Saturday, March 31, 2007
All in the Fuckin’ Family
As every fan of The Sopranos knows, that award-winning HBO mobster family drama, which debuted in 1999, is set to end its run with nine new episodes, beginning next Sunday, April 8. In case you haven’t been keeping up, though, some video-editing wiz has helpfully spliced together six years of Sopranos highlights into a seven-minute clip that recounts the murders, the adultery, the revenge, the deceits, and the duck appearances that together made this David Chase series so worth watching. Funny stuff. See it here.
The Battle Is Joined
We reported just a couple of days ago on Penguin’s aggressive efforts to capture a larger share of the UK crime and thriller market. Those moves seem to have kicked other British publishers into higher gear, as they try to hold their ground.
Among the houses girding for battle is Headline, part of the Hachette Livre group (France’s largest publisher, which also owns the UK’s Orion Publishing Group). Last week, Headline hosted a Crime Fiction Party at Browns Courtrooms on St. Martin’s Lane near Covent Garden, in London, to promote its authors in the genre. I attended with Shots editor Mike Stotter, and the two of us met up with author-reviewer Peter Guttridge (Cast Adrift) and Crime Time editor Barry Forshaw for a quick beer before the festivities commenced. We frequently compare notes on what’s new and forthcoming in the genre, as we all of us are under daunting reading pressures at this time of year, what with the summer publishing schedule approaching.
Finally joining the party, Mike and I toasted publicist Becky Fincham, who we’ve known for many years, and who was at HarperCollins UK before her recent move over to Headline. The party also introduced Headline’s newly revamped Web-based magazine, Crime Files, which is (thankfully) no longer in PDF format, and gives a good overview of Headline’s future titles and information about its stable of writers. Well worth a browse.
Headline did a fine job of gathering together its very diverse group of crime and thriller authors. And book critics, besides. Among those on hand were Mike Ripley, Ayo Onatade from the Mystery Women site, Geoff Bradley from the magazine CADS [Crime and Detective Stories], Bob Cornwall from the Tangled Web site, the ubiquitous Maxim Jakubowski, and John Dugdale of The Guardian.
As I made the partying rounds, I chatted with Mark Billingham, who, I discovered, is currently taking a break from his Tom Thorne police procedurals (Buried) in order to pen a crime standalone (for release in 2008). But fear not, Thorne fans, for another entry in that series, Death Message, is due out this summer. In addition, I encountered such novelists as Lesley Horton, Rob Ryan, and Louise Penny. I also heard whispers about one of my favorite authors, Paul Johnston, who has been seriously ill, but is thankfully back in action, with a heavily anticipated, standalone thriller, Death List, due this summer.
Typical of parties thrown by large publishers here in London, the drink and food were plentiful at this Headline fête, and members of the Headline team were on hand to talk up coming titles on their crime and thriller list. I must say that I’m impressed by the fact that in addition to Headline’s big-name wordsmiths, such as David Morrell (Scavenger), Martina Cole (Close), James Patterson (Step on a Crack), and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (whose Sherlock Holmes books are all being reissued with a “stunning, fresh new look”), the house also promotes lesser-known authors such as Patrick Quinlan, Scott Frost, the aforementioned Ms. Penny, and Jed Rubenfeld, whose best-selling debut novel, The Interpretation of Murder, just won the Richard & Judy Best of the Year Award.
Being something of a party animal, I enjoyed the hectic scene of mingling and chatting about books, glugging back glasses of red wine and grabbing proof copies of upcoming Headline treats. And I left with plenty of photographs, which I’ve organized into a slideshow, available here.
Among the houses girding for battle is Headline, part of the Hachette Livre group (France’s largest publisher, which also owns the UK’s Orion Publishing Group). Last week, Headline hosted a Crime Fiction Party at Browns Courtrooms on St. Martin’s Lane near Covent Garden, in London, to promote its authors in the genre. I attended with Shots editor Mike Stotter, and the two of us met up with author-reviewer Peter Guttridge (Cast Adrift) and Crime Time editor Barry Forshaw for a quick beer before the festivities commenced. We frequently compare notes on what’s new and forthcoming in the genre, as we all of us are under daunting reading pressures at this time of year, what with the summer publishing schedule approaching.
Finally joining the party, Mike and I toasted publicist Becky Fincham, who we’ve known for many years, and who was at HarperCollins UK before her recent move over to Headline. The party also introduced Headline’s newly revamped Web-based magazine, Crime Files, which is (thankfully) no longer in PDF format, and gives a good overview of Headline’s future titles and information about its stable of writers. Well worth a browse.
Headline did a fine job of gathering together its very diverse group of crime and thriller authors. And book critics, besides. Among those on hand were Mike Ripley, Ayo Onatade from the Mystery Women site, Geoff Bradley from the magazine CADS [Crime and Detective Stories], Bob Cornwall from the Tangled Web site, the ubiquitous Maxim Jakubowski, and John Dugdale of The Guardian.
As I made the partying rounds, I chatted with Mark Billingham, who, I discovered, is currently taking a break from his Tom Thorne police procedurals (Buried) in order to pen a crime standalone (for release in 2008). But fear not, Thorne fans, for another entry in that series, Death Message, is due out this summer. In addition, I encountered such novelists as Lesley Horton, Rob Ryan, and Louise Penny. I also heard whispers about one of my favorite authors, Paul Johnston, who has been seriously ill, but is thankfully back in action, with a heavily anticipated, standalone thriller, Death List, due this summer.
Typical of parties thrown by large publishers here in London, the drink and food were plentiful at this Headline fête, and members of the Headline team were on hand to talk up coming titles on their crime and thriller list. I must say that I’m impressed by the fact that in addition to Headline’s big-name wordsmiths, such as David Morrell (Scavenger), Martina Cole (Close), James Patterson (Step on a Crack), and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (whose Sherlock Holmes books are all being reissued with a “stunning, fresh new look”), the house also promotes lesser-known authors such as Patrick Quinlan, Scott Frost, the aforementioned Ms. Penny, and Jed Rubenfeld, whose best-selling debut novel, The Interpretation of Murder, just won the Richard & Judy Best of the Year Award.
Being something of a party animal, I enjoyed the hectic scene of mingling and chatting about books, glugging back glasses of red wine and grabbing proof copies of upcoming Headline treats. And I left with plenty of photographs, which I’ve organized into a slideshow, available here.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Top Cops and Slick Dicks
This isn’t the first time I’ve addressed the question of the greatest detectives in TV history, and it undoubtedly won’t be the last. As long as people are free to exercise independent judgment, such matters will go unresolved. Nonetheless, I feel the overwhelming need to tell TV Squad contributor Bob Sassone that he’s full of shit. But I say that in the nicest way possible, since I generally respect Sassone’s writing in TV Squad, Salon, and elsewhere. It’s just that, when he got around to making lists of American TV’s five greatest police detectives and eight greatest private eyes, he seems to have abandoned his keen sense of the differentiation between “great” and merely “good.”Here, for instance, are his greatest police detectives picks:
1. Lieutenant Columbo, Columbo (Peter Falk)
2. Sledge Hammer, Sledge Hammer! (David Rasche)
3. Steve McGarrett, Hawaii Five-O (Jack Lord)
4. Detective Robert Goren, Law & Order: Criminal Intent (Vincent D’Onofrio)
5. Dr. R. Quincy, Quincy, M.E. (Jack Klugman)
And of course, I must follow with his rundown of the P.I.s he thinks are most deserving of plaudits:
1. Spenser, Spenser: For Hire (Robert Urich)
2. Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett)
3. Thomas Banacek, Banacek (George Peppard)
4. Jessica Fletcher, Murder, She Wrote (Angela Lansbury)
5. Carl Kolchak, Kolchak: The Night Stalker (Darren McGavin)
6. Mike Hammer, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (Stacey Keach)
7. Robert McCall, The Equalizer (Edward Woodward)
8. Thomas Magnum, Magnum, P.I. (Tom Selleck)
Given that he’s no dumb guy, Sassone justifies his 13 choices here--some more ably than others. The problem is that he’s simply wrong in touting a few of these characters, while failing to mention more deserving candidates. I mean, how could anyone promote annoying Jessica Fletcher over, say, Jim Rockford (James Garner), who as far as I’m concerned should be at the very top of any list of best TV private eyes. And while I can agree with most of the five police detectives he mentions, and certainly endorse his selection of the dogged Columbo for the numero uno spot, was Sassone smoking crack and drinking Cuervo by the bucketful when he decided that the ridiculous Sledge Hammer--a parody of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry--should follow the unassuming L.A. cop on this roster? What’s more, Kolchak wasn’t even a private eye, unless you use the most liberal description of the job, in which case--though I liked Night Stalker as much as the next TV geek--a number of investigating attorneys, from Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) to Tony Petrocelli (Barry Newman), as well as Wild West gun-for-hire Paladin (Richard Boone, from Have Gun--Will Travel), would qualify as contestants for placement on this list--and perhaps be more deserving of inclusion than McGavin’s rumpled reporter-cum-monster slayer.
Rather than just dump on Sassone here, though, I would like to suggest my own nominees in both categories--and then let you, the readers, have a say on these subjects, too.
Me first. My top five choices for TV private eyes are:
1. Jim Rockford, The Rockford Files (James Garner): Hands-down, Rockford is the best private eye in an American TV series, a sleuth with a heart of gold but a bank account seriously in need of funds, and less bravery than bunco talent to go around.
2. Harry Orwell, Harry O (David Janssen): I just got through gushing all over Janssen’s dour detective, so I won’t bore you with more enthusiasm. But I will add that the pantheon of TV “eyes” who can make you happy to have watched an episode of their series, even when its plot was thin or transparent, is pretty damn small; Harry O, though, deserves a spot in those exalted ranks.
3. Jake Axminster, City of Angels (Wayne Rogers): Rogers left his plum role on M*A*S*H to star in this 1976, Stephen J. Cannell/Roy Huggins-created NBC series about an often frustrated and confused, but still determined gumshoe
working the Depression-hit streets of L.A. in the 1930s. Sadly, City of Angels didn’t get a sufficient run and Rogers later dissed it for bad scripting. Others knocked it for its obvious debts to 1974’s Chinatown. Yet some of this series’ stories (particularly the three-part opener, “The November Plan,” based on a real-life undercover conspiracy by big-money businessmen to overthrow President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933), were both novel and memorable. If anyone out there has tapes of City of Angels episodes that they’d like to share, I’ll be the first to put in a request.4. Spenser, Spenser: For Hire (Robert Urich): Here, I’ve got to go along with Sassone, who writes that the eponymous character, adapted from Robert B. Parker’s still-continuing series, “was smart, clever, caring, a wiseass, and ridiculously moral. What else do you want in a private eye?” ’Nuff said.
5. Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett): Again, when Sassone is right, he’s right. And even though part of me thinks membership on this list ought to be restricted to characters who originated on television, not also those who leapt to the small screen from the printed page, Brett’s decade-long portrayal (1984-1994) of Holmes in a series of Granada Television films was outstanding. Better than any other actor who has played Holmes (sorry, Basil Rathbone, wherever you are), he captured the incisive intelligence, antisocial air, and tendency toward manic behavior that are all part of the “consulting detective” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle left to the ages.
As I said, I’d make fewer modifications in Sassone’s rundown of estimable police detectives. Columbo’s an obvious winner, and plaudits are certainly due for D’Onofrio’s Goren, who seems perpetually to be right on the edge of exploding--shattering his intense and brainy front to show that, underneath it all, he’s no less crazy than some of the malefactors he pursues. I’ll even give Sassone Steve McGarrett, though I was never a huge fan of Hawaii Five-O. But I have to insist that Sledge Hammer be nixed in favor of NYPD Blue’s Sergeant Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz), a character who evolved tremendously over Blue’s dozen-year run, from a drunken and bigoted malcontent to someone who demonstrated what may be the best human weakness of all: our inability to remain rigid in our opinions and biases when faced with evidence of our misapprehensions about others. And since this list doesn’t yet contain any women, allow me to suggest Detective Sergeant Christine Cagney (Sharon Gless) from CBS’ Cagney & Lacey as a substitute for Klugman’s Quincy (who I liked initially, but whose development as a protagonist eventually left me wanting). Like Sipowitz, Cagney was forced to overcome realistic disappointments and tragedies in her life, but--with help from her partner, Mary Beth Lacey (Tyne Daly)--she managed to overcome the worst of it without sacrificing either her humanity or, thank goodness, her sanity.
But what do you think?
In The Rap Sheet’s second readership poll (see the two silver boxes near the top of the right-hand column on this page), we put the questions to you: Who’s the best TV police detective in history? And, Who’s the best TV private eye in history? Sassone’s choices in both categories can be found among the contenders, as can my alternatives and several other nominees that I thought might be appropriate (and test your knowledge of TV sleuths).
Feel free to vote for your favorite characters in each group. I’ll tally the results and announce the winners in a future Rap Sheet posting.
And if you have other series protagonists you’d like to nominate in either of these categories, tell us about them in the Comments section of this post.
FOLLOW-UP: The results of this poll can found here.
Law & Executive Order?
The Rap Sheet isn’t a political blog, nor does it aspire to become one. But every once in a blue moon, crime fiction and politics actually converge. As was the case last year when Kinky Friedman (Ten Little New Yorkers) made a quixotic run for the Texas governorship, and is the case again now, with Fred Thompson--who plays New York District Attorney Arthur Branch on TV’s Law & Order--saying he may make a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.
Assessing the chances of this 64-year-old actor and former U.S. senator from Tennessee slipping past the current GOP front-runners to capture the nomination, Slate chief political correspondent John Dickerson writes:
You can read all of Dickerson’s piece on Thompson here.
READ MORE: “Law & Order Episodes Could Be Pulled if Thompson Runs for President,” by Joel Keller (TV Squad).
Assessing the chances of this 64-year-old actor and former U.S. senator from Tennessee slipping past the current GOP front-runners to capture the nomination, Slate chief political correspondent John Dickerson writes:
Thompson’s chief appeal is emotional. Until now, many conservative Republicans have had to wince when they thought of their plausible presidential choices. [Rudy] Giuliani is too liberal, [John] McCain is too unpredictable and too well-liked by the media, and [Mitt] Romney seems like a flip-flopper on the issues they care about. The possibility of a Thompson candidacy excites the Republicans I talk to. He’s an “outsider”--having left Washington for Law & Order before the Beltway rot set in. He’s a good communicator, which means he can sell conservative policies and has the star power to battle Hillary [Clinton] or [Barack] Obama. Though he hasn’t been through the press-vetting process, his voting record and talk-radio performances suggest he holds conservative enough positions. Oh, and he can raise Hollywood cash.If I were one of the producers of Law & Order, I wouldn’t be too worried yet about having to replace Thompson in the cast. At least not in the long run.
Authenticity and star power conjure visions of Ronald Reagan. But Reagan had genuine experience running something--namely the state of California. Thompson’s résumé is thin--an undistinguished eight years in the Senate, an acting career, and a youthful turn as co-counsel in the Watergate hearings. Supporters try to pump up his résumé by boasting that he shepherded John Roberts through his confirmation hearings--but that was the legal equivalent of walking Michael Jordan onto the court.
What’s most puzzling is that Thompson is liked by Republicans who say the war on terror is the single most important issue facing the country. They claim they understand the reality of the threats we face and that Democrats don’t. And yet Thompson’s security résumé is puny compared to his potential rivals. He has no executive experience and the wars he’s fought have all been in the movies. Sure, you can argue that experience is overrated--after all, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld had plenty of it. The problem is that Thompson’s supporters like Cheney and Rummy.
The myth behind the Thompson quasi-candidacy is a dangerous one that bedevils both parties: If we just get a better communicator, people will love our policies. But once Thompson enters the race, he will have to either embrace or distance himself from GOP policies, which will either ruin his chances in the general election or hurt him with his conservative supporters. In short, he’ll become just like any other candidate--something he might not like after such a big buildup. Thompson also has a reputation for not enjoying the grind of campaigning.
You can read all of Dickerson’s piece on Thompson here.
READ MORE: “Law & Order Episodes Could Be Pulled if Thompson Runs for President,” by Joel Keller (TV Squad).
April Murders Bring May ... What?
Editor Tony Burton is out with the April edition of Crime and Suspense, which includes short stories by Therese Kinkaide (“Cigarettes”), William Wilde (“The Gil Hodges Trading Card”), and Libby Cudmore (“Hero Cop”), plus the fourth and final episode of Gary R. Hoffman’s serial, “No Motive for Murder.” There’s also word about a forthcoming anthology of “selected stories from the first 16 months’ issues of the Crime and Suspense e-zine.” No price or release date on that yet.
Mystery Book Seller Becomes Mystery Sleuth
In today’s issue of Publisher’s Weekly online, writer Kevin Howell reports on how Seattle Mystery Bookshop owner J.B. Dickey delivered sweet payback after being duped in a scam. Following a phone order he took for The Shortcut: 20 Stories to Get You from Here to There (Author Identity Press), Dickey discovered that the name of the potential buyer, and the credit card number given, were both false. He was stuck with two non-returnable copies of the vanity-published book. Not one to take it lying down, Dickey put a warning out on the Mystery Booksellers Association listserv saying, “I hate like hell committing my buffoonery to the world-at-large, but if it stops someone else from making my mistake, good.”
It did more than that, however. Turns out that other booksellers in “several different states” had been stuck with the identical book. Amateur sleuthing further discovered that the same phony name was used in each instance: Michael Evers. As it happens, Michael Evers is “the name of the main character in a suspense novel called The Palace of Wisdom: A Rock And Roll Fable” (Publish America), by Kevin A. Fabiano. Furthermore, Fabiano also authored and contributed a story to the aforementioned Shortcut. Do you see where this is going? While many vanity presses serve their authors fairly well, it seems that Author Identity has had complaints lodged against it--so many, that it prompted Victoria Strauss to write about the dubious publisher on her blogsite, At Last! Writer Beware Blogs!
The above scenario has shadows deeper than a hidden alley in a noir novel. Let the buyer--and writer--beware. The moral of this tale? Dickey spells it loud and clear: “Anyone being contacted about ordering this book should *69 the call ... and let them know we're onto them.” Another moral to be gleened: Don’t pick on the folks who read crime fiction. It’'ll get ugly. Fast.
You can read the whole PW article here.
READ MORE: “More on Author Identity,” by Victoria Strauss (At Last! Writer Beware Blogs!)
It did more than that, however. Turns out that other booksellers in “several different states” had been stuck with the identical book. Amateur sleuthing further discovered that the same phony name was used in each instance: Michael Evers. As it happens, Michael Evers is “the name of the main character in a suspense novel called The Palace of Wisdom: A Rock And Roll Fable” (Publish America), by Kevin A. Fabiano. Furthermore, Fabiano also authored and contributed a story to the aforementioned Shortcut. Do you see where this is going? While many vanity presses serve their authors fairly well, it seems that Author Identity has had complaints lodged against it--so many, that it prompted Victoria Strauss to write about the dubious publisher on her blogsite, At Last! Writer Beware Blogs!
The above scenario has shadows deeper than a hidden alley in a noir novel. Let the buyer--and writer--beware. The moral of this tale? Dickey spells it loud and clear: “Anyone being contacted about ordering this book should *69 the call ... and let them know we're onto them.” Another moral to be gleened: Don’t pick on the folks who read crime fiction. It’'ll get ugly. Fast.
You can read the whole PW article here.
READ MORE: “More on Author Identity,” by Victoria Strauss (At Last! Writer Beware Blogs!)
War March of the Penguins
It seems that the renowned British publishing house Penguin is getting as tough as some of the character who populate its crime- and thriller-fiction list. This, thanks in large part to literary editor Beverley Cousins.
I first heard of Beverley (shown at right, with Mark Timlin) back when she worked at the UK’s Pan Macmillan, editing Colin Dexter and Minette Walters,
working on Rennie Airth’s 1999 masterwork, River of Darkness and generally acquiring a formidable reputation in the industry. And I’ve kept in touch with her ever since. Which has proved fortuitous, since she’s now the editorial director with Michael Joseph/Penguin.
One of Beverley’s strengths is her ability to spot new talent. Among her early discoveries for Penguin was former journalist Jim Kelly, whose Philip Dryden novels (including The Coldest Blood, 2006) are set in the Fenland area of Britain’s East Anglia. Then last year, she and the Penguin team discovered Nick Stone, who debuted with Mr. Clarinet, recipient of the Crime Writers’ Association’s Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and has been nominated for the International Thriller Writers’ Best Thriller Debut Award. (The winner will be announced this summer during ThrillerFest, to be held this coming July in New York City. HarperCollins will release Mr. Clarinet in the States that same month.) Penguin has also recently acquired the UK rights to Chris Mooney’s The Missing, about which we wrote recently.
Under Beverley’s guidance, Penguin appears to be arming itself to conquer and keep the attention of Britain’s crime-fiction many readers. Its stable of writing talent is a remarkable mix of John Rickards, David Lawrence, Andrew Britton, Daniel Silva, Barry Eisler, Charles Cumming, Clive Cussler, Andrew Taylor, Nicci French (aka Nicci Gerrard and Sean French), P.J. Tracy, and Jilliane Hoffman, plus genre stalwarts such as John Buchan, Raymond Chandler, Ian Fleming, Erskine Childers, Georges Simenon, P.D. James, Dick Francis, and many others.
Earlier this year, Beverley was kind enough to invite me me, along with a bevy of other writers and reviewers (including Jane Jakeman of the New Statesman, Maxim Jakubowski and Laura Wilson from The Guardian, Mark Timlin of The Independent, and Mike Stotter from Shots) to Penguin’s annual Crime Dinner, held at The Crypt, in central London’s St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields church, near Trafalgar Square. It was an suitably creepy location for a gathering of folks who write about murder, mayhem, and malfeasance for a living. It was also valuable, though, from a journalist point of view, for after the sumptuous meal, Beverley treated us to a presentation on Penguin’s forthcoming crime-fiction titles.
So what does that the house think will make waves in 2007? Here are a few (with quotes from Penguin UK publicity materials):
• The Malice Box, Martin Langfield (February): “When Robert Reckliss is sent what seems to be a copper puzzle box, he has no idea his life is about to undergo violent transformation. That night, an acquaintance kills himself in curious circumstances; the following day, an old friend reveals the existence of an arcane weapon that could wipe the western world from the face of the planet. And the responsibility for hunting down this weapon, this Malice Box, lies with Robert. The weapon is primed to explode in seven days and Robert must undergo a quest--a series of trials around Manhattan--in order to track down the keys vital to prevent detonation. In a desperate race against the clock, Robert trails the streets of Manhattan guided by Terri, a mysterious psychic, and under the constant gaze of the sinister Watchman. Higher forces are battling to prevent him completing the quest ...”
• Frankie, by Kevin Lewis (March): “Homeless, streetwise and running away from a past she would rather forget, Francesca Mills is just another face on the streets of London. When a violent encounter leads to a man’s death, however, she is forced to leave the harsh world that has become her home and forge a new life elsewhere. On the run, Frankie unknowingly stumbles across a dangerous secret, a secret so powerful that men will stop at nothing to protect it. She tries to build a new life, but you can only stay anonymous when no one wants to find you. Hunted by both the police and shadowy assailants with powerful connections, the odds are stacked against a woman who will do whatever it takes to protect herself--and those who mean most to her ...”
• Absolution, by Caro Ramsey (June): “1984: It looked like a simple job. That was why they gave it to him. Guarding a woman--nameless and almost faceless after a savage acid attack--at a Glasgow hospital, PC Alan McAlpine has no idea that this simple job will haunt his career and change his life forever. 2006: Two decades later, Alan steps into Partickhill police station and back in time. Now a celebrated Detective Chief Inspector, McAlpine has been drafted in to lead the hunt for a man the press are calling ‘the Crucifixion Killer’. Two women are already dead, their mutilated bodies laid with arms outstretched. With his distinguished reputation,
McAlpine’s team are confident their new DCI will lead them to the killer. But the obsession that was born in a hospital room twenty-two years earlier has never quite left Alan. And now, it seems, it’s come back for a reason ...”
• The Skeleton Man, by Jim Kelly (July): “For seventeen years the Cambridgeshire hamlet of Jude’s Ferry has lain abandoned, requisitioned for military training. The isolated, 1,000-year-old community is, it seems, famous for one thing--never having recorded a single crime. But when reporter Philip Dryden joins the Territorial Army on exercise in the empty village, its stainless history is literally blown apart. For shelling has revealed a hidden cellar under the pub. And inside hangs a skeleton, a noose around its neck ... Then, two days later, a man is pulled from the river near Ely--he has no idea who he is or how he got there. But he knows the words ‘Jude's Ferry’ are important, and he knows he is afraid ...”
Penguin is also high on King of Swords, Nick Stone’s “terrifying sequel” to Mr. Clarinet (due out in August), but is keeping details of the story tightly under wraps. Hmm …
And a heads-up for 2008: Ms. Cousins has acquired another debut novel, Spider, this one by Michael Morley, a former crime reporter, former psychological profiler, and now a television producer with Britain’s Endemol. Spider, I’m assured, will set to send the serial-killer genre into a new and exciting direction, taking the reader right into the minds of both a killer and an FBI agent as they play out a frantic game of cat-and-mouse across two continents. Sounds good, but groundbreaking? We shall see.
In closing her presentation, Beverley quoted a statement made by Maxim Jakubowski in The Bookseller, which shows just how aggressively Penguin is going after the crime/thriller market: “The Penguin Group is making concerted attack on [British rival Orion’s] domination. Penguin is reaping the rewards from its careful cultivation of existing authors, its exciting new signings and expensive imports.”
And here I was under the impression that penguins were such peaceful, gentle creatures …
I first heard of Beverley (shown at right, with Mark Timlin) back when she worked at the UK’s Pan Macmillan, editing Colin Dexter and Minette Walters,
working on Rennie Airth’s 1999 masterwork, River of Darkness and generally acquiring a formidable reputation in the industry. And I’ve kept in touch with her ever since. Which has proved fortuitous, since she’s now the editorial director with Michael Joseph/Penguin.One of Beverley’s strengths is her ability to spot new talent. Among her early discoveries for Penguin was former journalist Jim Kelly, whose Philip Dryden novels (including The Coldest Blood, 2006) are set in the Fenland area of Britain’s East Anglia. Then last year, she and the Penguin team discovered Nick Stone, who debuted with Mr. Clarinet, recipient of the Crime Writers’ Association’s Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and has been nominated for the International Thriller Writers’ Best Thriller Debut Award. (The winner will be announced this summer during ThrillerFest, to be held this coming July in New York City. HarperCollins will release Mr. Clarinet in the States that same month.) Penguin has also recently acquired the UK rights to Chris Mooney’s The Missing, about which we wrote recently.
Under Beverley’s guidance, Penguin appears to be arming itself to conquer and keep the attention of Britain’s crime-fiction many readers. Its stable of writing talent is a remarkable mix of John Rickards, David Lawrence, Andrew Britton, Daniel Silva, Barry Eisler, Charles Cumming, Clive Cussler, Andrew Taylor, Nicci French (aka Nicci Gerrard and Sean French), P.J. Tracy, and Jilliane Hoffman, plus genre stalwarts such as John Buchan, Raymond Chandler, Ian Fleming, Erskine Childers, Georges Simenon, P.D. James, Dick Francis, and many others.
Earlier this year, Beverley was kind enough to invite me me, along with a bevy of other writers and reviewers (including Jane Jakeman of the New Statesman, Maxim Jakubowski and Laura Wilson from The Guardian, Mark Timlin of The Independent, and Mike Stotter from Shots) to Penguin’s annual Crime Dinner, held at The Crypt, in central London’s St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields church, near Trafalgar Square. It was an suitably creepy location for a gathering of folks who write about murder, mayhem, and malfeasance for a living. It was also valuable, though, from a journalist point of view, for after the sumptuous meal, Beverley treated us to a presentation on Penguin’s forthcoming crime-fiction titles.
So what does that the house think will make waves in 2007? Here are a few (with quotes from Penguin UK publicity materials):
• The Malice Box, Martin Langfield (February): “When Robert Reckliss is sent what seems to be a copper puzzle box, he has no idea his life is about to undergo violent transformation. That night, an acquaintance kills himself in curious circumstances; the following day, an old friend reveals the existence of an arcane weapon that could wipe the western world from the face of the planet. And the responsibility for hunting down this weapon, this Malice Box, lies with Robert. The weapon is primed to explode in seven days and Robert must undergo a quest--a series of trials around Manhattan--in order to track down the keys vital to prevent detonation. In a desperate race against the clock, Robert trails the streets of Manhattan guided by Terri, a mysterious psychic, and under the constant gaze of the sinister Watchman. Higher forces are battling to prevent him completing the quest ...”
• Frankie, by Kevin Lewis (March): “Homeless, streetwise and running away from a past she would rather forget, Francesca Mills is just another face on the streets of London. When a violent encounter leads to a man’s death, however, she is forced to leave the harsh world that has become her home and forge a new life elsewhere. On the run, Frankie unknowingly stumbles across a dangerous secret, a secret so powerful that men will stop at nothing to protect it. She tries to build a new life, but you can only stay anonymous when no one wants to find you. Hunted by both the police and shadowy assailants with powerful connections, the odds are stacked against a woman who will do whatever it takes to protect herself--and those who mean most to her ...”
• Absolution, by Caro Ramsey (June): “1984: It looked like a simple job. That was why they gave it to him. Guarding a woman--nameless and almost faceless after a savage acid attack--at a Glasgow hospital, PC Alan McAlpine has no idea that this simple job will haunt his career and change his life forever. 2006: Two decades later, Alan steps into Partickhill police station and back in time. Now a celebrated Detective Chief Inspector, McAlpine has been drafted in to lead the hunt for a man the press are calling ‘the Crucifixion Killer’. Two women are already dead, their mutilated bodies laid with arms outstretched. With his distinguished reputation,
McAlpine’s team are confident their new DCI will lead them to the killer. But the obsession that was born in a hospital room twenty-two years earlier has never quite left Alan. And now, it seems, it’s come back for a reason ...”• The Skeleton Man, by Jim Kelly (July): “For seventeen years the Cambridgeshire hamlet of Jude’s Ferry has lain abandoned, requisitioned for military training. The isolated, 1,000-year-old community is, it seems, famous for one thing--never having recorded a single crime. But when reporter Philip Dryden joins the Territorial Army on exercise in the empty village, its stainless history is literally blown apart. For shelling has revealed a hidden cellar under the pub. And inside hangs a skeleton, a noose around its neck ... Then, two days later, a man is pulled from the river near Ely--he has no idea who he is or how he got there. But he knows the words ‘Jude's Ferry’ are important, and he knows he is afraid ...”
Penguin is also high on King of Swords, Nick Stone’s “terrifying sequel” to Mr. Clarinet (due out in August), but is keeping details of the story tightly under wraps. Hmm …
And a heads-up for 2008: Ms. Cousins has acquired another debut novel, Spider, this one by Michael Morley, a former crime reporter, former psychological profiler, and now a television producer with Britain’s Endemol. Spider, I’m assured, will set to send the serial-killer genre into a new and exciting direction, taking the reader right into the minds of both a killer and an FBI agent as they play out a frantic game of cat-and-mouse across two continents. Sounds good, but groundbreaking? We shall see.
In closing her presentation, Beverley quoted a statement made by Maxim Jakubowski in The Bookseller, which shows just how aggressively Penguin is going after the crime/thriller market: “The Penguin Group is making concerted attack on [British rival Orion’s] domination. Penguin is reaping the rewards from its careful cultivation of existing authors, its exciting new signings and expensive imports.”
And here I was under the impression that penguins were such peaceful, gentle creatures …
* * *
Have you ever wondered what a London literary dinner was like? Well, wonder no more. Click here to view a slide show of the recent Penguin fête at The Crypt.Night of the Nibbies
Retired attorney, former Mississippi politician, and best-selling novelist John Grisham (The Innocent Man) received a Lifetime Achievement Award as part of last night’s Galaxy British Book Awards presentation in London, England.
There were GBBA (“Nibbie”) awards handed out in a variety of additional categories, as well. The other American writer to be most applauded was Jeb Rubenfeld, a constitutional law professor at Yale University and author of The Interpretation of Murder, which--in line with pre-ceremony betting--received the Richard & Judy Best of the Year Award (Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan being co-hosts of a phenomenally popular British TV-magazine show). Interpretation, a debut novel about murder and psychological deduction in early 20th-century Manhattan, was also on January Magazine’s favorite books of 2006 list.
Also competing for the Richard & Judy commendation were Restless, a World War II espionage thriller by William Boyd, and several non-crime novels: Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; The Girls, by Lori Lansens; Love in the Present Tense, by Catherine Ryan Hyde; Semi-detached, by Griff Rhys Jones; This Book Will Save Your Life, by A.M. Homes; and The Testament of Gideon Mack, by James Robertson.
Picking up the BCA Crime Thriller of the Year prize was Ian Rankin’s The Naming of the Dead (only recently published in the States). It’s rivals for that honor: Peter James’ Looking Good Dead, Kate Atkinson’s One Good Turn, and Sam Bourne’s The Righteous Men. Sponsor BCA, by the way, is the UK’s largest direct-mail book club.
Two other crime-oriented novels were up for Nibbies last night: Martina Cole’s gangland novel, Close, which had been nominated in the Sainsbury’s Popular Fiction Award category (but lost to Anybody Out There, by Marian Keyes); and The Meaning of Night, by Michael Cox, which had been touted for the Waterstone’s Newcomer of the Year prize (only to be bested by Victoria Hislop’s The Island).
Photographs from Wednesday’s festivities can be found here.
(Hat tip to Shotsmag Confidential.)
There were GBBA (“Nibbie”) awards handed out in a variety of additional categories, as well. The other American writer to be most applauded was Jeb Rubenfeld, a constitutional law professor at Yale University and author of The Interpretation of Murder, which--in line with pre-ceremony betting--received the Richard & Judy Best of the Year Award (Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan being co-hosts of a phenomenally popular British TV-magazine show). Interpretation, a debut novel about murder and psychological deduction in early 20th-century Manhattan, was also on January Magazine’s favorite books of 2006 list.
Also competing for the Richard & Judy commendation were Restless, a World War II espionage thriller by William Boyd, and several non-crime novels: Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; The Girls, by Lori Lansens; Love in the Present Tense, by Catherine Ryan Hyde; Semi-detached, by Griff Rhys Jones; This Book Will Save Your Life, by A.M. Homes; and The Testament of Gideon Mack, by James Robertson.
Picking up the BCA Crime Thriller of the Year prize was Ian Rankin’s The Naming of the Dead (only recently published in the States). It’s rivals for that honor: Peter James’ Looking Good Dead, Kate Atkinson’s One Good Turn, and Sam Bourne’s The Righteous Men. Sponsor BCA, by the way, is the UK’s largest direct-mail book club.
Two other crime-oriented novels were up for Nibbies last night: Martina Cole’s gangland novel, Close, which had been nominated in the Sainsbury’s Popular Fiction Award category (but lost to Anybody Out There, by Marian Keyes); and The Meaning of Night, by Michael Cox, which had been touted for the Waterstone’s Newcomer of the Year prize (only to be bested by Victoria Hislop’s The Island).
Photographs from Wednesday’s festivities can be found here.
(Hat tip to Shotsmag Confidential.)
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
We Like Pike
It was my fellow Rap Sheet blogger Anthony Rainone who, last October, tipped us off to the forthcoming release of Robert Crais’ long-awaited Joe Pike standalone, The Watchman. He followed up recently with an excellent review of that new novel for January Magazine. 
Being another big, big fan of private-eye novelist Crais, and having had the chance to interview him last year over a lengthy breakfast meeting in Manchester, England, I too was very much looking forward to reading The Watchman.
I wasn’t disappointed upon finally reading the novel. It’s a remarkable thriller that for the first time puts Los Angeles P.I. Elvis Cole’s sidekick, erstwhile Marine and LAPD maverick Joe Pike--“the man with few words”--at the very hub of the action. I’ve read with alacrity Crais’ previous Cole books, including 2005’s The Forgotten Man, and wondered on occasion whether he’d ever have the audacity to put Pike center stage--and if he did, what the result would be. I need wonder no longer. Pike featured heavily in one of my favorite crime novels of all time, L.A. Requiem (1999), and I have to say that Watchman equals that earlier work as a masterpiece of modern crime fiction. Whereas Requiem used poignancy as its compelling force, Watchman uses sheer velocity. This book zips along faster than Pike’s bullets.
The tale begins with wealthy 22-year-old playgirl-socialite Larkin Connor Barkley becoming involved in a car accident in L.A., after which the three men in the Mercedes she just hit escape the scene. It turns out that one of that other car’s occupants was a South American drug-cartel money launderer and his companions were shady real-estate developers--all people under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. Soon, Larkin’s life is threatened, and Pike is enlisted to protect the reckless heiress. But he’ll need help from the one man he can truly trust: Elvis Cole, who’s still recovering from the damage he had to endure in The Forgotten Man. Together, they’ll go about hunting the hunters, figuring out the angles (and dangers presented by) federal agents, and preventing the lovely Ms. Barkley from destroying herself.
What for me was the most interesting aspect of Watchman was the back story and insights into the enigmatic Joe Pike, especially the history of abuse he suffered at the hands of his father, the time he spent as a member of the Los Angeles Police Department, and his travels in Africa. More, I’m sure, will be revealed in future installments of this series, as Crais genuinely seems to enjoy writing about Pike. We shall see.
Last week, as The Watchman was making its debut across the UK, its author paid a short, three-day visit to Europe, meeting reviewers, booksellers, and assorted species of media folk. His British publishing house, Orion, made the man from Louisiana work hard. Crais’ two bookstore visits were at Waterstone’s in Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, and at No Alibis in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
During that time, I was fortunate enough to again interview Crais. We talked about Pike’s starring role in The Watchman, the value of sidekicks in this genre, and the author’s relationship to his continuing characters.
Ali Karim: The most obvious question first. What made you put Joe Pike at the center of your new novel?
Robert Crais: I’ve wanted to write this book from the second or third book in the [Elvis Cole] series. Like many of the readers, I was really intrigued by Joe--this enigmatic figure--because I wanted to know what was going on behind the sunglasses. I first made an attempt at that with L.A. Requiem, and I consider that novel as the first Joe Pike book. But it wasn’t until now when I saw this particular story, thanks to this young woman who became Larkin Connor Barkley, that I had what I felt was the perfect Joe Pike story. Through her I was able to get behind the sunglasses and see the world through Joe Pike’s eyes.
AK: In The Watchman you reveal a great deal about Pike’s past. Did you learn about Pike through the writing process, or did you know his past before?
RC: It’s a mix. I’ve known the large things about Joe right from the beginning, right back to The Monkey’s Raincoat [1987]. I didn’t relay them all, but I knew them. The best I can explain it is that it’s akin to joining the dots, over the years: everything comes into focus and the dots connect and a picture forms. It’s the details I’ve learned along the journey that make me understand who Joe Pike is.
AK: Crime-fiction sidekicks such as Pike, Hawk, Dennis Lehane’s Bubba Rogowski, Harlan Coben’s Win [Windsor Horne Lockwood III], et al. have a certain appeal to readers, and morally, they often allow the hero not to be tarnished when there’s a bad guy to kill. So, what’s your take on sidekicks and their morality in crime fiction?
RC: I had a publisher back in the old days, who dubbed Joe Pike as a sociopath. I guess they did that for commercial reasons, but I resented it then and I still don’t believe it today. I think Joe Pike is a very moral guy (from his point of view), ethical, with his own code. He just sees the world differently from you and I. He’s not a slave to what we call the law, so I don’t really think of Joe doing Elvis Cole’s dirty work, I think he functions within his own code and his own universe, and there is a very rigid standard to Joe Pike’s universe, which others have to respect.
AK: Pike is never described in a lot of detail. In fact, he remains one of the most inscrutable figures in contemporary crime fiction. Were you worried when you contemplated a Pike standalone that you would have to reveal too much about the man?
RC: I didn’t worry about it, but I was aware of it. It was never my intention to pull back the curtain and reveal the wizard. From the beginning, I was confident that when you get to the end of The Watchman, you would still feel Joe as being a man of mystery, and [as] enigmatic as you did at the beginning. There is still an enormous level of complexity to him that we have yet to see. He maintains that Zen-like, enigma-like quality. I wanted to preserve that.
AK: I would say that you have some similar mannerisms and share a dress-sense with Elvis Cole. I mean, look at that awful shirt you’re wearing, and those socks! While in London, you should have visited Saville Row ...
RC: [Laughing] I’m not Elvis Cole ...
AK: [Laughing, too] Come on, every time I meet you, you’ve visited Cole’s tailor.
RC: OK, I agree the socks ... But seriously, writers cannibalize themselves and that is what fiction-writing is all about. So when I created characters like Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, I gave them little bits and pieces of myself and people I know, but most of it is fiction. Hey, Elvis Cole is tough; in a “situation,” I’m the first guy under the table. These characters are 99 percent fiction, [but they] end up being metaphors not just for me, but the readers. You imprint and overlay yourself on top of them. Joe is in many ways the most vulnerable of this duo; that’s why he’s built a fortress around himself. There’s a passage in the book where we see how Joe thinks about things and this theory about how the inside person pushes against the outside person, so who we are on the inside influences who we are on the outside--like we create a steel plate for ourselves, often for protection. So when we read about Pike, we can relate to that and we see ourselves and how our inside person influences our exterior person.
AK: Are we going to learn more about Pike’s military background and his African missions in some forthcoming book in this series?
RC: I do touch on it in The Watchman, by indication from his mercenary days. None of this will appear in next year’s book, however, which is an Elvis Cole novel. But I have a notion now for a future Joe Pike book that includes travels not only in Africa, but also Europe.
In addition to spending time one-on-one with Crais, Orion and Waterstone’s have authorized me to release--for the edification of Rap Sheet readers--a couple of short video clips from the event in Milton Keynes. The first of these (click here) details how the author came to write The Watchman, while the second (click here) shows him reading from the novel’s introductory section. (Thanks to Crimespace for hosting these clips.) On top of all that, here’s a slideshow from Crais’ appearance in Milton Keynes.
Without a doubt, The Watchman will feature in my Best of 2007 list. You wanna argue with that? Hah! Go ahead. But first, let me put on my sunglasses and call a guy I know named Joe Pike.
READ MORE: “A Q&A with Robert Crais,” by Chris High (Shots).
Being another big, big fan of private-eye novelist Crais, and having had the chance to interview him last year over a lengthy breakfast meeting in Manchester, England, I too was very much looking forward to reading The Watchman.I wasn’t disappointed upon finally reading the novel. It’s a remarkable thriller that for the first time puts Los Angeles P.I. Elvis Cole’s sidekick, erstwhile Marine and LAPD maverick Joe Pike--“the man with few words”--at the very hub of the action. I’ve read with alacrity Crais’ previous Cole books, including 2005’s The Forgotten Man, and wondered on occasion whether he’d ever have the audacity to put Pike center stage--and if he did, what the result would be. I need wonder no longer. Pike featured heavily in one of my favorite crime novels of all time, L.A. Requiem (1999), and I have to say that Watchman equals that earlier work as a masterpiece of modern crime fiction. Whereas Requiem used poignancy as its compelling force, Watchman uses sheer velocity. This book zips along faster than Pike’s bullets.
The tale begins with wealthy 22-year-old playgirl-socialite Larkin Connor Barkley becoming involved in a car accident in L.A., after which the three men in the Mercedes she just hit escape the scene. It turns out that one of that other car’s occupants was a South American drug-cartel money launderer and his companions were shady real-estate developers--all people under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. Soon, Larkin’s life is threatened, and Pike is enlisted to protect the reckless heiress. But he’ll need help from the one man he can truly trust: Elvis Cole, who’s still recovering from the damage he had to endure in The Forgotten Man. Together, they’ll go about hunting the hunters, figuring out the angles (and dangers presented by) federal agents, and preventing the lovely Ms. Barkley from destroying herself.
What for me was the most interesting aspect of Watchman was the back story and insights into the enigmatic Joe Pike, especially the history of abuse he suffered at the hands of his father, the time he spent as a member of the Los Angeles Police Department, and his travels in Africa. More, I’m sure, will be revealed in future installments of this series, as Crais genuinely seems to enjoy writing about Pike. We shall see.
Last week, as The Watchman was making its debut across the UK, its author paid a short, three-day visit to Europe, meeting reviewers, booksellers, and assorted species of media folk. His British publishing house, Orion, made the man from Louisiana work hard. Crais’ two bookstore visits were at Waterstone’s in Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, and at No Alibis in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
During that time, I was fortunate enough to again interview Crais. We talked about Pike’s starring role in The Watchman, the value of sidekicks in this genre, and the author’s relationship to his continuing characters.
Ali Karim: The most obvious question first. What made you put Joe Pike at the center of your new novel?
Robert Crais: I’ve wanted to write this book from the second or third book in the [Elvis Cole] series. Like many of the readers, I was really intrigued by Joe--this enigmatic figure--because I wanted to know what was going on behind the sunglasses. I first made an attempt at that with L.A. Requiem, and I consider that novel as the first Joe Pike book. But it wasn’t until now when I saw this particular story, thanks to this young woman who became Larkin Connor Barkley, that I had what I felt was the perfect Joe Pike story. Through her I was able to get behind the sunglasses and see the world through Joe Pike’s eyes.
AK: In The Watchman you reveal a great deal about Pike’s past. Did you learn about Pike through the writing process, or did you know his past before?
RC: It’s a mix. I’ve known the large things about Joe right from the beginning, right back to The Monkey’s Raincoat [1987]. I didn’t relay them all, but I knew them. The best I can explain it is that it’s akin to joining the dots, over the years: everything comes into focus and the dots connect and a picture forms. It’s the details I’ve learned along the journey that make me understand who Joe Pike is.
AK: Crime-fiction sidekicks such as Pike, Hawk, Dennis Lehane’s Bubba Rogowski, Harlan Coben’s Win [Windsor Horne Lockwood III], et al. have a certain appeal to readers, and morally, they often allow the hero not to be tarnished when there’s a bad guy to kill. So, what’s your take on sidekicks and their morality in crime fiction?
RC: I had a publisher back in the old days, who dubbed Joe Pike as a sociopath. I guess they did that for commercial reasons, but I resented it then and I still don’t believe it today. I think Joe Pike is a very moral guy (from his point of view), ethical, with his own code. He just sees the world differently from you and I. He’s not a slave to what we call the law, so I don’t really think of Joe doing Elvis Cole’s dirty work, I think he functions within his own code and his own universe, and there is a very rigid standard to Joe Pike’s universe, which others have to respect.
AK: Pike is never described in a lot of detail. In fact, he remains one of the most inscrutable figures in contemporary crime fiction. Were you worried when you contemplated a Pike standalone that you would have to reveal too much about the man?
RC: I didn’t worry about it, but I was aware of it. It was never my intention to pull back the curtain and reveal the wizard. From the beginning, I was confident that when you get to the end of The Watchman, you would still feel Joe as being a man of mystery, and [as] enigmatic as you did at the beginning. There is still an enormous level of complexity to him that we have yet to see. He maintains that Zen-like, enigma-like quality. I wanted to preserve that.
AK: I would say that you have some similar mannerisms and share a dress-sense with Elvis Cole. I mean, look at that awful shirt you’re wearing, and those socks! While in London, you should have visited Saville Row ...
RC: [Laughing] I’m not Elvis Cole ...
AK: [Laughing, too] Come on, every time I meet you, you’ve visited Cole’s tailor.
RC: OK, I agree the socks ... But seriously, writers cannibalize themselves and that is what fiction-writing is all about. So when I created characters like Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, I gave them little bits and pieces of myself and people I know, but most of it is fiction. Hey, Elvis Cole is tough; in a “situation,” I’m the first guy under the table. These characters are 99 percent fiction, [but they] end up being metaphors not just for me, but the readers. You imprint and overlay yourself on top of them. Joe is in many ways the most vulnerable of this duo; that’s why he’s built a fortress around himself. There’s a passage in the book where we see how Joe thinks about things and this theory about how the inside person pushes against the outside person, so who we are on the inside influences who we are on the outside--like we create a steel plate for ourselves, often for protection. So when we read about Pike, we can relate to that and we see ourselves and how our inside person influences our exterior person.
AK: Are we going to learn more about Pike’s military background and his African missions in some forthcoming book in this series?
RC: I do touch on it in The Watchman, by indication from his mercenary days. None of this will appear in next year’s book, however, which is an Elvis Cole novel. But I have a notion now for a future Joe Pike book that includes travels not only in Africa, but also Europe.
In addition to spending time one-on-one with Crais, Orion and Waterstone’s have authorized me to release--for the edification of Rap Sheet readers--a couple of short video clips from the event in Milton Keynes. The first of these (click here) details how the author came to write The Watchman, while the second (click here) shows him reading from the novel’s introductory section. (Thanks to Crimespace for hosting these clips.) On top of all that, here’s a slideshow from Crais’ appearance in Milton Keynes.
Without a doubt, The Watchman will feature in my Best of 2007 list. You wanna argue with that? Hah! Go ahead. But first, let me put on my sunglasses and call a guy I know named Joe Pike.
READ MORE: “A Q&A with Robert Crais,” by Chris High (Shots).
Adults Say the Darndest Things
I was going to say something about this earlier, but heck, I forgot. The other day, novelist-screenwriter Lee Goldberg posted a selection of hilarious things readers said to him during his recent guest speaking engagement at the Anaheim (California) Public Library. My favorite selection:
A man approached me carrying a half-a-dozen of my books. “So you wrote all these books?”Judging by the quality of a few recent novels I’ve read, the answer may be “not enough.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you come up with the plots, too?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Wow,” he said. “I wonder how many other writers do that.”
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Happy Birthday, David Janssen
And here I was, thinking I would be the only person to remember that today would have been the 76th birthday of actor David Janssen (who died in 1980). But no, mystery maven Elizabeth Foxwell got the word out first in her blog, The Bunburyist.
Janssen, you’ll recall, was the star of three well-remembered American TV series: Richard Diamond, Private Eye
(1957-1960), The Fugitive (1963-1967), and of course, Harry O (1974-1976). Born David Harold Meyer in Naponee, Nebraska, on this date back in 1931, he was the son of a banker and a former teenage Miss Nebraska turned Ziegfeld Follies showgirl, Berniece Graf. But his parents’ marriage didn’t last, and Janssen’s mother relocated them to Los Angeles, where Berniece eventually married a man named Eugene Janssen. With his mother’s encouragement, David began acting at age 13, and by his 25th birthday, “he had appeared in 20 films and served two years as an enlisted man in the U.S. Army,” according to Wikipedia.
He caught his first big break in the late ’50s, when longtime film actor Dick Powell, who had spent four years as the voice of ex-OSS man turned New York City private eye Richard Diamond--“radio’s singing gumshoe”--decided he didn’t want to star in a new version of Diamond for the then-young medium of television. Instead, Powell became the series’ producer and hired Janssen as its lead. As Kevin Burton Smith notes at The Thrilling Detective Web Site, TV watchers who remember Richard Diamond, Private Eye in the least often remember it best for its gimmick: the answering-service girl, Sam, who took all of Diamond’s phone calls, but whose face you never saw on-screen, only her legs. Turns out, those prize-winning gams belonged to Mary Tyler Moore.
After Diamond’s end, Janssen took a lot of other TV work, guest-starring on Death Valley Days, Checkmate, Route 66, and Naked City, before being cast as Dr. Richard Kimble, a pediatrician falsely accused of murdering his wife, in the Roy Huggins-created ABC-TV series The Fugitive. That show took a while to build up an audience, but eventually proved to be a hit, winning an Emmy Award in 1966 for Best Dramatic Series. (Janssen himself was nominated for Emmys three times during the show’s run, but lost in each case--twice to Bill Cosby, for I Spy--and was never nominated again). The Fugitive ended after four years, when Janssen declined a fifth-year contract.
Instead, he turned to movie roles, appearing in John Wayne’s The Green Berets (1968), a science-fiction film called Marooned (1969), and a Western called Macho Callahan (1970), in which he played a Confederate army deserter who breaks out of a prison camp and, with his old partner, goes hunting for the man who landed him in that brutal stockade. But the lure of TV series (and the money that went along with them) led Janssen back in 1971 as the star of O’Hara, United States Treasury, a Jack Webb serial that had Janssen playing a Treasury agent (“T-Man”) who traveled around the country on assignment with assorted law-enforcement agencies. As The David Janssen Archive puts it none too delicately, O’Hara is “considered to be the only stinker of the four series in which Janssen starred. It lasted one season.”
The good news was that O’Hara’s cancellation made it possible for Janssen to star three years later in one of the best private-eye series of the 1970s: Harry O. I qualify that because the ’70s was a particularly fecund period for TV P.I.s, some of them excellent (like Jim Rockford and Miles C. Banyon) and others who never should have been given a license to practice (such as Richie Brockelman and Wade Griffin). Though darker in tone than The Rockford Files, Harry O was a nice complement, the two exemplifying divergent paths taken by modern fictional gumshoes. In a piece that originally appeared in the magazine Television Chronicles, TV historian and author Ed Robertson wrote:
Although Harry O still hasn’t made the transfer to DVD, I’ve lately been fortunate--thanks to a taped-from-TV DVD collection purchased from a Web site called Old Time Favorites--to revisit the series. I remember watching it only periodically, so many of these episodes are new to me. And I’m pleased to finally see them. Janssen lacked the flashy presentation of many TV “eyes” of the ’70s, and he could be downright grumpy at times--an obvious contrast to James Garner’s humorously self-effacing Rockford. Yet you always knew that Harry Orwell cared about the people he worked for--often at a cost to his faith in civilization’s worth or sanity. “As time went on,” Meyers remarks, “it became obvious that Harry wanted to give of himself, but he had learned never to rely on anything or anyone. His car did not work. His body did not work. ... Everything he had done in the past was for nothing. Everyone he touched seemed to get hurt.” That included his San Diego policeman friend, Lieutenant Manny Quinlan (Henry Darrow), who--in a remarkable incident, given his previous status as a regular--was shot to death at the end of the series’ first season. By then, Harry O was ranked among U.S. television’s top-20 shows.
So why was it cancelled a year later? Meyers writes that
Much too soon.
READ MORE: “A Star, Not Merely a Fugitive,” by J. Kingston Pierce
(The Rap Sheet).
Janssen, you’ll recall, was the star of three well-remembered American TV series: Richard Diamond, Private Eye
(1957-1960), The Fugitive (1963-1967), and of course, Harry O (1974-1976). Born David Harold Meyer in Naponee, Nebraska, on this date back in 1931, he was the son of a banker and a former teenage Miss Nebraska turned Ziegfeld Follies showgirl, Berniece Graf. But his parents’ marriage didn’t last, and Janssen’s mother relocated them to Los Angeles, where Berniece eventually married a man named Eugene Janssen. With his mother’s encouragement, David began acting at age 13, and by his 25th birthday, “he had appeared in 20 films and served two years as an enlisted man in the U.S. Army,” according to Wikipedia.He caught his first big break in the late ’50s, when longtime film actor Dick Powell, who had spent four years as the voice of ex-OSS man turned New York City private eye Richard Diamond--“radio’s singing gumshoe”--decided he didn’t want to star in a new version of Diamond for the then-young medium of television. Instead, Powell became the series’ producer and hired Janssen as its lead. As Kevin Burton Smith notes at The Thrilling Detective Web Site, TV watchers who remember Richard Diamond, Private Eye in the least often remember it best for its gimmick: the answering-service girl, Sam, who took all of Diamond’s phone calls, but whose face you never saw on-screen, only her legs. Turns out, those prize-winning gams belonged to Mary Tyler Moore.
After Diamond’s end, Janssen took a lot of other TV work, guest-starring on Death Valley Days, Checkmate, Route 66, and Naked City, before being cast as Dr. Richard Kimble, a pediatrician falsely accused of murdering his wife, in the Roy Huggins-created ABC-TV series The Fugitive. That show took a while to build up an audience, but eventually proved to be a hit, winning an Emmy Award in 1966 for Best Dramatic Series. (Janssen himself was nominated for Emmys three times during the show’s run, but lost in each case--twice to Bill Cosby, for I Spy--and was never nominated again). The Fugitive ended after four years, when Janssen declined a fifth-year contract.
Instead, he turned to movie roles, appearing in John Wayne’s The Green Berets (1968), a science-fiction film called Marooned (1969), and a Western called Macho Callahan (1970), in which he played a Confederate army deserter who breaks out of a prison camp and, with his old partner, goes hunting for the man who landed him in that brutal stockade. But the lure of TV series (and the money that went along with them) led Janssen back in 1971 as the star of O’Hara, United States Treasury, a Jack Webb serial that had Janssen playing a Treasury agent (“T-Man”) who traveled around the country on assignment with assorted law-enforcement agencies. As The David Janssen Archive puts it none too delicately, O’Hara is “considered to be the only stinker of the four series in which Janssen starred. It lasted one season.”
The good news was that O’Hara’s cancellation made it possible for Janssen to star three years later in one of the best private-eye series of the 1970s: Harry O. I qualify that because the ’70s was a particularly fecund period for TV P.I.s, some of them excellent (like Jim Rockford and Miles C. Banyon) and others who never should have been given a license to practice (such as Richie Brockelman and Wade Griffin). Though darker in tone than The Rockford Files, Harry O was a nice complement, the two exemplifying divergent paths taken by modern fictional gumshoes. In a piece that originally appeared in the magazine Television Chronicles, TV historian and author Ed Robertson wrote:
However, that original, 1973 pilot film for the series was less than enthusiastically received, and it took a second (and far superior) pilot film, 1974’s Smile Jenny, You’re Dead, guest-starring Andrea Marcovicci and Clu Gulager, to sell ABC on Janssen’s often dour, cynical, and antisocial, but determined and emotionally vulnerable San Diego private eye. The series premiered in September 1974, and though it lasted only two years, it won significant critical acclaim. “Harry O is possibly TV’s only truly successful interpretation of the Chandler/Macdonald/Spillane first-person narrative,” wrote Max Allan Collins and John Javna in The Best of Crime and Detective TV (1988), while Richard Meyers, in TV Detectives (1981), calls Harry O and The Rockford Files “the finest private-eye shows ever.” I wouldn’t even think to disagree with that.Harry Orwell ... wasn’t like most private eyes. He owned a car, but rode the bus because his car was often “sick.” He couldn’t run well because of a bullet lodged in his back from his days on the San Diego police force. He really didn’t have to work: while his disability pension didn’t make him rich, it afforded him a life of simple pleasures. Though he didn’t work for free, he didn’t always work for money: he once let a client pay off his fee by working on his boat, The Answer. He could also afford to work “on the house” occasionally, if he truly believed in a client, or if he somehow felt he had let the client down. Jim Rockford would never do that.
Harry O was born out of the fertile mind of Howard Rodman (Naked City, Route 66), the award-winning writer/producer of over 1,000 teleplays, screenplays and radio shows. Sometime in 1972, Warner Bros. commissioned Rodman to script a pilot based on the box office smash Dirty Harry. The studio soon learned, however, that the prolific scribe had ideas of his own. As Rodman explained in Murder on the Air (Mysterious Press, 1989), rather than re-create Clint Eastwood, he found his initial inspiration in the pages of Nathanael West’s classic novel, The Day of the Locust.
There is a page or two describing this guy walking up Sweetzer--that slope between Santa Monica and Sunset Boulevard--on a very hot day. He’s a door-to-door salesman going through bungalow courts and he’s got his jacket off, his thumb through the hanger loop holding it over his back, and his shirt is all wet ... That is the image I used to create Harry O. I mean that literally. That’s where I started.Rodman’s Orwell owned a gun, but rarely used it; he didn’t own a car at first, relying instead on the buses for transportation. He lived near the ocean--alone, but not lonely (he goes to bed with a lot of different women). Though he wasn’t particularly friendly, he was a good friend to those who knew him. He was different (for television, at least), yet he was also rooted in the tradition of the literary gumshoes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. In fact, Rodman’s title for the script, Such Dust as Dreams Are Made On, was itself an homage to the classic line from the film version of Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, “This is the stuff that dreams are made on” (which screenwriter John Huston in turn cribbed from Shakespeare’s The Tempest).
Although Harry O still hasn’t made the transfer to DVD, I’ve lately been fortunate--thanks to a taped-from-TV DVD collection purchased from a Web site called Old Time Favorites--to revisit the series. I remember watching it only periodically, so many of these episodes are new to me. And I’m pleased to finally see them. Janssen lacked the flashy presentation of many TV “eyes” of the ’70s, and he could be downright grumpy at times--an obvious contrast to James Garner’s humorously self-effacing Rockford. Yet you always knew that Harry Orwell cared about the people he worked for--often at a cost to his faith in civilization’s worth or sanity. “As time went on,” Meyers remarks, “it became obvious that Harry wanted to give of himself, but he had learned never to rely on anything or anyone. His car did not work. His body did not work. ... Everything he had done in the past was for nothing. Everyone he touched seemed to get hurt.” That included his San Diego policeman friend, Lieutenant Manny Quinlan (Henry Darrow), who--in a remarkable incident, given his previous status as a regular--was shot to death at the end of the series’ first season. By then, Harry O was ranked among U.S. television’s top-20 shows.
So why was it cancelled a year later? Meyers writes that
The answer came from Anthony Zerbe [who played Los Angeles cop K.C. Trench in the series’ second season] in 1980 at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, Connecticut, where he was starring in Cyrano de Bergerac. David Janssen had died earlier in the year at the age of 49 [actually, 48]. When asked about the demise of the Harry O series, Zerbe responded with the story that [TV exec] Fred Silverman had just come over to ABC from CBS to “fix” the third-place network. The first thing he did was to get rid of the shows he had nothing to do with. Harry O was one of them.Janssen was soon back to guesting in TV flicks, such as Mayday at 40,000 Feet! (1976), Superdome (1978), and The Golden Gate Murders (1979). He also appeared in the anthology series Police Story and the miniseries Centennial, based on James A. Michener’s 1974 novel of the same name. According to the Internet Movie Database, Janssen’s last dramatic appearance was in a 1981 theatrical film titled Inchon, but for some reason, his scenes were deleted prior to release. He died from a sudden heart attack on February 13, 1980, six weeks shy of his 49th birthday.
There is no way of telling if Harry O would have continued to add depth to the private-eye character. All that can be said is that it was unjustly killed long before its time. It remains a monument to Janssen’s work as an actor and television detective.
Much too soon.
READ MORE: “A Star, Not Merely a Fugitive,” by J. Kingston Pierce
(The Rap Sheet).
“L.A. Belongs to John Shannon”
It’s very easy to become enthusiastic about Los Angeles writer John Shannon’s work, and critic Kevin Burton Smith does just that in a review of The Dark Streets, posted earlier today in January Magazine. Smith begins:
What does John Shannon have to do to get some love from book buyers?You can read the whole energetically composed review here.
Sing on American Idol?
Punch Oprah in the nose?
Start dating Paris Hilton?
He’s going to have to do something, because clearly writing the finest series of detective novels currently set in Los Angeles isn't enough.
These books aren’t merely good reads. That they are, undeniably. But they’re also hard-edged, action-packed, character-driven thrillers that aren’t afraid to entertain. And they're not afraid, either, to be smart. Even better, though, is that Shannon is not afraid to be angry. His novels should be read not just by the huffing, puffing suits-and-ties that pretend to be our leaders, but by every single American with half a clue who has ever despaired about the state of this Union.
Monday, March 26, 2007
The Dark Side of Mooney
New England novelist Chris Mooney debuted in 2000 with the violent thriller Deviant Ways, and followed that a year later with World Without End. But the real treat was his third novel, 
the Edgar Award-nominated Remembering Sarah, which made January Magazine’s favorite books of 2004 list. Now, Mooney (shown at left with yours truly) is back with a wonderfully dark serial-killer opus called The Missing, which was just released in the States and is due out in Britain next month.
I first bumped into Mooney at Bouchercon 2003 in Las Vegas--a meeting that led quickly to a rather drunken evening spent at The Peppermill in company with Irish writer Ken Bruen and novelist (now San Francisco Chronicle books critic) Eddie Muller. (See proof here.) Later, I conducted an interview with Mooney for Shots, which cast some light onto this interesting writer and the genesis of the deeply disturbing Remembering Sarah. Here’s an excerpt from that exchange:
Ali Karim: Remembering Sarah is a real departure in terms of subject matter and style, but I believe it was a story that predates your two earlier thrillers. Would you care to tell us about it?
Chris Mooney: Funny you should mention that. Remembering Sarah was the first book I wanted to write--I knew how it started, I knew the characters’ names, how it would end, all of it. But given the book’s emotional scope, I knew at the time that I didn’t have the talent to pull it off the way I wanted to. That, along with the fact that I had this character, Malcolm Fletcher, sort of drawing me into his circle, I went ahead and wrote what became Deviant Ways. I’m glad I waited, because I’m really happy with the way Remembering Sarah turned out. I learned a lot writing that one, and the early response on it has been real encouraging.
AK: I really enjoyed Remembering Sarah, but, being a father myself, it was a hard read at times. But I also noticed that Dennis Lehane, Harlan Coben, and John Connolly have heaped praise on the book. How tough was it to write?
CM: There’s no way to write a story about a missing child without it being emotionally draining on both you and the reader. It was hard to put myself in [protagonist] Mike Sullivan’s shoes every day for almost two years, and there were certainly times when I felt like walking away from it. A lot of my energy went into making sure the book wasn’t exploitative in any way, but an honest account of how this father who made a big mistake goes about his life trying to find a way to redeem himself. That’s the tough part of the book because, as a parent myself, we’ve all been in that place where you turn your head for just a second and your child falls down and almost splits their head open on the edge of a glass coffee table or something. The other tough part is dealing with this idea of hope--how long do you hang on to hope? When do you give it up, and can you give it up? Because the second Mike gives up hope, his daughter’s gone. That’s what I think makes the book interesting and, at the same time, makes it tough to read. You connect with Mike because he’s real, he’s like a guy you know or a close friend, and he made some of the same mistakes you’ve probably made as a parent. He’s a good guy and you’re just on his side from day one, rooting for him.
So, what is The Missing all about?
Well, it’s a terrifying serial-killer yarn that features a hunt across time and across the United States, as searches are made for a score of women who have been abducted and whose names have gone onto the FBI’s missing persons list.
The key with Mooney is how he brings characterization into play as a plot device. Enter a young teenager named Darby McCormick and her two friends Melanie and Stacey, all of whom witness what they believe to be a murder in the woods. But the killer
also sees them. A hunt ensures, and Darby becomes traumatized by seeing what happens to her friends after the killer tracks them down. However, she survives (and the reasons for her survival are only revealed in the book’s sucker-punch ending).
Darby goes on to become an FBI investigator. Then a case lands on her desk that has the familiar hallmarks of the one that so traumatized her in childhood. Abductions continue, but nothing seems to link the missing women, and there is a lack of clues; but Darby thinks there must be a link to her own past. Red herrings abound, with a white supremacist being favored as the abductor. Darby, though, thinks this case could involve a number of other connected killers--people with fractured pasts, people with disassociated minds, people who lurk amidst the blackness of psychosis. This portion of the novel sent real chills through my body, as did the banality of evil Mooney portrays in this bullet-train thriller.
The Missing is a way-above-average addition to the already overstocked subgenre of serial-killer novels. Let’s hope that its appearance provokes Penguin to finally issue Remembering Sarah in the UK, too. Both show Chris Mooney to be a don’t-miss writer.
the Edgar Award-nominated Remembering Sarah, which made January Magazine’s favorite books of 2004 list. Now, Mooney (shown at left with yours truly) is back with a wonderfully dark serial-killer opus called The Missing, which was just released in the States and is due out in Britain next month.I first bumped into Mooney at Bouchercon 2003 in Las Vegas--a meeting that led quickly to a rather drunken evening spent at The Peppermill in company with Irish writer Ken Bruen and novelist (now San Francisco Chronicle books critic) Eddie Muller. (See proof here.) Later, I conducted an interview with Mooney for Shots, which cast some light onto this interesting writer and the genesis of the deeply disturbing Remembering Sarah. Here’s an excerpt from that exchange:
Ali Karim: Remembering Sarah is a real departure in terms of subject matter and style, but I believe it was a story that predates your two earlier thrillers. Would you care to tell us about it?
Chris Mooney: Funny you should mention that. Remembering Sarah was the first book I wanted to write--I knew how it started, I knew the characters’ names, how it would end, all of it. But given the book’s emotional scope, I knew at the time that I didn’t have the talent to pull it off the way I wanted to. That, along with the fact that I had this character, Malcolm Fletcher, sort of drawing me into his circle, I went ahead and wrote what became Deviant Ways. I’m glad I waited, because I’m really happy with the way Remembering Sarah turned out. I learned a lot writing that one, and the early response on it has been real encouraging.
AK: I really enjoyed Remembering Sarah, but, being a father myself, it was a hard read at times. But I also noticed that Dennis Lehane, Harlan Coben, and John Connolly have heaped praise on the book. How tough was it to write?
CM: There’s no way to write a story about a missing child without it being emotionally draining on both you and the reader. It was hard to put myself in [protagonist] Mike Sullivan’s shoes every day for almost two years, and there were certainly times when I felt like walking away from it. A lot of my energy went into making sure the book wasn’t exploitative in any way, but an honest account of how this father who made a big mistake goes about his life trying to find a way to redeem himself. That’s the tough part of the book because, as a parent myself, we’ve all been in that place where you turn your head for just a second and your child falls down and almost splits their head open on the edge of a glass coffee table or something. The other tough part is dealing with this idea of hope--how long do you hang on to hope? When do you give it up, and can you give it up? Because the second Mike gives up hope, his daughter’s gone. That’s what I think makes the book interesting and, at the same time, makes it tough to read. You connect with Mike because he’s real, he’s like a guy you know or a close friend, and he made some of the same mistakes you’ve probably made as a parent. He’s a good guy and you’re just on his side from day one, rooting for him.
* * *
Then, last month, I attended Penguin UK’s crime-fiction dinner in London, and who should appear but Chris Mooney. We managed to carve out some time for a beer together and to catch up. Mooney let me know more about The Missing, which Penguin seems to be pushing hard in the UK, if this link is any indication. I’m very pleased to see Mooney’s work making a splash again in Britain.So, what is The Missing all about?
Well, it’s a terrifying serial-killer yarn that features a hunt across time and across the United States, as searches are made for a score of women who have been abducted and whose names have gone onto the FBI’s missing persons list.
The key with Mooney is how he brings characterization into play as a plot device. Enter a young teenager named Darby McCormick and her two friends Melanie and Stacey, all of whom witness what they believe to be a murder in the woods. But the killer
also sees them. A hunt ensures, and Darby becomes traumatized by seeing what happens to her friends after the killer tracks them down. However, she survives (and the reasons for her survival are only revealed in the book’s sucker-punch ending).Darby goes on to become an FBI investigator. Then a case lands on her desk that has the familiar hallmarks of the one that so traumatized her in childhood. Abductions continue, but nothing seems to link the missing women, and there is a lack of clues; but Darby thinks there must be a link to her own past. Red herrings abound, with a white supremacist being favored as the abductor. Darby, though, thinks this case could involve a number of other connected killers--people with fractured pasts, people with disassociated minds, people who lurk amidst the blackness of psychosis. This portion of the novel sent real chills through my body, as did the banality of evil Mooney portrays in this bullet-train thriller.
The Missing is a way-above-average addition to the already overstocked subgenre of serial-killer novels. Let’s hope that its appearance provokes Penguin to finally issue Remembering Sarah in the UK, too. Both show Chris Mooney to be a don’t-miss writer.
Cagney & Lacey Back on the Beat
I was out of town last week when fans of the 1982-1988 TV series Cagney & Lacey were told that release of that show’s first season would be delayed indefinitely from its original May 8 date. The reason: a hitch over music rights, which sent C&L producer Barney Rosenzweig into a froth. But TV Shows on DVD now reports that “the package is back on, and on the original schedule as well!”--a fact confirmed by Rosenzweig on his own blog.
By the way, questions surrounding the contents of this C&L set--especially whether it would contain the initial six, spring 1982 episodes in which actress Meg Foster, rather than Sharon Gless, portrayed New York cop Chris Cagney--appear resolved by a recent MGM Home Entertainment release, which lists only the Gless and Tyne Daly episodes (beginning with “Witness to an Accident”), as well as by the DVD cover lines, which label this “The True Beginning: Cagney & Lacey.” There’s no telling yet whether those previous eps will be packaged separately, or maybe offered as bonuses on a future C&L DVD release.
By the way, questions surrounding the contents of this C&L set--especially whether it would contain the initial six, spring 1982 episodes in which actress Meg Foster, rather than Sharon Gless, portrayed New York cop Chris Cagney--appear resolved by a recent MGM Home Entertainment release, which lists only the Gless and Tyne Daly episodes (beginning with “Witness to an Accident”), as well as by the DVD cover lines, which label this “The True Beginning: Cagney & Lacey.” There’s no telling yet whether those previous eps will be packaged separately, or maybe offered as bonuses on a future C&L DVD release.
To Make a Long Story Short
I’ve made mention before in this space of novelist S.J. Rozan’s Six-Word Stories competition (see here and here), as I really like the idea. Following on a challenge Ernest Hemingway supposedly took--to write a complete story in just half a dozen words (his entry: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”)--Rozan has asked crime writers and enthusiasts in the genre to compose their own six-word tales. Some of the latest winners:
• “Divorce? Never!” “Well ... ‘almond’ cookie, then?”--Merlot
• “The perfect murder. Oh, no: Poirot.”--Joseph Wallace
• “Love ... marriage ... jealousy ... rage ... murder. Remorse.”--B.G. Ritts
• “Crap! I shot the wrong twin!”--Gerald So
S.J. was even kind enough to post a submission from yours truly, not that I in any way fancy myself as economical with words as Papa could be (though I did accomplish this in five words, not six):
“Amateur marksman. Professional asshole. Bullseye.”
To read more of these six-word stories, click here. And if you’d like to take the challenge yourself, e-mail your submission to: sixwordstory@aol.com.
Now, far be it from me to suggest that the London Guardian got this idea from Rozan, but the paper recently asked notable novelists to send in their own six-word yarns. Several of the best come from crime-fictionists:
• “It can’t be. I’m a virgin.”--Kate Atkinson (One Good Turn)
• “Set sail, great storm, all lost.”--John Banville (aka Benjamin Black, Christine Falls)
• “Bob’s last message: Bermuda Triangle, Baloney.”--Elmore Leonard (Up in Honey’s Room)
• “Humorous book: critic died laughing. Sued.”--Alexander McCall Smith (The Good Husband of Zebra Drive)
Read all of the Guardian entries here.
(Hat tip to Campaign for the American Reader.)
• “Divorce? Never!” “Well ... ‘almond’ cookie, then?”--Merlot
• “The perfect murder. Oh, no: Poirot.”--Joseph Wallace
• “Love ... marriage ... jealousy ... rage ... murder. Remorse.”--B.G. Ritts
• “Crap! I shot the wrong twin!”--Gerald So
S.J. was even kind enough to post a submission from yours truly, not that I in any way fancy myself as economical with words as Papa could be (though I did accomplish this in five words, not six):
“Amateur marksman. Professional asshole. Bullseye.”
To read more of these six-word stories, click here. And if you’d like to take the challenge yourself, e-mail your submission to: sixwordstory@aol.com.
Now, far be it from me to suggest that the London Guardian got this idea from Rozan, but the paper recently asked notable novelists to send in their own six-word yarns. Several of the best come from crime-fictionists:
• “It can’t be. I’m a virgin.”--Kate Atkinson (One Good Turn)
• “Set sail, great storm, all lost.”--John Banville (aka Benjamin Black, Christine Falls)
• “Bob’s last message: Bermuda Triangle, Baloney.”--Elmore Leonard (Up in Honey’s Room)
• “Humorous book: critic died laughing. Sued.”--Alexander McCall Smith (The Good Husband of Zebra Drive)
Read all of the Guardian entries here.
(Hat tip to Campaign for the American Reader.)
Women’s History Month, Noir Edition
As we approach the end of Women’s History Month, it seems a fitting moment to honor the contributions women over the decades have made to noir fiction.
The debate over the status of female authors in contemporary noir rages anew every few months, as do discussions about the position of specific female authors (Patricia Highsmith, Leigh Brackett,
Delores Hitchens, Helen Nielsen) within the noir, hard-boiled, and pulp traditions. In recent years, growing scholarship in the area and the launch of the CUNY Feminist Press’ Femmes Fatales: Women Write Pulp series has reinvigorated the discussion. So, too, have some exhilarating new books, such as Sara Gran’s Dope, and early excitement surrounding Hard Case Crime’s upcoming Money Shot, by Christa Faust, not to mention the long-overdue reprinting of Vicki Hendricks’ seminal Miami Purity (due from Busted Flush Press in May). Miami Purity celebrates and turns inside out James M. Cain’s Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), recasting the original novel’s male drifter as a hardscrabble ex-stripper just out of jail and doomed by her own desires.
A side note, from a personal point of view: I set out last year to try to write a novel (Queenpin) in the pulp tradition--or at least my conception of it. Tugging on different fascinations I have with Cain, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, Dashiell Hammett, Highsmith, Jim Thompson and Cornell Woolrich, and inspired by first exposures to Dorothy B. Hughes and Vera Caspary, I plugged away at a story built around a fundamental genre trope: the older tough guy who mentors a young protégée in the ways of crime. In my case, however, the mentor was an aging moll in the Virginia Hill mold, who takes a young bookkeeper under her wing, to no good end. The novel was a chance to explore the complexities (and dark corners) of female friendship in a genre that is generally far more revelatory about male friendships. All in all, though, the gender reversal mattered far less than I might have guessed. I wonder now if its because noir is so steeped in questions of power and powerlessness, fate and desperation--human issues, if dark ones. They frequently (almost obsessively) take gendered form (e.g., the classic sap falling victim to the emasculating femme fatale), but that’s just one form of many. The larger themes--ugly ambition, betrayal, and the terrible weight of desire--seem to loom up, regardless.
There’s a lot to reckon with here in terms of gender/genre. One thing, however, is certain. As this month encourages the recognition and celebration
of the historic accomplishments of women, the women standard-bearers of noir merit commemoration. As a small token to their gifts to the genre, consider a poisonous little sliver from Dorothy B. Hughes.
Brimming over with post-World War II malignancy and sex panic, Hughes’ In a Lonely Place (1947) tells the story of Dix Steele, a Ripleyesque drifter and sociopath, who may have finally met his match in Laurel Gray, a hard-boiled beauty with a taste for the high life and a dark cynicism to match his own. Over drinks at the posh apartment Dix claims to be subletting from Mel, a wealthy Princeton friend, they discuss the most recent in a series of Los Angeles sex murders. Glancing at the newspaper headlines, Laurel says:
The debate over the status of female authors in contemporary noir rages anew every few months, as do discussions about the position of specific female authors (Patricia Highsmith, Leigh Brackett,
Delores Hitchens, Helen Nielsen) within the noir, hard-boiled, and pulp traditions. In recent years, growing scholarship in the area and the launch of the CUNY Feminist Press’ Femmes Fatales: Women Write Pulp series has reinvigorated the discussion. So, too, have some exhilarating new books, such as Sara Gran’s Dope, and early excitement surrounding Hard Case Crime’s upcoming Money Shot, by Christa Faust, not to mention the long-overdue reprinting of Vicki Hendricks’ seminal Miami Purity (due from Busted Flush Press in May). Miami Purity celebrates and turns inside out James M. Cain’s Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), recasting the original novel’s male drifter as a hardscrabble ex-stripper just out of jail and doomed by her own desires.A side note, from a personal point of view: I set out last year to try to write a novel (Queenpin) in the pulp tradition--or at least my conception of it. Tugging on different fascinations I have with Cain, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, Dashiell Hammett, Highsmith, Jim Thompson and Cornell Woolrich, and inspired by first exposures to Dorothy B. Hughes and Vera Caspary, I plugged away at a story built around a fundamental genre trope: the older tough guy who mentors a young protégée in the ways of crime. In my case, however, the mentor was an aging moll in the Virginia Hill mold, who takes a young bookkeeper under her wing, to no good end. The novel was a chance to explore the complexities (and dark corners) of female friendship in a genre that is generally far more revelatory about male friendships. All in all, though, the gender reversal mattered far less than I might have guessed. I wonder now if its because noir is so steeped in questions of power and powerlessness, fate and desperation--human issues, if dark ones. They frequently (almost obsessively) take gendered form (e.g., the classic sap falling victim to the emasculating femme fatale), but that’s just one form of many. The larger themes--ugly ambition, betrayal, and the terrible weight of desire--seem to loom up, regardless.
There’s a lot to reckon with here in terms of gender/genre. One thing, however, is certain. As this month encourages the recognition and celebration
of the historic accomplishments of women, the women standard-bearers of noir merit commemoration. As a small token to their gifts to the genre, consider a poisonous little sliver from Dorothy B. Hughes.Brimming over with post-World War II malignancy and sex panic, Hughes’ In a Lonely Place (1947) tells the story of Dix Steele, a Ripleyesque drifter and sociopath, who may have finally met his match in Laurel Gray, a hard-boiled beauty with a taste for the high life and a dark cynicism to match his own. Over drinks at the posh apartment Dix claims to be subletting from Mel, a wealthy Princeton friend, they discuss the most recent in a series of Los Angeles sex murders. Glancing at the newspaper headlines, Laurel says:
A simple passage, packed tight with nastiness. Here’s to the sublime Ms. Hughes and all the rest, the rough-and-tumble women who set such high standards for treachery and vice, mayhem and dissolution, a brutal eroticism and a desperate drive toward one’s own doom.“I see where the strangler’s been at it again.” She wasn’t very interested; it was conversation, nothing more. “Someday maybe those dopes will learn not to pick up strange men.”
“You picked me up.”
She’d taken a long swallow of the highball. As he spoke, she lifted her eyebrows. "You picked me up, Princeton.” She purred, “Besides, you’re no stranger.” She knew it too, the instinct of one for the other. “Mel’s liquor is as good as ever.”
He said, “Yes, he left a good cellar for me.” He went on, “I ran into him in a bar.” “And you had an old-home week.”
“He was potted and trying to make my girl.” His eyes spoke meaning beyond the words he slurred. “A blonde.”
“That you’d picked up somewhere,” she retorted.
Zine Makes the Scene
We’re always glad to introduce readers to new crime-fiction blogs, so let us point you at Crime Zine Report. According to author-blogger Sandra Ruttan (Suspicious Circumstances), who appears to be in charge here too, Crime Zine “is intended to be a group blog where publishers of ezines that contain crime fiction content can post about new issues, contests and news. An RSS feed will be linking Crimespace and Crime Zine so that crime fiction readers and authors will see updates there as well. It’s intended as a way to get the news out.” Sounds good.
However, there’s still a lot of growing this new blog must do. So far, only a few publishers/editors have put in their two cents, and they seem to still be in the process of introducing themselves to readers--a practice that is very popular in blogging circles, but that frequent Web site visitors and listserv subscribers tire of quickly. (There’s a fine line between community building and self-promotion.) We look forward to reading substantive reports not just about new content in crime-fiction zines, but some behind-the-scenes stuff about how interviews were secured, perhaps, or the real headaches to be found in putting out Web publications. Good grist, all of that.
However, there’s still a lot of growing this new blog must do. So far, only a few publishers/editors have put in their two cents, and they seem to still be in the process of introducing themselves to readers--a practice that is very popular in blogging circles, but that frequent Web site visitors and listserv subscribers tire of quickly. (There’s a fine line between community building and self-promotion.) We look forward to reading substantive reports not just about new content in crime-fiction zines, but some behind-the-scenes stuff about how interviews were secured, perhaps, or the real headaches to be found in putting out Web publications. Good grist, all of that.
“I’m Just Pleased to Get the Books Published”
Tennessee writer William Gay’s Twilight (2006) didn’t register with me right away as fitting into the crime-fiction tradition. But this “Southern gothic novel about an undertaker who won’t let the dead rest” definitely makes the cut, as might his previous novel, The Long Home (1999). As Gay explains today in an interview with John Kenyon of Things I’d Rather Be Doing,
I actually think I’m influenced by Flannery O’Connor. A Good Man is Hard to Find is one of the best books I’ve ever read. I think my stuff was influenced in style, and characters, by O’Connor’s characters.I also read a lot of Raymond Chandler, Ross McDonald [sic], hard-boiled stuff. There is a general feel toward the end of The Long Home when the kid’s sort of walking away that’s like that. Otto Penzler, who runs the Mysterious Bookshop, called me after The Long Home. He stocked it. He considered it a crime novel. I have a story coming in the Best Mystery Stories of 2007 chosen by him. It was from Tin House, about the meth trade. It’s kind of a surreal, bizarre story. It’ll be in Best American Short Stories, selected by Stephen King, too. First time I’ve ever been in there.
The full text of TIRBD’s fine interview with Gay can be found here.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Summery Judgment 2007
Here in Ohio, spring is in the air. Natives to the Buckeye State know that you’re not out of reach of a rogue snowstorm until mid-April, but over the last few days we’ve had a nice preview of summer. In the Miller household, this means many things: copious amounts of Sauvignon Blanc on the deck, live music under the stars, and lots of good summertime reading. In keeping with a Rap Sheet tradition (meaning “for the second year in a row”), here are the books I’m most looking forward to reading during the next six months:
• Donald E. Westlake has yet another John Dortmunder caper (after 2004’s Watch Your Back!) coming out in April. What’s So Funny (Warner) finds the beleagured master thief and his crew attempting to steal a gold chess set from a Manhattan vault. The set was intended for Russia’s final czar, but was liberated by U.S. soldiers during the First World War. Unless Dortmunder can pull this off, he heads to jail for being the best thief not currently in the slammer, at least in the view of the crooked cop who blackmails Dortmunder into taking this “assignment.”
• Little Girl Lost was one of the great finds of 2004, and was instrumental in launching the paperback imprint Hard Case Crime. Now, author Richard Aleas (known to the rest of us as Hard Case honcho Charles Ardai) returns in his second tale featuring New York City private eye John Blake. Songs of Innocence picks up where the previous book left off, with Blake looking into the suicide of a college student who led a dangerous double life. Songs of Innocence will be released in July.
• Allan Guthrie’s Kiss Her Goodbye was published by Hard Case Crime and scored an Edgar Award nomination back in 2006. Guthrie’s U.S. hardcover debut, Hard Man, (Harcourt), will be out in June. In this new book, Guthrie takes us deep into the bleak Edinburgh realm of Gordon Pearce, an ex-con known as a tough customer. Pearce tries to resist being hired by thug Jacob Baxter, who wants his daughter rescued from an abusive marriage. Resistance eventually proves futile, as Pearce is forced to act to save the one thing he values most: his three-legged Dandie Dinmont Terrier.
• Earlier this year, I raved about Ken Kuhlken’s The Do-Re-Mi, which was published by Poisoned Pen Press. Kuhlken recently told me that the earlier works in his historical series featuring P.I. Tom Hickey are being reissued by his new publisher. The Loud Adios, which won the 1991 Private Eye Writers of America/St. Martin’s Press award for Best First Private Eye Novel, is already available again in bookstores. The Venus Deal is due out in June, with The Angel Gang to appear in September. The Hickey series is a diamond in the rough, and Poisoned Pen Press is to be commended for bringing Kuhlken’s earlier works back into print.
• Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of noir short-story collections set in different locales. Peter Speigelman, creator of the superb John March series (Red Cat), edits Wall Street Noir, an anthology of tales set in a place where “fear and greed have always held sway.” Contributors include Jason Starr, Jim Fusilli, Twist Phelan, and The Rap Sheet’s own Megan Abbott. Wall Street Noir will be out in June, just ahead of Bronx Noir, edited by S. J. Rozan, which will be gracing store shelves in August. Looking further ahead, Akashic tells us to look forward to forthcoming entries in the Noir series set in Brooklyn (for the third time), Delhi, Las Vegas, Detroit, and Paris.
• And, since this man cannot live by crime fiction alone, I’m waiting for one of my public libraries to purchase New York 2000: Architecture and Urbanism from the Bicentennial to the Millennium, by Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the Yale School of Architecture and leading light of the neoclassical movement. Stern’s buildings range from the cloying and hyper-sentimental to spot-on perfect, but as an architectural historian, he is unmatched. His look into the last 30 years of New York City architecture should be enlightening.
READ MORE: J. Kingston Pierce’s Summer 2007 Picks; Anthony Rainone’s Summer 2007 Reading Picks; Linda L. Richards’ Summer 2007 Picks.
• Donald E. Westlake has yet another John Dortmunder caper (after 2004’s Watch Your Back!) coming out in April. What’s So Funny (Warner) finds the beleagured master thief and his crew attempting to steal a gold chess set from a Manhattan vault. The set was intended for Russia’s final czar, but was liberated by U.S. soldiers during the First World War. Unless Dortmunder can pull this off, he heads to jail for being the best thief not currently in the slammer, at least in the view of the crooked cop who blackmails Dortmunder into taking this “assignment.”• Little Girl Lost was one of the great finds of 2004, and was instrumental in launching the paperback imprint Hard Case Crime. Now, author Richard Aleas (known to the rest of us as Hard Case honcho Charles Ardai) returns in his second tale featuring New York City private eye John Blake. Songs of Innocence picks up where the previous book left off, with Blake looking into the suicide of a college student who led a dangerous double life. Songs of Innocence will be released in July.
• Allan Guthrie’s Kiss Her Goodbye was published by Hard Case Crime and scored an Edgar Award nomination back in 2006. Guthrie’s U.S. hardcover debut, Hard Man, (Harcourt), will be out in June. In this new book, Guthrie takes us deep into the bleak Edinburgh realm of Gordon Pearce, an ex-con known as a tough customer. Pearce tries to resist being hired by thug Jacob Baxter, who wants his daughter rescued from an abusive marriage. Resistance eventually proves futile, as Pearce is forced to act to save the one thing he values most: his three-legged Dandie Dinmont Terrier.
• Earlier this year, I raved about Ken Kuhlken’s The Do-Re-Mi, which was published by Poisoned Pen Press. Kuhlken recently told me that the earlier works in his historical series featuring P.I. Tom Hickey are being reissued by his new publisher. The Loud Adios, which won the 1991 Private Eye Writers of America/St. Martin’s Press award for Best First Private Eye Novel, is already available again in bookstores. The Venus Deal is due out in June, with The Angel Gang to appear in September. The Hickey series is a diamond in the rough, and Poisoned Pen Press is to be commended for bringing Kuhlken’s earlier works back into print.
• Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of noir short-story collections set in different locales. Peter Speigelman, creator of the superb John March series (Red Cat), edits Wall Street Noir, an anthology of tales set in a place where “fear and greed have always held sway.” Contributors include Jason Starr, Jim Fusilli, Twist Phelan, and The Rap Sheet’s own Megan Abbott. Wall Street Noir will be out in June, just ahead of Bronx Noir, edited by S. J. Rozan, which will be gracing store shelves in August. Looking further ahead, Akashic tells us to look forward to forthcoming entries in the Noir series set in Brooklyn (for the third time), Delhi, Las Vegas, Detroit, and Paris.• And, since this man cannot live by crime fiction alone, I’m waiting for one of my public libraries to purchase New York 2000: Architecture and Urbanism from the Bicentennial to the Millennium, by Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the Yale School of Architecture and leading light of the neoclassical movement. Stern’s buildings range from the cloying and hyper-sentimental to spot-on perfect, but as an architectural historian, he is unmatched. His look into the last 30 years of New York City architecture should be enlightening.
READ MORE: J. Kingston Pierce’s Summer 2007 Picks; Anthony Rainone’s Summer 2007 Reading Picks; Linda L. Richards’ Summer 2007 Picks.
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