the critically acclaimed and very twisted THE CONTORTIONIST'S HANDBOOK (er, no pun intended there.) Naturally they talk about writing and other related matters, but Clevenger also reveals his acumen--or lack thereof--as a poker player....

Sam Allis's review of THE NARROWS in the Boston Globe has perhaps the best, if not terribly blurbable, opening line: "Michael Connelly is back with a new mystery that is as self-referential as it is readable." The rest of the review pretty much backs that statement up, but Allis is excited about the possibility of what lies ahead for Harry Bosch (even if it's a big fat spoiler, so you have been warned.)

The Christian Science Monitor reviews a new book by ex-FBI agent Jim Fisher about Dorothy Deering, once a librarian and aspiring writer who kept getting conned by fake agent, who later became...a particularly virulent fake agent. However, I must nitpick--Inflation has made it necessary to correct the title to "Fifteen Percent of Nothing."

When Amazon spread their tentacles into Canada, they actually managed to get an exemption from the government because, of course, there ain't a damn thing Canadian about that company. Others objected, and now the courts get to decide if Amazon.ca's existence in Canada selling books online is illegal.

Rebecca Caldwell at the G&M reports on the Trillium Awards, another top Canadian book prize, where nearly all categories were swept by non-fiction

Sarah Shannon, writing for the Independent, is quite staggered (in a good way) about the upcoming TV adaptation of Peter Ackroyd's sprawling tome, LONDON.

Now I can start to see why Penguin has started that ridiculous promotion "Get Good Booking" that I linked to yesterday: a study published in JAMA (that's Journal of the American Medical Association to you laypersons) seems to show that girls are often better readers than boys. (thanks to Jeff for the link.)

And finally, Erik Larson can't contain his excitement about winning the Edgar for Best Fact Crime after losing out on the National Book Award:

"I told people that if I didn't win this time, I was not going to any more awards ceremonies," Larson said yesterday. "You go from not caring about awards to being all caught up in the excitement. And the fact of the matter is that I had always wanted to win an Edgar, so I was thrilled. And at the awards ceremony I got to meet writers like Ian Rankin and Michael Connelly, whose books I love."

Hey, it's always cool to see that award-winning authors can fanboy (or girl) like the rest of us....!

Watching TV on a Saturday morning

2004-05-04T21:23:00.000-04:00

Although I could have done some big fanfare-y announcement about the fact that Laura Lippman has finally, finally joined the 'sphere with "The Memory Project"--oh wait, maybe I just did--her latest post touched upon something that tends to be a touchstone of cultural reference for differing generations: Saturday morning kids' shows.

Usually, at least for me and my peers, it was a topic of conversation all-too-familiar in collegiate settings, usually in the campus bar. Likeminded students getting together, having beers, and well, age-regressing to their early childhoods in fond remembrance of those obscure, kitschy, bizarre, and utterly stupid cartoons they watched back then. Oh, sure, we'd reminisce about the good stuff--especially because we were older and such wonderful examples of cartoonery were pulled off the air or edited due to some censorship and political correctness issues--but really, we just wanted to play a form of "Can You Top This" with each other. Although any time "The Care Bears" were brought up in the presence of my company, I made my own objections loud and clear. The saccharine dialogue and wimpy demeanor of the characters make me shudder still even today.

What exactly was it about these shows that kept--and still keep--kids hooked? The medium of television? The novelty of seeing silliness in cartoon format or laughing at even greater silliness on the part of live humans in the midst of some wacky situation or another? I'm still not sure, but all I know is, whenever I see my friends from college, we end up taking a trip through time to revisit the salient points of the shows we watched--and recount our experiences in the same voices and same vocabulary we had as little kids.

So all of this pontificating to ask--which shows did you watch as a kid? Which were actually good, and which were awful but you watched anyway? Any commonalities between what North American and UK audiences got to see? (One of the above links was to a BBC-owned show, I believe.)

PEN Awards

2004-05-04T13:15:00.000-04:00

I was just about to do some long rant about the award winners of the PEN Scholarships, but frankly, Ed sums it up rather nicely:

Starving writers let loose a collective cry of anguish as PEN awarded extra cash to those who didn't need it. Two year scholarships at $35,000/year have been granted to rich literary darling Jonathan Safran Foer, Will Heinrich and Monique Truong. Also rolling in the dough is poet laureate Robert Pinsky, who has reportedly been planning an east wing extension to his house.

Granted, it's oh so easy to pick on Jon Foer (especially when some people do it over and over again), but is it really necessary to award scholarships to those in possession of six-figure Bonus Baby book deals? I mean, didn't anyone learn their lesson after the brouhahas involving Rick Moody (Guggenheim) and Jonathan Franzen (NEA)? There is the issue of lead time and consideration, but Foer's novel has been out for 2 years--presumably longer than the length of time from the beginning of the application process until now.

Never mind that by picking Foer, PEN has pretty much attached a "KICK ME" sign to the back of their collective rear ends. So once again: was that trip really necessary?

C'est tout, je pense

2004-05-04T07:36:00.000-04:00

The gravy train of the job hunt beckons, which means I'm otherwise engaged for most of the day. But do enjoy the pre-posted items below (especially the Nevermore entries, which still have me in stitches and I've read them over several times already.) More later.

Winning Nevermore entries

2004-05-04T07:30:00.000-04:00

Donna Moore, whose gift of the parody wowed the Nevermore Awards Committee so much they gave her two awards for their "Better Dead Than Read" contest (for "worst" opening paragraph of a particular genre novel), has kindly agreed to let me post the winning entries here on the blog. Enjoy.

THE BIG SLEEPOVER - HARD BOILED

She was a strawberry blonde, and I knew she was trouble. When she walked into my room that day, she had a bottle in her hand and mischief in her eye. "Hey sister," I said, opening my desk drawer. I pulled out my own bottle from my desk and took a thirsty swig. I was like a dying man in the desert. The liquid hit my throat and went down with a burn. I looked at the dimpled knees of the babe in front of me. "What's new sister?"

"Goo," she said, smacking her building block down on my desk without a by-your-leave.

My Mom walked in at that precise moment. "Philip dear", she said "I do wish you wouldn't call your sister 'sister'. She DOES have a name you know. And will you get a glass. I HATE to see you drinking soda from a bottle - it's so uncouth."

I looked at my watch. "Sorry to love you and leave you like this ladies. I gotta hit the streets. There's a hot lead I gotta follow and I may not be in for tea." I shrugged into the raincoat hanging on the back of my bedroom door.

"Philip - you're not wearing that old thing. I've thrown it away twice. There's that lovely anorak that Grandma bought you for Christmas in the hall cupboard."

I narrowed my eyes. "The raincoat suits my mood, lady. Now where's my fedora?"

Mom sighed. "For God's sake Philip. You don't HAVE a fedora. You don't even know what a damn fedora IS. And don't squint like that. The wind will change and your face will stay like that."

***

STONE, PI - HISTORICAL

Being a PI in 2010 BC really sucked. Of course, we didn't call it 2010 BC- we called it The Year The Woolly Mammoth Ate My Brother. Things were slow at Stone Investigations. That's me - Stone - so called because when I was born, a Stone was the first thing I grasped. It coulda been worse. My brother, Cowpat, never had any luck. As I was saying, the PI game in prehistoric Britain was as slow as a Diplodocus with a limp. I was beginning to think I'd gone into the wrong job. I should have listened to my father and gone into the family Interior Cave Design business. Instead, I was stuck tracing missing pet Stegosauri and tailing errant husbands. I sighed, and longed for the day when someone would invent fire so that I could deal with a nice juicy arson case. I reached into my drawer and pulled out the bowl of Elderflower Juice I kept there - man, that stuff has a kick. Just then the door opened and in walked a vision of loveliness. She sashayed into my office, her buttocks looking like a pair of baby brontosauri fighting in a sack.

New crime fiction magazine to launch

2004-05-04T07:15:00.000-04:00

Starting next month, a new print magazine about the mystery genre will be making its way into bookshops and subscribers' homes. As imagined by Jon Jordan (whose first book with Mystery One Publications, INTERROGATIONS, was a compendium of author interviews he's done over the years), Crime Spree seeks to offer something a little bit different for mystery fans and those in the industry--there will be interviews, some short fiction, and columnists, but writers such as Reed Farrel Coleman, Blake Crouch, and Brian Wiprud will contribute special features about their own experiences.

I tend to think of the magazine as crime fiction meets INSTYLE with a little bit of VANITY FAIR thrown in for good measure. But then, such a description could be chalked up to a wee bit of bias, as yours truly conducted the cover interview with UK-based author Mark Billingham.

Subscription information is available here, and further information about the launch issue is here.

Links, links, baby, just the links

2004-05-04T07:00:00.000-04:00

And oh, where to start? Well, why not with the author of my favorite book this year, Eoin McNamee? Not only did he have a very compelling essay about blending fact and fiction (as demonstrated in David Peace's polarizing GB84) in last week's Guardian, but both the Independent on Sunday and the Daily Yomiuri gave THE ULTRAS some seriously positive platitudes.

Caroline Adderson, the author of SITTING PRACTICE, has won the Ethel Wilson Prize, given to the best work of fiction by a British Columbia writer.

Noah Richler, in Sunday's Toronto Star, uses his review of Miriam Toews' new book (which he enjoyed) as a means of ripping into Ryan Bigge's article in the National Post some days back about how much of a crying shame it is that there are no Young Turks taking on the CanLit establishment. Well, some youngsters aren't very good at imagining how they could ever get old. Me, I figure if I have to suffer a few wrinkles and jowls to gain some well-needed wisdom, I'm probably coming out ahead...

Also in that edition of the Star was Jack Batten's newest crime column, offering up a double dose of Dortmunder with the short story collection THIEVES' DOZEN and the new novel THE ROAD TO RUIN.

I wouldn't normally link to anything remotely involving Plum Sykes because god knows the saturation point was reached ages ago, but god, this "profile" in the Sunday Telegraph was freakin' hilarious. The headline--"Bergdorf Bitch"--pretty much says it all. (First seen on Gawker.)

I'm really just pointing people to this review for the headline on the main books page of USA TODAY: "A Finnish, gay version of 'The Hobbit?" As it happens, the review was written by Ellen Hetzel, one of the notorious Book Babes.

William Boot of the Bookseller isn't terribly impressed with Penguin's new venture Good Booking, designed to tempt 16-30something males back to reading books by foisting "cool fiction" upon them. Based upon the website, which is so hyperactive that it actually gyrates, I'm inclined to agree....

Dennis Lehane was in the Pittsburgh area last week to speak at Carnegie Mellon University. If you missed him, chances are this interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review done prior to his talk will fill in some gaps.

I managed to miss Dick Adler's roundup of mysteries in Sunday's Chicago Tribune yesterday, but have rectified the mistake today. In it, he looks at new books by John Shannon, Kathryn Wall, Richard Barre, Rick Riordan, and Terrill Lankford.

Rick Kleffel delivers on the long-awaited second half of his report on February's Left Coast Crime Convention. Especially fascinating is his experience at an unusual panel that talked the audience through all the processes involved in getting a book in print, as viewed through the prism of hotshot writer Blake Crouch.

The Famous Five are coming back--thanks to the work of Chorion, the publishing company that recently bought Enid Blyton's catalogue. The beloved children's series will be relaunched with a strong marketing initiative and TV plans, too.

And finally, the Independent on Sunday asked members of some of the country's best-known football clubs to list their favorite books as part of an ongoing literacy project. Wonder if anyone from Real Madrid will take part in the next survey--or perhaps nothing that's longer than a text message would make the cut in that case....

Review Writing 101

2004-05-03T19:28:00.000-04:00

Oline Cogdill, the mystery columnist for the Florida Sun-Sentinel, has long been one of my favorite reviewers in the business. There's no better proof of her skills than in her review earlier today of THE NARROWS, which not only explains what makes Connelly's latest book work and why Harry Bosch is such an appealing character, but doesn't spoil a single plot point. Talk about walking a tightrope, but Cogdill does it with seeming ease.

A lot of people--myself included--have wondered how to review THE NARROWS without revealing some of the major shocks and surprises that dot the first few pages of the book. We need not wonder any longer.

Giving cozies their due

2004-05-03T12:51:00.000-04:00

The Malice Domestic convention was held this past weekend in the Washington, D.C. area. On Saturday night, the Agatha Awards were given out:

BEST NOVEL
Letter From Home, by Carolyn Hart (Berkley Prime Crime)

BEST FIRST NOVEL
Maisie Dobbs, by Jacqueline Winspear (Soho Press)

BEST NON-FICTION WORK
Amelia Peabody's Egypt: A Compendium, edited by Elizabeth Peters and Kristen Whitbread (William Morrow)

BEST SHORT STORY
"No Man?s Land?" by Elizabeth Foxwell in Blood On Their Hands (Berkley Prime Crime)

As it happened, Alina Adams was there--both at the awards banquet and Malice in general--and after filling me in on the details (the new writer's breakfast, where each first-timer was given a few minutes to speak up and talk about her book, was a highlight) submitted her report--in verse:

THE VIRGIN MALICE

'Twas the Friday post-Edgars
I flew into Dulles
Published mystery in hand
To attend my first Malice.

The hotel was cold.
Actually, freezing - and then some.
And all 'bout the lobby
Sat Nation of Islam.

Attending were big names
Like Cannell and Hess
Krich, Maron and Viets
Donna Andrews, no less.

My panel (sports mysteries)
Was Sunday at nine.
What luck! The above were the
Panel up against mine.

The New Authors Breakfast
Drew two hundred plus.
With no stars to distract them
Fans listened to us!

All in all, it was great
Save for one little quibble
My TBR pile is now
Several feet bigger!

Maybe I should change the blog title

2004-05-03T11:59:00.000-04:00

Because bloody hell, is there no end to Ian Rankin-related content? It's awfully hard to keep up, that's for sure, but this lengthy profile in the Sunday Herald is well worth reading. Basically an "everything you've always wanted to know" primer, it deals with Rankin's early days as a struggling writer before being transformed into the successful author that he is now. All thanks to his beloved character Rebus, who's getting rather long in the tooth:

The Rebus franchise is nearing an end. There will be only two more books after Fleshmarket Close (ed., that was the title when the piece was done, it may not be the title anymore), by which time Rankin figures he will be nearly 50, a good moment to move on to something new. Is he apprehensive about finishing with such a lucrative character? “Uh, yeah. Especially sitting in a house that’s mortgaged up to the hilt. But not as apprehensive as my publishers probably are. I think my readers will come with me whatever I choose to write.”

The article goes into detail about the new book, and puts the Scotsman article I commented on yesterday, with its backlash flavoring, in a much better context:

Like most of Rankin’s work, the book had its genesis in a real-life event, in this case the fatal stabbing of Firsat Yildiz, a Turkish Kurd in the Sighthill area of Glasgow in 2001. “That murder flagged it up for me,” he says. “Scots have always prided ourselves on our openness; we weren’t like the English, we were very close to our European neighbours, and very welcoming. I always used to say that we were too busy with bigotry to have any time for racism, but it turns out we have both. It’s something that we have to deal with; we have to discuss it and think about it.”

In any case, the new book will be political and no doubt controversial--but remember, it's not finished yet...!

A bleary-eyed hello

2004-05-03T11:35:00.000-04:00

Although I had one of the best weeks in ages, it's good to be back home, sleeping in my own bed, and dealing with...cold weather? Alas, the gorgeous Manhattan sunny skies didn't cross the border quite yet, but no matter--I'll probably be semi-catatonic most of the day anyway, especially with a job interview (!) in the early morning.

I'll likely have more to say about my culture-packed weekend later on in the day, but first, some spate of mystery-only links to indulge in:

First, more on the big book of the week: Michael Connelly's THE NARROWS. Let's start off with Janet Maslin's review, which manages to provoke admiration and infuriation; the former because wow! She doesn't actually reveal the name of The Poet, but the latter because agh, that clueless sycophancy she's far too well known for when it comes to certain writers rears its head once again. Robin Vidimos's review in the Denver Post, though more spoiler-laden, is more straightforward, but causes the nails-on-blackboard feeling because one of the main character's name is spelled wrong throughout the review. Can't win 'em all, but a copyeditor should have caught that. And in related matters, the honor for the first print interview with Connelly about the new book goes to the News-Press in Southwest Florida, as Jay MacDonald asks all the usual questions.

More post-Edgar coverage, chiefly centered around Ian Rankin's win for Best Novel. The Herald has a fairly boilerplate wire report, while the Scotsman reveals that the new book's title has been changed to ASYLUM SEEKER, although I'm still waiting confirmation of such a change. If it's true, I must say, it probably works better than the old one, FLESHMARKET CLOSE, which would have to be different for the US market. This new one crosses the Atlantic quite nicely.

David Montgomery's mystery roundup for the Chicago Sun-Times starts off with a glowing review of Denise Hamilton's new book, and looks at new releases from Julia Spencer-Fleming, P.J. Tracy, Terrill Lankford, Chris Mooney, and Jonathon King.

Tom and Enid Schantz return with their monthly column in the Denver Post, focusing on the latest by John Shannon, Lawrence Block, and a linked anthology edited by Elizabeth Foxwell.

Patrick Anderson takes a look at Vince Flynn's new espionage-tinged novel, MEMORIAL DAY, and the verdict? Good on military matters, not as much when it comes to politics.

It's been more than 20 years since FLOOD, the first of Andrew Vachss' novels featuring his antier-than-antihero Burke, appeared on shelves. Now the new one, DOWN HERE, is just out and garnering good notices from the likes of the Oregonian.

And finally, Alexander McCall Smith gets a long, well-deserved profile in the Observer, written, interestingly enough, by fellow Scot Ruaridh Nicoll, the author of WHITE MALE HEART and other nervy thrillers. The kicker is the last paragraph:

McCall Smith believes that Americans have taken to his books in such numbers because, faced with the prospect of 'long-term conflict and harsh antipathy', they are searching for 'a lost Eden' of innocence and moral certainties. Small wonder, given some of the pictures that we have seen from Iraq over the past few days.

Yet that goodness in McCall Smith is something to aspire to. His enthusiasm for the adventure of life is magical. Events such as the book festival remind us how civilised life can be. Most of all, it is the revelation of that moral core in his novels that makes it so reassuring that this man - Sandy to his friends - is there, doing a day job that governs the research into our very cells.

Was it ever thus. There's a real simplicity and sheer delight to his books, whether they be the #1 Ladies novels or anything he's ever written (even the academic stuff, honest) and to the man himself. No wonder there's a circle where fans love the books, then meet him and love the books even more and on and so forth. There's a damned good reason he's a phenomenon--and it's all deserved. (Link from Fiona.)

And speaking of Ian Rankin

2004-05-02T21:18:00.000-04:00

Geez. The man just barely gets over a whirlwind trip in and out of New York to collect his Best Novel Edgar when he's hit with some new "controversy" cooked up by his local paper, The Scotsman:

A FICTIONAL Scottish detective is once again investigating controversial events which bear a striking similarity to real life.

Inspector John Rebus, created by bestselling novelist Ian Rankin, is confronted with his most difficult case yet when he has to investigate the murder of a Kurdish refugee.

The plot is reminiscent of the killing of Firsat Dag in Glasgow in 2001, and the novel also features a Dungavel-type detention centre.

But, as the paper points out, this new book, FLESHMARKET CLOSE, isn't even finished yet--Rankin only completed the first draft a couple of days ago and still has to revise the draft, and so he's still figuring things out, to say the least:

"I cannot tell you if it is racially motivated as I am still writing the book.

"The actual name Rebus is Polish I believe, and it leads him to ask about his own past. Most of the research I do involves looking at internet sites and reading newspapers, and extrapolating that information to set it nearer Edinburgh.

"Obviously I have read about Dungavel and what happened to Firsat Dag in Sighthill, but I write fiction.

"In this novel I have my own version of Dungavel, which is set in a fictional part of West Lothian."

Is it me, or does it seem rather silly to start criticizing a book that isn't even finished yet, let alone on bookshelves? Talk about preconceived notions. OTOH, considering how huge Rankin is in Britain, let alone his own country, any whiff of controversy is going to set off the journalists like hungry lapdogs--they are so good at such things...

The long-awaited Edgar report

2004-05-02T09:57:00.000-04:00

While some folks ask how I could manage to be even more detailed and long-winded than I have been the last few days, the answer is: oh, I can. And so I shall.

One cannot start a report like this and leave out the most important detail: what I wore. Unlike two years ago (long black dress, cleavage) and last year (long black dress, cleavage) I went for something altogether different. For one thing--and it turned out as such--there was such a sea of black that the atmosphere might have been funereal had the vast majority of people not had wineglasses in their hands. As it happened, the royal blue chinese-style frock I had picked up in a nameless shop near Marble Arch in London last summer did the trick, although personally, I was far more admiring of Beth Saulnier's fire-engine red dress. Talk about traffic-stopping ability.

Anyway, my compadre and photographer Mary and I cabbed our way down to the Hyatt a little bit early because last year, we got there at six and it was mobbed, and a little breathing room never hurt. In the foyer we said hello to Lee Child (attending his first Edgars), Alafair Burke and her boyfriend Sean, and then made a pit stop in the bar to check in on the barflies. For Donna Moore and her friends Bev and Kathy weren't going to the ceremony--it is a little bit pricey--and instead chose to hang out in the bar until everybody convened afterwards. Not a bad choice, and when a couple of authors got wind of their plans the night before, they thought it was a great idea as well.

Up the escalators then and on to cocktails, where registrants were greated by the lovely sight of Margery Flax, bedecked in a gorgeous black gown with a pink shawl draped around her shoulders. She seemed to express approval at my earlier description of her here as "a goddamned ray of sunshine all the goddamned time." While it's true, I confess I stole the phrase from Sparkle Hayter, but that doesn't mean it's not a good one, right?

Meanwhile, Otto Penzler couldn't wipe the beam off his face as he was showing off his now-bride (they married yesterday, and congratulations to the happy couple) to his friends and fellow attendees. While some snarky comments were overheard about making bets on how long the union would last, the majority of people wished Otto well. After running into M.G. Kincaid and her daughter Heather, both looking flat-out stunning, I hustled over and got my first white wine (alas, not my last, not by a longshot) and started circulating madly.

There was Charlie Stella in one corner, chatting with Bonnie Claeson and Joe Gugliemelli of Black Orchid. Gay Toltl Kinman was there, sitting on the other side of the room with Marilyn Meredith. Larry Gandle, who reviews for DEADLY PLEASURES, spotted me and we chatted about the nominees and who was expected to win. Val McDermid, who is off to New Orleans and other cities on what looks to be some kind of road trip, was off to another corner. Her friend and fellow Scot (and best novel nominee) Ian Rankin made his way in a little later, presumably after attending the VIP party for the nominees. He chose the express route, literally--he'd only arrived earlier in the day and left early on Friday. He seemed a little discombobulated--especially as he'd only just completed the first draft of his new Rebus novel, FLESHMARKET CLOSE, which will be in UK shops everywhere in late September (!).

And then, there were the flashing lights. Caused, of course, by cameramen everywhere.

Natsuo Kirino was another Best novel nominee, and she is something of a legend in her home country in Japan. So she was followed by those eager vultures across the world to witness whether she'd take home the prize or not--and so, pictures were being taken of everyone and everything, and no doubt some embarassing moment has been captured for posterity on Japanese TV. That being said, whenever I joked to people about it, they were near-uniform in their enthusiasm for the prospect. Hey, it's TV after all. And it's not like the Edgars are going to be televised in North America anytime soon.

Eventually the signal came that it was time to go into the ballroom, and I bumped into Peter Blauner and asked why he hadn't been to any of the parties earlier in the week. Babysitting duties, as it happened--a noble cause if there ever was one. He, however, was sitting across the room from me and I slowly made my way over to one of two tables sponsored by Partners & Crime, and proceeded to eat my meal with Mary, Maggie Griffin, Lee, Alafair & Sean, Nina Revoyr (and her editor at Akashic books whose name escapes me at the moment) and a whole host of Himes. James Hime, as a nominee, was sitting with St. Martin's, who had a bumper crop of finalists (especially in Best First.) But he'd flown down nearly his entire immediate family from Texas or thereabouts and so I spent much of the time cracking jokes with his sons Travis and Josh, who returned the favor a number of times. Honestly, it was just so nice to spend a little time with people my age and act like a goofball.

Especially as any mood-lightening was a boon, because the ceremony itself is well, itself. I absolutely admire Bob Levinson's ability to produce a show and put everything together, because it has to be bloody hard work, no question about it. But perhaps in the next edition, it might be a better idea to keep the biographical information about presenters to a bare minimum. It's kind of equivalent to a mystery novel itself--the best ones are the ones that move, keeping the filler to a minimum unless it's absolutely necessary to do so. Also, last year the MC was Jerry Orbach, a total professional at keeping things going, whereas William Windom, fine actor that he is, just couldn't keep it up.

There were some, shall we say, interesting touches about the ceremony, although Angela Lansbury's taped introduction for Windom disturbed me somehow, though I'm not certain as to why. Don Bruns entertained the crowd with his opening number, although when he returned in the second half, there was an antsy mood in the air and suddenly the noise level increased considerably. I thought it was rather sad, but I suppose some people would prefer their musical interludes not to take center stage. Ah well. Parnell Hall returned to do a second version of last year's wildly popular routine "Who Didn't Win the Edgar" but unfortunately, the "sequelitis" rule doesn't just apply to movies (although I did like his crack about James Patterson--who never won an Edgar, thank god--making a deal with Milli Vanilli. Even if the majority of the crowd seemed to blank on the reference...)

Dominick Dunne made a nice, if somewhat self-absorbed, speech about his boss Graydon Carter, who much to my disappointment, wasn't around to accept his Raven Award for the true-crime coverage in VANITY FAIR. As for other memorable moments, Rebecca Pawel was so thrilled to win, and made a very lovely speech about how humbled she is in her ordinary life, and was even more so now. When I asked her later about the speech, she said she could hardly see anyone and worried that she had been babbling and incoherent. I reassured her that it wasn't the case. I do hope Pawel's win will be a harbinger of wonderful things to come--especially further deals in other countries--like Spain, perhaps?

A roar went up when G. Miki Hayden won for Best Short Story, and she made a special note to thank those in Haiti dealing with the conflicts in the country--relevant as her winning story was set in 17th century Haiti. Sylvia Maultash Warsh was a deserving winner for Best Paperback Original, although as seems to be the usual, most people in attendance weren't overly familiar with her work and responded accordingly, but I was so extremely impressed with FIND ME AGAIN, and am eagerly awaiting her next book. Warsh appears to be a slow writer, but I suspect it will be worth the wait.

Then came Best Novel. The consensus throughout the week was that the competition would be between Rankin and popular Irishman Ken Bruen, nominated for his bleakly noir turn THE GUARDS. However, when Rankin's name was called, I sat there and found the moment to be somewhat anticlimactic--mostly because when I got wind of his travel arrangements, there went any sort of suspense. (That being said, when I told this to Rankin afterwards, he effectively replied, "I wish someone would have told me.") But his win was a popular one, although another author commented that perhaps the right author took it, but for the wrong book. Well, the Lifetime Achievement effect is certainly not uncommon in other awards circles, and it's likely been the case for the Edgars before--and, no doubt, will be again in the future.

As the winners posed for pictures for an unearthly amount of time, I made my way outside to collect on what some people seem to love best about the Edgars--the free books. After scoring some in a manner that, interestingly, made me look rather like a shopper at the bargain sections of Filene's Basement, I chatted with a few more folks. I made the acquaintance of Charles Ardai, the commissioning editor of Hard Case Crime, a new line of paperback original pulp novels in the vein of the Gold Medal paperbacks of old. I'm really excited about this venture and when I saw the sampler they had put together, I was even more impressed. HCC has been getting tons of buzz and press, including the cover of the April 19 issue of Publisher's Weekly. While this year's lineup includes work from Lawrence Block, Erle Stanley Gardner, Max Phillips and Dominic Stansberry, next year features the reissue of an early Donald Westlake novel, 361, another book by Wade Miller (who authored TOUCH OF EVIL) and Allan Guthrie's second novel, KISS HER GOODBYE. Like I said, impressive stuff.

Eventually, oh so eventually, I made my way down to the bar where I hung out with my fellow barflies and met Jim McDonough, who heads up Brandon Books, Ken Bruen's publisher in Ireland. He was, naturally, there to cheer Ken on and we talked at length about other authors he published. I was especially excited to hear that Chet Raymo, who wrote the marvellous novel THE DORK OF CORK, will have a new book out next year (I believe), and the first edition will be from Brandon Books. Glad to see Raymo's making another return to fiction. Then I saw--and finally was introduced to, after years of seeing him at conventions and parties--Con Lehane, whose first book, BEWARE THE SOLITARY DRINKER, was a great piece of atmospheric noir set in the dive bars of the Upper West Side. Lehane's been picked up by St. Martin's, who will publish his next book early next year. Glad to see he's made the move to a major publisher.

After chatting again with Margery and Bob Levinson, I fell into a group that ventured down to the Collins Bar in the Times Square area and stayed a few hours there drinking with the girls as well as Bruen, Olen Steinhauer (who, I must say, has been summarily adopted by certain writers and will no doubt look back on his experiences this week with considerable fondness), Jim Born (same applies) and Jonathon King.

It was a long night. It was a good night. If writers weren't coming up to me and complimenting the blog, they were introduced to me by those who did the same thing. Any way it went, such praise was most gratifying because sometimes I forget that people really pay attention to what I write. It means I have to be careful (my new rule: if someone tells me something in a bar, I don't report it, mostly because I can barely remember what I said either) but a little deliberation never hurt anyone.

And so that ends Edgar Week, which has been, I must say, an absolute blast. A great many writers went on to the Malice Domestic convention that's held annually in the Washington, D.C. area, and I've been promised a report from Alina Adams, who is attending for the very first time. It'll be interesting to get her view on a smaller, but certainly popular, convention, and I'm looking forward to it.

Some links while you wait

2004-05-01T12:47:00.000-04:00

The problem with being in a city where one can actually do stuff and hang out with friends and drink is, well, you end up doing just that. So, the copiously detailed, ridiculously long Edgar Awards report remains on the backburner for now--perhaps it would have been easier if I'd been blogging live from the ceremony, like the guy I sat next to during the dinner. But alas, I am technologically impaired, so this did not happen.

But the world at large covered the Edgars too, like the Globe and Mail with their Canadian angle on Sylvia Maultash Warsh's win for PBO. Though Rebecca Caldwell's coverage is a little boilerplate, no matter--nice to see such an article anyway. Especially because it was the only PBO on the list I actually read (and enjoyed immensely, too) so I was happy to see Warsh take the prize. Hopefully it will lead to bigger and better things for her.

And then there's the Japanese coverage. Considering how many freaking camera people were around blinding every attendee with the continuous use of flash, it's not terribly surprising that the papers and TV stations have been reporting on the ceremony and more specifically, Natsuo Kirino's "failure to win" the award. The Japan Times has a nice shot of Kirino with a bunch of microphones in her face. The Manichi Daily Times' report is somewhat dry and humorless, and Japan Today screws up by referring to Ian Rankin as a British writer. Oy. OTOH, considering how little time Ian spent doing Edgar-related stuff, I don't think the mistake will bother him overly much....

Speaking of Rankin, the only paper that seemed to find it worthy enough to report on was the Houston Chronicle, in their roundup of the award winners.

The G&M's crime beat is rather expansive in general today. Margaret Cannon's crime columnincludes warhorses like Jonathan Kellerman, Elizabeth Peters and James Patterson. The last one, to be honest, threw me because do we really need another review of another goddamned Patterson novel? But then I read Cannon's opening comments and understood:

The inside-flap teaser reads: "One of James Patterson's best-loved heroines is about to die." My first reaction was, "I live in hope."

Oh dear. But so fitting nonetheless.

And then there's poor Peter Robinson, entrusted with the task of reviewing Michael Connelly's THE NARROWS. Funny, I thought print reviews weren't allowed to run until Monday, when the book is officially released, but maybe this doesn't apply in Canada*, I don't know. So, read the review at your peril because honey, it's spoiler city.

In this interview with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Harlan Coben is making noises--small ones, but noises nonetheless--about returning to his Myron Bolitar series after next year's standalone is published. Should we believe him? And even if we do, does it mean he'll actually give fans what they want should he actually try getting back in the saddle of the series? Eh. We shall see....

And finally, because I just thought the idea was so weird: the German band Super Smart has decided to forsake all conventional means of getting their new music heard and will, instead, solely release selected tracks as ringtones. It's gonna catch on. I may not like it, but yes, it's gonna catch on....

*remember too that I wrote about my thoughts on the book a couple of weeks ago, so obviously, the Canadian thing is quite pervasive....

So forth, the Nevermores

2004-04-30T11:13:00.000-04:00

[Edgar report later, or perhaps tomorrow. In the meantime, the winners are posted here.

As I'd said before, I didn't attend the Agents & Editors party because I had my priorities straight--i.e., I needed a nap. Instead, my friend Mary and I got to Partners & Crime about a half-hour before the festivities were to start, and could see just how bedecked the store was. Gorgeous food platters everywhere, balloons and flowers, too. I said hello to my former colleagues and caught up a bit, but at a little past seven, it was already becoming obvious that conversations would be a premium.

I don't believe they expected the kind of crowd they got--which was large. Extremely large. Several chairs were set up so that took away some valuable space but it didn't make all that much of a difference. It also was extremely cool, as Ron pointed out in an earlier post, to be offered a pate or delicacy from the likes of Anthony Bourdain, who is a good friend of store co-owner Maggie Topkis. I didn't get to talk to him but he was hard to miss, being so tall and with his distinctive visage.

I was introduced to Jason Starr and had a great conversation about noir, the two upstart imprints Hard Case Crime and Point Blank Press and how Scottish writer and editor Allan Guthrie has his hands all over those new publishing outlets. Also made some nice conversation with Colin Harrison, author of THE HAVANA ROOM, a title which would have a lot more significance later on in the evening. And as I mentioned before, I finally met Olen Steinhauer as well as his agent Matt Williams. Some of Tuesday's partiers were in attendance Wednesday night as well, including Lauren Henderson, S.J. Rozan, Ken Bruen, Rebecca Pawel, Jim Hime, and James O. Born, while others stopping in after the A&E Party included Lee Child, Alafair Burke, and Katherine Clark. And more, oh so many more, but my memory bank has limited capacity, after all...

So, the show. There was much to it, and I won't get into everything, but the people at Partners went all out and their efforts were duly rewarded with laughter and guffaws--and some occasional surprises. After quickly dispensing with some industry awards ("Stupid Publisher Tricks," "Good Fences Make Good Neighbors" Award to Amazon for violating agreements about US/UK distribution and ordering) they got right into the opening musical number, set to the tune of "Fugue for Tinhorns" from GUYS AND DOLLS. In "Fugue for Booksellers," a shy lass is just trying to find the right book for her, and she's bombarded with choice: hardboiled (Ken Bruen's THE GUARDS), erudite (Jasper Fforde's LOST IN A GOOD BOOK) or cozy? As that mantle was represented by Lauren Henderson's FREEZE MY MARGARITA, it wasn't exactly, erm, accurate. And Lauren protested in turn throughout. I watched her gesticulations from the back and I can't say I blame her--surely a cat mystery would have worked in her place? But the parody was nicely done (nicely sung too, since Kate Nesbit, the manager, is a classically-trained opera singer) and got a hearty round of applause.

Many of the award winners were not in attendance, but Andrew Klavan (winning for the most grabbing opening line in a crime novel for DON'T SAY A WORD) sent in a rather hilarious speech in thanks, as did Thomas Perry and Ed McBain for their award wins. Colin Harrison accepted in person for the "Havana Award", as over the last year, a whole bunch of books were set or used the city name in the title--Harrison's irony, of course, is that his book has nothing to do with Cuba. Which was why he won. He was a good sport about it though.

To close the evening, there was the "Better Dead than Read" Award for worst opening paragraph of one of three categories: Hardboiled, historical, and cozy. Two of the honors went to the lovely and talented Donna Moore, meaning she won more Nevermores than anyone else that night. The first win elicited a loud roar from a certain section (with an isolated cheer in the back, from, well, me.) That entry combined the hardboiled cliche--but told from the point of view of a teenager taking care of his baby sister. For some reason it was just great to watch people like Bourdain laughing uproariously at Donna's comedic touch--and she claims she's not a writer! Not yet, maybe, but all in due time...

Afterwards, there was cake. Oh, and it was glorious, and I barely had any because I was going out to dinner. Tried to corral Ken Bruen into coming along, but he was otherwise engaged, and ended up at a nearby bar (one of my favorites, the Stoned Crow) along with Lauren, Jim Born, Ron, Jason Starr, and others. I heard the next day that the drinking went on a while--that, in fact, some persons never actually got any sleep....

Meanwhile I celebrated Donna's win with her, Olen, Rebecca, and Bev and Kathy from the 4 Mystery Addicts list. We talked about the Edgars, publishing war stories, slush pile horrors, and why inexplicably, Pawel's books aren't available in Spanish, considering they are set in wartime Spain. Hopefully, that will change now.

And so I was in bed at a reasonably early hour--with little idea of what was in store for the Big Show. And as for that account, like I keep saying--stay tuned...

And still abbreviated

2004-04-29T16:11:00.000-04:00

So that fuller report on last night's Nevermores that I'd promised for today? Well, OK, I kinda lied. Or at least didn't quite factor in the level of overprogramming that ensued (job interview in the morning, followed by a business lunch.) And considering that I'm just about to get dressed and will be heading out the door in due course for the opening cocktails of the Edgar Awards, that report--and the one of the Edgars proper--will have to wait till tomorrow or beyond. Ah, the life of a carousing young blogger in Manhattan. But I'll have my trusty notepad and a pen that only works half the time, scribbling down the dish and noteworthy items of the night.

I'll be sitting at one of two tables fronted by Partners & Crime along with my friend Mary, Maggie Griffin, Lee Child, Alafair Burke, first novel nominee James Hime, and several others. I'm looking forward to seeing Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin, Karin Slaughter, Val McDermid, and a whole host of other writers who haven't yet achieved barfly status this week. And hey, maybe I'll even run into Graydon Carter, who's getting a special raven (for investigative pieces in VANITY FAIR) which will evidently be handed to him by Dominick Dunne, another favorite of mine. One never knows what can happen at these Edgar bashes, after all.

More tomorrow--if I don't see you in the Grand Hyatt hotel bar after the awards are done.

Day Two, Abbreviated

2004-04-29T00:28:00.000-04:00

...is forthcoming tomorrow--at least, the full story. But here's a sneak peek:

--Didn't go to the Agents & Editors party in the end, and from what people told me later on, the party wasn't as filled to the brim with people as it usually is. Just as well--the few hours of relaxation I had worked wonders, and I do believe I am fully in the swing of things now.

--I think, well certainly I hope, that Monsieur Hogan made some worthwhile author contacts during the evening. It was certainly cool to see him take in the Edgar Week stuff.

--The Nevermores were wonderful, and crowded. I mean, it was a complete crush. I could circulate, but barely, and found myself wishing to be outside in "Smoker's Corner," where there was some fresh air to be had. I managed to get outside just once, and couldn't stay because the show was just about to start.

--Ken Bruen was, once again, in hot demand. He was supposed to join my group for dinner but was last seen in deep conversation with Jason Starr, someone whom I had a very nice conversation in parts throughout the evening. I suspect they decamped to a nearby bar, and for all I know, they are still there....

--Finally got to meet up with Olen Steinhauer, First Novel Edgar nominee and blog denizen. He's just as charming and thoughtful as his comments here indicated, and then some.

--Donna Moore is a star, as she was the only recipient of two Nevermores--it was lovely to see her brilliant comedic writing displayed and eliciting consistent guffaws for the audience. Will she listen to the masses and heed the call of her Muse? Well, everybody loves a cliffhanger...

-And shockingly, yours truly barely indulged in the scrumptious birthday cake that was in display. Truly a sign that this was a special evening (or that it was way too close to dinnertime, and the full meal won out. But oh, that chocolate cake....)

And now, to all, good night, for I must be up and about at an earlyish hour to take care of some real and actual business. But stay tuned for the full wrap-up of the awards, their winners, and who was there and what they said.

Day One

2004-04-27T22:34:00.000-04:00

Truth is, I'm out of practice.

It used to be that I could slip into my "New York persona" with relative ease after some time away. I'd leave the airport, hop into a cab or the M60, arrive at my apartment or wherever I was staying and lo, the suburban Sarah could morph into urban Sarah: eyes slightly narrowed, darting everywhere, daring anyone to mess with me. Jumping into subway cars as soon as the doors opened, people be damned, then honing in on the first available empty seat even if it meant I had to squish in between two people who shouldn't be wedged apart. Walking faster, in a slightly more frantic, hurried fashion.

But this time, it took some more effort. I usually like early morning flights: it's the first thing in the morning, and it leaves the rest of the day to get things done. I arrive, take a nap after I get in, then face the day with whatever energy I can muster up. Which was how I was going to tackle things, of course--except by the end of the night, and earlier than usual, I flagged. My head seemed elsewhere, everything was a blur.

Now, sitting here all by myself, I'm getting some clarity again. Putting pieces together, letting the events as they happened coalesce into the story I'm trying to tell. But it's a process that's taking a little longer, making me think all the harder.

Which is all a big, slightly grandiose way of saying I'm bloody tired. And that getting home early has its benefits, for my itinerary, which is close to bursting as it is, is just about ready to explode. More on that as it develops.

So, you ask, what about the partying?

Right. So things started in a low-key fashion, after pulling myself together and taking the IRT to Times Square, followed by a brisk walk right into Coliseum Books, where Edgar nominees Rebecca Pawel, James Hime, and Robert Heilbrun were scheduled to read. But really it was an excuse to finally meet up with Ron--after finding him in the mystery section, interestingly enough. After chatting at length about our recent and older shared history, we looked over to the cafe and realized the event had begun. We made our way there, stood for a bit, and when the event manager offered us seats I promptly swung my bag and knocked over a few of the remainder books. Yup, I'm always remembered wherever I go...

Anyway, each of the trio read from their debut novels, of which Pawel's, the Spanish Civil War-set novel DEATH OF A NATIONALIST, is the only one I've read (though that will be rectified soon, as Hime, with his "neo-western" THE NIGHT OF THE DANCE, and Heilbrun--son of the late Carolyn aka Amanda Cross--with his legal thriller OFFER OF PROOF, showed some deft writing and storytelling skills in the excerpts they read out) and then fielded some of the dumbest questions I've ever heard--and having spent 2 years as a mystery bookseller, I have, alas, heard plenty.

The kicker was this (paraphrased, please blame the fatigue)

aspiring writer to Robert Heilbrun: how did you pick that particular title?

Heilbrun: which one?

writer: "the people vs. XXX XXX."

I turned to Ron and whispered, "I think that's our cue to leave."

So we did, heading uptown to Black Orchid, where, as expected, the place was mobbed. In fact, I think it was more crowded than last year, because then, I managed to speak to everyone I pretty much wanted to and met up with new faces. This time....I saw Keith Snyder in the distance, never got a chance to say hello. I saw Chris Niles (with longer hairdo! I think it's in the air, and the new 'do suits her) but didn't get to talk to her, though I did catch up with her husband, Roderick Huntress. I believe Charlie Stella was in attendance but didn't see him, and only got a quick glance over at Mark Conard (author of yet another Uglytown triumph, DARK AS NIGHT) lingering by the stairwell. Barely got a chance to speak to my friend and blog regular Alina Adams, although I did see her speaking to some other folks, including M.G. (Moira) Kincaid, who was there with her daughter Heather--and who had braved a freak snowstorm to arrive just in time.

But I did manage to catch up some with Rebecca Pawel, who commented on the oddity of having to read from an excerpt of her first book when book #2 is out now, book #3 is in revisions and book #4 is the one on her mind. It really does go to show what kind of lead time is de rigeur in the book business. Also had a chance to speak briefly with Jim Hime, who was dubbed by a Black Orchid regular as "one of the five nicest authors in the business," a statement that I'd be hard pressed to disagree with, based on first impressions alone. I also spoke with upcoming debut author James O. Born, whose WALKING MONEY (not out till mid-June) is already racking up some serious buzz. A bookseller friend in his native Florida suggested he attend, and so, here he was. Smart move.

Lauren Henderson was bedecked with a fuzzy white hat that was the perfect place to hold her nametag; she's really been keeping her head down of late, what with her tongue-in-cheek nonfiction tome THE JANE AUSTEN'S GUIDE TO DATING due out later this year and two romantic comedies coming out in the next year or so. Charles Todd was his usual entertaining self, and offered the news that he's switching gears, trying his hand at a noir novel set in the 1940s, which is certainly a departure from the Ian Rutledge WWI-set books he co-authors with mother Caroline. And MWA Office Manager Margery Flax was a well deserved goddamned ray of sunshine all the goddamned time--and my goodness, that woman had me in stitches for much of the night.

The Brit contingent--author or not--was out in full force. Tony Broadbent, the author of the critically acclaimed SMOKE, was in town ostensibly on business, but was talked into coming to the party tonight and the Nevermores tomorrow, hopefully. Anyone who within ten minutes of meeting me is already making sardonic comments about my hairstyle is someone I want to hang out with more. The persuading person, as it happened, was the redheaded firebrand Donna Moore, who'd blazed into town a mere 3 hours before the party--and hardly looked worse for wear. She keeps pretending that she's not a real writer, but no one believes her--and if one of her entries for the Nevermore "Better Dead than Read" contest wins a prize, even fewer will believe her protestations...

Ken Bruen was there, but not till late--he too was a late arrival but looked, well, pretty damned chipper. There's something about him that lights up a crowd, and it's with good reason that a whole lot of people are cheering him on for Best Novel--and, as I remarked to my friend Jonathan Matthews, I wouldn't mind in the least.

Oh and naturally, I had my fangirl moment.

Donald Westlake stood at the back signing books. Many of them. I wedged myself near the bookshelves to his right, speaking to Bonnie, working up the nerve to say something, anything. Jonathan Santlofer waltzed in and got his copy of THE ROAD TO RUIN signed, then J.L. Abramo did the same thing. Finally I managed to offer my hand and attempt to keep the gushing to a minimum. I asked what was happening with the Dortmunder reissues--THE HOT ROCK in spiffy trade paper, but what next? Soon, Westlake promised, once rights issues with publishers previously in existence could be worked out. Alas, DANCING AZTECS won't be reissued anytime soon, but he did tell me how much fun he had writing the book, because it kept spiralling out of control. Me, I just love the book because it was my guide to New York--the vast majority which I still haven't seen.

So this closes day one--and I do hope this burst of hypergraphia will suffice till the next installment. As for pictures, I know there will be some. Stay tuned.

Greetings from the Apple

2004-04-27T09:48:00.000-04:00

After enduring a fairly uneventful but far-too-early flight, I'm safely ensconced in Manhattan on what is looking to be a perfectly gorgeous beginning to a wonderfully lovely week--not just weather-wise. After a well-deserved rest (and I want to finish my flight reading) I'll head for the first installment of Edgar Week: a booksigning by three of the Best First nominees at Coliseum Books at 5:30 PM, followed by the Black Orchid Bookshop's annual pre-Edgar party, where a whole host of authors, including Donald Westlake, Meg Cabot, Rebecca Pawel, Lauren Henderson, Charlie Stella, Chris Niles, M.G. Kincaid, and Katherine Hall Page (to name but a few) will be in attendance.

As Edgar Week rolls on, I hope to post event reports and pictures, notwithstanding any technical difficulties that may occur. I'll also be blogging the Edgars (though the report won't show up till mid-Friday at the earliest) and whatever else occurs throughout the week that's worth mentioning. I'm just glad to be here--and if you see me at any of the above parties, tomorrow's Nevermores, or the Edgars, please do say hello--looking forward to meeting old friends and new ones.