Tree, Tech, and Typos

Well, it’s finally happened: Those of us manning the giant, cluttered Rap Sheet desk have decided to take a couple of long-overdue days off. But before we turn out the lights here, let us leave you with a few notes and bits of news to chew on:

• We’re still two months away from the release of Max Allan Collins’ next Hard Case Crime novel, Deadly Beloved. But already GalleyCat is reporting that this first novel-length adventure for comic-books private eye Ms. Tree “is headed to the Oxygen Network as a potential pilot.” As Ron Hogan explains, “The novel stars Michael Tree, a widowed private investigator (her husband was also named Michael) who Collins, along with artist Terry Beatty, first introduced to readers in the 1980s indie comic Ms. Tree. The site [Comics2Film] describes the novel as ‘a Casino Royale-style reboot’ that preserves Tree’s fundamental character with a bit of modernization.”

• Los Angeles writer-blogger Stephen Blackmoore is the willing subject of Angie Johnson-Schmit’s latest In for Questioning podcast interview. During their exchange, he talks about “the perils of mixing horror and crime, the general squickiness of undead sex, and the tastiness (or lack thereof) of candy corn and wax lips.” You can listen to the results here. And in case, like us, you’d never heard the term “squickiness,” here’s the definition. Now, try to use that in everyday conversation ...

• Authors are always troubled by typos--no matter how small--that somehow creep in their books. But the circumstances surrounding Tess Gerritsen and the paperback edition of her 2006 novel, The Mephisto Club, would send many wordsmiths into high orbit. “Three different readers have e-mailed me about a major printing blooper ...,” Gerritsen writes in her blog. “The copies they bought were missing pages 21-53. In their place, instead, was a section from a Perry O’Shaughnessy novel. That’s three whole chapters of my story they’re missing, and those chapters contain vital clues to the mystery. Oy vey.” You can say that again.

• Book2Book reports that Hamburg Kriminalhauptkommissar Jan Fabel, the star so far of three novels (Blood Eagle, Brother Grimm, and this year’s Eternal) by award-winning British author Craig Russell, is headed to German television. The first of those three books to be adapted for the small screen will be 2006’s Brother Grimm. Read more here. (Hat tip to the Euro Crime blog.)

• UK screenwriter and novelist Stephen Gallagher subjects his new historical novel, The Kingdom of Bones, to Marshal Zeringue’s famed Page 69 Test. As it turns out, Bones’ page 69 marks a major plot development, transforming Gallagher’s protagonist from a peaceable citizen into a hunted man. Equally interesting, though, are the author’s remarks on his intentions with this novel (which, you may recall, was one of the books I most looked forward to reading this season). Gallagher explains:

As a teenager I had a fascination with old-time Penny Dreadfuls and turn-of-the-century thrill fiction. Tom Sayers was a leading character in one of those old story papers, The Marvel. Loosely--very loosely--based on an actual historical figure, the fictional Sayers was your classic Victorian hero. Clean-living, morally upright, and with a hero’s enviable physical prowess.

These were the unsung narratives of the Age of the Great Storytellers. They gripped the masses, but they weren’t made to travel. Haven’t you ever bought the DVD set of a TV show you used to love, and realised with a twinge of sadness that what you’re experiencing isn’t pure joy, but rather that joy remembered?

It takes more than just the old material to recreate a form. My ambition with The Kingdom of Bones was to take the characters, settings and narrative pacing of those old stories, and to bring them to new life with the kind of themes and complex psychology that we look for in modern fiction.

Read more from Gallagher about his page 69 here.

• Did you know that California novelist Nichelle D. Tramble (The Dying Ground, The Last King) is among the writers working on ABC-TV’s new police procedural/legal drama, Women’s Mystery Club, set to debut next Friday night? Yeah, neither did I. But Tramble has been blogging about her participation in the show, which stars Angie Harmon, Linda Park, Paula Newsome, and others, and is apparently based on a series of books by James Patterson. For a preview of that program, click over here.

• In celebration of his 100th post at Pulpetti, Finnish writer Juri Nummelin pays tribute not to his own accomplishment (though that might have been justified), but instead to what he calls “the grittiest and darkest western novel I’ve ever read.” And no, it’s not by Elmore Leonard. Click here to find out more.

• Writing in the Palo Alto Weekly, author Keith Raffel (Dot.Dead) asks why there aren’t more crime novels being set in Northern California’s Silicon Valley:

With the perfect ingredients for a mystery just lying here, why do so many authors persist in setting their mysteries in the old standbys, while next to none take advantage of the seething turmoil of the Valley?

Technology as the background for a compelling story can lead to bestsellerdom as Joseph Finder and Michael Crichton have proven. If Silicon Valley is the center of world technology, why is it not the hub of high-tech mysteries and thrillers? Of course, behind the Valley’s high-tech image lurks very human motives and emotions--the Valley’s position at the center of world technology is based in no small part on disloyalty and betrayal. If young technologists could not break away from companies run by an older generation of entrepreneurs to start up their own firms, Silicon Valley would still be known as the Valley of Heart’s Delight and covered by orchards rather than tilt-up buildings.

The neglect of the Valley as a setting cannot be that business is the wrong background for a mystery. The Enron trial played out in compelling drama on the nation’s finance pages. Financial meltdowns are all too familiar to Valley denizens. Using the dot-com implosion as background could give a mystery writer a chance to show the mighty made humble--always a popular theme--or show how a fallen icon can rise again--an equally popular storyline.

Sure, we in the Valley are not quite so cocky as we were in 1999, but mystery writers have shown themselves to be more than adept in setting books among dissolution and decline.

Hmm. Do we detect a promotional motive behind Raffel trying to interest the world in mysteries set in California’s high-tech corridor? After all, the subtitle of Dot.Dead is “A Silicon Valley Mystery.” Read his full essay here.

• And where in the blazes did Bill Crider get that cool slideshow of old Harry Whittington book jackets for his blog? Will this technological add-on become the Next Big Thing for bloggers? See it for yourself right here.