Escape from the Ordinary, Part II

(Editor’s note: This is the concluding segment of a two-part pre-Bouchercon report submitted by British correspondent Ali Karim. Part I can be found here.)

Critics Barry Forshaw and Mike Ripley at the Faber & Faber fête.

I really enjoy attending literary lunches, when I can spare the time. So, following the wine, excellent cuisine, and rapid ramblings about crime fiction to be had at the celebration of R.J. Ellory’s new novel, A Simple Act of Violence, I left feeling distinctly well and headed off with a spring in my step, pleased to be making my first visit to the hallowed halls of Faber & Faber.

Those of you who know about iconic British publisher Faber may associate it with literary fiction, poetry, and music as well as books about film and the arts. Things change, however. Faber has entered the crime-fiction market in a big way. It has already made a name for itself by publishing such authors as Michael Dibdin, P.D. James, and Roger “R.N.” Morris, an occasional Rap Sheet blogger. However, when publicist Becky Fincham (formerly with Headline, and an organizer of the annual Ellis Peters Historical Awards) contacted me last month, she hinted that that there are significant changes afoot at Faber. Not long thereafter, an invitation to Faber’s crime-fiction party landed on my doorstep. I couldn’t help but be curious.

So, after leaving Orion’s launch of Simple Act, I took to the sidewalk, heading for Faber headquarters in Queen’s Square in London’s Bloomsbury District. Arriving simultaneously there was my dear friend, Shots editor Mike Stotter. We repaired right off the bat to a nearby pub called The Queen’s Larder. My round of drinks soon grew rather large, as Stotter and I were joined by Jake Kerridge from The Daily Telegraph; novelist, reviewer, and Shots columnist Mike Ripley; Mystery Woman Ayo Onatade; Crime Squad editor Chris Simmons; and critic Barry Forshaw. After chatting about what books we’d been reading and enjoying of late, we downed the dregs of our libations and headed in pursuit of the Faber fête.

I’ve relished work by a number of Faber authors over the years, particularly Irishman Eoin McNamee (aka Ian Fleming Dagger winner John Creed), who unfortunately could not attend this event. However, I was pleased to learn that my dear friend, the novelist, music journalist, and Catholic Herald literary editor Stav Sherez (The Devil’s Playground) would be partaking of Faber’s hospitality. Sherez and I traveled to the inaugural ThrillerFest in Phoenix, Arizona, in 2006. Since then, he’s weathered some personal tragedies, which forced him to take a break from novel-writing. Only recently, though, he signed with Faber and has a new book coming out called The Black Monastery. I was looking forward to seeing Sherez again, after many months of radio silence.

Interestingly, the cocktail party was held in the Faber & Faber boardroom. We were greeted with glasses of chilled wine, and waiters brought around plates of canapés as we were encouraged to mingle. Faber senior editor Angus Cargill addressed the guests, explaining that although his house has always published crime fiction, it is planning a much bigger push into the genre during 2009. (This is not surprising, as crime/thriller fiction is one of the few areas of book publishing that has grown lately, leaving other sectors of the industry in the dust.) He opined that writers being added to the Faber stable should be of great help in injecting some new excitement into the genre. Then he set about introducing these authors to the assembled and curious crowd.

First up was the aforementioned Roger Morris, who we learned was born in Manchester in 1960, but now lives in North London with his wife and two young children. Morris’ first novel, A Gentle Axe (or The Gentle Axe, as it’s known in the States), introduced his detective, Porfiry Petrovich from Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866). Its sequel, A Vengeful Longing, was a contender for this year’s Duncan Lawrie Dagger, given out by the British Crime Writers’ Association (CWA). And his third Porfiry Petrovich book, A Razor Wrapped in Silk, is set to be published in January 2010.

Next to be introduced was Andrew Martin, who grew up in Yorkshire. He has written for The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent on Sunday, and Granta, among other publications. Martin was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association’s 2008 Dagger in the Library Award and the Ellis Peters Historical Award in 2007. The sixth adventure in his celebrated “Jim Stringer, Steam Detective” series (due out in March of next year) is titled The Last Train to Scarborough, its plot described thusly:

One night, in a private boarding house in Scarborough, a railwayman vanishes, leaving his belongings behind. A reluctant Jim Stringer is sent to investigate. March 1914, and Jim Stringer, railway detective, is uneasy about his next assignment. It’s not so much the prospect of Scarborough in the gloomy off-season that bothers him, or even the fact that the last railwayman to stay in the house has disappeared without trace. It’s more that his governor, Chief Inspector Saul Weatherhill, seems to be deliberately holding back details of the case--and that he’s been sent to Scarborough with a trigger-happy assistant. The lodging house is called Paradise, but, as Jim discovers, it’s hardly that in reality. It is, however, home to the seductive and beautiful Amanda Rickerby, a woman evidently capable of derailing Jim’s marriage and a good deal more besides. As a storm brews in Scarborough, it becomes increasingly unlikely that Jim will ever ride the train back to York.

Following Martin came my friend Sherez (photographed at left), who talked rather nervously about The Black Monastery, which is to be released in April 2009. Its plot goes something like this:

People used to come to the small Greek island of Palassos for the historic ruins. Now they come to take drugs and party all night. But the horrific ritual murder of a boy in the grounds of an old monastery brings back memories of two similar deaths in the mid 1970s, and of a mysterious cult who once dwelt in the island’s interior, memories the island has tried hard to forget.

As Nikos, the police chief who has been persuaded back to his home island for the final years of his career, begins his investigation, two Brits arrive on the island: the best-selling crime writer Kitty Carson, on a break from the pressures of work and her strained marriage, and Jason, an aspiring writer with a secret of his own. When a second body is discovered--further endangering the island’s lucrative tourist trade--these three characters are thrown together, as the gruesome secrets of the past begin to emerge.

Adam Creed is an author new to this genre. He was introduced as head of writing at Liverpool John Moores University, but he’s also project leader of Free to Write, working with prison inmates and ex-offenders. Creed, who lives in the Peak District and Andalucia, currently works for newspapers and magazines, including New Statesman, The Times of London, The Guardian, and City Life. He is laboring over the second novel in his series featuring Detective Inspector Wagstaffe, Willing Flesh. Its predecessor, Suffer the Children, is due out from Faber in May of next year. A synopsis of its plot makes it sound like a tough tale, indeed:

In the heat of London’s summer, sexual predators are allowed to roam free and children are attacked. However, someone has decided to take matters into their own hands and a known paedophile is horrifically murdered. The next day, another is brutally tortured and left to live.

DI Will Wagstaffe--‘Staffe’ to friends and enemies alike--finds himself having to protect known offenders and haul the families of their victims down to the precinct. As he digs deep into London’s dirtiest seams, figures from Staffe’s past come back to haunt him: Sylvie, the estranged love of his life, and Jessop, his ex-partner and mentor. In pursuing justice, he has to hurt the ones he loves. Staffe lives in a splendid Georgian flat in South Kensington--one of a portfolio of flats and houses he acquired following the murder of his parents. He collects antique furniture and likes to cook, drink fine wine and listen to classical music and jazz. A reluctant bachelor, strong women tug at him from each quarter of his life.

In Suffer the Children, a vigilante killer lures Staffe closer and closer into his web; allowing himself to get too personally involved, he jeopardises his position among his colleagues. To crack the case before it is taken off him, he takes further risks and finds himself drawn to a vigilante case that Jessop prosecuted years ago. Is this case telling him something? The victims are paedophiles who escaped conviction when their cases were dropped by the CPS. Could it be that the families of the child-abuse victims are in cahoots together to enact their own retribution?

Behind Creed came Jason Goodwin, whose debut novel, The Janissary Tree (2006), was selected by Tom Cain as part of The Rap Sheet’s One Book Project. I was interested to learn more about this author. It seems that Goodwin is an acclaimed travel and history writer. His historical crime series, set in 19th-century Istanbul and starring Yashim the Eunuch, comprises The Janissary Tree (winner of the 2007 Edgar Award for Best Novel), The Snake Stone (shortlisted for the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Crime Award in 2007), and most recently, The Bellini Card. Goodwin is also the author of The Gunpowder Gardens: Travels in China and India in Search of Tea, On Foot to the Golden Horn: A Walk to Istanbul, his account of a six-month pilgrimage across Eastern Europe to Istanbul (which won the John Llewellyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize in 1993), and Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire, which Jan Morris called “a high-octane work of art.” He is married with four children and lives in Dorset. The Bellini Card is described this way:

The third book in Jason Goodwin’s celebrated series following The Janissary Tree and The Snake Stone, The Bellini Card takes Yashim from the winding alleyways of Istanbul to the decaying grandeur of Venice. Charged by the Sultan to find a stolen painting by Bellini, he enlists the help of his friend Palewski, the Polish Ambassador, and goes undercover. Venice in 1840 is a city of empty palazzos and silent canals, and Palewski starts to mingle with Venetian dealers--self-made men, faded aristocrats and the hedonistic Contessa. But when two bodies turn up in the canal, he realises that art in Venice is a deadly business. And meanwhile, what has happened to Yashim? The Bellini Card is a thrilling adventure in which a quest for a lost painting turns into dangerous game of cat and mouse that threatens to destroy the Ottoman throne and overturn the balance of power in Europe.

Then it was the turn of Tobias Jones, who was born in Somerset in 1972. Having graduated from Jesus College, Oxford, with a double first in English and History, Jones spent a year framing and selling antiquarian maps in a bookshop in Bloomsbury. He then joined the editorial team of the London Review of Books, before becoming a staff writer for The Independent on Sunday. In 1999 he emigrated to Italy, from where he has worked as a freelance journalist, writing essays and articles on Italy for Wallpaper, Prospect, Vogue, and The Guardian. In 2003, he became the best-selling author of The Dark Heart of Italy. Now based in the UK, Jones’ most recent book, Utopian Dreams, was published in 2007. His first crime novel, The Salati Case, is scheduled to reach bookstores on this side of the Atlantic in June 2009.

Finally, we were introduced to Nicola Upson, who was born in Suffolk and read English at Downing College, Cambridge. She has worked in theater and as a freelance journalist, and is the author of two works of non-fiction and the recipient of an Escalator Award from the Arts Council England. Upson’s first novel, An Expert in Murder, was published earlier this year. Its sequel, Angel with Two Faces, will be published in July 2009. The latte’s story is described as follows:

It’s a year after the murderous events recounted in An Expert in Murder and Inspector Archie Pensrose has invited Josephine Tey to spend the summer with his family at the estate in Cornwall where he grew up--especially as it is at the site of the Minack Theatre, perched high on the cliffs overlooking the sea.

But their summer idyll is marred when their arrival coincides with the funeral of one of the workers on the estate. He was killed in a freak accident when his horse bolted and took him into the lake where he drowned.

However, there are suspicions that it might be suicide, and when the local curate is thrown off the edge of the Minack Theatre onto the rocks below, the holiday turns into a nightmare.

Other Faber authors who are were not present, but are still considered critical parts of the Faber crime stable, include Brent Ghelfi, Michael Gregorio, Gilbert Adair, P.D. James, and Elmore Leonard’s son Peter Leonard.

Once all of the introductions were complete, we had a chance to roam amongst the authors and learn more about their books and background. I also had a long talk with my friend Stav Sherez. It was good to see him getting back to a degree of normality. I thought for a while that Sherez would not write again, but looking into his eyes (as George W. Bush claims to do in order to read men’s souls), I could see that writing and reading are what he lives for. Many authors produce only one novel, but in Sherez’s case I hope he has plenty more books in his head. He kindly signed a proof of The Black Monastery for me, and we promised to meet next month for dinner, so I can tell him about my adventures at Bouchercon in Baltimore.

With the hour running late, I grabbed Mike Stotter, and after thanking the Faber & Faber gang for their hospitality and waving good-night to our reviewing colleagues, we headed away to dinner. It gave us a chance to recount the evening and evaluate Faber’s new crime-fiction offerings. The publisher certainly seems serious in its efforts to gain a bigger impact on the genre--criminally serious, we agreed as we finished our meal and trudged home, our arms rewardingly full of review copies.

After my day off, I just hoped that the international financial crisis hadn’t deepened while I was not paying attention. At least I had a bag of books to escape to if I couldn’t face reading The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times the next morning. It’s funny that these days I derive considerably more comfort from reading crime fiction than I do from perusing the newspapers.

Click here to learn more about Faber & Faber’s crime list and perhaps you too can escape the pervasive gloom.