items of interest, stories and subjects to divert Americans from today’s barbecues and inevitable grumblings over the direction the nation is taking. Herewith:• Do you know the name Andrew Pepper? Well, you soon will, as his debut novel, The Last Days of Newgate (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), just published in Britain, is busily chalking up raves in the press (see here and here). Like so many novels in recent years (I think immediately of James McGee’s spirited Ratcatcher and T.F. Banks’ The Thief-Taker), Newgate focuses on a pre-Victorian Bow Street Runner, the rather disreputable Pyke, whose search after a British peer’s missing family money throws him into the midst of a triple homicide, and lands him in prison on murder charges. With help from an uncle and the daughter of an enemy, Pyke must break free, identify the real killer, and untangle a treacherous muddle of politics and religion. In an interview on the Crime Squad site, Pepper talks about his fascination with early 19th-century London, his protagonist’s complicated personality, and his fondness for the works of Newton Thornburg (“any book that makes me feel physically sick has to be doing something right”).
• In a too-short interview with Mystery Morgue, Dallas, Texas, real-estate appraiser-turned-author Harry Hunsicker (The Next Time You Die, Still River) remarks on the naming of his protagonist, Lee Oswald, his frustrating first venture into novel-writing, and why his hometown makes a dandy backdrop for hard-boiled storytelling (“Dallas, in many ways, presents itself as this entrepreneurial utopia, a Mecca for the self-made man. The competitive spirit which drives people to succeed also drives them to take chances and cut certain legal and ethical corners ...”).
• Stuart MacBride, the Scottish author of Cold Granite (among the nominees for the first-ever Thriller Award) and its recently released sequel, Dying Light, both of which star an Aberdeen cop named Logan McRae, is the latest “New Faces” subject at the Mystery Reader site. The frequently witty MacBride tells that he only started writing novels as a result of peer pressure, reveals his debts to R.D. Wingfield (A Touch of Frost), and says that his family finds it “odd” to have a crime novelist in their gene pool.
• The Summer 2006 edition of Mystery Readers Journal carries the theme “Murder in the Far East.” Most of its text (including an overview of Japanese crime fiction and an interview with Colin Cotterill, author of the Siri Paiboun novels [The Coroner’s Lunch, Disco for the Departed]) can’t be accessed online. However, there are three fine components available to non-subscribers: an essay by Barry Eisler (The Last Assassin) about his attraction to Japan; a piece by Jake Needham (The Ambassador’s Wife) explaining his associations with Bangkok, Thailand; and the musings of Laura Joh Rowland, who found it eerie that, soon after publishing a novel
(The Assassin’s Touch) in which 17th-century Edo (Tokyo) is flooded during a bad rainy season, she had to evacuate her own home in New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina.• Finally, a pair of DVDs to watch for--one already available, the other due out before the end of the year. Jon Jordan points to the recent release of Dick Francis Mysteries, which contains three “full-length features” from a British-made TV series in which Ian McShane (now better known for his role on Deadwood) appears as Jockey Club investigator David Cleveland in adaptations of three Francis tales, Twice Shy, Blood Sport, and In the Frame. Meanwhile, TV Squad has announced that Riptide, Stephen J. Cannell’s action-packed, 1984-1986 series about a couple of Southern California private eyes and Vietnam vets who, with help from a nerdy associate and his robot (OK, so the show wasn’t exactly perfect) is finally coming to DVD, first in Canada, and later in the States--just in time for Christmas (hint, hint).
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