Love and Death in the Sheets

With all of the excitement last week surrounding the Edgar Awards presentations in New York, followed by this last weekend’s Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, we somehow neglected to mention the Romantic Times Awards, given out on Saturday during the Romantic Times Book Lovers Convention in Houston, Texas.

The following titles were winners in the Best Mystery Novels category:

• Amateur Sleuth: Definitely Dead, by Charlaine Harris (Ace)
• Contemporary Mystery: Snow Blind, by P.J. Tracy (Putnam)
• First Mystery: Blown Away, by Shane Gericke (Pinnacle)
• Historical Mystery: North by Northanger, by Carrie Bebris (Forge)
• P.I./Procedural Novel: The Finishing School, by Michele Martinez (Morrow)
• Suspense: The Kill, by Allison Brennan (Ballantine)

These commendations are sponsored, of course, by the magazine Romantic Times Book Reviews.

Under the Radar

I’ve been extraordinarily busy recently. After reading a staggering array of debut thriller novels for the International Thriller Writers, then tackling a plethora of short stories for the British Crime Writers’ Association--in both cases, for the purposes of awards judging--I found myself behind in book reviewing. Then last week, as I surveyed the array of new works laying around me, all waiting to be read, I found myself suddenly frozen, unable to even begin tackling the stacks. I realized that I wanted to read something I’d actually bought off a bookshelf, not been sent with the hope that I would mention it or critique it in some venue.

Author Margaret Atwood is evidently experiencing a similar mood. She was quoted in the London Times last week lamenting that the Internet, with its quick access to supposedly “perfect” books for each individual reader, is killing off the joy of book-browsing and bleeding away the joy of happening upon new and potentially delightful works by chance. According to The Times’ Ben Hoyle:

Margaret Atwood, the Canadian author whose books include The Edible Woman, The Handmaid’s Tale and The Blind Assassin, which won the Booker Prize in 2000, said that the “serendipity” of discovering something in a bookshop has not been replicated online.

Atwood told the London Book Fair last week: “You are not going to get the same experience on the net. Amazon is trying, by saying, ‘If you like this book you might like this other book’, but it’s often something quite offensive that they suggest.”

She added that the success of internet retailers meant that bookshops were missing out on “the sales that they wouldn’t expect to make, but make because somebody sees this beautiful cover and they pick it up and read the front flap.

“They might look at the back flap and the picture of the author, then they might read the first two or three pages. If they are [like] me, they might then open it in the middle. It all takes about five minutes.”

Fewer customers [are] taking those vital five minutes as online and supermarket book sales increase. Between 2001 and 2005, the market share of independent bookshops fell by 16 per cent, Book Marketing, the consumer research company, said. Over the same period, the supermarkets’ share grew by 90 per cent and internet sales by 183 per cent.

Later in the week, though, The Times published an opposing point-of-view piece by Michael Gove, the Conservative MP for Surrey Heath, who stated his conviction that the Internet is the savior of secondhand and independent bookstores, and a handy tool for book browsers--as well as small booksellers. Gove begins:

Sometimes I can arrange only a few minutes to indulge my vice. Sometimes I get up to an hour. The longer I have the more enjoyable the release, but being a man I can still get satisfaction out of a few snatched moments. I can’t say I’m proud, but at least my wife knows all about it now. I can’t say she approves, but she knows that boys will be boys. Which is why she’s prepared to tolerate me straying ... into second-hand bookshops.

If a week goes by without me spending some time in a bookshop I grow grumpy and agitated, like a cow that hasn’t been milked. I will purposely plot travel routes to allow time to visit towns that boast superb secondhand bookshops (Midhurst, Deal, Burford and Folkestone all come to mind). I will truncate lunches and arrive late at parties to allow time for visits to bookshops that happen to be in the area in which I’m being entertained. All of this behaviour is quite horrifically selfish and antisocial. But I’m afraid I can’t help it.

He goes on to contend that the Internet can help level the playing field for small bookstores battling to survive beside large merchandizing chains such as the UK’s Tesco:

But while I don’t want to see any small bookshops close (and am indeed euphoric when the best, such as Daunt’s in Marylebone, expand by opening another branch, as they have done recently in Holland Park) I think its wrong to point the finger at the internet. The web has become a catch-all villain for any individual or movement unhappy with trends in modern life, a handy focus for all the discontents of globalisation, up there with Tesco as a disrupter of the settled, the small-scale and human-centred.

But while the jury may be out on Tesco, the internet deserves to be acquitted. Certainly on the count of grievous bodily harm to the book trade. The truth is that the internet now allows many antiquarian and secondhand dealers to flourish even more successfully than before, by allowing them to reach a far larger market than just the passing trade provided by Conservative MPs making time en route to a speaking engagement in Worthing to see if they have any Bulldog Drummond first editions. One of my favourite secondhand bookshops, the Golden Hind in Deal, manages to serve a varied clientele in East Kent, adds lustre to the town’s seafront and keeps a very wide stock to suit all tastes, all supported by a healthy online sales presence.

Now, thanks to the wonderful antiquarian bookfinder site, AbeBooks, it’s possible for secondhand shops to survive in the sorts of towns that Waterstone’s would turn its nose up at, ensuring that the spread of bookstores in this country (the parchment footprint?) is wider than it otherwise would be.

All of this brings me back to my abrupt determination to read something I didn’t have to read. So I left behind my reviewing pile and headed off to book-browse, a task that always cheers me up considerably. And sure enough, I uncovered a remarkably taut and chilling thriller that kept me reading well past my bedtime the other night--and it was a debut novel, to boot.

So where did I find this unexpected gem? Sorry to say that it was at Tesco. The jacket price was £6.99 but Tesco was selling the thing at about half that price, so I grabbed it up, proceeded to the checkpoint, and purchased it along with a pack of cigarettes. Once home again, reading glasses on, coffee brewed, ashtray cleaned, and lamp lit, I launched into this book I knew nothing about. There was no publisher’s press release, no complimentary bookmark inserted in the middle. Three hours later I finally put the novel down and felt so much better, my reading anxiety gone and my mind engaged. Contrary to my fear about any first novel (that its text will be unnecessarily bloated), the book I had chosen on a whim was sharp and judiciously edited, coming in at just 230 pages, with an exciting premise enhanced by expert editing.

And the name of this book? Something in the Sea, by Yves Bonavero. Published by Bloomsbury UK, this novel was originally released last year in hardcover, but it somehow slipped beneath my radar. Which is odd, since I’m usually a sucker for maritime mysteries, having once worked on chemical tankers in the Arabian Gulf. This time around, though, the jacket caught my attention, and the menacing little teaser on the back closed the deal:

It’s a steamy, sultry day of a hot Mediterranean summer. Terence, a rich London lawyer, his beautiful wife Cathy, a doctor, and their young daughter Lucy are relaxing on the yacht that is Terence’s pride and joy.

Suddenly, a storm whips up from nowhere and Terence battles into the night to save the lives of his family. Battered and bruised, they limp into Dubrovnik harbour. Unable to go ashore until daybreak, Cathy is tending to her daughter’s injuries when a large motor-cruiser pulls up alongside the yacht. Its wounded skipper, the enigmatic Kurt, comes aboard the family’s yacht also seeking medical help. As the darkest hours slowly tick by, Terence and Cathy have to listen to Kurt’s disturbing story ...

At sunrise, Terence is a changed man, desperate to hold on to his wife and daughter, and accordingly willing to change his life--a life about which, it transpires, he has been somewhat less than candid. With a harrowing denouement, dripping with suspense, this explosive psychological thriller also is a tragic love story.

Something in the Sea took me about three hours to read--and that was reading slowly, as Bonavero’s tight and claustrophobic plot had me riveted to my chair. I won’t give anything away, except to say that I guessed the ending long before the final chapter, but this short work takes in another twist as its pages run out. The climax is sad, but in an odd way uplifting. I came away from this novel feeling energized and entertained, but also rather pleased with himself for having found a minor masterpiece without the commercial come-ons that usually accompany every book I read. And it seems I’m not the only one who enjoyed this novel.

It didn’t take much digging to find information about author Bonavero. As the Oxford Times reported last year:

Like many authors who try various careers before they become full-time writers, Yves Bonavero has an eclectic CV. In his case, however, you can’t really see the writing replacing the other careers--it probably wouldn’t be as lucrative or as interesting.

French by birth and education, he came to England 30 years ago at the age of 23 and never left. He worked in the City of London for 14 years, ending as chief executive of a financial conglomerate, then left to spend more time with his family and pursue other interests.

One of these was to become an undergraduate at Oxford University, the same year as his oldest child Olivier. Here, he studied German and philosophy for three years while also running a film company. Now back working in finance, he’s also found time to write his first novel. ...

After achieving a first-class degree in 1999, Yves thought about doing a doctorate in philosophy, but his application was rejected. “I was reduced to the other side of my degree, which was literature, and that led me to write the book.” It was a toss-up which language to use. “I was more familiar with nautical terms in English than in French, so I decided to write it in English,” he said.

Given his work commitments, where does the book fit into his life? “It’s my reward for all the rest of my hard work,” he said. It’s so rewarding, in fact, that he’s writing another.

To think, I never would have discovered Bonavero and Something in the Sea, had I not let serendipity take hold of my reading future. This was book-buying pretty much the way it used to be, without handy Amazon leads to more novels one might like, based on previous buying habits, and without any effort to seek out an era-defining work or one that I might have to judge for an award somewhere down the road. This was, in other words, book-buying without a ’Net. I’d almost forgotten what a pleasure that can be.

You Like Us! You Really Like Us!

Just a few moments ago, 10 days after we filed our 1,000th post here at The Rap Sheet, the blog clocked its 100,000th visit. (See the little red counter at the bottom of the right-hand column.) We can’t help it: we’re feeling awfully Sally Fieldish this morning.

Hitting All the Bases

• Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, one of the books I have most looked forward to reading this season, and which is due in bookstores this week, receives a mixed review from C. Max Magee of The Millions. While he applauds Chabon’s alternative history conceit (that “the world’s Jewish population was offered a temporary homeland in Alaska following World War II”), he is disappointed that the author uses that premise “as little more than backdrop for a detective story of fairly straightforward construction.” Regardless, I shall be among the first to procure a copy of this novel, and have already convinced the members of my monthly book group to read it. You’ve got to figure that any author who takes an extra year to rewrite a book so that it will meet his expectations is either obsessive, or a craftsman of uncommon merit. Chabon belongs in the latter category, as is made clear in more complimentary review of the novel in the Los Angeles Times. I look forward to the exchange of opinions on Yiddish.

• Regis Behe of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review interviews Chabon here.

• What’s an Edgar Award-winning short story like? You can judge for yourself, as Hard Case Crime has now made available online “Home Front,” the yarn for which company honcho Charles Ardai took home top honors this last Thursday. In other HCC news, an e-note received this morning reports that the publisher “just reached an agreement with the brilliant Donald E. Westlake to bring back into print an outstanding book of his that hasn’t been available in more than 35 years. It’s the story of a New York City cab driver who has a hell of a time collecting on a winning horse race bet, and it’s called Somebody Owes Me Money.” The book is due out in 2008.

• Bookgasm introduces us to a new line of pulp magazine reprints, including the long-forgotten but eternally provocative title Spicy Mystery. It seems this and many other pricy reprints are coming from an Ontario, Canada, company called Girasol Collectables. The enterprise produces three new magazine replicas each month.

• Crimespree Cinema’s Jeremy Lynch has the lowdown on casting for the film adaptation of James Lee Burke’s 1993 novel, In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead. We already knew that Tommy Lee Jones is set to play Louisiana detective Dave Robicheaux (a truly inspired choice), but Lynch notes that Ned Beatty, John Goodman, Kelly MacDonald, and Tom Sizemore have also signed on. It’s only unfortunate that producers of this film (which is due in theaters in December of this year) have apparently chosen to shorten the evocative title of Burke’s book, making it simply In the Electric Mist.

• The new, April/May 2007 issue of Mystery News reached my mailbox yesterday. It carries a front-page interview with the amazingly prolific UK novelist Edward Marston, whose fourth Inspector Robert Colbeck book, The Iron Horse, is due out in Britain in July; and who tells MN that he’s “currently working on a military adventure that has strong elements of crime but is not really a mystery.” Elsewhere in the paper, Rap Sheet contributor Stephen Miller interviews Sean Chercover (Big City, Bad Blood), and Marv Lachman recaps the career of Brett Halliday (aka Davis Dresser), best known as the creator of Miami private eye Mike Shayne.

• Meanwhile, the May edition of Crime and Suspense has been posted, with new fiction by Jan Christensen (“The Antidote”), Edward McKinney (“Tailless”), and others, plus the premiere installment of Donna Nowak’s three-part “neo-Golden-Age” serial, “Saved by Miss Bell.” There’s also notice here about a brand-new anthology of Crime and Suspense tales from Wolfmont Publishing. Oh, and let’s not forget about the second full edition of Blazing! Adventures Magazine, which features stories by Patrick Lambe (“The Whore of Lemuria”), Ron Capshaw (“Murder on the Train of History”), and Dwight Geddes (“Consequential Damage”), as well as “Gunmen,” part four of Xavier Treadwell’s modern pulp serial. (Previous installments of that serial can be found here.)

• Author-critic Mike Ripley’s latest column in Shots heaps kudos on Sarah Dunant (creator of private eye Hannah Wolfe) and Jenny Siler (who, under the pseudonym “Alex Carr,” has a new Europe-based thriller due out this month, An Accidental American); reveals that the late actor Ian Richardson was once in the running to play Inspector Endeavour Morse on British TV; laments clunky translations of Scandinavian crime fiction; and alerts us to a coming novel from “Red Riding Quartet” author David Peace, Tokyo Year Zero, due out this coming September.

• U.S. television executives being as capricious and fearful as they are, there’s no telling yet whether the Jeff Goldblum mid-season replacement series, Raines, will be green-lighted for a full season in the fall. But for now, at least, you can visit the NBC-TV Web site and watch all seven existing episodes. I think the show is pretty good ... but of course, that’s relative to all the other crap that’s now taking up American TV time.

• Oscar Wilde, detective? It isn’t a new idea; Walter Satterthwait’s 1991 novel, Wilde West, imagined the flamboyant Irish playwright and author pursuing a murderer of prostitutes in 19th-century America. But now British author-politician-raconteur Gyles Brandreth intends to enhance Wilde’s creds as a sleuth in a series of nine novels, the first of which is Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders, just out from UK publisher John Murray. He explained his longstanding interest in Wilde, and his intentions with this new series, in an interview in yesterday’s edition of The Scotsman. Read it here. (Hat tip to Euro Crime.)

• Some people wouldn’t like to be reminded all the time of just how much they don’t know about a subject in which they fancy themselves a qualified expert. I, on the other hand, appreciate being told new things about crime fiction--particularly on the subject of works written long before I was even born. Which is why I often find myself clicking over to Steve Lewis’ Mystery*File blog (which includes a voluminous archive of material from the previous Mystery*File magazine). Just yesterday, for instance, I discovered this retrospective on the early 20th-century detective fiction of Herbert Jenkins (1876-1923), the creator of British intelligence agent-turned-sleuth Malcolm Sage. Despite a write-up about Sage at The Thrilling Detective Web Site, I’d never heard of the character before. Yet, judging exclusively from Mary Read’s assessment of the short-story collection Malcolm Sage, Detective (1920), he sounds like somebody whose adventures are worth watching out for as one cruises garage-sale book boxes and used-book stores.

• Not only does last year’s Casino Royale appear to have reinvigorated the flagging James Bond movie franchise, but it also seems to have unleashed upon the world newfound authorial interest in Ian Fleming’s Agent 007. First came Simon Winder’s book, The Man Who Saved Britain. Now look out for The Battle for Bond: The Genesis of Cinema’s Greatest Hero, by Robert Sellers. In hopes of whetting the reading public’s appetite, the UK’s 007 Magazine has posted an exclusive extract from Sellers’ work here. (Hat tip to Shotsmag Confidential.)

• And Libby Fischer Hellmann is the latest crime novelist to suggest appropriate casting for one of her books (in this case, 2005’s A Shot to Die For) at My Book, the Movie. So, who does she think would be best in the role of protagonist Ellie Foreman, the Chicago video producer? The ever-watchable Marisa Tomei (My Cousin Vinny).

Well-Traveled Sleuths

Writing in today’s Sunday Times of London, John Sutherland extols the virtues of detective fiction as a global phenomenon. As his springboard, he employs the recently published non-fiction book The Triumph of the Thriller: How Cops, Crooks, and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction, by Patrick Anderson. He begins:

Reading fiction (particularly the recreational variety) involves such quirky likes and dislikes that the big picture tends to get lost. But very big and very interesting things have been happening in those interlocking genres, crime, mystery and thriller, over the past few years.

The biggest thing is that they’ve taken the whole show over. In his recently published treatise The Triumph of the Thriller, Patrick Anderson makes the point that 40 years ago, when he began reviewing, there was never a thriller in the American bestseller lists. Those books were down in the literary cellar--next to the garbage cans.

No longer. Last week, in the authoritative New York Times hardback-fiction bestseller list, 10 of the 16 titles qualify as thrillers, and six of those are clear-cut detective stories. “Triumph” is too feeble a term. The biggest (and most inexplicably successful) seller of all time, The Da Vinci Code, is, of course, a detective story. Robert Langdon, the Harvard symbologist, is a Sherlock Holmes de nos jours: a code-breaker, clue-interpreter, crime-buster, world-saver.

The most interesting aspect of Sutherland’s essay may be his point about the influence of detective fiction and thrillers transcending cultures and borders:

As national boundaries melt away, however, so the detective novel has--simultaneously--regionalised itself more narrowly than ever in its history. Sticking with Scotland, another internationally superfamous detective is Inspector [John] Rebus, a sleuth who rarely ventures farther south from his Edinburgh beat than Morningside, or farther north than the Water of Leith. Judging by the rows of books on “Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh” on sale, the creator of Rebus should get an award from the Scottish tourist board. And, if there is room on the Rankin mantelpiece, what with all those Mystery Writers of America Edgar and The Crime Writers' Association Dagger trophies, he should get an even bigger award for services to the British book trade. According to Ken Gelder, in his recent, excellent monograph Popular Fiction: The Logics and Practices of a Literary Field, Rankin accounted for an incredible 10% of British book sales at one point.

One of the first detective novels I felt really pleased with myself for reading was Raymond Chandler’s The High Window. It opens with a wonderful description of Pasadena, roasting in high-summer heat and the stew of moral corruption. At that early stage of my life, Pasadena, that eastern outpost of Los Angeles, was as unvisitably foreign a place to me as Arthur C. Clarke’s The Sands of Mars. I now live there much of the time (something that in the 1950s would have seemed as unlikely as space travel) and I can virtually MapQuest the action of Scott Frost’s Alex Delillo detective stories, which set out to do for Pasadena what Rankin has done for Edinburgh. Not, so far, alas, with the same sales success, but with the same pinpoint attention to location, location, location.

Sutherland leaves the last word to the Italians, which is a fitting tribute considering the death earlier this month of Michael Dibdin:

So, why do Italy and the Italian detective novel hit the mark so effectively with us culturally xenophobic anglophone readers? Why does it “speak to us”, hitting so many familiar chords? Why are we so taken with Brunetti, Zen and Montalbano? Why has the Italian detective novel succeeded in breaching our cultural defences, when so many others have failed? [Donna] Leon says the answer is simple. “[The Italians] have no illusions. They know that all politicians are corrupt, they know that all institutions are corrupt and they never pretend that they are anything but that.”

She finds this nihilism “very refreshing”. The Italian view of life, she thinks, is the most honest. “Italians know about human nature--they understand it perhaps better than anyone else does. They know that people are weak and greedy and lazy and dishonest, and they just try to make the best of it; to work around it.” They know they’ll never change it, but resolve to live their lives as best they can, nonetheless.

It’s a satisfying explanation. The implicit, false promise in much Anglo-Saxon detective fiction is that crime can be cleared up. And if only enough of it is cleared up, by the omnicompetent sleuth, we shall one day find ourselves in the sunny uplands of crimelessness. Happy ever after in white-hat utopia, all the black hats put away or blown away.

The disillusioned Italians think differently. It makes for great detective fiction. Some would say the best. ...

To read the entirety of Sutherland’s piece, click here.

“Hard,” Black, and Humorous

I seem to have gone all Celtic of a sudden, what with my expressed admiration of Irishman Ken Bruen’s latest P.I. Jack Taylor novel, Cross, then my willing transportation to the Aberdeen, Scotland, of Stuart MacBride’s fiction. And I shouldn’t fail, either, to mention crime writer Allan Guthrie (shown at left in the photo, with Irish novelist Declan Hughes).

I’m familiar in certain circles as a networking type of guy, and several weeks back, while I was in London, drinking with Bruen and others to celebrate Cross’s launch, I encountered a young author and journalist from Scotland by the name of Tony Black--a perfect name, as it turns out, because of the sort of fiction he pens. Over a few beers, I learned that in addition to his work for The Scotsman, Black has been featured in the Webzine Thug Lit and will have a short story in the fall issue of Bryon Quertermous’ Demolition. Furthermore, he’s involved (perhaps more than a wee bit) with the new UK ’zine Pulp Pusher, and has a story, “Pretty Boy,” in Issue #1. Black also has a first novel, Paying for It, making the rounds “after being taken on by a London literary agent.” Between pints of Guinness, Bruen, who’s read the manuscript, enthused of that book: “The writing is a joy, in your face, with that wondrous deadpan humor that only the Celts really grasp.”

The point of all this, is that in the course of our chatting about crime fiction, I mentioned how much I admire author Guthrie, who I first met during a panel discussion at Left Coast Crime 2006, in Bristol, England, and subsequently ran into again at a bar during the Harrogate Crime-Writing Festival. I told Black that I was looking forward to reading Guthrie’s new novel, Hard Man, and was disappointed that I couldn’t be on hand for the Hard Man launch festivities in Edinburgh (which took place this last week). As it turns out, Black had planned to meet up with Guthrie for that very same launch, and said that he’d report back to me on the proceedings. He recently e-mailed me this brief account:

The genteel Scottish capital of Edinburgh took some knocks at the launch of Allan Guthrie’s Hard Man recently. The Pino Grigio-swilling set of the plush West End were brought to earth with a thud as Guthrie booked them some lessons--Hard Man style. Fortunately, the only shots that were fired were of the malt whisky variety. Although Guthrie, being teetotal, steered clear of the Scots’ famous Uisge Betha [the Gaelic word for whisky, translated as “the water of life”].
“It’s been a great night,” [Guthrie] said, after a lengthy on-stage recital from his latest tome, not to the skirl of bagpipes, but to the carefully chosen strains of “Mack the Knife.”
“There was little or no practice, but it went off really well. I’m pleased with that.”
And the crowd approved, too. Wholesale applause followed the reading--some for the writing surely, but some also for the equally well-crafted performance.
Guthrie’s publishers, the Edinburgh-based Polygon, had chosen a swanky bar in the elegant New Town for the occasion, and mercifully the stag and hen parties stayed away.
But that didn’t stop the rowdies invading. Crime Scene Scotland’s Russel McLean led the Bravehearts’ charge, alongside The Incredible Alan Spark author and self-styled ne’er-do-well, Alan Bissett. It was left to [the] writer of The Glass House, Sophie Cooke, to bring some decorum to the fixture, which she managed in style.
“It’s a great turnout,” said Guthrie, flagging only slightly after a hefty few rounds of handshaking, “I’m just delighted so many people were good enough to come along.”
And why wouldn’t they? A nicer host would be a Hard Man to find.

The funny thing about these Celtic Noir writers--Bruen, Black, Guthrie, MacBride, and the rest--is that, while their imaginations and tales might be filled with disturbing imagery, they’re actually great guys to have a beer with, all of them funny. Perhaps the Celts are responsible for the familiar term “black humor.”

Mean Streets and Memories

This is definitely the week for book honors. First came the Edgar Awards, and then last night the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were handed out, with Michael Connelly’s Echo Park winning in the Mystery/Thriller category. Also nominated, though: City of Tiny Lights, by Patrick Neate (Riverhead); The Night Gardener, by George Pelecanos (Little, Brown); The Zero, by Jess Walter (HarperCollins); and The Winter of Frankie Machine, by Don Winslow (Knopf).

A complete rundown of book prize recipients can be found here.

In addition to congratulating Connelly on his win, I also want to tip my hat to Montana wordsmith William Kittredge (The Willow Field), who was honored during last evening’s ceremony with the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement. As the L.A. Times explains, “The Kirsch Award honors a living author with a substantial connection to the American West whose contribution to American letters deserves special recognition. William Kittredge is a master storyteller, essayist, and influential cultural voice known for his unflinching vision of the hardscrabble landscape of the West and the people who survive and die on it.” I’ve never met Kittredge, but he was kind enough to take a writing assignment from me many years ago, when I needed an essay about Nez Perce Indian Chief Joseph for the late, much-lamented Washington Magazine. Kittredge didn’t know me from a hole in the wall, but he kindly listened to me babble on the phone, as I sought to describe what exactly it was that I needed. He then went on to deliver one of the finest short pieces of prose I ever published in that magazine. In the years since, I’ve often thought that I didn’t do nearly enough to thank him for his contribution, and for the respect he paid to me as a still-wet-behind-the-ears young editor, humbled in the presence of greatness. So if you’re out there Mr. Kittredge, allow me to pass along my thanks to you once more. I only hope to be as generous to another young editor someday as you were to me so long ago.

READ MORE: “Namedropping,” by Lee Goldberg (A Writer’s Life); “LAT Festival: Some Preliminary Photos,” by Brett Battles (A Writer’s Sphere).

Stone Plays His Cards Right

Most of you know how much I loved British writer Nick Stone’s debut novel, Mr. Clarinet, and how much I’ve been looking forward to his follow-up story, a prequel of sorts called King of Swords (due out under Penguin UK’s Michael Joseph imprint in August). Like the previous book, Swords will feature Miami ex-cop-turned-private investigator Max Mingus. Penguin recently sent me this teaser about the forthcoming work:

Miami, 1981. When Detective Max Mingus and his partner Joe are called to the scene of a death at Miami’s Primate Park, it looks like another routine--if slightly bizarre--investigation. Until two things turn up: the victim’s family, slaughtered; and a partly digested tarot card in the dead man’s stomach. “The King of Swords”--an increasingly bloody trail leads Max and Joe first to a sinister fortune-teller and her scheming pimp son, then to the infamous Solomon Boukman. Few have ever met the most feared criminal in Miami, but rumours abound of a forked tongue, voodoo ceremonies and friends in very high places. Against a backdrop of black magic and police corruption, Max and Joe must distinguish the good guys from the bad--and track down some answers. What is the significance of the “King of Swords”? What makes those who have swallowed the card go on a killing spree just before they die? And can Max find out the truth about Solomon Boukman, before death’s shadow reaches his own front door ...

Meanwhile, I understand that the new Webzine, UK-based Pulp Pusher, is planning a rather special exclusive in its next issue, due out this summer: a short story by Nick Stone. As PP’s enigmatic editor informs me,

Everyone knows Nick Stone is a massive talent, but let me tell you his latest offering is going to deliver the kind of punch the author was known for in his boxing days. The writing is as tasty as a bare-knuckle fighter with money on himself! Lean, mean prose that goes the distance.

When we got Nick’s submission--a short story based on the characters from his new book, King of Swords--we wanted to put it up there and then ... but, hold the phones, we’ve got to be sensible. It’s up in Issue Two which is due in early July.

Pulp Pusher’s readers are in for one hell of treat. Nick Stone might just have, single-handedly, cleared most of my debt to The Pusher!

(To learn more about Stone’s boxing days, click here.)

So the next few months will be quite a busy time for Mr. Stone. In addition to welcoming the Pulp Pusher piece and King of Swords into print, Mr. Clarinet is finally due out in the States (from William Morrow) in late June. Furthermore, Mr. Clarinet is in the running for a Best First (Thriller) Novel award from the International Thriller Writers organization. The winner will be announced, along with victors in other categories, during ThrillerFest, to be held in New York City in mid-July.

Who Let the Edgars Out?

Last night I was in New York, celebrating with authors and agents at the 61st annual Edgar Allan Poe Awards dinner. Tonight, I’m in a hotel room in L.A., awaiting tomorrow’s opening of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Whew!

But before moving on, I wanted to offer a few thoughts and observations on Thursday night’s Edgars gala:

• The most telling and honest moment of the evening for me was the speech accepting the Mystery Writers of America’s 2007 Best Novel award. The winner: Jason Goodwin for The Janissary Tree. However, it wasn’t Goodwin addressing the crowd; instead, it was his Farrar, Straus and Giroux editor, Sarah Crichton. She stated that the author wasn’t in attendance, “because the publisher was too cheap to pay for his airfare” from England. In fact, FSG didn’t believe the novel had the legs to win this award. Whoops.

• Disbelief seemed to be prevalent at the ceremony. New York Times reporter Alex Berenson accepted his award for Best First Novel by an American Author after exclaiming that he hadn’t prepared a speech because he didn’t think his book, The Faithful Spy, had a chance of winning--due to the fact that, though exceptional, “it’s a spy novel.” I was glad to see that any assumption that thrillers don’t win Edgars (but must instead wait for recognition by the International Thriller Writers or some other organization) was dispelled last night.

• So many gorgeous women made it to the Edgars banquet. Twist Phelan, Mystery Scene’s Kate Stine, and Angela Zeman at my table looked beautiful. Going around the room prior to the awards presentations, I chatted with Sarah Weinman, Carol Fitzgerald, Rosanne Coleman, and photographer Mary Reagan--all stunning.

• Members of the BBC America contingent were vocal and energetic supporters of their nominated shows. Loud shouts were heard when Life on Mars, Episode 1, with teleplay by Matthew Graham, was acclaimed as the Best Television Episode Teleplay. And even though they didn’t win the second TV Edgar, Best Television Feature/Mini-Series Teleplay (that went instead to The Wire, Season 4), I spied several BBCers standing and applauding the Home Box Office victory. Summing up The Wire’s well-deserved win, presenter Alafair Burke, referring to that series’ Season 4 screenwriters--Ed Burns, Kia Corthron, Dennis Lehane, David Mills, Eric Overmyer, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, David Simon, and William F. Zorzi--said: “With so many writers like these, how can it not be good?” A small side story here: There were three judges selecting the recipient of this particular award--Burke, Sean Doolittle, and chair Thomas H. Cook. When I lunched with Doolittle in Omaha, Nebraska, last February, I tried to get him to reveal the winner. But he wouldn’t divulge so much as a clue.

• The presentation by Stephen King (who was also receiving the MWA’s 2007 Grand Master Award) was funny. After fellow novelists Ridley Pearson and Dave Barry delivered a sort-of roast to the master of mystery and the macabre (“He was the bestselling author of all time, until J.K. Rowling came along”), they departed by introducing the evening’s best-known guest of honor--except that instead of King appearing on stage, out came Donald Westlake. Westlake (whose latest novel is What’s So Funny?) proceeded to say a few words. He described himself as the only one fatuous enough, and egotistical enough, to dare present the Grand Master Award to the master storyteller. As Westlake left, King finally took the stage.

• Speaking of funny, I really had no idea that the Today show’s Al Roker possessed such a sense of humor. After James L. Swanson accepted the Best Fact Crime award for Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, weatherman Roker asked if the author was going to “jump off the stage.”

• And speaking of funny: After the head on one of the Edgar statuettes suddenly broke off, somebody on stage (I forget who now) remarked, “Man, Stephen King is good.” (Though I heard that the horror author was not around at the time, having left soon after collecting his award.)

• While we’re on the subject of humorous incidents, let’s not forget about Jason Starr presenting the Edgar for Best Motion Picture Screenplay (won by William Monahan for The Departed) and introducing his debonair co-presenter, Lee Child, as “James Bond”; or Naomi Hirahara remarking, after accepting her Best Paperback Original award for Snakeskin Shamisen, that her mother was waiting upstairs in the hotel room. “She doesn’t want to come, unless I win,” Hirahara explained. “I guess I have to go get her.”

• How fantastic was it to see Hard Case Crime’s Charles Ardai accept the Best Short Story award for “The Home Front,” which appeared in the Harlan Coben-edited anthology, Death Do Us Part? All five contenders in that category were brilliant, so the winning nod was a tough choice--but so deserved.

• And the perfect ending for me: Kate Stine telling me that my article about hard-boiled poetry in the forthcoming edition of Mystery Scene magazine was shipped today. It ain’t an Edgar, but hey ...

Congratulations to all of last evening’s winners and nominees.

READ MORE: “Jason Goodwin: The Janissary Tree,” by Michael Allen (Grumpy Old Bookman).

It’s All Geek to Me

Well, I can be happy about one thing on this overcast Friday in Seattle: I’m not a TV geek. At least not according to TV Squad. From contributor Paul Goebel’s list of “10 Things You Need to Be a TV Geek,” I can claim a paltry one. Well, maybe two, if--under the heading of “A Videotape Filled With Episodes of a Show That Only You Enjoy” you count Bill Bixby’s The Magician or 1975’s Ellery Queen, starring Jim Hutton and David Wayne. But I don’t think you should. On the other hand, I have to confess that my musical library contains a couple of the Television’s Greatest Hits CDs, for as Goebel writes, “There is nothing like driving in your car listening to the theme from Mannix” (or The Mod Squad, or Miami Vice, or ...).

The Wait Is Over

Well, it was a race to see who could get the names of tonight’s Edgar Award recipients into the public arena the fastest. The first clues, telegraphic as they were, leaked out through Sarah Weinman’s Twitter page (despite her reluctance to subvert the Mystery Writers of America’s ridiculous prohibition on live-blogging during the Edgars banquet). George Easter at Deadly Pleasures magazine had promised to be first out with the results, but he couldn’t beat Brian Thornton, head of the MWA’s Northwest Chapter, to the punch. By 7:12 p.m. PST, Thornton had a list of the winners up at Crimespace. Easter had the official announcement a few minutes later.

Without further ado, then, this year’s Edgars go to ...

Best Novel: The Janissary Tree, by Jason Goodwin (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Also nominated: The Pale Blue Eye, by Louis Bayard (HarperCollins); Gentleman & Players, by Joanne Harris (William Morrow); The Dead Hour, by Denise Mina (Little, Brown and Company); The Virgin of Small Plains, by Nancy Pickard (Ballantine Books); and Liberation Movements, by Olen Steinhauer (St. Martin’s Minotaur)

Best First Novel by an American Author: The Faithful Spy, by Alex Berenson (Random House)

Also nominated: Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn (Shaye Areheart Books); King of Lies, by John Hart (St. Martin’s Minotaur); Holmes on the Range, by Steve Hockensmith (St. Martin’s Minotaur); and A Field of Darkness, by Cornelia Read (The Mysterious Press)

Best Paperback Original: Snakeskin Shamisen, by Naomi Hirahara (Delta Books)

Also nominated: The Goodbye Kiss, by Massimo Carlotto; translated by Lawrence Venuti (Europa Editions); The Open Curtain, by Brian Evenson (Coffee House Press); The Deep Blue Alibi, by Paul Levine (Bantam Books); and City of Tiny Lights, by Patrick Neate (Riverhead Books)

Best Fact Crime: Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, by James L. Swanson (William Morrow)

Also nominated: Strange Piece of Paradise, by Terri Jentz (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); A Death in Belmont, by Sebastian Junger (Norton); Finding Amy: A True Story of Murder in Maine, by Capt. Joseph K. Loughlin and Kate Clark Flora (University Press of New England); Ripperology: A Study of the World’s First Serial Killer, by Robin Odell (The Kent State University Press); and The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe and the Invention of Murder, by Daniel Stashower (Dutton)

Best Critical/Biographical: The Science of Sherlock Holmes: From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear, by E.J. Wagner (John Wiley & Sons)

Also nominated: Unless the Threat of Death Is Behind Them: Hard-Boiled Fiction and Film Noir, by John T. Irwin (Johns Hopkins University Press)

Best Short Story: “The Home Front,” by Charles Ardai (in Death Do Us Part, edited by Harlan Coben; Little, Brown and Company)

Also nominated: “Rain,” by Thomas H. Cook (in Manhattan Noir, edited by Lawrence Block; Akashic Books); “Cranked,” by Bill Crider (in Damn Near Dead, edited by Duane Swierczynski; Busted Flush Press); and “Building,” by S.J. Rozan (also in Manhattan Noir)

Best Juvenile: Room One: A Mystery or Two, by Andrew Clements (Simon & Schuster)

Also nominated: Gilda Joyce: The Ladies of the Lake, by Jennifer Allison (Sleuth/Dutton); The Stolen Sapphire, by Sarah Masters Buckey (American Girl Publishing); The Bloodwater Mysteries: Snatched, by Pete Hautman and Mary Logue (Sleuth/Putnam); and The Case of the Missing Marquess: An Enola Holmes Mystery, by Nancy Springer (Philomel/Sleuth)

Best Young Adult: Buried, by Robin Merrow MacCready (Dutton Children’s Books)

Also nominated: The Road of the Dead, by Kevin Brooks (The Chicken House); The Christopher Killer, by Alane Ferguson (Sleuth/Viking); Crunch Time, by Mariah Fredericks (Richard Jackson Books/Atheneum); and The Night My Sister Went Missing, by Carol Plum-Ucci (Harcourt Children’s Books)

Best Play: Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure, by Steven Dietz (Arizona Theatre Company)

Also nominated: Curtains, by Rupert Holmes (Ahmanson Theatre); and Ghosts of Ocean House, by Michael Kimball (The Players’ Ring)

Best Television Episode Teleplay: Life on Mars, Episode 1, teleplay by Matthew Graham (BBC America)

Also nominated: The Closer: “Blue Blood,” teleplay by James Duff and Mike Berchem (Turner Network Television); Dexter: “Crocodile,” teleplay by Clyde Phillips (Showtime); House: “Clueless,” teleplay by Thomas L. Moran (Fox/NBC Universal); and Monk: “Mr. Monk Gets a New Shrink,” teleplay by Hy Conrad (USA Network/NBC Universal)

Best Television Feature/Mini-Series Teleplay: The Wire, Season 4, teleplays by Ed Burns, Kia Corthron, Dennis Lehane, David Mills, Eric Overmyer, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, David Simon and William F. Zorzi (HBO)

Also nominated: Conviction, teleplay by Bill Gallagher (BBC America); Cracker: A New Terror, teleplay by Jimmy McGovern (BBC America); Messiah: The Harrowing, teleplay by Terry Cafolla (BBC America); and Secret Smile, teleplay by Kate Brooke, based on the book by Nicci French (BBC America)

Best Motion Picture Screenplay: The Departed, screenplay by William Monahan (Warner Bros.)

Also nominated: Casino Royale, screenplay by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis, based on a novel by Ian Fleming (MGM); Children of Men, screenplay by Alfonso Cuarón, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, based on a novel by P.D. James (Universal); The Good Shepherd, teleplay by Eric Roth (Universal); and Notes on a Scandal, screenplay by Patrick Marber (Scott Rudin Productions)

Dylan Schaffer, who was one of the Best Novel judges this year, had hinted a few hours before these announcements were made that “given how we came out [on the choices], there may well be something to talk about.” Indeed, for I’d expected either Bayard’s The Pale Blue Eye or Nancy Pickard’s The Virgin of Small Plains to walk away with Best Novel honors. And I would’ve bet real money--maybe a lot of it--that Cornelia Read would be victorious in the Best First Novel by an American Author category for her work, A Field of Darkness. Which just goes to show the wisdom behind my not ever gambling for money ...

READ MORE: “The Edgars in Bulletpoints,” by Sarah Weinman (Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind); “The Edgar Banquet” (Dave White’s Writing Block).

Judge Not, Lest Ye Be … Oh, Never Mind

As we await tonight’s announcement of the 2007 Edgar Allan Poe Award winners, author Dylan Schaffer (Misdemeanor Man, I Right the Wrongs), who this year helped judge entries in the Best Novel category, has been kind enough to give us first crack at his poetic musings on the judging process:

Thoughts of an Edgars (Best Novel) Judge,
in the Form of 25 Haikus

Everyone has an
Opinion. But for better
Or worse, we decide.

To judge, to choose, to
Wake at three a.m. thinking:
Should I keep writing?

What makes a good book?
Maybe you have the answer.
If so, please call. Now.

Regrets, I’ve had a
Few, but then again to few ...
Well, more than a few.

One book was so bad,
And sold so well, I thought, geez,
Maybe I’ll write bad.

But then I obsessed
On that last adjective; ought
To be an adverb.

Seems to me the real
Geniuses are the ones whose
Books sell at Costco.

When I get there, I’m
Going to throw a party.
You’ll be invited.

Edgar judging rules
Are secret. But rest assured,
’Cause I’m a lawyer.

Once I saw Robert
Bork eat a tuna sandwich.
Which just goes to show,

I’m in a better
Position to judge if we
Were fair or not. Right?

And we were, we were.
The pay doesn’t exactly
Encourage big graft.

Anyway, we write.
So even if we are not
Harvard-trained chemists,

Or winners of the
National Book Award, we
Think we picked damn well.

Pardon me while I
Go make my lunch. That tuna
Reference caused hunger.

[One hour later]

The best thing about
Picking an Edgar winner:
So many good books.

The worst thing about
Picking an Edgar winner:
So many good books.

Seriously, it
Made me wonder what the hell
I’m doing writing.

I’m a much better
Cook than a novel writer.
Maybe Iron Chef

Will have me. Maybe
I could open a combo
Deli/launder mat.

In my humble view
My books should have been winners,
But for the others,

Which were much better.
I tell people I was on
The Edgar long list.

Anyway, some will
Complain and some will cheer us.
Then it’s back to work,

Writing, reading, more
Fighting the keyboard for the
Words, the damn words. But

Can you imagine?
Five hundred forty crime books?
Go on. I dare you.

By the way, Schaffer’s latest book is actually a memoir titled Life, Death & Bialys: A Father/Son Baking Story, which contains no out-and-out poetry at all.

More than “Skin” Deep

If you aren’t already familiar with police procedural author Stuart MacBride, you might well become so over the next week, since his third novel, Broken Skin, is just now being released in the UK. (It’s due for publication in the States in August, under the title Bloodshot.) MacBride hails from Scotland’s City of Granite, Aberdeen, in which I have spent much time over the years, due to its links to the petroleum industry, which long ago overtook Aberdeen’s fishing- and quarrying-based economy. Given the dark light in which MacBride casts his hometown, Aberdeen might not be totally thrilled with the fact that his books are heightening the city’s notoriety internationally.

I first bumped into MacBride during Left Coast Crime 2006, in Bristol, England, after his debut novel, Cold Granite, was shortlisted by the International Thriller Writers in their Best First Thriller category. (Cold Granite also made the cut as one of January Magazine’s favorite books of 2005.) When novelist Gayle Lynds announced that Cold Granite had been nominated, MacBride was discernibly shocked, and he went to the podium quivering. How, I asked myself, can a novelist who writes about the grim crimes that his fictional Detective Sergeant Logan McRae is sent to investigate, possibly quiver?

I had hoped to meet MacBride for lunch during the recent London Book Fair, since I knew he was speaking during the event; but because of a diary clash, I could only attend the first day of that fair. So lunch was out. Too bad, since his publisher, HarperCollins UK, has been touting Broken Skin as another memorably tough ride through Logan McRae’s life:

A new Logan McRae thriller from the bestselling author of ‘Cold Granite’ and ‘Dying Light’, set in gritty Aberdeen. In the pale grey light of a chilly February, Aberdeen is not at its best! There’s a rapist prowling the city’s cold granite streets, leaving a string of tortured women behind. But while DS Logan McRae’s girlfriend is out acting as bait, he’s dealing with the blood-drenched body of an unidentified male, dumped outside Accident and Emergency. When a stash of explicit films turn up, all featuring the victim, it looks as if someone in the local bondage community has developed a taste for violent death, and Logan gets dragged into the twilight world of pornographers, sex-shops and S&M. To make matters worse, when they finally arrest the Granite City Rapist, Grampian Police are forced by the courts to let him go: Aberdeen Football Club’s star striker has an alibi for every attack. Could they really have got it so badly wrong? Logan thinks so, but the trick will be getting anyone to listen before the real rapist strikes again. Especially as his girlfriend, PC Jackie ‘Ball Breaker’ Watson, is convinced the footballer is guilty and she’s hell-bent on a conviction at any cost.

Instead, I called him up and asked him to answer just one question--the one I rarely ask, but for MacBride I decided to make an exception:

So Stuart, where the hell did your idea for Broken Skin come from?

I haven’t a damned clue, Mr. Karim. ... That’s what I always say when people ask me where the idea for Broken Skin came from, but I don’t. I’ve got a pat answer about how I wanted to write a book with John Rickards [shown in the photo above, with MacBride on the left] in it so I could take the piss out of him. And what better way to do that than have him be a police constable with a thing for bondage and the nickname “Spanky”?

But if I’m being brutally honest, I haven’t got a sodding clue where this one came from. Yes, there were some little snippets that had been lurking about in the dusty corners of my brain for years, but nothing that explains what actually ended up on the bookshop shelves.

And the weird thing is that this is the book I spent the most time planning. This was not one of my three scribbles on a napkin, wing and a prayer efforts. I pitched Dying Light [2006] to my editors at a drunken bash in the HarperCollins offices (or at least it was drunken for me--everyone else had work to do, but I didn’t: Wheeeeeee!) “Iss ... isss about drugs and dogs an’... an’... yeah, I’d love some more champagne ... iss ... where was I?” But not Broken Skin. No, for that one I went all professional and produced a detailed point-by-point plan from start to finish.

The only problem being that the book I turned in bore only a superficial resemblance to the one I said I was going to write. Somewhere along the way (page three I think) it all went different, and my carefully laid plans ganged aft agley, faster than you could shake a mouse. Rodenty little bastards that they are.

I suppose I could blame the research: speaking to people involved in the bondage scene was an eye-opener, and a lot of stuff that ended up in the book would never have been there otherwise. Or I could blame a crappy year--three bouts of surgery involving someone clambering up my nose with a pointy knife; or I could blame the Inspiration Fairy for dragging my poor pain-killer-addled brain in strange directions. Did I mention that they drilled holes in my skull?

Or maybe it’s a case of breaking all the rules. They say in crime fiction you should never kill children (did that in Cold Granite), you should never kill pets (dismembered a Labrador in Dying Light), but most of all you should never, EVER talk about sex. Or people will assume you’re into whatever your characters get up to between their rubber sheets. Which, given the onscreen antics in Broken Skin, isn’t exactly the recipe for a quiet life ...

But in the end I honestly have no idea where anything in Broken Skin came from. And I know that’s not what you’re supposed to tell people. There’s supposed to be some clear moment of inspiration that everything else hangs off. Something that people can look at, think about, and go, “Ah ... I see. It all makes perfect sense!” Only it doesn’t.

To learn more about Stuart MacBride and his dark but humor-laced work, listen to The Independent’s podcast interview with the author, available here.

Erdman Cashes Out

International business writer and former Swiss banker Paul E. Erdman, who picked up an Edgar Award for his first novel of financial intrigue, The Billion Dollar Sure Thing (1973), died this last Monday, April 23, at his ranch in Healdsburg, California, reportedly from cancer. He was 74 years old.

“Not too many mystery writers can claim to have created a whole new sub-genre, but ... that’s what Paul Erdman did,” writes Steve Lewis at Mystery*File. Adds The New York Times: “An economist and former Lutheran seminarian, Mr. Erdman was widely regarded as having popularized financial fiction, a genre he affectionately called fi-fi. ... Mr. Erdman was in all likelihood one of the few novelists whose books were routinely reviewed--often glowingly--in Business Week and The American Banker as well as in mainstream publications. His novels featured exotic locales, shadowy cartels and lots and lots of money.” Among the author’s other best-known works are The Crash of ’79 (1976), The Panic of ’89 (1986), and The Set-Up (1997). His 1974 novel, The Silver Bears, was made into a 1978 movie starring Michael Caine, Martin Balsam, and Cybill Shepherd.

The Times’ Margelit Fox recalls that Erdman got his start as a writer while he was imprisoned for a time in Switzerland, following the collapse of his Swiss bank, which had lost “tens of millions of dollars” through “unauthorized speculation in cocoa and silver futures.”

It was by all accounts a very nice dungeon. Room service, complete with fine wines, was provided (at Mr. Erdman’s expense) by the best local restaurants. The wine would come in handy later, as he discovered.

Mr. Erdman also had a portable Olivetti, and to pass the time, he decided to write a nonfiction book about economics. But the one thing the dungeon lacked was a research library, so he turned the book into a novel.

Writing was a struggle at first. But help arrived in the form of a new inmate, a Frenchman reputed to be the finest safecracker in Europe.

“I sent him over a couple of bottles of wine, and in exchange he told me a way for an amateur to crack a safe rather easily with ordinary equipment,” Mr. Erdman told The New York Times in 1981. “That became the first scene in the first chapter in my first novel.”

The novel was, of course, The Billion Dollar Sure Thing.

(Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)

Prelude to an Edgar

This year’s journey to the Edgar Allan Poe Awards began in New York City around the middle of April--a busy month for crime fiction fans--when the weather was still cold and raw. On Wednesday, April 11, novelists Meredith Anthony and Lawrence Light stopped by the Black Orchid Bookshop on East 81st Street to sign copies of their new book, Ladykiller. A store-packing crowd showed up that night, and the two authors came with champagne in hand to lighten the mood. Proprietors Bonnie Claeson and Joe Guglielmelli poured drinks up front for anyone who walked inside to purchase the novel, or just to meet its creators before they left to promote their work at SleuthFest in Miami (which, as everyone hereabouts knows, is the sixth borough of New York).

Now jump ahead to Tuesday, April 17, when the energy was ratcheted up by the appearance of Reed Farrel Coleman at The Mysterious Bookshop on Warren Street. Coleman, who can be very entertaining in front of a crowd (the members of which this evening included Lee Child, Jonathan Santlofer, and S.J. Rozan), read from and then signed copies of his newest P.I. Moe Prager novel, Soul Patch. Before reading from Chapter One, though, Coleman let those attending know that his publisher, Bleak House, put the wrong image on the hardcover edition of his book. The main action in Soul Patch takes place in Brooklyn, New York, and the Parachute Jump ride at Coney Island was supposed to front the novel. Instead, that ride was placed on the inside front jacket. (Bleak House did get it right on the paperback, at least). Coleman put a positive spin on matters, however: he urged those who bought his work in hardback to treat it like a mis-stamped coin, something that might have extra value because of the error. Yet the word from people who’ve read Soul Patch already is that the real value is on the inside--many think it’s Coleman’s best writing yet.

The following Sunday, April 22, was a perfect opportunity to have a beer and bask in the pre-Edgar glow, as Hard Case Crime took over the KGB Bar on East 4th Street for readings. Guests of honor came from the growing Hard Case stable: Jason Starr, Richard Aleas (aka HCC honcho Charles Ardai), Peter Pavia, and Max Phillips. Starr read from Slide, his upcoming sequel to last year’s Bust (both of which he co-authored with Irish celebrity Ken Bruen), while Aleas/Ardai gave listeners a sampling of Songs of Innocence, his follow-up to 2004’s Little Girl Lost. Both of these novels are knock-outs, and fans of their authors are going to be hard-boiled happy campers come publication time.

Then last night, April 24, as momentum was building toward The Big Event (that is, the Edgar banquet and awards dispersal), the Black Orchid threw its annual Edgar cocktail party. If, for some reason, you’re in Manhattan at this time of year and can’t attend the Edgar banquet, you will want to at least get to the Black Orchid party--it’s that good, year in and year out. On Tuesday, the weather was balmy and in the mid-70s, the beer was cold, and the crowd was thick and worth watching. I had the chance to converse briefly with Dave White, whose first novel, When One Man Dies, is due out in September, and who happens to share a birthday with Lee Child (October 29). Elsewhere, I spotted Carol Fitzgerald of Book Reporter.com; Harry Hunsicker, who’d come to this fête with his lovely wife; and Jason Starr affixing his John Hancock to copies of Bust, while Jonathan Santlofer inked copies of his new novel, Anatomy of Fear. Blogger-critic-industry watcher Sarah Weinman bounced from person to person, chatting the whole time (who doesn’t want to say hello to Sarah?), while Gerald So very articulately and objectively discussed the works of Robert Crais, photographer extraordinaire Mary Reagan captured the night on film, and my fellow Rap Sheet contributor Megan Abbott told me that re-reading her own recent second novel, The Song Is You, kept her entertained during a long, dull experience of jury duty. Another colleague, fellow Demolition Magazine contributor James McGowan, stopped by with his fetching girlfriend, and we debated the merits of going to Bouchercon this year in Anchorage, Alaska. Still no decision.

Which brings us up to today and the Edgar symposium, a daylong affair capped off with an agents and editors party--the last events before Edgar banquet attendees prepare to don their formal attire and line up at the Hyatt Hotel bars. If you couldn’t make the symposium--and there were some terrific panels, as well as a question-and-answer session during which Charles Ardai interviewed new Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Stephen King--the MWA will put on sale CDs and DVDs of this day’s events, so you can hear or watch your favorite authors talk about relevant topics, such as the merits of writing a series versus standalones, or what elements combine to make a great book.

The anticipation of tomorrow’s awards, pre- and post-parties, and the chance conversations that might very well lead to new projects or new associations is now pretty hard to contain. And not just for the award nominees.

Let the games begin!

Head Games

“Vinnie’s Head, by debut novelist Marc Lecard, brings gonzo noir to [New York’s] Long Island,” enthuses James R. Winter in his review of that new novel, posted today in January Magazine. He goes on to write that Lecard “has penned one of the fastest, most ridiculous, and funniest romps of 2007 so far.”

The story is certainly one of the more twisted we’ve seen all year. It involves a severed head, caught off the end of a town dock by a small-town crook, Johnnie LoDuco, who just lost his best friend to gut-toting mobsters, after Johnnie “borrowed” that pal’s identity in pulling off a convenience store heist. Then there’s the informercial doctor who had been planning to run off to Paraguay, after pulling off a credit-card scam with Johnnie and his friend--a doc who just killed someone for the motel suite in which she and Johnnie are hiding out. And don’t forget the giant bounty hunter named Stosh, or the mobster with the cute cognomen “Worm Lips,” or the dreadlocked computer-hacking video-store clerk, or the serial murderer-turned-private eye, or ...

Well, that’s enough to prove Winter’s point, that “Vinnie’s Head is a lesson in the absurd,” delivered “with tongue firmly planted in cheek.” You can read the full review here.

New Debut Novel Contest

How appropriate it is that publisher St. Martin’s Minotaur and the Mystery Writers of America should piggyback on all of the excitement surrounding this week’s Edgar Award events to announce their new first crime novel competition. As a joint news release explains, “This contest provides a previously unpublished writer an opportunity to launch his or her career with a major mystery imprint, St. Martin’s Minotaur. The winner will receive a one-book, $10,000 contract.” Contest rules, guidelines on eligibility, and information about requesting entry forms can be found here.

Making Art of Life

In an Earth Day-related issue predominately devoted to the dangers--physical and political--of climate change, The Nation magazine also hosts a fine essay about the life and linked fiction of Georges Simenon. In it, contributor Marco Roth opines:

To posterity, then, the Belgian-born writer appears as one of literature’s great graphomaniacs. Where other novelists had moods, fantasies and love affairs that may or may not have influenced their work, Simenon seemed to turn every mood, every passing fantasy, every love affair into a novel. And there were quite a lot of fantasies and affairs. On the rare occasions when he wasn't writing, Simenon had lots of sex: with prostitutes, mistresses--even with wives (he had two, although his preferred mode was a ménage à trois that included a housekeeper or personal secretary). It usually took him between six and fourteen days to produce a novel. The affairs often took an equivalent amount of time, while the marriages averaged twenty years.

Literary theorist Gérard Genette remarked that graphomaniacs pose a special problem to scholars since it’s hard to know where life ends and writing begins. Does it make sense to mark the end of one novel and the beginning of the next, or should the entire lifework, including journals and random jottings, be understood as a sort of stream of consciousness, and the pauses in between as merely like rests in music? Simenon is a perfect test case, despite the sharply defined compartments and the tight formulaic plots he used to separate the man who was Maigret from the man who was more often [Inspector Jules] Maigret’s quarry--the man who could write The Engagement, a novel that eerily predicted the psychological mechanics of fascism, and the man who lived a comfortable war in an aristocrat’s chateau, hosting dinners for German officers while the Nazi-run film industry adapted nine of his novels.

Roth’s full essay can be read here.

Out of Mind, But Online

Earlier this month, while penning a post about what would’ve been the 145th birthday of “inverted detective story” innovator R. Austin Freeman, I realized that a number of Freeman’s mystery tales from the early 20th century are available--in their entirety--from the wonderful Project Gutenberg site. Then, just the other day, I came across a review in Mystery*File of The Bittermeads Mystery (1922), by E.R. Punshon--somebody I’d never even heard of, much less read. (The author of a Web site devoted to Punshon’s work and memory acknowledges that his subject is “one of the most shamefully neglected writers of detective fiction.”) That critique, composed by Mary Read--the co-author, with Eric Mayer, of the John the Eunuch mysteries--concludes with a note about Read and Mayer being “in the process of compiling an online directory of all freely available e-texts of mystery fiction published during the Golden Age of Detection.”

Naturally, I clicked right over to this new Maywrite Library site. There, I found dozens of links to classic mystery and detective stories--by both American and British authors--that, with the passage of time, have fallen into the public domain, and are available at no cost on the Web. Included among these literary riches are Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, Charles Dickens’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Jacques Futrelle’s famous “Thinking Machine” stories, Marie Belloc Lowndes’ The Lodger, and G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday. Some of these particular offerings are damnably difficult to find in print anymore.

Intrigued, I dash off an e-note to Mary Read, asking for some background on The Maywrite Library and inquiring as to her intentions with this site. She responded within a very short while:

The Maywrite Library came about in this wise. As a longtime devotee of Golden Age and earlier mysteries, I noticed Gutenberg and other sites offer no end of e-texts of same. Some titles are virtually unheard of (no pun intended) these days, for example Punshon, while others are known far and wide. So it was great fun finding hidden gems and rereading old favourites. It then occurred to me perhaps other fans of these novels might find a page listing e-texts handy, since some titles are buried in sites and less easy to find, particularly if the authors’ names are lesser known. So I began keeping notes of URLs of novels and adding them to the list as they were located. There must be hundreds of them online, and that’s even before we get to Edgar Wallace! The temptation is to read them as they are noticed, and in fact your e-mail arrived while I was in the middle of the Malcolm Sage collection mentioned on the library page.

What does it entail? Keeping an eye out for vintage e-texts and the occasional search for same by name or title. As for how far the library will go ... we’ll just keep adding those we find or hear about, so your guess is as good as mine. We only hope that folk find as much enjoyment as we do from these sometimes forgotten gems, although of course this list cannot be comprehensive given the number of appropriate titles lurking about in the ether.

Of course, not everyone enjoys reading lengthy works on a computer screen. But you can always print out stories you’d like to enjoy later on. And if you know of other e-texts that aren’t mentioned already on the Maywrite Library page, send a note to Read at maywrite@epix.net. We’ll check back site sometime soon, just to see how this project progresses.