16 Random Things About Me

There’s a new meme making the rounds of crime-fiction-related blogs, after being given birth on Facebook. While I am not usually one to participate in this sport (and am only rarely asked to join in, anyway), my friend and longtime January Magazine cohort, Linda L. Richards, invited me to have a whack at it this time. And I’m always up for a challenge.

The rules are pretty straightforward:

Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 16 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 16 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

Already, there have been a number of bloggers exposing their intimate information to the prying public through this meme. They include the aforementioned Ms. Richards; Patti Abbott; Brian Lindenmuth; Bill Cameron; Ali Karim; Sandra Ruttan; Patrick Shawn Bagley; and Steve Mosby. Undoubtedly, more will follow. It’s actually a rather enjoyable exercise to muse on small things about yourself that most people probably don’t know. I figured it would be tough to come up with 16 worth mentioning; but when I finally got going, it was hard to stop myself at that number. (I’ll have to save the remaining factoids for some later date.) For now, here goes:

1. I love hotels. I’d probably live in a hotel for the rest of my life, if I could afford to do so, and as long as I had an office elsewhere to store my books. In the mid-1980s, I moved to Detroit, Michigan, to take a job as a magazine editor and was put up for six months (at company expense) at what was then the Westin Hotel in the Renaissance Center downtown. I couldn’t have been happier, enjoying room service, laundry pick-up and delivery, and restaurants and movie theaters a mere elevator ride away.

2. I once had a friend who could’ve gotten me a job crewing for singer Jimmy Buffett on his boat. Stupidly, I passed up that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

3. I can’t stand the smell or taste of mustard--it makes me want to wretch. Ditto with horseradish and wasabi. There must be some element common to all three, because I’m equally sensitive to them and they all cause the same reaction.

4. For some reason, hearing the 18th-century Christian hymn “Amazing Grace” always brings tears to my eyes, especially when it’s belted out on bagpipes.

5. I used to write and host a series of TV segments about Seattle history, based on my book Eccentric Seattle. But I had to give it up, because I didn’t like seeing myself on the tube. I thought the producers should’ve hired somebody handsome to play me.

6. I was born with a high capacity for alcohol. This could’ve been very bad, had I also been prone to alcoholism. Fortunately, I am not. My capacity has served me well at times over the years. Maybe a decade ago, my wife and I attended one of her company Christmas parties. And in the course of it, someone got the brilliant idea to have a tequila-drinking contest. The half a dozen women in attendance were out or the running early, so the decision came down to about as many male imbibers. Finally, my wife’s boss (who outweighed me by 50-75 pounds) and I were the last ones competing, having each consumed probably 10 shots of Mexican hair-raiser. Even I knew that I couldn’t spill too much more down my gullet, so I went for a bluff. I looked across at my opponent, seated at the opposite end of the long table, and said, “OK, I have to admit something: I don’t think I can drink more than three or four more of these.” My wife’s boss immediately announced with a groan that he conceding. He didn’t look very good in the morning, but I could at least stand with relative verticalness.

7. I’ve never been inside a Wal-Mart store. Never want to go.

8. For many years, I worked as a travel writer, in part for Travel & Leisure magazine. During that time, I had the chance to visit a great number of exotic places. But the spots where I feel most at home are Jamaica, Australia, London, Barcelona, New Orleans, and San Francisco. That last city is my favorite place of all. I’ve told my wife and friends that if and when I die (many decades from now), I want to be cremated and have my ashes tossed off the Golden Gate Bridge. I don’t care if it’s illegal.

9. I was named Jeffrey after my maternal grandmother’s favorite brother, Geoffrey Bunting. My mother once told me that had I been born a day earlier, on March 17, my parents would have named me Patrick, instead.

10. I rarely loan my books, and almost never give them away. I still have 99.5 percent of the books I’ve owned since high school.

11. One of the reasons I like writing fiction? Because it gives me the chance, through my protagonist, to finally get the girl.

12. I’m a hell of a whistler. Vibrato and everything.

13. I didn’t have a driver’s license until I was 40 years old. My mother started driving at about the same age. I dreamed as a youngster that I would die in the crash of a black car, and it put me off the whole business. It wasn’t until I got married and my wife asked that I share the driving, that I finally got my license. And then I was proud enough to be annoyed when I didn’t score 100 percent on my driving exam.

14. While a senior in college, I won a spot on the selection committee for that year’s commencement speaker. I’d barely stayed awake through the previous year’s commencement address, given by some dull banker, and wanted my own class to be sent forth into the world by someone more memorable. In the end, I was able to secure Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau as our guest--a minor coup that won me notice from The New York Times. (I was interviewed in a wrap-up piece about that year’s college commencement orators by Robin Toner, who just recently died.) Prior to his address, I had the chance to dine with Trudeau, and in the course of it I asked him--pleaded with him, really--to let me interview him for my hometown’s alternative newsweekly, explaining that it would put me in a good position with the editors there. Trudeau politely refused, saying, “If your whole future in journalism depends on interviewing me, then you’d better think about a different profession.” Wise words, but hard to hear at the time.

15. Although I consider myself computer savvy, other electronic gizmos do nothing for me. I’ve never sent a text message in my life. I once received one on my cell phone, and it took me several weeks to figure out what it was.

16. People often insist that they wouldn’t wish to travel back in time 20 or 30 years and live things over again. They’re fools. I’d be thrilled to be 30 years younger and have the chance to make changes in my life. In fact, I might change most everything.

Although the rules say I’m supposed to tag 16 more people, that narrows down the available stock pretty damn quickly. So instead, I shall tag only four bloggers, none of whom I’ve seen chosen yet: Gerard Brennan, Uriah Robinson (aka Norman Price), Mystery Readers Journal editor Janet Rudolph, and my old friend Kevin Burton Smith of The Thrilling Detective Web Site. Oh, and of course I’m also supposed to tag back to Linda Richards.

Have fun with this, everyone.

Bullet Points: Prizes and “Prisoner” Edition

• Nominations are open for the second annual Spinetingler Awards, organized by Sandra Ruttan, the editor of course of Spinetingler Magazine. She’s looking for public suggestions in the following categories: Best Cover, Best Editor, Best Reviewer, Best Publisher, and Special Services to the Industry. There’s also a short-story category. More specifics can be found here. Interestingly, though, there are fewer categories open for 2008 work than there were for 2007 efforts. Send your suggestions to sandra@sandraruttan.com, and write “Spinetingler Awards Submissions” in the subject line.

• The recent news that London’s Murder One Bookstore will close at the end of January, after nearly 21 years in business, has inspired a number of teary-eyed encomia. Sarah Weinman highlights a few in her blog. In addition, Martin Edwards looks back fondly on the shop in “Do You Write Under Your Own Name?” I agree with most commentators, that it simply won’t be the same visiting London’s Charing Cross Road without being able to pop in to Maxim Jakubowski’s bookstore for a long perusal of the shelves or else a quick fix of Ian Rankin, Sophie Hannah, or maybe the latest from Peter Lovesey. Thank you, Murder One, for more than two decades of exceptional book-selling.

• Earlier this week, I mentioned Patti Abbott’s flash-fiction challenge (the rules of which she has already changed slightly). But Julia Buckley has posed a challenge of her own at Poe’s Deadly Daughters. This one asks you to choose one of 14 photographs and “write a ‘first sentence’ of the story of that photograph.” More on Buckley’s challenge here.

• We’re still two months away from this year’s Left Coast Crime convention, to be held in Hawaii. But there’s already news of a special award to be given out during the event: the Hawaii Five-O Award for police procedurals. Janet Rudolph has the scoop.

• Here’s the full list of the books chosen on Kerrie Smith’s Mysteries in Paradise blog as readers’ favorites of 2008.

• Bill Cameron submits his latest novel, Chasing Smoke, to Marshal Zeringue’s notorious Page 69 Test. The results are here.

• Everything you always wanted to know about James Bond, and well, so bleeping much more.

• AMC has resurrected all 17 episodes of Patrick McGoohan’s classic, 1960s British TV show, The Prisoner, and is making them available for free viewing on the Web. More on that here.

• Finally, Mother Jones writer-blogger Kevin Drum lists his “top ten whiny, blog-related pet peeves.” Fortunately, I don’t think The Rap Sheet is guilty of any of these.

No Time to Wait

Just to remind everyone, The Rap Sheet has two separate contests in the works. Both will end later this week:

Best Crime Fiction Covers of 2008. We’ve narrowed down a list of what we believe are the dozen finest-looking crime novel jackets from the last year. But we would like your help in crowning a winner. Click here to see all of the nominees and cast your vote for the book front you think works best.

Win a Free Book. To help celebrate the British release this week of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played with Fire, the sequel to last year’s award-winning The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, publisher Quercus is offering three free copies of that book to Rap Sheet readers. All you have to do to enter the running is answer one simple question. Details here.

What are you waiting for? Check these out. Now!

So He’d Be ... 155 Years Old?

I’m not going to make a big deal of this, since I wrote at greater length on the subject just two years ago, but today is supposed to be the birthday of Sherlock Holmes. According to Sherlockian Christopher Morley, that famous pipe-smoking and deerstalker-wearing London sleuth took his first breath in 1854.

READ MORE: “The Curious Case of a Birthday for Sherlock,” by Jennifer 8. Lee (The New York Times).

The Talented Ms. Cooper

Natasha Cooper’s latest Trish Maguire legal thriller, A Poisoned Mind, was reissued not long ago in paperback in Britain (and is still available in the States from St. Martin’s Minotaur). January Magazine contributing editor (and Rap Sheet correspondent) Ali Karim took the occasion as his excuse to ask the author and former editor some questions about her professional background, her early days writing historical romances, her interest in today’s economic uncertainties, and what it is she finds so fascinating about the complex world of laws and lawsuits.

One of my favorite parts of their exchange comes when Karim inquires of his subject, “Who inspired you to read, and ultimately to write?” Cooper answers:

Unlike the rest of my family, I had a bit of a problem with reading and now know that I’m dyslexic, although when I was 5 and should have been learning to read, no one ever talked about dyslexia. In those days you were just classed as “thick.” But eventually my mother realized what was happening and taught me herself. Oddly, given my late start, I had always thought of myself as a writer. My novelist grandmother encouraged me, though always adding practical caveats about contracts and advances. She herself had given up writing when her agent embezzled his authors’ royalties. He died in prison.

The full interview can be found here.

Paging Mr. Know-It-All

(Over the last five years, I have become friendly with British critic and author Barry Forshaw. Although I think of myself as a busy guy [and my family would certainly agree], Forshaw actually makes me feel like a slacker. He’s an amazing workhorse, editing the magazine Crime Time, writing for the UK’s top-quality newspapers, penning books, and the like. In fact he is probably the most informed crime- and horror-fiction reviewer I know. That he makes a living from his passion is a wonder to behold. I was flattered not long ago when he asked me to contribute to his latest project, a mammoth, two-volume register and analysis of British crime fiction, vintage and modern. With that set brand-new in UK bookstores, I asked Forshaw [pictured at right] to tell Rap Sheet readers a little about his weighty literary tome. His submission follows.--Ali Karim)

I will be torn to pieces. Or I will be cut--in the non-physical sense--at publishers’ parties and author launches. But I have only myself to blame. When I took on the task of editing (for Greenwood World Publishing) British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia, I was queasily aware that I was making myself a hostage to fortune. The brief was to include every important British crime writer since the beginning of the genre (and before), along with as many forgotten names as I could muster. And, of course, as many current practitioners as I could persuade the publisher to include. Aye, there’s the rub. Current practitioners! When the horse-trading began in earnest as to what special categories should be included (the use of the comma in Dorothy L. Sayers’ work? British crime novels featuring umbrellas?), it quickly became clear that something would have to give in terms of inclusiveness. Half a million words seemed to get allocated all too easily. And those writers who didn’t make the final cut--and who may be reading these words--will no doubt be crossing me off their Christmas card lists with all the savagery they can muster.

* * *

I know it will do me no good to say that I had the missing authors in an early draft before Greenwood insisted on another 1,000 words about John Dickson Carr (or whoever). And that horse-trading with Greenwood was vigorous. But all such explanations will seem mealy mouthed to those who decide that my neglect of them makes me the Antichrist. And so, I suppose, I’ve simply got to bite the bullet and realize that I’ll be making a few enemies. But wait! What about the enemies I’ll be making out of those people who actually are included in the book? It was always the intent of this encyclopedia to be positive and celebratory; in other words, to inspire the reader to pick up the excellent crime novels by X, Y, and even Z. So ... no hatchet jobs. After laboring over my own copy, and compiling the work of my team of contributors (and a certain amount of blood-from-stone squeezing was involved there, but nothing worthwhile comes easily!), I had the requisite (and massive) amount of text. I, of course, copy-edited all the material. Then it was copy-edited by a team at Greenwood. And a final wash-and-rinse was performed by the indefatigable Mike Ashley (The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Modern Crime Fiction), whose knowledge of the genre is nonpareil.

But--inevitably--there will be errors! And this is where I’ll be able to irritate the living authors who are included in the book as much as the no-shows. With half a million words, there was no way I could run each entry past the subject author for his or her approval in the time frame available--and I’d also be fighting off a host of suggestions along the lines of “perhaps the hyperbole could be cranked up a little? Couldn’t I be described as the new King/Queen of UK Crime Fiction?” Whatever way I looked at it, I was on a hiding to nowhere--and (quite rightly) I can’t count on an iota of sympathy.

So, to those who didn’t make the final cut: mea culpa. And to those who did make the final cut, but who have spotted that their first book was published in 1974, not 1973 as listed: mea culpa again. I could blame contributors (and top crime writers) Andrew Taylor, Russell James, Natasha Cooper, et al., but the buck has to stop with the editor. Naturally, all errors crept in at the editorial stage.

* * *

Back in the dawn of prehistory, when this encyclopedia was a gleam in publisher Greenwood’s eyes, this was not to be a solo job. My co-editor was to be none other than critic, writer, and man-about-town Peter Guttridge. But Peter (along with all his other skills) is perhaps more of a survivor than most, and fairly quickly decided that the enterprise was not for him (he said he’d be content to simply be an entry for his sardonic Nick Madrid novels, covered by somebody else). Peter’s chosen method of losing friends and alienating people is by reviewing them for The Observer; I had half a million words here to perform a similar task on a nigh-cosmic scale.

But if the above had you thinking “the gentleman doth protest too much,” I should say that my overriding sensation was pleasure, as some wonderfully incisive writing arrived, tranche by tranche. And, boy, was putting this book together fun! I have never worked so hard in my life, and have never enjoyed editing other writers’ copy so much. While I wrote a goodly chunk of the book myself, I utilized my years as editor of Crime Time (and the smidgen of good will I’d accrued) to divide the workload between some of the best writers and critics in the UK (and beyond), full of enthusiasm for the genre. As the two volumes began to take shape, and the vision I had of the book began to fall into place, it was as satisfying an experience as might be imagined--even with a future Damoclean Sword hovering (courtesy of soon-to-be indignant crime writers). And when I heard that the jacket illustration was to be done by Paul Slater, famous for his London Times pieces (and those delicious cod-pulp covers for Malcolm Price), the icing was well and truly on the cake.

* * *

British crime fiction can (and often does) bifurcate into two distinct, though not mutually exclusive, genres. First, we have the undemanding divertissement, wherein the puzzle (and its ingenious solving) is central: in this area, British writers have few equals, notably Agatha Christie & Co. But the other stream, that of the dark investigation of psychological states, is quite as strong a branch in the UK, and has been as far back as Arthur Conan Doyle (who touched on such queasy areas). From the 1940s to the present day, this examination of the nether regions of human psyche (and its inevitable derogation of our behavior) has been a British specialty, made all the more acute by the carefully preserved decorum of appearance (however turbulent the metal states beneath) that, until recently, was the sine qua non of middle-class British society. Such writers as Patrick Hamilton have stripped bare this minefield of the national consciousness with quite as much unsparing rigor as novelists working in more overtly “literary” fields. And while the sexual arena was hors de combat for an earlier generation of writers, modern crime specialists such as Laura Wilson have dragged sexual mores struggling into the daylight. If the results in most crime novels hardly suggest sexuality as an ameliorative, life-affirming force, that has more to do with the demand of drama than healing psychoanalytical imperatives.

Addressing the mainstream of crime fiction today (and leaving aside the great legacy of the past), it is clear that the field is in ruder health than it has ever been. Such is the range of trenchant and galvanic work in the field at the beginning of the 21st century, an argument could be made for the fact that we are living in a second Golden Age. There are female writers, such as the formidable duo of P.D. James and Ruth Rendell. James took the mechanics of the genre as forged by her great predecessors and enriched all the key elements: plotting, setting, and (most of all) characterization. Her tenacious protagonist, Commander Adam Dalgliesh, is one of the most rounded and plausible series characters in crime fiction--even persuading the reader of the unlikely premise that a copper could also be a respected poet. Ruth Rendell, while plowing similar territory in her reliable Inspector Reginald Wexford novels, mined a far more disturbing psychological vein in her non-series, standalone crime novels, set in a world of dark criminality and betrayal quite the equal of the American Patricia Highsmith. (Rendell’s novels under the pseudonym “Barbara Vine” have the same queasy concerns, with an even more cold-eyed take on human foibles.)

* * *

The unquestioned supremacy of the James/Rendell duo is currently being challenged by such remarkable novelists as Minette Walters and Frances Fyfield, who have folded a new social incisiveness into the contemporary British crime novel. And there are the British males: the older generation of professionals such as Frederick Forsyth and Dick Francis, whose productivity has barely faltered over the years; and the younger writers who have re-invigorated the genre with resolutely non-parochial crime epics as full of exuberance and invention as they are of violence, such as Mark Billingham, Michael Marshall, and Christopher Brookmyre. And, of course, there is the male writer who comfortably outsells every one of his rivals, the formidable Ian Rankin, whose Edinburgh-set novels featuring his doughty copper John Rebus have propelled the author to the upper echelons both in reader numbers and critical acclaim. (The Rebus series has also been distinguished by Rankin’s refusal to simply repeat well-loved ideas, as his ex-alcoholic copper takes on new and cogent problems in society.)

The remit of this encyclopedia has been as wide as possible: every conceivable subgenre that is subsumed under the heading of crime fiction is here, from the novel of detection to the blockbuster thriller to the novel of espionage. The dark worlds of noir and true crime are treated, but the more ingratiating fields of romance and humor are also referenced. And while criminals are central to the text, the police are given their appropriate due. The reader will discover many familiar names, but it’s hoped that this encyclopedia will act as a guide to much unfamiliar terrain, as well.

* * *

The cadre of top crime-writing experts assembled for the task of composing British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia were chosen on the basis of their boundless enthusiasm for the genre, and largely speaking, the authors they cover (all entries have individual credits) have their virtues rather than their demerits maximized in the essays. But while there are no hatchet jobs here, many a dispassionate view is given. Generally speaking, though, contributors have been requested to extol the virtues of writers that they admire. Working with the brief that the reader will be seeking to extend his or her knowledge and pleasure in the genre, the assumption was made that positive recommendations would be preferred to hatchet jobs--however, anodyne praise has been discouraged, and those elements that have dated badly in certain writers’ works are duly noted. And as the contributors include such top British crime writers as Andrew Taylor, Natasha Cooper, Russell James, Carol Anne Davis, Phillip Gooden, Mark Timlin, Lauren Milne-Henderson, Martin Edwards, Carla Banks, Nicholas Royle, and Michael Jecks (along with a variety of key crime reviewers and editors), nonpareil critical writing is the order of the day.

It’s a Steal

Derringer Award-winning author Patti Abbott, who also happens to be the queen mother of the Friday “forgotten books” series, is launching a new flash-fiction contest in tandem with Aldo Calgano and Gerald So. Entries will apparently be posted in time for Valentine’s Day, though it isn’t necessarily a contest associated with romance and boxes of chocolates and spooning on lakeshores. Abbott spells out the guidelines:

I got the idea on the Women of Mystery’s blog, where Terrie Moran wrote two lines that I wanted to steal.

So now we can all steal. Or get a kick start on a new flash from someone else’s words. Or work in tandem. Whatever.

• First, sign up to play by January 13th.

• Second, write the first paragraph of a story (say, 3-6 lines). It doesn’t need to be about Valentine’s Day.

• Third, send your paragraph to me by January 20th (aa2579@wayne.edu). I will stir the pot and send it back out to another writer.

• Fourth, write a 750- (or so) word story using [the paragraph you receive].

• Fifth, post it on your own blog or with Mystery Dawg at Powder Burn Flash on February 10th. [Send entries to Mystery Dawg’s Calgano at mysdawg@sbcglobal.net.]

• Sixth, I’ll let you know whose lines you used when it’s over.

Just write a first paragraph, something you might use yourself--the best you can come up with, and you’re off. Does this sound doable? Does this sound like fun?

It does, actually, sound like a bit of a hoot.

Super Woman

Talk about art imitating life, to impressive effect. New Yorker Daphne Uviller, author of the new novel Super in the City, was a grad student who couldn’t get a job, so she took over as superintendent of her family’s Greenwich Village brownstone--which gave her a great idea for a mystery series. It’s a sensational book, full of laughs and sex and lovely writing and repair tips.

Get your hands on 27-year-old protagonist Zephyr Zuckerman while she’s still the newest thing on the block.

Always Coming Up Roses

I have known Connecticut author M.J. Rose for a number of years now. We’re both active members of the International Thriller Writers (ITW), with Rose being one of that organization’s directors (thanks to her expertise in marketing). I encountered her again at Bouchercon in Baltimore this last October. Over coffee, we did some reminiscing (recalling, for instance, our dinner a couple of years ago with author and advertising exec James Siegel, who had to cut out a bit early to take a call from then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton). And, naturally, we also discussed the change of direction she’s taken with her fiction-writing career.

I really enjoyed Rose’s series featuring New York sex therapist Dr. Morgan Snow (The Halo Effect, The Venus Fix). But I was very impressed, too, to see The Washington Post celebrating the release of her newest novel, The Memorist, which is the second installment in a series focusing on reincarnation. As renowned Post columnist Patrick Anderson wrote:

Do you have memories from an earlier life? Do you remember marching with Napoleon? Bantering with Shakespeare? Making whoopee with Cleopatra? If so, you probably should rush out and buy M.J. Rose’s “The Memorist,” because Rose believes that your memories are more likely fact than fantasy. Indeed, her ambitious new novel strikes me as the “Gone With the Wind”--or, at the very least, “The Da Vinci Code”--of reincarnationist fiction.

It probably helps to believe in reincarnation to appreciate this novel, but it isn’t essential. I don’t believe in it, but I do believe in good writing, and Rose is an unusually skillful storyteller. Her polished prose and intricate plot will grip even the most skeptical reader. Whatever your views on reincarnation, “The Memorist,” which is a sequel to [2007’s] “The Reincarnationist,” is first-rate fiction.

I was equally intrigued by the synopsis of The Memorist:

As a child, Meer Logan was haunted by memories of another time and place always accompanied by the faint strains of elusive music. Now the dreads are back. The past has reached out again in the form of a strange letter that sets her on a search to unlock the mystery of who she once was.

With the help of her father--a Kabbalist, known as the Jewish Indiana Jones--Meer attempts to learn the meaning behind her hauntingly vivid memories. What they discover could reveal a frighteningly powerful secret hidden for generations by one of the greatest composers of all time.

With each step she comes closer to remembering the connections between a clandestine reincarnationist society, a lost flute linked to Ludwig van Beethoven and David Yalom, a journalist who understands all too well how the past affects the future.

David knows loss firsthand--terrorism is a reality that cost him his family. He’s seen every solution promised by security experts around the world--and he’s seen every solution fail. Now in a concert hall in Vienna, he plans to force the world to understand the cost of those failures in a single violent act. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

The Memorist is a literary page turner that races across the Austrian countryside and takes you to a Viennese tear-gas-filled auction house, dusty museums, [and] hidden passages deep within the walls of the secret Memorist Society. It’s a journey through the centuries as Meer unravels the mystery behind her own past lives.

I decided to call Rose recently and ask her about her new series, her passion for the book-publishing industry, and where else her workaholic nature has taken her lately.

Ali Karim: I really enjoyed the Morgan Snow series. Is that series now on hold, while you go off in this other direction?

M.J. Rose: Thank you, and yes, that series is on hold. But I yearn to return to Morgan. The problem with the series was that it did so much better in Europe and the UK than in the U.S., so we stopped to try to figure out what the problem is before I write another one. I think the books need to be repackaged; the American covers didn’t represent the tone/tenor/subject of the books nearly as well as the UK covers, which were genius. I’m hoping there’s a chance to [repackage them], so I can go back and write number four. I feel like I’ve left her in limbo, and that bothers me.

AK: You seem very fascinated with the whole topic of reincarnation. Where did that interest originate?

MJR: When I was 3 years old, I supposedly told my great-grandfather things about his childhood in Russia that there was simply no way I could have known. He became convinced I was a reincarnation of someone in his past. And over time, after more incidents, my mother--a very sane and logical woman--did a lot of research into reincarnation and became fascinated with it, and so it became something I grew up with. After my mother died, I thought of writing a novel about someone like her--a skeptic presented with proof--but it took a long time to get enough distance from her death and then even longer to do all the research.

AK: I hear you are working on a sequel to The Memorist. So, is this destined to be a trilogy?

MJR: I’ve committed to do three, but there might be more.

AK: When you published The Reincarnationist, did you foresee a series in the offing?

MJR: Yes, I pitched it that way. My idea was to write a series of standalones--each a treasure hunt--but with some aspects that tie them all together. So the books all have something to do with the Phoenix Foundation, where a group of therapists work with people in past-life crisis. And a dozen “memory tools”--objects dating back 4,000 years--which help people access past-life memories that have all been lost.

AK: I’ve noticed some big reviews of your latest novel. Were you nervous when the reviewers finally got their hands on The Memorist?

MJR: Yes, because life isn’t hard enough without giving people the opportunity to eviscerate you in public. I keep saying I won’t read them ... but I can’t help it ... so I read them kind of leaning back and away from the screen as if the distance will make it hurt less. I’m envious of authors who say they don’t care what reviewers say ... and secretly wonder if they are telling the truth.

AK: What are your thoughts about the present global economic situation, and how it’s hitting publishing hard?

MJR: Sadly, I think many of the things happening in publishing now are corrections that were inevitable. You can’t keep throwing books against the wall like spaghetti to see what sticks, without eventually winding up with a big mess on the floor. Industry insiders have been admitting that, for years, this is how they’ve been publishing all but a small percentage of titles (admitting it only off the record, of course).

People can’t and won’t buy books that they don’t know exist. Especially not with laptops, Netflix, PDAs, iPods, cell phones, social networking, and a dozen other distractions that are all advertised and all get media interest and attention. We’ve got two dozen brand names and they sell 70 percent of the books. We’ve got millions of readers with no market research on who they are, where they are, or why they buy what they buy. That’s not the way to build a robust business. We need to work at selling books, not hope we’ll sell them.

AK: As a result of these tough economic turns, have you seen renewed interest in your AuthorBuzz.com marketing as well as your work in marketing efforts at ITW with authors and publishers?

MJR: The interest hasn’t waned, so it’s not renewed but it’s busier than ever--with some parts of the service booked up through March. Simply, AuthorBuzz.com offers the biggest bang for the buck and we’ve been around long enough to be tried, tested, and trusted. We work with publishers and authors, and since we’ve worked with pretty much every major house, authors feel secure in hiring us, knowing their publishers will approve.

As far as ITW goes, we have a major commitment to get more attention for our authors and their books with readers. Next on the agenda this winter--the Thriller Readers’ Newsletter has over 10,000 readers, and in January we’re doing a promotion to try and double that number. We’re not stopping there, though. We’re continuing to look for and come up with more marketing opportunities for our members.

AK: So what’s next for M.J. Rose?

MJR: I’m writing the third book in the reincarnation series, and just because there was 15 minutes a day where I wasn’t busy, I’ve started something new--The Book Trib--with Meryl Moss. It’s still in beta, but basically we’re tying to give readers a one-stop news page for all things books.

10 Again

Talk about slipping in just under the wire! Kerrie Smith, the Australian author of the Mysteries in Paradise blog, recently asked her readers to submit--by today, January 4--lists of their 10 favorite crime novels from 2008. Since I didn’t have the time or space to talk about that many books in January Magazine’s recent two-part selection of crime-fiction reads from last year, I decided to submit my own top-10 list to Smith’s blog. The following books are arranged alphabetically, rather than in order of my preference:

• The Black Dove, by Steve Hockensmith
• The Black Tower, by Louis Bayard
• Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith
• Dancing for the Hangman, by Martin Edwards
• Fatal Lies, by Frank Tallis
• The Dawn Patrol, by Don Winslow
• Killing Frost, by R.D. Wingfield
• A Quiet Flame, by Philip Kerr
• Second Violin, by John Lawton
• Stratton’s War, by Laura Wilson

Honorable mentions: A Pale Horse, by Charles Todd; Death Was the Other Woman, by Linda L. Richards; A Vengeful Longing, by R.N. Morris; Moriarty, by John Gardner; Lie Down with the Devil, by Linda Barnes; and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, by John McFetridge.

Other readers’ lists at Mysteries in Paradise can be found here.

Born on the Fourth of January

From today’s edition of The Writer’s Almanac:

It’s the birthday of the ornithologist James Bond, ... born on this day in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1900). He was the leading expert on birds of the Caribbean, and his book Birds of the West Indies (1936) is still in print today.

The novelist Ian Fleming was an enthusiastic bird-watcher, and he was living in Jamaica and came across a copy of Birds of the West Indies. Fleming was writing a thriller and decided to use the name James Bond for the protagonist, agent 007. That thriller was Casino Royale (1953), the first of Fleming’s 12 James Bond novels.

More about the inspirations for James Bond can be found here.

Pay Attention, Bucko!

In case you’re still reeling from all those Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Year’s celebrations, let me remind you that The Rap Sheet has two separate contests in the works.

Best Crime Fiction Covers of 2008. We’ve narrowed down a list of what we believe are the dozen finest-looking crime novel jackets from the last year. But we would like your help in crowning a winner. Click here to see all of the nominees and cast your vote for the book front you think works best.

Win a Free Book. To help celebrate the British release later this week of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played with Fire, the sequel to last year’s award-winning The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, publisher Quercus is offering three free copies of that book to Rap Sheet readers. All you have to do to enter the running is answer one simple question. Details here.

What are you waiting for? Check these out.

Van Demon’s Land

Do you ever get tired of reading fiction?

I have to admit that I do. All too often, I’m afraid. There are so many books around, and a great deal of hype is spouted about them. If I started to list the titles of “highly recommended” novels and the names of authors who disappointed me over the last year, I’d go on for hours. So, let’s just breathe the sacred words “dragon” and “tattoo” and leave it at that!

Tired of reading, but never too tired to read, what do I turn to when crime or mainstream fiction temporarily relaxes its hold on me? Well, there are three literary genres which are always ready to step up into the firing line: biography, true crime, and history. I suppose they are obvious choices for anyone who attempts to write historical crime fiction: character is always the central concern, the mechanics and logistics of the crime come next, and, finally, background color is provided by a thorough reading of the available historical material.

At the moment, history has me in its grip; the book I am reading is potentially so interesting to dedicated crime buffs, that I thought I ought to tell you all about it.

The history of science is so vast a subject that few specialist readers manage to keep up with it. And as for the rest of us, well! I say this partly to excuse myself, because the book that I am about to review was originally released way back in 2005, which is like Before-the-Flood in publishing terms. Human Remains, by Helen MacDonald (Melbourne University Press; a U.S. edition was published by Yale University Press in 2006), deserves a favored place on any dedicated crime-fiction fan’s bookshelf, especially when you consider the subtitle: “Dissection and Its Histories.” It immediately brings to mind a classic undergraduate text, What Is History?, by professor Edward Hallet Carr (Vintage, 1967), which candidly states that history is what historians choose to write about, and that, by implication, it raises a host of questions about the stuff that those same historians pointedly choose to ignore. And it also highlights the much-used notion of “the official history of ...,” which must be the greatest whitewash of all time. After all, someone wrote it, and for a specific purpose, missing out on all the bits that didn’t quite fit!

Ms. MacDonald wades straight in and tells you what to expect in this tome of rare delight.

This history explores the way in which certain people’s bodies were turned into surgeons’ things in nineteenth century dissecting rooms, were resurrected from graves, and harvested for desirable parts. They were exchanged for favours, posed as pieces of art, and displayed in museums. All of which was as much a social as it was a scientific matter.

The emphasis is on “certain people,” “surgeons’ things,” “desirable parts,” and the roles of “art” and “science,” which certainly includes a vast chunk of 19th-century social reality, not the bland, conventional tales of the same old resurrectionists that generally appear on the New Crime display tables. If you happen to have read Brian Bailey’s Burke and Hare: The Year of the Ghouls (detailing one of Britain’s most notorious bodysnatching cases), Sarah Wise’s The Italian Boy: Murder and Grave-Robbery in 1830 London, or any one of another dozen midnight-in-the-graveyard books, this one will come as a surprise. Firstly, midday was a much more likely time for the dismembering to start, and secondly, the little that remained of the so-called “subject” (it is an object, as the writer carefully points out) rarely reached the grave­yard to be dug up again. Indeed, there was a huge Victorian market for “desirable parts,” and nothing disreputable about dissecting in the early 19th century, so long as it was done in a teaching hospital’s Dead Room by educated men with medical degrees. The trouble was, as Helen MacDonald amply displays in exquisite prose, the hands-on business of chopping up a human being for display was a filthy mess, and its enthusiastic practitioners hid themselves behind convenient notions of medicine and science in the interests of ... what?

Here the picture starts to really take off.

What happened in Tasmania, for example, when the last Aboriginal Tasmanian died?

MacDonald’s social history of medical practice in the British colonies during the early 19th century is eye-opening. At that time, native Tasmanians were thought to be the most degenerate and degraded of peoples, living proof (though they were rapidly dying out) of the “contamination” which “civilized men” inevitably brought upon the native societies that they colonized. The amazing account of what happened to the skull, hands, feet and body of “King Bill” William Lanney when he died in 1869 makes for bewitching reading, as does the sudden worldwide explosion of anthropological apologists in the pre-Darwinian worlds of monogenists and polygenists, progression­ists and degenerationists (anthropologists of a religious inclination, who argued, respectively, that humankind was in a state of progressive improvement, or else regressive decline), “civilised and uncivilised Europeans,” colonial “contributors” and the learned Royal Society “collectors” with whom they corresponded. Also fascinating was the wild scramble for “perfect” museum exhibits to document­ the last survivor of an extinguished race.

How hard it is to describe a world and a society that no longer exists.

And how easily Helen MacDonald manages it in Human Remains!

So, there you have it. A great historical read, full of local color and the sort of detail that only expert factual historical research can turn up. If you had invented the story, your readers would accuse you of exaggerating. This book asks and answers all the questions that the 19th century chose to leave out, and fills in all the holes that would normally puzzle an amateur modern historian such as myself.

What more can you ask of a great read?

Meanwhile, in Other News ...

• Here’s something worth listening to on your weekend off: In the latest installment of BBC 4 radio’s Thinking Allowed program, “Laurie Taylor brings past and present together to explore the culture of the detective. He talks to Kate Summerscale, author of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, or The Murder at Road Hill House, as well as criminologists Dr. Louise Westmarland and Professor Dick Hobbs. They discuss the theory and practice of detection based on Kate’s book, a gripping story of a real-life 19th-century murder as well as a sociological treatise on the nature and significance of the detective in fact and fiction.” Tune in soon, as these programs aren’t available forever. (Hat tip to Elizabeth Foxwell.)

• Another fine way to while away a Saturday afternoon.

• Illinois author Laura Benedict, author of Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts, is the latest inductee into January Magazine’s catalogue of “Author Snapshots.” Read more here.

• From Carnival of the Criminal Minds queen Barbara Fister: “Kerrie of Mysteries in Paradise ushers in the new year with a ‘murder in the outback’ carnival theme. She points out (with appropriate video accompaniment) that Australia may be uniquely suited to murder--having a harsh climate, hardy roots transported in convict ships, and heroes who range from sheep thieves to the bushranger who was hanged for murder and gave his name to the country’s highest mystery writing honor, the Ned Kelly Award.”

• Although it looks as if some roadblocks are stalling the feature-film adaptation of that 1970s Roger Moore/Tony Curtis TV thriller series, The Persuaders!, some clever enthusiast has gone ahead and imagined a teaser for the new movie. A version of the original series opener can be seen here.

• Speaking of 1970s TV suspensers, does anyone else remember this one? A refresher can be found here.

• J.M. Hayes casts his eccentric “Mad Dog & Englishman” series for Hollywood consumption.

• And wrapping up (or perhaps not) the recent run of “best of 2008” books lists, Sharon Wheeler and Dark Party Review both name their favorite titles.

Signs of Respect

In the wake of author Donald E. Westlake’s stunning demise on New Year’s Eve, there have been a number of tributes spread over the crime-fiction blogosphere. We’ve already catalogued a wide variety of those here, but there seems to be no stopping their proliferation. Especially worth checking out are Max Allan Collins’ recollections of the novelist, hosted in Ed Gorman’s blog, and Michael Carlson’s fine encomium, which he apparently wrote for the British e-zine Shots (though I don’t see it there yet).

Meanwhile, Mystery*File’s Steve Lewis has been re-running what I hope will be an increasing number of reviews from past years of Westlake’s books and the films made from his novels. Featured so far: Why Me?, The Hot Rock, God Save the Mark, and Dancing Aztecs.

Good stuff all around.

READ MORE: “Donald Westlake: An Appreciation,” by Mario Taboada (Mystery*File); “Donald E. Westlake (1933-2008),” by Ethan Iverson (Do the Math); “Donald Westlake: The Stark Truth,” by Ed Gorman (Mystery Scene); “R.I.P., Donald Westlake,” by Clayton Moore (Bang!).

The Return of Lisbeth Salander

Most everyone who spent any time at all with me during Bouchercon in Baltimore last fall has probably already heard me go on and on about the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson and my obsession not only with his first novel, last year’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but also its first sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire, which is due out in the UK next week. Just prior to flying off to Maryland for Bouchercon, I’d had the rare opportunity to interview Erland Larsson, the novelist’s father, and to see Dragon Tattoo win the ITV-3 award for Best International Thriller. So it was hard to contain my enthusiasm on the subject of Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy.” I spent a great deal of energy during the convention, telling everyone I met how astounded I was by the second book in the series (a copy of which I had received from Mark Smith, managing director of Quercus Publishing, which is bringing out these works in Britain), and encouraging them to take a look for themselves--as soon as possible.

I found it difficult at first to write about The Girl Who Played with Fire, as it still echoed in my head. I felt that no matter what I wrote, it would never do the novel justice. I could save a lot of space by simply writing Wow! But that wouldn’t really tell you much. So with this English-translated novel’s introduction rapidly approaching, I want to explore why the follow-up to Dragon Tattoo sent me reeling.

Firstly, let me recall how captivated I was by reading Larsson’s prose in the initial series installment. Dragon Tattoo rocked my world so, that I overlooked a few of its shortcomings, including a lengthy introduction that was heavy on business politics, some of the clunkier aspects of the story’s English translation, and the immense scope of its narrative, which at times detracted from its pacing. Also, I found some of the sexual violence in Larsson’s debut novel disturbing. Thankfully, though, none of those shortcomings are evident in The Girl Who Played with Fire. I can say quite confidently that this second book is one of the greatest works of fiction, not just crime fiction.

In talking about Volume II of the Millennium Trilogy, I don’t want to ruin things for readers who haven’t yet enjoyed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; you really need to take that first book in hand, as it sets up the action and the dynamics Larsson further explores in The Girl Who Played with Fire. The trouble is, much of the first novel’s back-story permeates into Volume II. And there are secrets revealed here that place protagonist Lisbeth Salander--introduced in the previous book as the 24-year-old partner of disgraced journalist and publisher Mikael Blomkvist--under a new light, some of which even she does not realize exist. Those secrets will make both Salander and the reader re-examine what they think they know so far and question everything that follows.

Played with Fire opens with a disturbing prologue that makes one apprehensive about what might follow. An unnamed 13-year-old girl finds herself fastened to a steel-frame bed by leather straps. She has been trapped by someone with evil intent, someone harboring the darkest of intentions. One naturally wonders whether that unnamed girl is a younger Lisbeth Salander, but the answer to that mystery will not be revealed until much else has happened.

Soon enough, the grown-up Salander makes her entrance into this tale in grand style, visiting tropical Grenada on a well-deserved vacation. After the conclusion of Dragon Tattoo, Salander “inherited” a vast sum of money, so she’s decided to see something of the world. Distanced from her love interest, and feeling pangs of jealousy as a result of Blomkvist’s carnal nature and his relationship with a business associate, the misfit Salander cuts herself off. While exploring Grenada, she engages in a relationship with a local youth, one George Bland. But danger approaches, thanks to a tornado called Matilda. During the storm, Salander encounters other threats, this time in the forms of a woman named Geraldine Forbes and her husband, Richard. It will demand all of our heroine’s moral outrage to restore order amidst the tornado. When she moves into action, she’s not one to take any prisoners, believe me.

Having survived that disaster, a relieved Salander returns to Sweden and resumes a physical relationship with an old girlfriend, Miriam “Mimmi” Wu, even giving her lover the keys to her flat. However, like Batman or Superman, Salander has her own secret retreat, an expensive flat registered under one of her secret identities. Being Salander, she has enemies, the most dangerous of whom is the sexual sadist and lawyer Nils Erik Bjurman. He’s her legal guardian--the same man who sexually abused her long ago, and upon whom Salander later inflicted a brutal revenge. Bjurman now schemes to kill Salander, for his every waking hour is still haunted by memories of what she did to him.

Meanwhile, back at Millennium magazine, Mikael Blomkvist is puzzled by Salander having vanished and her refusal to return his calls. His latest lover, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Erika Berger, also has a dilemma. Despite being very fond of her role at Millennium, she has been offered the career opportunity of a lifetime--a senior role with one of Sweden’s most prestigious media companies. She keeps this offer a secret from Blomkvist, though; in fact, all of the characters in Larsson’s narrative have hidden motivations and secrets they carry around with them, for which there will be consequences.

Blomkvist plans to publish a special edition of his magazine to coincide with a book being written, one that exposes the illicit business of people-trafficking and the damaged women who find themselves sucked into that soul-destroying world. Blomkvist hires freelance journalists and partners Mia Johansson and Dag Svensson to pen the piece from their upcoming book. Blomkvist knows that their exposé will destroy some senior people in Swedish society, but being every inch the moral crusader, he can’t see beyond his wish to shed light on the hypocrisy such people exhibit.

Things take a turn for the worse, though, when Johansson and Svensson are found murdered, and the description given of their fleeing assailant matches Lisbeth Salander to a T. From there, we’re offered a multifarious web of dark doings that seem to originate with, or at least relate to, Salander and her strange behavior, which is in turn linked to her passion for complex mathematics. Her continual reading of Dimension in Mathematics, by L.C. Parnault, may shed light on her affliction with autism or Asperger’s Syndrome, but it could also suggest something far more complicated.

To investigate this case, the Swedish police assign a motley bunch of oddballs headed by the wonderfully crafted Inspector Jan Bublanski (known behind his back as “Officer Bubble”). As the hunt for Salander goes nationwide, they become interested in her relationship with Blomkvist. But Salander is not a woman to be messed with; between bites of Billy’s Pan Pizza, she fights to clear her name, and at the same time prevent Miriam Wu from becoming embroiled in the fallout from the murders of Blomkvist’s two freelancers. In the course of it all, Salander contacts her old boss, Dragan Armansky of Milton Security. He tells her that her former guardian, Holger Palmgren, is recovering from a serious stroke. Prior to being taken on by the vile lawyer Bjurman, Salander’s guardian had been the kindly Palmgren, and from her encounters and investigations we soon learn a great deal about how she became the misfit she is today. It seems that Salander has a twin sister, Camilla, who, after what is enigmatically described as “all that evil,” was sent to a foster home, while Salander was committed to St. Stefan’s Psychiatric Hospital for Children. To reveal more would be wrong of me, but suffice it to say, the revelations are scary, and they give the reader ample understanding of malevolent people--the type who lack compassion and crave only the satisfaction of their dark desires, no matter how much hurt their inflict on the most vulnerable around them.

As The Girl Who Played with Fire gathers pace in the last third of its pages, we learn about a gangster known as Zala and his henchmen, the Ranta Brothers, as well as a walking giant named Niederman, who chomps steroids as regularly as he cracks bones. Finally, as Miriam Wu is placed in mortal danger, it’s up to Salander--with some help from a politician and ex-wrestling champion--to the rescue.

Notice how many weird characters make appearances in this book and how I refer to them as if they were real people? That’s because Larsson’s sophomore novel pulses with life, as well as death. It’s not overstating the case to say that, at times I was hypnotized by the author’s writing style and the people he chooses to fill his narrative. As odd as it may sound, some of the players in these pages are far better delineated than the folks populating my reality.

The novel’s conclusion is truly shocking, as we learn about the corruption that led to the incarceration of that young girl I mentioned before, and the reasons why Lisbeth Salander became such an outcast from society. We also discover more about the nefarious attorney Bjurman, but most frighteningly, we learn who Zala really is. By the end of The Girl Who Played with Fire, I found myself practically tearing through the pages, as if hidden in the story were something as important as the secret to eternity. I’ve fallen so deeply in love with Stieg Larsson’s characters, that reading about their world seems far more true than what I see around me in these weird economic times.

I warn you, this story is not pretty. Not in the least. But it does pulse with insight and compassion, and it will haunt you for many weeks after you’ve put it down. If I read a finer book this year than The Girl Who Played with Fire, I shall consider myself extraordinarily lucky. American fans of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo might have a hard time waiting until the U.S. edition of Played with Fire comes out from Alfred A. Knopf/Borzoi in July. If you would like a taste of what’s to come, click here.

* * *

To help celebrate the British release next week of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played with Fire, Quercus’s publicity director, Lucy Ramsey, is offering three free copies to Rap Sheet readers. To enter the contest for one, just answer this question:

What is the first name of Stieg Larsson’s niece, on whom Lisabeth Salander is partly based?

(If you need a clue, click here.)

Send your response, including your name and mailing address, to jpwrites@wordcuts.org. And in the subject line, write “Larsson Competition.”

The closing date for entries is next Thursday, January 8. The names of three people who answered the above question correctly will then be pulled out of a hat, and copies sent to all of them.

Good luck.

Rippin’ Right Along

Mike Ripley’s latest “Getting Away with Murder” column in Shots covers subjects ranging from John Buchan and Bitter Lemon Press, to Tom Bale’s forthcoming thriller, Skin and Bones, and a new series from Fred Vargas. Read more here.

Reads Worth Recalling

Since this is Friday morning, one has to assume that there are “forgotten books” being promoted around the crime-fiction blogosphere. And sure enough, here are some highlights: Dead in the Water, by Ted Wood; Big Town, by Doug J. Swanson; The Dark Side, edited by Damon Knight; The Overseer, by Jonathan Rabb; After Things Fell Apart, by Ron Goulart; Solomon’s Vineyard, by Jonathan Latimer; and, uh, Jonny Quest’s Adventure with the Secret Tunnel, by Horace J. Elias.

Patti Abbott features several more choices in her own blog, including Modesty Blaise, by Peter O’Donnell. Go to Abbott’s blog, too, to find a complete list of this morning’s forgotten books picks.

A Good Ass-Whuppin’

After the death of somebody famous, such as author Donald E. Westlake, absolute nobodies pour out of the woodwork to recall their encounters--even if ever so brief--with the deceased. I cannot claim to have known Westlake, but I am a nobody who was once lucky enough to meet him. This happened way back in 1994, when I was attending my first Bouchercon World Mystery Convention. The event was held that year in Seattle, and the editor of Seattle Weekly thought it would be a brilliant idea to send me into that crowd of distinguished novelists with a tape recorder and ask them “the question that has intrigued readers for the past century and more: What would constitute the perfect crime?”

The answers I received were occasionally inventive, but always colorful. For instance, British author Peter Lovesey told me: “I’ve tried to work this out before, and I’ve resolved that one perfect crime would be a deadly jellyfish in a Jacuzzi. There are all these deadly jellyfish off the coast of Australia, and you wouldn’t be able to see one of them in whirling water, now would you? So a murderer would drop one of those things into the water and then contrive to be away at a party, say, when his victim decides to take a bath. He’d then collect the creature in a bucket before the police show up.” Meanwhile, Bill Brashler, a Chicagoan who (with his partner, Reinder Van Til) was then writing a series baseball mysteries under the pseudonym “Crabbe Evers,” said: “I’d kill one of those overweening clerks at the coffee shops in Seattle. I asked one of them this morning for an extra paper cup, and they wouldn’t give it to me. They should die a horrible death. Maybe from one poisonous coffee bean dropped into their morning grind.”

Stopping Westlake in one of the convention hotel hallways, I put the same question to him. He thought for a rather long moment, and then answered: “The perfect crime is a crime in which nobody gets punished--and no animals are harmed. [Laughs.] It’s always a good idea to hit a corporation. Mark Twain said that ‘the trouble with a corporation is that it has neither a head to think nor an ass to kick.’ So the perfect crime would be one in which you got to kick a corporation in the ass.”

No wonder readers found Westlake’s humor so appealing.

READ MORE: “Donald Westlake (aka Richard Stark), 1933-2008,” by Duane Swierczynski (Secret Dead Blog); “Donald Westlake, R.I.P.,” by Dave White (Dave White’s Writing Block); “Donald Westlake, Part II,” by Peter Rozovsky (Detectives Beyond Borders); “Donald Westlake, R.I.P.,” by Michael Blowhard (2Blowhards); “Lest We Forget,” by Bill Crider (Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine); “More Westlake,” by Nathan Cain (Independent Crime); “Donald Westlake,” by Lee Goldberg (A Writer’s Life); “Celebrating Westlake,” by Patrick Shawn Bagley (Bitter Water Blog); “Don Westlake, #2,” by Ed Gorman; “Donald Westlake,” by Kevin Burton Smith (The Thrilling Detective Blog); “Under Any Name, Donald Westlake Was a Grandmaster,” by Sarah Weinman (Los Angeles Times); “A Tribute to Donald Westlake,” by David Laurence Wilson (Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine).

Donald Westlake, R.I.P.

The New York Times is reporting the passing of Donald E. Westlake, in Mexico, at age 75.

Known best for comic mysteries written under his own name and the harder-boiled Parker novels under the pseudonym “Richard Stark,” Westlake had published over 100 novels during a career that spanned half a century. Westlake was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 1993.

UPDATE: Sarah Weinman has collected a number of links with more information about author Westlake and his work. In addition, Bookgasm’s short obit includes references to reviews of many Westlake/Stark novels.

READ MORE: “Donald E. Westlake (1933-2008),” by Vince Keenan; “Donald Westlake Dies,” by Peter Rozovsky (Detectives Beyond Borders); “Donald E. Westlake,” by James Reasoner (Rough Edges); “A Don Westlake Pro-File from 2006,” by Ed Gorman.