Last Writes

I am always on the lookout for new sorts of crime fiction, and the debut novel Tethered--released recently in Britain (but available in the States since last summer)--is most definitely different. I must warn you, however, that this story, written by Boston-area author Amy MacKinnon, is more than a bit disturbing.

Its British cover (seen at left) makes my skin crawl; the imagery is as creepy as MacKinnon’s narrative, which is filled with damaged people. A synopsis of Tethered sets the scene beautifully:

Clara Marsh is an undertaker who doesn’t believe in God. She spends her solitary life among the dead, preparing their last baths and bidding them farewell with a bouquet from her own garden. Her carefully structured life shifts when she discovers a neglected little girl, Trecie, playing in the funeral parlor, desperate for a friend.

It changes even more when Detective Mike Sullivan starts questioning her again about a body she prepared three years ago, an unidentified girl found murdered in a nearby strip of woods. Unclaimed by family, the community christened her Precious Doe. When Clara and Mike learn Trecie may be involved with the same people who killed Precious Doe, Clara must choose between the stead-fast existence of loneliness and the perils of binding one’s life to another.

Taking place in Brockton, Massachusetts, this tale is multi-layered, suffused with insight, compassion, and human pain. Tethered is sure to haunt, and maybe make readers question what value life still has when it’s riddled with suffering. As wonderfully evocative as it is disquieting, this dark novel will embed itself in your mind as surely as the plaintive cries of a lost child.

So while MacKinnon was in London not long ago to attend a party held by her UK publisher, Orion, I arranged with publicity manager Gaby Young to interview her. It gave me the chance to ask this author about her writing history, her background in politics, and how she died during his first experience of childbirth.

Ali Karim: Although Tethered is touted as your first novel, you’ve done a good deal of scribbling in the past, right?

Amy MacKinnon: I was a freelance reporter for a few years and admit to having one novel under the bed. It was dreadful. I took [Ernest] Hemingway’s advice to “write what you know,” so I wrote a humorous take on the drama of suburbia. The only problem being that I’m not terribly funny.

AK: Do you come from a bookish family? And what did you read in your early years that made an impression upon you?

AM: I come from a blue-collar family, which emphasized hard work and integrity. Books and reading were a luxury. I didn’t own many, but my good Mom took me to the town library every Saturday. I’d borrow anything and everything from Mad Magazine to Judy Blume to Kurt Vonnegut. I remember in a high-school English class being exposed to Albert Camus’ The Stranger and that being the single most transformative reading experience of my life.

AK: Can you tell us when you first started writing?

AM: I left behind a career in politics [she was once an aide to U.S. Representative Gerry Studds and later served as chief of staff to Massachusetts legislator Paul Haley] to stay home with my children, and while I never regretted it, I did miss having something all my own. One night while nursing my youngest, I started writing my obituary. I recommend it to everyone; it helps clarify one’s goals. Soon after, I started freelance reporting. After hearing Jonathan Franzen say writing The Corrections was the most fun he’d ever had, I thought I’d try my hand at a novel. I can attest that writing is indeed the most fun I’ve ever had. Just goes to show how (thankfully) boring my real life is, I suppose.

AK: What about crime fiction? Have you read much in the genre?

AM: I don’t mean to be oppositional when I say this, but I dislike labeling books. Certainly it’s necessary for organizing them in stores and libraries, but, really, isn’t nearly every good story based on a crime? The Bible is rife with them, [Fyodor] Dostoevsky too. I don’t choose my reading material based on anything other than whether or not it’s a good story. If the writing is exemplary, well, then I’m doubly pleased. I read YA [young adult fiction], women’s fiction, crime, literary fiction, middle grade, thrillers ... People who claim to read only one genre are severely limiting themselves.

AK: Do you consider yourself a crime novelist?

AM: Most days I struggle with simply calling myself a writer.

AK: Who else’s work do you enjoy reading?

AM: My absolute favorite writer is Ian McEwan (On Chesil Beach). Or perhaps it’s Ann Patchett, Cormac McCarthy, Dennis Lehane, Margaret Atwood, Charles Frazier, Karen Fisher, Lois Lowry, or Stephen King.

AK: How did you find yourself hooking up with Orion Books?

AM: I sold world rights to Random House America in October 2007, and four days later they sold my novel at auction to four foreign publishers, including my beloved editor at Orion, Sara O’Keeffe. She’s been a phenomenal advocate for my novel.

AK: Now that you have U.S. and UK editions of your novel, are you finding interest from foreign publishers?

AM: As of today, Tethered has sold to nine foreign publishers. As a debut novelist, I feel blessed.

AK: I heard somewhere that your uncle was once in the undertaking business, just like Clara Marsh. Would you care to tell us something about that relative of yours?

AM: My uncle is a man of great faith, much like the character Linus in the story. There’s a scene where an elderly woman tells Linus that he’s surrounded by spirits waiting for him to show them the way home. My uncle had a similar experience and I’m certain it’s true.

AK: At times, Tethered can be a rather tough read. Did you worry about writing on the subject of death and the effect it has on families, especially when the loss of children is involved?

AM: Life is hard, especially now. Losing a child is the absolute worst fear of every good parent. Unfortunately, too many of my friends have experienced the loss of a child. At the book’s end, when Clara recites the names, those are their children. I have a very different take on death than many. After the birth of my first child, I contracted a massive infection, died, was revived, [was] placed on life support, and was in coma. It’s an absolutely lovely experience to die; the hard part was coming back. But I’m a mother first and foremost.

AK: Publishers like series characters. Without giving away the end of your novel, can you say whether you have further plans for the players in Tethered?

AM: The characters in Tethered are at rest now. I can’t imagine where I’d take them next. I do, however, have plans for Clara to make an appearance in the novel I’m working on presently.

AK: Finally, what books have you enjoyed reading lately?

AM: Other than the usual suspects? Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects is a startling read and I just received her next one, Dark Places. Wow! My dear friend Lynne Griffin has a book about to be published [that] crime readers would love, Life Without Summer. Anyone who enjoys a hilarious series with a mature woman reporter/detective, I suggest you try Hank Phillippi Ryan’s Prime Time series. Finally, one of the consistently best out there has to be Laura Lippman. Anything by her will leave an intelligent reader reeling.

* * *

A short excerpt from Tethered can be found here. Author Amy MacKinnon also writes a blog, The Literary Maze. And you can listen to a podcast by MacKinnon here.

(Author photo by Sigrid Estrada.)

READ MORE: “The End: Amy MacKinnon’s Novel About Death Was the Start of a Whole New Life, by David Mehegan (The Boston Globe).

Did You Cast Your Spinetingler Vote Correctly?

I was extraordinarily pleased earlier this week to find myself nominated for a Spinetingler Award. However, I’ve discovered a problem with the online voting, which others might encounter themselves--and which might prevent some choices from registering.

If you go to the online voting page for the Spinetingler Awards, you will find 10 white boxes containing the categories of nominees. (Scroll down to see them all.) At the bottom of each of those boxes is a small gray button that reads “Submit.” Now, if you’re like me, you will assume that you can go through this complete series of categories, vote for your favorite in each one, and then press “Submit” once at the end. However, that’s not the way this system works. Instead, you have to press “Submit” in each of the individual boxes, or all of your votes will not be counted.

If you punch “Submit” once at the end of the ballot, then only your vote for Best Short Story on the Web (the last category) will be tallied, the rest will not.

Fortunately, if you fouled up your voting the same way I did, you can now go back to the online voting page and finish making your picks in all of the categories. Only if you try voting in the same category more than once will your vote be rejected.

Technology--ain’t it grand?

Happy Birthday, Doctor Watson?

Nowhere in the dozens of cases that make up the Sherlock Holmes canon are the birthdates of “the world’s first consulting detective” or his loyal biographer, Dr. John H. Watson, supplied. If author Arthur Conan Doyle ever settled on birthdays for his most famous creations, he took that information to the grave with him in 1930.

However, during the decades since, scholarly efforts have been made to pin down the birthdates of both Holmes and Watson, based on elusive and perhaps erroneous clues. Purists often scoff at the findings of such studies, and author Laurie R. King (The Language of Bees) has her own ideas about Sherlock Holmes’ beginnings; but Holmes fans, especially those in the States, seem to have settled on January 6, 1854, as the day the Great Detective took his first breath.

There’s not even that grudging degree of agreement, though, on exactly when Dr. Watson was born.

Brad Keefauver, who used to be the editor-in-chief of an excellent but now apparently defunct periodical, The Holmes & Watson Report, wrote a piece back in 2000 called “Birth of a Watson, Birth of a Canon.” In it, he contended that today--March 31--ought to be celebrated as the birthday of Holmes’ “intimate friend and associate.” But as Keefauver acknowledged, not everyone agrees with his conclusion:

In his pamphlet, Watsoniana, Elliot Kimball placed Watson’s birthday on July 7, 1852. (Of course, he also claimed that Watson’s middle name was “Hubert.”) In his Annotated Sherlock Holmes, William S. Baring-Gould states that several commentators place Watson’s birth on July 7th, based on the fact that Watson took Beaune with lunch to celebrate. It is a horrible date for any Sherlockian to contemplate celebrating ... Watson’s literary agent died on that same day in 1930, and I don’t think it was because he overdid it at Watson’s birthday party. Perhaps Baring-Gould realized this, as in his Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, Baring-Gould cites August 7th as Watson’s birthday. Later compilers, like Matthew Bunson in his Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana, uncomplainingly follow those two leads, but I have to wonder: Can’t we do better?

As Keefauver explained, his determination of March 31, 1853 (or perhaps the early morning hours of April Fool’s Day), as the date of Watson’s entry into the world was based on “the time-honored hangover system of dating birthdays.”

I would, therefore, like to propose the opening of “The [Adventure of the] Speckled Band” for the morning after Watson’s birthday bash. In that April morning of 1883, Holmes awakens a slightly resentful Watson at 7:15 a.m., the doctor being a bit put out as he fully expected Holmes to sleep in. Daylight, according to Violet Stoner [aka Julia Stoner, the elder sister of Holmes’ latest client], came well before six that morning, so 7:15 is hardly an ungodly hour to be wakened ... unless, of course, one had a rough night before.

South Africa-born British novelist Rafe McGregor (The Architect of Murder) seems less than convinced by Keefauver’s “evidence.” After penning his own rather scholarly analysis of Watson’s history, A Study in Watson: The Extraordinary Life of the Man Behind Sherlock Holmes, McGregor explains in an e-mail note that “If I’m strict according to Doyle’s Canon, then I’m afraid there’s no mention of Watson’s birthday. I’m not actually a believer in the 6th January for Holmes either, although I know this is generally accepted in the U.S. The connection with Holmes is to do with Twelfth Night, I believe; but April Fool’s for poor old Watson ... we can’t have that!”

However, McGregor accepts the notion of Watson having been born in 1853, rather than 1852, as some non-canonical sources assert. In A Study in Watson, he spells out the doctor’s heritage and introduction to Watson’s future sleuthing friend thusly:

John Hamish Watson was born in 1853, a year before Sherlock Holmes. He inadvertently reveals his middle name when his wife calls him ‘James’ in “The Man with the Twisted Lip”: Mary Morstan was brought up and educated in Edinburgh, and Hamish is the Scottish version of James. Watson was born in England and had at least one sibling, an older brother. He probably went to school in London and we know that either then, or while a student at the University of London, he played rugby for Blackheath Club. At some time in this early period of his life his father died. Watson qualified as a Doctor of Medicine in 1878, aged twenty-five. His studies complete, he was commissioned into the Army Medical Service and trained at Netley in Southampton. He was gazetted as a captain-surgeon in the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers and joined his regiment in India early in 1879. At some time in the next 18 months he volunteered for front-line service and was attached to the 66th Berkshire Regiment, serving in the Second Anglo-Afghan War.

Watson was severely wounded at the Battle of Maiwand, on the 27th July 1880. He describes his wound as being in the shoulder in A Study in Scarlet [1887], and subsequently the leg in The Sign of Four [1890]. The discrepancy suggests that it was in fact the upper leg, probably in the abdominal region--the mention of which would not have been considered respectable in 1887, when A Study in Scarlet was first published. Following the harrowing retreat to Kandahar, Watson was sent to a military hospital in Peshawar, where he contracted enteric fever. His health apparently ruined, he was repatriated, arriving in Portsmouth at the end of the year. By this time his remaining family had emigrated. In The Sign of Four Watson mentions that he has visited three continents. We already know two of these (Europe and Asia) and he reveals the third when he notes that he has been to Ballarat (a mining town in Australia), also suggesting the whereabouts of his family.

On his return to England, Watson initially found lodging in a hotel in the Strand in London. He bought a bulldog puppy for company, but quickly found that he was unable to live on his income of ‘eleven shillings and sixpence a day’. He decided he must either leave London or find cheaper accommodation to solve the problem. A chance meeting with Stamford, a colleague from his student days at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, led to Watson’s introduction to Sherlock Holmes early in 1881. They agreed to share the cost of the rooms at 221B Baker Street, and during Watson’s continued convalescence he became aware that Holmes was engaged in an entirely unique profession, that of consulting detective. Their first collaboration was in A Study in Scarlet, and Watson published eleven other cases in which he was involved before The Sign of Four in 1888 (although he indicates that there are a vast number of unpublished cases for this period).

So, it’s with reservations that we celebrate John H. Watson’s birthday on this last day of March. We could be wrong about the date, or we could be right. The only person who knows for sure, if anybody does, died almost seven decades ago--yet the debate continues.

READ MORE: “Second to None,” by J. Kingston Pierce
(The Rap Sheet).

This “Pain” Is All Gain

After last week’s announcement of the three winners in our Afraid giveaway contest, I promised you another free book for the taking, and here it is. I have one copy of California writer Jerry Stahl’s fourth and latest novel, Pain Killers, to send to some lucky Rap Sheet reader. I was a big fan of Stahl’s previous novel, I, Fatty, which I included among January Magazine’s Best of 2004 books list, so I’m looking forward myself to reading this blackly humorous new work of history, mystery, and dementia.

The book’s publisher describes its plot this way:

Down-and-out ex-cop and not-quite-reformed addict Manny Rupert accepts a job going undercover to find out if an old man locked up in a California prison is who he claims to be: the despicable--and allegedly dead--Josef Mengele, aka the Angel of Death. What if, instead of drowning thirty years ago, the sadistic legend whose Auschwitz crimes still horrify faked his own death and is now locked up in San Quentin, ranting and bitter about being denied the adulation he craves for his contribution to keeping the Master Race pure--if no longer masterful?

After accidentally reuniting with ex-wife and love of his life, Tina, at San Quentin--they first met at the crime scene where Tina murdered her first husband with Drano-laced Lucky Charms--Manny spends a bad night imbibing boxed wine and questionable World War One morphine, hunched over a trove of photos showing live genital dissections that plant him in the middle of a conspiracy involving genocide, drugs, eugenics, human experiments, and America’s secret history of collusion with German believers in Nordic superiority.

Manny’s quest sends him careening from one extreme of apocalypse-adjacent reality to the other: from SS-inked Jewish shotcallers to meth-crazed virgin hookers, from Mexican gangbangers to Big Pharma-financed prison research to an animal shelter that gasses more than stray dogs and cats ...

Pain Killers captures one man’s struggle against a perverse and demented scheme of global proportions, in a literary tour de force as outrageous, compelling, and dangerous as history itself. Not for the faint of heart, the novel hurtles readers into a disturbing, original, and alarmingly real world filled with some of the kinkiest sex, most horrific violence, and screaming wit ever found on the page--proving yet again that Stahl is, as The New Yorker described him, “a better-than-Burroughs virtuoso.”

To enter this latest book contest, just answer one simple question:

In which other of Stahl’s novels did ex-junkie turned codeine-popping detective Manny Rupert also appear?

If you need a clue, click here. Once you have the answer, send it in an e-mail note--along with your snail-mail address--to: jpwrites@wordcuts.org. And write “Pain Killers Contest” in the subject line. The deadline for entering is midnight on Sunday, April 5. One winner will be announced next Monday.

Unfortunately, only readers living in the United States are eligible to enter this contest.

Fine Food, Fine Wine, and Crime

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’d signed up to attend the ninth crime-writing festival, A Qualcuno Piace Giallo, in Brescia, Italy. That event was held in the large and comfortable auditorium of the Brescia Chamber of Commerce building, beginning on March 16 and concluding on the 22nd. It gave me the opportunity to listen to a host of crime writers from Italy as well as some from abroad talk about their work. It was also a chance to eat, drink, and make merry with the local foods and wines, which are just about as good as they come. (One tip: The next time you’re visiting Brescia, check out the Raffa Restaurant. Wow!)

The Italian “squad” attending this year included best­-selling writers such as Giuseppe Genna (author of My Name Is Ishmael and Hitler), Valerio Massimo Manfredi (whose latest book has sold 1,900,000 copies, and who spoke at this event about his new one, Ides of March, which appears set for worldwide publication), Antonio Steffenoni (a writer with a rib-snapping sense of humor), and young, upcoming Italian writers such as Patrick Fogli, Barbara Baraldi, Donato Carrisi, and Simone Sarasso (the last of whom confessed over dinner to writing an erotic love story every Sunday afternoon for the sizzling Italian magazine Intimità, in addition to his crime-writing).

The platform of foreign wordsmiths was equally impressive. It included this year’s Cartier Diamond Dagger Award winner, Andrew Taylor (whose Bleeding Heart Square is soon to be released in Italy), Peter Tremayne (who talked about his Sister Fidelma series, set in medieval Ireland), Gisbert Haefs (the German author of a marvelous series of mysteries set in ancient Rome, one of which is The Centurion of Caesar, published in Italy by Tropea), Santiago Roncagliolo from Lima, Peru, but now living in Spain (his book The Holy Week Murders is riding high on the Spanish best-seller list, while his new novel, Red April, will be published next month in the USA by Pantheon), Jean Christophe Grangè from France (Miserere has recently appeared in this country from publisher Garzanti), the Italo-American Ben Pastor (who talked about the Martin Bora series, recently published in Italy by Hobby & Work), and, last but not least, Arne Dahl (né Jan Arnald) from Sweden, whose monumental A Group saga (11 titles so far) has just started to be published in Italy by Marsilio, the first installment being Misterioso. I had a chance during this festival to interview Andrew Taylor, and also interpreted from Italian into English and vice versa for Gisbert Haefs and Arne Dahl.

Pictured, left to right: Luca Crovi, radio journalist; Daniela De Gregorio (the female half of “Michael Gregorio”); Swedish author Arne Dahl; British writer Andrew Taylor; and Michael Jacob (the male half of “Michael Gregorio”).

In between the author appearances, and running late into each evening, there were simply too many films, theatrical shows, and concerts to take in, all of them with a noir theme.

Then on Saturday, to crown it all off, my wife, Daniela, and I went to Milan, where we appeared live on Luca Crovi’s brilliant RAI 2 radio program Tutti I Colori del Giallo along with Taylor and Dahl. Again, I translated those authors’ comments into Italian, so it was really a bilingual edition of the show. Luca Crovi’s program deserves special attention, in that it is one of the few European radio broadcasts which is dedicated to crime writing (along with some great hard-rock music, including an AC/DC exclusive, since that Australian band was in Milan that week). If you’d like to listen to that edition of the program, just click here.

ALSO CHECK OUT: Italian Mysteries.com, “the definitive Web site for English-language mystery novels set in Italy.”

License to Thrill

The International Thriller Writers organization has announced its nominees for the 2009 Thriller Awards. They are:

Best Thriller of the Year:
• Hold Tight, by Harlan Coben (Dutton)
• The Bodies Left Behind, by Jeffery Deaver (Simon & Schuster)
• The Broken Window, by Jeffery Deaver (Simon & Schuster)
• The Dark Tide, by Andrew Gross (Morrow)
• The Last Patriot, by Brad Thor (Atria Books)

Best First Novel:
• Calumet City, by Charlie Newton (Touchstone)
• Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith (Grand Central Publishing)
• Criminal Paradise, by Steven Thomas (Ballantine)
• Sacrifice, by S. J. Bolton (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
• The Killer’s Wife, by Bill Floyd (St. Martin’s Minotaur)

Best Short Story:
• “Between the Dark and the Daylight,” by Tom Piccirilli
(Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM]
• “Last Island South,” by John C. Boland (EQMM)
• “The Edge of Seventeen,” by Alexandra Sokoloff (from The Darker Mask, edited by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers; Tor Books)
• “The Point Guard,” by Jason Pinter (from the Killer Year anthology, edited by Lee Child; St. Martin’s Minotaur)
• “Time of the Green,” by Ken Bruen (from the Killer Year anthology)

In addition, David Morrell will be given the ThrillerMaster Award in honor of “his influential body of work,” and Brad Meltzer will receive the Silver Bullet Award “for his outstanding charitable contributions.”

All of this year’s winners will be announced during ThrillerFest 2009, to be held in New York City from July 8 through 11. To find out more information or register for the convention, just click here.

Half a Million? Yowza!

Sometime over the last day or so, when I wasn’t paying close enough attention to that little red counter thingee at the bottom of the right-hand column on this page, The Rap Sheet racked up its 500,000th page view. In the almost three years since this blog debuted, it has enjoyed steadily climbing readership. The site now amasses about 1,000 to 1,200 hits each and every day. Not bad for a project I once thought I’d experiment with, but couldn’t possibly commit myself to in the long run ...

I want to thank all of the writers who contribute their voices and insights to this blog, and especially everyone who makes The Rap Sheet a regular part of their reading day.

Back Out in the Cold

If my memory serves correctly, some brilliant scribe with the Chicago Tribune (yes, both he and it are still around) once said that Peter Schecter’s first novel, Point of Entry (2006), was “as good as this kind of writing gets.” If anything, though, Schecter’s latest book, Pipeline, is even more thrilling. Here’s the synopsis:

A new Cold War has arrived, posing deep threats to our national security. Country after country is bending to the will of a newly resurgent Russia willing to use its vast natural gas reserves as a foreign policy sword. Suddenly, the United States too finds itself needing energy from an increasingly hostile Russia. And only a handful of unsuspecting insiders can save America from ruthless Moscow oligarchs that seek to ensnare our country into ever-deeper energy dependence.

In a small apartment, in the middle of a damp D.C. summer night, Tony Ruiz, special assistant to the president, gets a phone call from the White House. Blackouts in California are causing panic, the electric fences at the prison in Sacramento have powered down and prisoners are escaping, California is being plunged into a hellish nightmare ...

In a hotel room in Germany, the brilliant and feared American environmental activist Blaise Ryan is relieved to be away from the steady deterioration in her home state of California. A heated dinner argument with a powerful Russian energy executive lays bare the new alignments of world power ...

Way to go, Peter.

Gratuitous “Harper” Film Clip

I just returned from playing a bit of tennis, and the sun is shining (finally) in Seattle, and I’ve begun to think that maybe--just maybe--summer will arrive soon. Which immediately put me in mind of this clip from 1966’s Harper, a film that was adapted from Ross Macdonald’s first Lew Archer novel, The Moving Target (1949). That movie found Paul Newman playing the slightly renamed private eye Lew Harper, working an odd kidnapping case. The scene below finds Newman questioning Robert Wagner (who plays the missing man’s pilot) and a delightfully plush young Pamela Tiffin (as the kidnap victim’s daughter). Ah, the joys of summer ...



READ MORE: “Acting Up,” by Peter Rozovsky (Detectives Beyond Borders).

Let Your Voice Be Heard

I’m honored to discover my own name among the nominees for the 2009 Spinetingler Awards, being given out--for the second year in a row--by Spinetingler Magazine. (Look down there under “Special Services to the Industry.”) The full list of contenders in all of the categories looks like this:

New Voice:
• Sharp Teeth, by Toby Barlow (Harper)
• The Price of Blood, by Declan Hughes (Morrow)
• Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, by John McFetridge (Harcourt)
• Borderlands, by Brian McGilloway (Minotaur Books)
• Go With Me, by Castle Freeman Jr. (Steerforth Press)
• The Crazy School, by Cornelia Read (Grand Central Publishing)
• Who Is Conrad Hirst?, by Kevin Wignall
• Crimson Orgy, by Austin Williams (Borderlands Press)

Rising Star:
• When Will There Be Good News?, by Kate Atkinson (Black Swan)
• No More Heroes, by Ray Banks (Polygon)
• Money Shot, by Christa Faust (Hard Case Crime)
• The Shadow Year, by Jeffrey Ford (Morrow)
• Savage Night, by Allan Guthrie (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• A Nail Through the Heart, by Timothy Hallinan (Morrow)
• Empire of Lies, by Andrew Klavan (Harcourt)
• Victory Square, by Olen Steinhauer (Minotaur Books)

Legend:
• Hit and Run, by Lawrence Block (Morrow)
• Nothing to Lose, by Lee Child (Delacorte Press)
• Chasing Darkness, by Robert Crais (Simon & Schuster)
• Leather Maiden, by Joe R. Lansdale (Knopf)
• The Given Day, by Dennis Lehane (Morrow)
• Dooley Takes the Fall, by Norah McClintock (Red Deer Press)
• A Darker Domain, by Val McDermid (Harper)
• Salt River, by James Sallis (Walker & Co.)

Graphic Novel:
• 100 Bullets, by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso
• Criminal, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
• Femme Noir, by Christopher Mills and Joe Staton
• Hawaiian Dick, by B. Clay Moore and Steven Griffin
• Incognegro, by Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece
• Scalped, by Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera

Best Editor:
• Ben LeRoy, Bleak House
• Charles Ardai, Hard Case Crime
• Neil Nyren, Putnam
• John Schoenfelder, Thomas Dunne

Best Reviewer:
• Ali Karim
• Larry Gandle
• Lesa Holstine
• Karen Chisholm
• Glenn Harper

Best Publisher:
• Bleak House
• Hard Case Crime
• Soho Press

Special Services to the Industry:
• Declan Burke, Crime Always Pays
• Barbara Franchi, Reviewing the Evidence
• J. Kingston Pierce, The Rap Sheet
• John and Ruth Jordan, Crimespree Magazine
• Peter Rozovsky, Detectives Beyond Borders
• Ruth Jordan and Judy Bobolik, Bouchercon 2008

Best Cover:
• At the City’s Edge, by Marcus Sakey (St. Martin’s Minotaur)--cover design: The DesignWorks Group
• Death Was the Other Woman, by Linda L Richards (St. Martin’s Minotaur)--cover design: David Baldeosignh Rotstein
• Empty Ever After, by Reed Farrel Coleman (Bleak House)--cover design: 2Faced Designs
• Fifty to One, by Charles Ardai (Hard Case Crime)--cover design: Cooley Design Lab
• Mad Dogs, by Brian Hodge (Cemetery Dance Publications)--cover design: Jill Bauman
• Sharp Teeth, by Toby Barlow (Harper)--cover design: Suzanne Dean

Best Short Story on the Web:
• “Cold Rift,” by Sandra Seamans (from Crooked)
• “Fruits,” by Steve Mosby (from Spinetingler)
• “Hard Bite,” by Anonymous-9 (from Beat to a Pulp)
• “Lenny and Earl Go Shooting Off Their Mouths,” by Ray Morrison (from Word Riot)
• “Random Acts of Fatherhood,” by Robert Pesa (from Darkest Before the Dawn)
• “Red Hair and Black Leather,” by Jordan Harper (from ThugLit)
• “She Watches Him Swim,” by Claude Lalumiere (from Back Alley)
• “Sisters Under the Skin,” by Naomi Johnson (from A Twist of Noir)
• “They Take You,” by Kyle Minor (from Plots With Guns)
• “Wishing on Whores,” by John Weagly (from Thieves Jargon)

As Spinetingler editor Sandra Ruttan explains, “Winners in each category will be determined by public vote. Voting will be open until April 25, 2009. Please follow this link to cast your vote in any or all of the categories, to see the covers nominated, and to follow the links to the short stories.” The victors will be announced on April 30.

What are you waiting for? Go vote. Now!

The Book You Have to Read: “War Against the Mafia,” by Don Pendleton

(Editor’s note: This is the 46th entry in our Friday blog series about great but forgotten books. Today’s selection comes from Matt Hilton, the British former beat copper whose first novel, Dead Men’s Dust--introducing Joe Hunter, “an all action hero with a strong moral code”--is due out in the States in May from William Morrow.)

I came into the crime and thriller genre by a different route than many of the writers out there. When others talk at length about the works of Chandler, Hammett, Spillane, Parker, and Leonard, I’m the one with the blank stare. I’ve long been aware of Mike Hammer, Spenser, et al. through the wonders of television, but I confess to never having read any of the obviously wonderful books in which they appear. I came into this genre through reading Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan the Cimmerian) and H.P. Lovecraft (Cthulhu Mythos) as a young teenager. I loved the action and the derring-do of the Howard books, as well as the creepy supernatural undertones of Lovecraft.

It was only natural, I suppose, that I moved on to “action”-based books when I started looking around in hopes of widening my reading base. Back in 1979, I discovered a dog-eared copy of a paperback novel first published 10 years earlier. That book was War Against the Mafia, by Don Pendleton, which introduced Mack Bolan to the world … and it really rocked my boat.

I know I was an impressionable 13-year-old, but the blood and thunder penned by Don Pendleton gripped me, and I began to search out as many Mack Bolan books as I could find--not to mention fund on a meager income from delivering newspapers. I didn’t realize it at the time, but those novels about Bolan, aka The Executioner, made up a huge, best-selling series created by “the father of action adventure” (a term allegedly coined by Pendleton himself). I devoured book after book in the massive 38-volume series Pendleton composed between 1969 and 1980. There were other players trying to feed off Pendleton’s literary success, most notably the Destroyer series, featuring Remo Williams and Chiun, and I lapped those up as well. Quite frankly, I couldn’t get enough of those types of stories. And they led me on to discover other characters cut from the same cloth as The Executioner. Jack Reacher, Joe Pike, Bob Lee Swagger, and, yes, my own creation, Joe Hunter, all owe a nod toward the original larger-than-life figure that was Mack Bolan--even if the influences are barely subliminal.

Mack Bolan was the American hero of his time. His adventures were set against the backdrop of Vietnam War horrors and stories about soldiers who returned home to crowds hurling verbal abuse their way, when they should have been treating those men with the respect heroes are due. Mack Bolan was a voice for those soldiers--a man of virtue with a strong moral sense and a desire to see justice done. Looking back, War Against the Mafia was a violent book, as were all of the subsequent installments of that series, but Pendleton wasn’t propagating vigilante action or aggression. The violence in his stories was simply an allegory for the sanctity of life and a person’s responsibility to fight for that life.

With War Against the Mafia we get exactly what we expect. As it says on the cover, “Mack Bolan, Vietnam war hero, launches a bloody, one-man crusade against the most powerful gangster force in the history of the U.S.A.” The story has a simple premise, which was used to equal success by Marvel Comics’ Punisher series. Bolan, the Special Forces’ top assassin, returns from the hell of jungle warfare to discover that his family has been pushed into despair and degradation by underworld figures, and Bolan just isn’t the kind to let them get away with it. Cue the blood and thunder that appealed to a 13-year-old boy and still resonates with me three decades later.

Pendleton, a veteran of World War II and the Korean War, began his writing career by authoring several books under the pseudonyms “Dan Britain” and “Stephan Gregory.” He also wrote several non-fiction books with his wife, Linda. But it is for the first run of Executioner books that he is best remembered. Pendleton penned books 1 through 15 in the series, before a legal battle with his publisher, Pinnacle Books, saw book 16, Sicilian Slaughter (1973), written by an unknown author under the pseudonym “Jim Peterson.” Moving his business to another publisher, New English Library, Pendleton took up the yoke again with book 17, Jersey Guns (1974), and went on to deliver the next 21 books in the series. Following Satan’s Sabbath (1980), Pendleton’s Executioner was licensed to the Harlequin Publishing group, and all subsequent Mack Bolan books, including numerous spin-offs (Phoenix Force, Able Team, Super Bolan, and Stony Man) were composed by a team of writers. Pendleton acted as a consulting editor on the books but he didn’t write any of them, though his name always appeared on the covers.

In addition to the Executioner series, Pendleton wrote novels about some more endearing characters, including hard-boiled private eye Joe Copp and psychic detective Ashton Ford. The Copp and Ford books are still in print, but unfortunately the same can’t be said for Pendleton’s original Mack Bolan novels.

Sadly, Don Pendleton passed away in 1995, but he has left behind an admirable body of work that continues to influence writers 40 years after the publication of War Against the Mafia. Although they are not strictly “crime” novels, the Executioner series featured crime as the nucleus of Bolan’s rage against injustice. In our present times, Bolan’s ethos still rings loud and clear. Live large and stand proud.

READ MORE: Reviews of the Executioner books by Marty McKee of the blog Johnny LaRue’s Crane Shot.

You Must Remember These

While Matt Hilton is championing Don Pendleton’s War Against the Mafia on this page, many other blogs are also weighing in with “forgotten book” picks for this Friday.

Included among today’s array are: An Eye for an Eye, by John B. West; 13 French Street, by Gil Brewer; The Scoop, by members of The Detection Club; Chiefs, by Stuart Woods; I Should Have Stayed Home, by Horace McCoy; The Sins of the Fathers, by Lawrence Block; A Family Affair, by Nero Wolfe; The Anatomy of a Murder, by Robert Traver; White Star, by James Thayer; The Long-Legged Fly, by James Sallis; and the latest of Orrie Hitt’s books to be highlighted in James Reasoner’s blog, Pushover.

Patti Abbott has several other books worth rediscovering in her blog, plus a list of all of today’s participants in this series.

Better, Brighter, Bolder

Have I mentioned that 2009 is shaping up as a bonanza for crime-fiction fans? Two more sterling examples of what’s to come:

Bad Things Happen, by Harry Dolan (Putnam), “is a very smart, well-written roller-coaster ride that is always threatening to hurl the reader out into roaring empty space. Go along for the thrill ride!” opines the prolific James Patterson. Adds Karin Slaughter: “A tense read that keeps you tightly in its grip until the very last page. Harry Dolan has written an incredibly rich, smart read reminiscent of A Simple Plan or Presumed Innocent--not to mention that it’s just a damn good story.”

The man who calls himself David Loogan is leading a quiet, anonymous life in the college town of Ann Arbor, Michigan, working as an editor and writer (and very believable as both) for a crime magazine called Gray Streets. He’s hoping to escape a violent past he would rather forget. But his solitude is broken when he’s drawn into a friendship with Tom Kristoll, the publisher of the magazine--and into an affair with Laura, Tom’s sleek blond wife. What Loogan doesn’t realize is that the stories in Gray Streets tend to follow a simple formula: Plans go wrong. Bad things happen. People die.

Elizabeth Waishkey is a single mother. She’s also the most talented detective in the Ann Arbor Police Department. But when Tom Kristoll turns up dead, she doesn’t know quite what to make of Loogan. Is he a killer, or an ally who might help her discover the truth? Loogan suspects his friend’s death is part of a much larger puzzle, and he’s not going to wait for someone else to put the pieces together.

Palos Verde Blue, by John Shannon (Pegasus). Some brilliant critic for the Chicago Tribune once said that Shannon was the best California crime writer to tip his fedora in decades. His last book, The Devils of Bakersfield (2008), was a dark delight--and his newest one is even better. Even at 60 years of age, Jack Liffey still specializes in finding lost children. Which is good, because in this story his ex-wife, Kathy, asks him to find Blaine “Blue” Hostetler, her best friend’s missing teenage daughter. Smart and attractive, Blue was involved in such causes as preserving the habitat of the endangered butterfly, the Palos Verdes Blue, and aiding illegal immigrants. Brilliantly told in part through letters written by a young Mexican immigrant and others written by a scared teenage surfer to his dad, this fine work shows off Shannon’s best quality: the ability to sharply render subtle shades of right and wrong.

The Great Adapters

The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers has announced its nominees for the 2009 Scribe Awards, which honor “excellence in licensed tie-in writing--novels based on TV shows, movies, and games.” Contenders include Tod Goldberg, Max Allan Collins, Greg Cox, and James Rollins. Lee Goldberg has the full list. These awards will be handed out during the forthcoming Comic-Con, set to take place in San Diego from July 23 to 29.

Everything’s Coming up Chandler

Just over a week ago, we launched a poll in The Rap Sheet to determine which of Raymond Chandler’s seven original Philip Marlowe novels our readers think is his finest. (We chose not to include the posthumous work Poodle Springs, which Chandler began writing back in 1959, but which was completed by Robert B. Parker and published in 1989, 30 years after Chandler’s demise.) Today, we have the results of that survey.

In total, 178 votes were cast, with The Long Goodbye (1953) receiving the greatest number--55, or 31 percent. In second place, with 25 percent of the vote, we find The Big Sleep (1939), which is rather surprising, given how often readers remark on that story’s confusing plot. Third place in this poll goes to Farewell, My Lovely (1940), with 22 percent. The other four contenders rank downward from there: The Little Sister (1949), 10 percent; The Lady in the Lake (1943), 8 percent; and The High Window (1949) and Playback (1958), both with 2 percent of the vote (though The High Window edges out Playback with one more vote).

Thank you to everybody for participating in this poll.

In case you haven’t noticed yet, the crime-fiction blogosphere today offers up a variety of tributes to Chandler and his famous fictional private eye. Sarah Weinman points us to a few choice posts, including biographer Judith Freeman’s excellent review of the author’s life and career in L.A. Weekly, Baltimore Sun writer David Rosenthal’s fill-in-the-blanks quiz on Chandler’s trademark descriptive phrases, Utter Scoundrel’s re-reading of Playback, and Chris Routledge’s recollection of this novelist’s early life. And although we chose to ignore Poodle Springs, Gregory McNamee gives credit to that “lost” novel in the Encyclopedia Britannica blog.

One more treat to enjoy today: Here is the Los Angeles Times’ obituary of Chandler from 1959. It’s pretty short for a guy who made such a big impact on fiction.

Marlowe Goes to the Movies

In commemoration of this being the 50th anniversary of the death of oil company exec-turned-crime novelist Raymond Chandler, I’ve put together a collection of trailers from the various 20th-century film adaptations of his private eye Philip Marlowe novels.

After some experience penning screenplays for Hollywood, Chandler came to despise the movie-making business; yet producers were willing to pay big bucks for Chandler’s stories, and he was no less willing to take their checks and cash them. Under those terms, most of the seven Marlowe books were brought to the silver screen, several of them more than once, though the results weren’t always sympathetic to their source material.

It seems impossible to find online videos from every one of those adaptations, but there are certainly enough to make clear that Hollywood loves Chandler--even if he didn’t always love it back.

Let’s begin with the opening from 1944’s Murder, My Sweet, which starred Dick Powell as Marlowe in the first big-screen version of Chandler’s 1940 novel, Farewell, My Lovely, to feature Marlowe as the detective. (There was an earlier adaptation of the book, 1942’s The Falcon Takes Over, but it substituted George Sanders’ “gentleman sleuth,” Gay Lawrence, in the lead role.)

Two years later, director Howard Hawks turned the first Marlowe novel, The Big Sleep (1939), into a motion picture starring Humphrey Bogart as the iconic P.I. and Bogey’s newly minted (and fourth) wife, the almost-quarter-century-younger Lauren Bacall, playing the altogether fetching femme fatale. Here’s the trailer:



And here is the opening title sequence from Hawks’ The Big Sleep:



In 1947, actor-director Robert Montgomery stepped into Marlowe’s scuffed shoes in a cinematic version of Chandler’s The Lady in the Lake (1943). This production is undoubtedly most memorable for the fact that it was shot strictly from the detective’s viewpoint--the audience saw things as if through Marlowe’s eyes. “A milestone in movie-making,” proclaimed the studio.



A different Montgomery--George Montgomery--assumed the role of Chandler’s knight errant in The Brasher Doubloon (1947), which was loosely based on the author’s 1942 novel, The High Window:



James Garner has always been one of my favorite movie Marlowes. He played the part in 1969’s simply titled Marlowe, which set the stage for his later starring role as a not altogether different gumshoe, Jim Rockford, in the popular TV series The Rockford Files. To quote Wikipedia: “Many of the wisecracking Marlowe lines written by [Stirling] Silliphant for this movie (quite a few of which were lifted directly from Chandler’s novel) could just as easily have come from the mouth of Garner’s television private eye Rockford, although Garner played Marlowe as a substantially more serious character.”

Go ahead and take a look at the Marlowe film trailer:



And here’s the introduction to that same picture. Note the accompanying song (by Orpheus), which makes clear that Marlowe was based on Chandler’s 1949 novel, The Little Sister:



The most often criticized adaptation of Chandler’s work has to be director Robert Altman’s 1973 silver-screen version of The Long Goodbye (1953). Marlowe fans usually grouse about it because they don’t think that star Elliott Gould was a good choice to play the Los Angeles investigator, and because Altman changed the story’s ending. Personally, I prefer the way that Gould’s Goodbye concludes, but then I’m not averse to stirring up a bit of trouble now and then. Future California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has a small part in this film as a muscle-bound thug. Watch the trailer:



Robert Mitchum, who had played tough guys for so many years in Hollywood productions, was cast as Marlowe in the 1975 picture Farewell, My Lovely. It was based (like Murder, My Sweet) on Chandler’s 1940 novel, and was even set in the colorfully corrupt L.A. of that time period. Many critics applauded director Dick Richards’ casting of Mitchum as Marlowe, even though he was a couple of decades older than the character in the book. Below is what looks to be one of several trailers for Farewell, My Lovely:



The then 60-year-old Mitchum returned to play Marlowe in Michael Winner’s 1978 adaptation of The Big Sleep. Only this time, the story wasn’t a period piece and it wasn’t even set in the City of Angels; for no obvious reason, the action was transferred to modern-day London. While Winner’s film could be a bit more explicit about pornography and homosexuality than the earlier, Bogart-Bacall version, the movie was weakened by its shift of setting and the fact that the scandal from which Marlowe was protecting his client would have seemed so much more devastating during World War II than it could have during Jimmy Carter’s presidency. Unfortunately, I don’t find a trailer for this second Big Sleep anywhere on the Web, but here’s a clip.

It’s interesting that, of the seven original Philip Marlowe novels, only Playback (1958)--a book that was Raymond Chandler’s reworking of a rejected screenplay he’d penned during his Hollywood-writing period--never made it to movie theaters.

READ MORE: “How Chandler Made a Killing at the Movies,” by Hugh Tynan; “Raymond Chandler Wrote Los Angeles,” by Carolyn Kellogg (Los Angeles Times); “Trouble Was His Business--Raymond Chandler,” by Larry Harnish (Los Angeles Times); “The Slumming Angel,” by Isaac Adamson (Legacy.com); “Raymond Chandler and Me,” by Jeri Westerson (Getting Medieval); “Raymond Chandler: Lady in the Lake,” by Brooks Peters (Brooks Peters: An Open Book); “Mitchum Plays Marlowe,” by Chris Routledge (The Venetian Vase); “Marlowe Back on the Case?” by J. Kingston Pierce (The Rap Sheet); “Farewell, My Lovely (1975)--Tuesday’s Overlooked Film,” by Sergio Angelini (Tipping My Fedora); “Dick Powell Transforms His Career with Murder, My Sweet,” by Rick29 (Classic Film & TV Café).

The Critics Choose

The Strand Magazine has announced the nominees for its 2008 Critics Award for Best Mystery Novel and Best First Mystery Novel. Intended to recognize excellence in the field of mystery fiction, the Critics Awards are judged by “a select group of book reviewers from the nation’s top daily newspapers.”

For the 2008 awards, bookseller-editor Otto Penzler served as the award chair for Best Novel and Andrew Gulli served as the award chair for Best First Novel.

This year’s judges include Dennis Drabelle of The Washington Post, David Ulin of the Los Angeles Times, Lev Grossman of Time magazine, Carol Memmott of USA Today, Maureen Corrigan of National Public Radio, and Bruce DeSilva of the Associated Press.

In a press release, The Strand explained its award methodology:

“All judges sent to me, as committee chairman, a list of their 10 favorite books. I made a list that included all of these books--and a disparate selection it was--and the five with the most votes were to be the finalists,” said Otto Penzler, the world famous publisher and proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop. “As it happened, there were three books that made it onto the short list, with five others tied for fourth, so we had a runoff with an extra round of voting to determine the top five nominees. Judges were then asked to list these top five in order of preference, with a first-place vote awarded five points, a second-place vote four points, and so on.”

“I couldn't have been more pleased with this selection of nominees,” said Andrew F. Gulli, the managing editor of The Strand. “When I read several of these books last year, I had a feeling they would be nominated for the Critics Award.”

The awards will be presented at an invitation-only cocktail party on July 8 in New York City. A lifetime achievement award will be given posthumously to English author John Mortimer.

Here are all of the nominees:

Best Novel:
• When Will There Be Good News?, by Kate Atkinson (Little, Brown)
• Master of the Delta, by Thomas H. Cook (Houghton Mifflin)
• The Brass Verdict, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
• Lush Life, by Richard Price (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
• Hollywood Crows, by Joseph Wambaugh (Little, Brown)

Best First Novel:
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson (Knopf)
• City of the Sun, by David Levien (Doubleday)
• A Cure for Night, by Justin Peacock (Doubleday)
• Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith (Grand Central Publishing)
• A Carrion Death, by Michael Stanley (Harper)

The Best TV Crime Drama Openers, #8

Series Title: Homicide: Life on the Street | Years: 1993-1999, NBC | Starring: Yaphet Kotto, Andre Braugher, Clark Johnson, Melissa Leo, Richard Belzer, Jon Polito, Ned Beatty, Kyle Secor, Daniel Baldwin | Theme Music: Lynn F. Kowal

A Baltimore Police homicide detective taught me how to carry a wallet. OK, it was a fictional TV detective, but so what? Detective Frank Pembleton, brought to life with brilliant intensity by Andre Braugher on Homicide: Life on the Street, explained to his partner, Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor), that men should carry their wallets in the front pants pocket. Like most men, I had always carried mine in my back pocket. Pembleton pointed out that carrying the wallet in the back pocket throws off proper alignment of the spine whenever you’re sitting down and makes it easier for a pickpocket to grab your wallet undetected. I’ve carried my wallet in the left front pocket of my pants ever since.

Homicide: Life on the Street ran for seven seasons on NBC-TV, from 1993 to 1999. It was based on a non-fiction book by David Simon, a longtime crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun (and the husband of newsie-turned-novelist Laura Lippman). In 1987, Simon took a year off from the newspaper to shadow a team of homicide detectives from the Baltimore Police Department. His book about that experience, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, was published in 1991. Although the TV show was fictional, it often depicted situations from actual cases worked by Charm City police detectives.

The show’s best-known main title sequence (click the image above) is done in black-and-white, signaling a no-frills, serious-minded program to come. The drums-heavy music by songwriter and composer Lynn F. Kowal is more a series of punctuation notes than a melodic theme. You see, one by one, the shadowed faces of the cast. You see a burning cigarette in an ashtray next to a half-drunk cup of coffee. You see a large dog barking aggressively at someone on the other side of a chain-link fence who’s out of our sight. You see a random set of storefront signs flash by. You see a mid-’50s Ford passenger car making a left turn. You see an old photo of Baltimore cops from the early 1900s. And finally, as you look at the door to the Homicide unit, you hear a telephone ringing until Detective John Munch’s voice announces “homicide.”

It’s what novelist-screenwriter Lee Goldberg would call a “mood sequence.” It conveys the “feeling and tone” of the show it introduces.

Homicide was a great ensemble series, blessed with strong writing and a superb cast. Lieutenant Al Giardello (Kotto) led a squad of eight detectives, who were paired off in teams of two: Stan Bolander (Beatty) and John Munch (Belzer); Steve Crosetti (Polito) and Meldrick Lewis (Johnson); Frank Pembleton (Braugher) and Tim Bayliss (Secor); Beau Felton (Baldwin) and Kay Howard (Leo). The detectives’ job, as Giardello delighted in reminding them, was to turn the names written in red on the squad room’s case board (open) into names written in black (cleared). Here, the lieutenant waxes poetic about that board:

“It’s pretty, isn’t it? The way the board just stands there. A silent sentry to the dead and gone. I love the way the red and black meld together in harmony. A haiku of color and vengeance.”

The unit’s interrogation room, where detectives coaxed, tricked, sweet-talked, and browbeat suspects into confessing their crimes, was known as “The Box.” Pembleton was the acknowledged master of The Box; he owned The Box. Here, he addresses a fellow detective who will join him in questioning a suspect:

“What you will be privileged to witness will not be an interrogation, but an act of salesmanship as silver-tongued and thieving as ever moved used cars, Florida swamp land, or bibles. For what I am selling is a long prison term to a client who has no genuine use for the product.”

Every fan of the show has favorite Homicide episodes, and I’m no exception. But the one episode that caught the widest attention--and drew the highest critical acclaim--was titled “Subway.” It aired on December 5, 1997, during the sixth season. In this hour, played as real-time 60 minutes, a man named John Lange falls (or was pushed) between a subway car and the edge of the platform and is crushed between the two. Although the paramedics soon realize that if the subway car moves, Lange, whose spine is broken, will die instantly, he recognizes the hopelessness of his predicament only gradually. Vincent D’Onofrio (Law & Order: Criminal Intent) earned an Emmy nomination for his tour-de-force portrayal of Lange. In a second Emmy-nominated performance, Andre Braugher, as Detective Pembleton, stays with Lange the entire hour. Watching the relationship between those two strangers develop is an emotionally compelling experience. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more powerful hour of dramatic television.

Pierce’s Picks

One of the weekly features of January Magazine’s crime-fiction page is “Pierce’s Picks.” Every Monday, J. Kingston Pierce selects a just-published book that goes on to headline January’s crime-fiction section for the next seven days.

His selection for this week is the short-story collection Sherlock Holmes in America, edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon L. Lellenberg, and Daniel Stashtower, while for the week of March 16, Pierce chose Chinatown Angel, by A.E. Roman.

If you have not been keeping track of what Pierce has been Picking (just try to say that five times fast), you haven’t missed the boat: 52 weeks of Pierce’s Picks are archived here.

Baldacci and the Nature of the Thrill

In a far-ranging profile of bestselling author David Baldacci (Absolute Power, First Family), published in the March 30 edition of Newsweek, writer Louisa Thomas muses on what makes thrillers so darn ... thrilling:

What makes a thriller work is a million-dollar question, but why they matter is more than an economic concern. Baldacci’s prose might be clumsy (a typical Baldacci line: “As with scissors, one should avoid running with a loaded gun while the safety was off”), but if anyone could do it, more people would. On the most basic level, a thriller works if it can persuade the reader to turn the pages as fast as possible. The easiest way to get someone to keep reading is to withhold information expertly, but a blockbuster has to offer more than just suspense.

What Baldacci offers, Thomas suggests, is the whole package:

Like other thriller writers, Baldacci depends on a mixture of inventive plotting, appealing characters, luck and consistency. Unlike others, his books rely more on characters’ relationships than whiz-bang technology or procedural twists. Baldacci is more likely to set a scene in the Washington suburbs than a submarine (though any thriller worth its name has a decent armory), and the courtroom is rarely the site for drama (though, as a former lawyer, Baldacci usually includes a little law and order). What he offers is in some ways more unusual.

Although the article covers a lot of personal and professional ground, I really like this image of Baldacci at home:

Baldacci clearly has an ambivalent relationship to his wealth. His house is huge and his Reston office is well appointed -- the enormous wooden conference table is polished to a shine; the library furniture is soft and deep. (“I always wanted a room like this,” he says as he looks around the library, his tone more surprised than satisfied.)

Thomas’ piece can be found online right here. One of the things Baldacci talks about with her is his literacy foundation, which he established with his wife, Michelle. Information on that Wish You Well Foundation is here.