The Outfit Muscles in on the Queen City

Monday night brought The Outfit’s Marcus Sakey and Sean Chercover to Cincinnati, Ohio’s Joseph-Beth Booksellers to discuss their debut novels. Marcus is the author of the well-received The Blade Itself, a book whose very jacket blurb has you longing for the late, lamented Plots with Guns. Sean, a Chicago transplant from Toronto, wrote the new Shamus-worthy Big City, Bad Blood, which reads like it was penned by the bastard child of Loren D. Estleman and Robert Crais and plunked down in the Windy City.

Marcus and Sean spent most of their time on Monday night fielding questions from the crowd in a two-man panel format. Marcus discussed the start of his career as a novelist. It seems that on the day he decided to quit his job, he was fired. With plenty of time on his hands, he got started on The Blade Itself. Prior to becoming a novelist, Marcus worked in advertising, selling everything from pro wrestling to bottled water. (Pro wrestling was more fun.) The idea for his debut novel came to him as he walked home from the train one night, noticing the nice Chicago neighborhood and nice house he had. What, he thought, if that were all taken away? His wife found him on a stoop that evening, scribbling notes.

Sean Chercover parlayed a liberal-arts degree into a career as a private investigator. For him, it was the best way to learn about what he wanted to write.

“Plus,” he says, “I needed a job.”

Sean worked in both Chicago and New Orleans before moving back to his native Toronto a few years ago to work in television production. He now lives in Chicago full-time.

Just six blocks from Marcus Sakey.

Their book-promotion tour together was born of coincidence. They both signed their deals about the same time. At a mystery conference, they met and discovered they lived so near one other. And this year? Their books, from different publishers, debuted on the very same day.

Before the event began, Marcus and Sean did a lot of hand shaking and talking with members of the bookstore crowd, individually. They probably would have spent the whole evening at Joseph-Beth if left to their own devices, and it still would have been a successful event.

As it was, the pair spent more than an hour with the small, but very attentive, group of listeners. Joseph-Beth is always a great, intimate setting for a signing, as Barry Eisler, Walter Mosley, and science-fiction writer John Scalzi can all attest. Marcus was, as always, enthusiastic, and Sean was a trooper, battling a case of tour cold. It was great seeing these two and great to witness the reader interest in their powerful debuts.