Time for Your Briefing

• Author J.A. “Joe” Konrath has enjoyed a fair bit of publicity on this page over the last few months. Ali Karim interviewed the author last November, and more recently we gave away three free copies of his new horror novel, Afraid, which he composed under the pseudonym “Jack Kilborn.” But now, here we are again, talking about Konrath and a new interview with him, conducted by Rap Sheet contributor Jason Starr (Fake I.D.) and available on the MySpace page Starr shares with Irish writer Ken Bruen. My favorite part of their exchange comes in answer to Starr’s question, “Do you think it sucks that in some situations authors need to change their names, or do you just think it’s part of the reality of the publishing business and we all have to deal with it?” Konrath’s response: “I plan on having many names throughout my career. And my wife digs it, because she gets to sleep with different men.”

• Today is actor James Garner’s 81st birthday. All of us at The Rap Sheet send the former star of The Rockford Files, Maverick, and those classic Polaroid commercials our warmest wishes.

• Speaking of The Rockford Files, I missed seeing this blog post by Cameron Sturdevant about how private eye Rockford’s social hacking schemes could not be so easily executed in the early 21st century. Oh, well. We can still appreciate the old shows.

• Congratulations to Crimespree Magazine on its fifth birthday. Co-editor Ruth Jordan writes that the publication will celebrate this milestone on its Central Crime Zone blog, beginning on April 15. First up: Ruth and husband Jon Jordan will interview each other. Look for more of the festivities here.

• UK writer James Green reads his story “Tommy, Jimmy, and Me” for the latest podcast from CrimeWAV.com. That short tale is described as “something of a prelude to his crime novel,” Bad Catholics (2008).

• In case you haven’t heard (and believe me, you’d be the last one in the dark), the late author Michael Crichton has at least two new books slated for publication over next couple of years. As The New York Times reports, “HarperCollins, Mr. Crichton’s publisher for his previous three books, will release ‘Pirate Latitudes,’ an adventure story set in Jamaica in the 17th century, on Nov. 24. The company also plans to publish a technological thriller in the fall of 2010, a novel that Mr. Crichton was working on when he died.” More on Crichton’s posthumous plenty here and here.

• Baltimore babe Laura Lippman talks with John Kenyon of Things I’d Rather Be Doing about her new standalone novel, Life Sentences, and her fondness for memoirs. “I prefer what I call ‘quotidian’ memoirs, about recognizably normal lives,” she says. Meanwhile, librarian-blogger Lesa Holstine catches up with Lippman as her book tour swings through Glendale, Arizona.

• Speaking of interviews, Clayton Moore tackles the prolific Walter Mosley (The Long Fall) for Bookslut. Read his piece here.

• Three more of Donald E. Westlake’s early Parker novels have just been reissued by the University of Chicago Press.

• Many years ago, Arthur Lyons, creator of the private eye Jacob Asch series, recommended that I read Richard Hallas’ You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up (1938), but I’ve somehow never gotten around to that task. Now, though, Cullen Gallagher’s review of the novel has me looking for a copy.

• In Reference to Murder reports that “The Coen Brothers’ adaptation of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, based on the Michael Chabon novel, will be postponed so they can concentrate first on their remake of the western True Grit.”

• I can’t believe TV Guide neglected to include Lieutenant Columbo’s “Just one more thing” from its list of the 16 Greatest TV Catchphrases. Lame. But at least it included the famous “Book ’em, Danno” line from Hawaii Five-O.

• And what are the 10 best fight scenes in fiction? One of them features in Ian Fleming’s 1957 James Bond novel, From Russia with Love, according to The Guardian’s John Mullan. He describes that and his other nine favorites here.

Spy Speak

I’ve written periodically on this page about the biweekly Web radio program TV Confidential, co-hosted by Frankie Montiforte and TV historian Ed Robertson, and even had a couple of chances to be a guest on that show, talking about the 1973-1974 Bill Bixby series The Magician. Maybe someday I’ll have another such opportunity.

But tonight’s episode of TV Confidential is devoted to “TV Spies, from A to Z,” and boasts a different special guest. As Robertson explains in his program’s blog:

Spymaster Wes Britton joins Frankie Montiforte and me this week on TV Confidential, Tuesday, Apr. 7, beginning at 10 p.m. ET, 7 p.m. PT on Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org.

The leading authority on the film and television spy genre, Wes Britton has just published his latest book, The Encyclopedia of TV Spies--a comprehensive guide to spy shows that have aired on American and British television over the past 50 years, from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. to Get Smart to My Own Worst Enemy and everything in between.

Which spy series is your favorite, and why? Is it listed in Wes’ book, or available on cable or DVD? Find out the answers to these and other questions this Tuesday, Apr. 7 beginning at 10 p.m. ET, 7 p.m. PT on Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org. Phone number, as always, is (800) 407-KSAV (5728). You can also e-mail a question or comment in advance by sending it to talk@tvconfidential.net.

Fire up your computer, grab your shoe phone, and join the fun.

Mack Is in for “Pain”

A week ago, we announced that publisher William Morrow had provided us with one free copy of California writer Jerry Stahl’s fourth and latest novel, Pain Killers, to give away. We asked readers to submit the answer to a very simple question: “In which other of Stahl’s novels did ex-junkie turned codeine-popping detective Manny Rupert also appear?” And we promised to randomly draw a winner from those entries.

Well, today we have the name of that winner. He’s Mack Lundy of Williamsburg, Virginia, who knew that Rupert had previously been featured in Stahl’s rather violent but darkly comic, 2001 crime-caper novel, Plainclothes Naked. A copy of Pain Killers should be in the mail to Lundy shortly.

Thanks to everyone for taking part in this contest. We hope to have another book to give away soon.

Never Send Flowers*

As Marty McKee of Johnny LaRue’s Crane Shot notes, this would have been the 100th birthday of Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli, the American producer who, along with Harry Saltzman, gave us the iconic James Bond film series. Broccoli died in 1996, but his work is being celebrated today with a very classy tribute over at FelixLeiter.com.

In addition to pieces penned by actors such as Richard Kiel (familiar as the metal-toothed Jaws, from The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker) and David Hedison (who played CIA agent Felix Leiter in at least two Bond films, as well as portraying Captain Lee Crane on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea), you’ll find features about: Broccoli’s feads, written by Double O Section’s Matthew Bradford (aka “Tanner”); UK novelist John Gardner’s initial encounter with the director (Gardner would go on to write some of the post-Ian Fleming Bond books); and James Bond’s impact on popular culture, written by FelixLeiter.com editor Hunter Graybeal.

As I said before, a classy tribute. Well worth reading today.

* In case you didn’t recognize it immediately, this post’s headline is taken from the title of a 1993 Bond novel written by John Gardner.

Chapter 11 Structuring

Central Crime Zone’s Jon Jordan suggests that, “in honor of the wonderful world of high finance,” bloggers should post “the first line of Chapter Eleven in the book you’re reading.” This turns out to be a more difficult assignment than I would have imagined, as the book I just began, Jonathan Rabb’s new historical crime novel, Shadow and Light (the sequel to Rosa, one of January Magazine’s favorite books of 2005), doesn’t have an easily identifiable Chapter 11. Its numbering only goes up to Chapter 5.

I’ve also just started reading T. Coraghessan Boyle’s wonderfully composed new novel about architect Frank Lloyd Wright, The Women. But that has no Chapter 11, either. Its Part I ends with Chapter 9, and then the numbering commences again in Part II. However, if I count the second chapter of Part II as the 11th chapter, then this is its first line (on page 208):

She was sunk in the sofa in Norma’s sitting room--or living room, as they call it here--taking a cup of tea and idly shifting the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle round the end table for lack of anything better to do, when Norma came in with the mail.

Having not read anywhere close to that far in The Women, I don’t know who Norma is yet, or who the “she” reclining on her sofa happens to be. I look forward to finding out.

Better to refer back to two other books that I just finished over the weekend. The first completed was Devil’s Garden, Ace Atkins’ brand-new novel about Dashiell Hammett’s involvement, during his time as a Pinkerton detective, in the evident 1921 frame-up of big-screen funny man Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle for the murder of a wannabe actress in San Francisco. Chapter 11 in that story begins with the entrance of Arbuckle’s estranged wife:

When Minta arrived at the Hall of Justice it was early morning and Roscoe had been asleep on his bunk, dreaming of the dusty town where he’d lived as a boy in a little hotel closet alone, scrubbing floors and cleaning spittoons and falling in love with this nineteen-year-old singer who smelled of lilac and taught him to harmonize and dance.

The second novel on which I just turned the final page yesterday, The Ignorance of Blood, the fourth and apparently final installment of Robert Wilson’s series about Spanish Inspector Jefe Javier Falcón (a series that began with The Blind Man of Seville, another January Magazine favorite, back in 2003), kicks off its own Chapter 11 in the middle of a kidnapping:

“I’m not going to talk to anybody except Javier,” said Consuelo, not loudly, but with such an edge to her voice that all the men stood back from her, as if she’d just unsheathed a sword.

The speaker, by the way, is Falcón’s on-again-off-again lover, restaurateur Consuelo Jiménez.

Feel free to apply this test to your own latest reads. I’m not sure it tells you much about them, but it may give you the chance to discover--or rediscover--some fine prose.

Horns of Plenty

Here’s a little something to jump-start your spirit on this slow Monday morning: the latest entry in Permission to Kill’s delightful “Spy Tunes” series.

The Great American Invasion, Part II

(Editor’s note: This is the final installment of a two-part report from British correspondent Ali Karim. The first part can be found here.)

As Dennis Lehane, seated in an office of the Borders bookstore in London’s Charing Cross Road, finished signing my unbelievably numerous collection of his novels, I switched off my tape machine’s microphone. We talked and drank our coffee, until Tess Gerritsen--who was making a joint appearance at the store that evening with fellow American Lehane--entered the room. She and I had just enough time to talk, before the audience massing outside would call for both authors to making a showing.

I pulled out a second hold-all full of books. Lehane looked over at me, laughed, and said, “Not more books!” But he was obviously relieved, and Gerritsen equally delighted, as both of them recognized that these hefty new piles I was heaving onto the table were Gerritsen’s novels, not more Lehanes.

With no time to waste, I switched on my microphone again as Gerritsen got down to the serious business of signing her books. I’ve followed Gerritsen’s fiction-writing career for many years now, so was looking forward to asking her about her circuitous route to becoming a crime novelist, why she sets most of her novels in Massachusetts’ biggest city, the covers of her books on both sides of the Atlantic, and of course her latest novel, Keeping the Dead (or, as it’s known in the America, The Keepsake).

Ali Karim: You now have a very successful series going, featuring Detective Jane Rizzoli of the Boston Police Department and medical examiner Maura Isles. However, you’ve switched genres several times in the past, starting out writing romantic thrillers, then moving on to techno-medical thrillers [beginning with Harvest in 1996], science fiction, and finally crime novels. How has your readership reacted to these switches?

Tess Gerritsen: They get very confused, very confused. I know that some of my crime readers occasionally come across one of my earlier romance books and they are completely flabbergasted to find out that I used to write romance. On the other hand, some of my crime readers come across Gravity [1999] and are surprised to discover that I wrote science-fiction.

AK: Some of your science fiction was in the mode of the late Michael Crichton, who also liked to move around between the genres, at one point writing mysteries under the nom de plume “John Lange.”

TG: Precisely. I think basically I write whatever I feel like writing, and wherever it takes me.

AK: A novel’s location is so often key to the telling of a tale. You set your 2007 bestseller, The Bone Garden, in historical Boston and your Rizzoli and Isles novels [beginning with The Surgeon in 2001] in that same city, only in modern times. However, you live in Maine. What’s this fascination of yours with Beantown?

TG: Partly because [my books deal with] a couple of characters who are homicide investigators, and quite honestly we have one of the lowest homicide rates in the country in the state of Maine, so it would start to feel rather unrealistic if I were to have serial killers running around rural Maine. So I wanted to set my crime novels in the nearest large city that you could have serial killers operating … and I chose Boston.

AK: Have you ever lived there, or worked in Boston?

TG: No, I haven’t lived there. But I am very familiar with Boston, as I spend a lot of time there doing research in the city.

AK: To what degree do you attribute the success of your books to your characters, Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles? And where did those two players come from?

TG: I attribute a great deal of my success to the characters, particularly Jane Rizzoli, who I think is the character most readers have the most fun with.

AK: That’s interesting, because she has some problems ...

TG: Yes, she’s not a lovey-dovey person. And perhaps to answer [the second part of] your question, I’ll have to reveal something that many of my readers may not be aware of. Jane first appeared in … The Surgeon, and a lot of people told me that “I don’t like her, she is quite a bitch.” And the explanation for her appearing that way was that she was never intended to survive that book--she was going to die. You see, I never planned to write a series. But when I got to the scene where she was supposed to die, she frankly refused to die. So when she survived that book, I became really interested in her and wanted to find out what happened in her life, so then I wrote the second book [The Apprentice, 2002] … and suddenly I had a series. It was totally unplanned.

AK: So is Maura Isles you, Tess?

TG: Very much. We both have backgrounds in science, both studied medicine, and both like to believe that there is a logical explanation to why things happen. So whenever there is any biographical detail required in Maura’s life, like what wine does she drink, what car does she drive? I just take it from my own life.

AK: I’m very interested in the differences between the covers of your U.S. editions and of those published in the UK. I find the ones produced by British publisher Transworld to be much more interesting.

TG: I love my UK covers. They are stark and clean and very distinctive. … I would go as far as to say that [Transworld’s jackets] were revolutionary in their design. I don’t think anyone else was making such minimalist imagery work in the crime-fiction world. As it turned out, it was those covers that really caught people’s eyes …

AK: For instance, the UK cover for The Surgeon is very minimal--just a white sink basin with three drops of blood--whereas your American cover for that same book is far busier and more colorful. What’s your take on cover design?

TG: I think [the differences are] cultural. Americans like more color. We like a lot of sex on our covers--the female form, faces. A lot of this has to do with the art director at the publishing house and their taste; and to be honest I don’t really know what makes a cover work or not work. So I leave it to my publisher. I don’t want to second guess them, as they are usually right.

AK: You have become quite adept at blogging, both at Murderati and in the blog associated with your Web site. Why do you enjoy blogging, and does the exercise have any downsides for you?

TG: I blog because I have a very solitary profession. I sit in my office all day, and something will occur either in the business of writing or in the process of writing that makes want to write about it, and I blab. I like the sense of wanting to share with others what I am dealing with, and I really didn’t think anybody cared, until I discovered that I do indeed have quite a few blog readers--especially a lot of other writers who can identify with what I am talking about.

AK: Your latest work in the UK, Keeping the Dead, is a Rizzoli-Isles thriller. In the States, though, it’s called The Keepsake. How do you feel about your publishers changing your books’ titles for their separate markets?

TG: I always worry about confusion. ... Some [readers] don’t realize that both are the same book, but with different titles. In my latest book, both my U.S. and UK editors had very strong opinions ..., [and] neither liked the other title. So, to make everyone happy we decided to go with the two titles.

AK: On the subject of confusion, I was amused to see that much of your backlist is being reissued by Mira UK, and the covers are similar to the Transworld style. How do you feel, seeing your earlier work re-packaged and back on shelves?

TG: Well, again I’m a little concerned about the confusion this causes. As much as I am very happy to have my early romance novels re-released, what happens is that my current crime-fiction readers think they are crime novels, and I get a lot of angry e-mails from readers.

AK: Really?

TG: Yes, really. I get some upsetting e-mails from people: “What is wrong with you? Your style has changed? I’ll never read your stuff again!” Nasty stuff.

AK: Well, that’s bizarre. Aren’t these people bright enough to read the copyright page?

TG: Well, perhaps not, and I end up responding nicely by telling them that the next time you want to pick up one of my books, you should check the copyright page and date, because if it’s before 1997, it may very well be a romance novel. I am, however, concerned that I may have lost readers who never told me this, who never realized about my backlist being re-released with covers that accentuate the crime-fiction angle, when in reality they are romance novels.

AK: Is this just a UK issue, or are your romance novels also being re-issued in the States to look like crime novels?

TG: It’s all over--not just the U.S. and UK, but all over the world. Mira has re-released my older work in a number of countries.

AK: So what comes next, what’s after Keeping the Dead? A standalone, perhaps, or another Rizzoli-Isles thriller?

TG: Well, my next contract specifies three more Jane and Maura novels. I love doing the standalones, but what I’ve noticed is that they just don’t seem to sell as well as the Jane and Maura series. But saying that, The Bone Garden sold very well. I think readers get very attached to the characters of Jane and Maura, and want more. I have plenty of ideas for standalones, but I’m not sure if I’ll be doing one just yet, as I am working on a Jane and Maura book right now.

AK: In today’s world, how much time do you have to spend away from your garret, working with publishers to promote your books? And what are your feelings about having to take that time way from the actual writing process?

TG: It has become a more and more a critical part of establishing a career as a novelist. I do love going on tour [and] meeting readers ... But the problem is, you do have to turn out a book a year--that’s what my publishers want. So that combination of having to tour, not just in the U.S. but internationally, plus turn in a book a year has made writers’ lives pretty insane. If it was up to me, I’d turn in a book every two years, and do a leisurely tour. ... How much can a writer manage these days, [between] promotion and writing, without going insane?

AK: Finally, given the present tate of the economy and changes in the publishing world, how do you look at all those people who are foolhardy enough to embark on a fiction-writing career nowadays?

TG: From what I understand, it is very hard for a debut author to sell a book, simply because readers don’t know what they will expect from that author in future work. Whereas, if you’re an established author ..., you have a readership. Looking at book sales in late 2008, they have held pretty steady compared to other retailers, so let’s hope this year that book sales are not going to be hit as hard as other sectors, such as general retail, manufacturing, etc.

READ MORE: “Dennis Lehane and Tess Gerritsen at Borders, by Ayo Onatade (Shotsmag Confidential).

Bullet Points: Oldies and Goodies Edition

• Don’t forget that this is the last day to enter The Rap Sheet’s contest to win a free copy of Jerry Stahl’s fourth and latest novel, Pain Killers. All you have to do is 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 tonight. One winner will be announced on Monday. Unfortunately, this contest is only open to U.S. residents.

• The first-season DVD set of Veronica Mars has recently received enthusiastic acclaim from not just one, but two sources. First, from Pajiba (which is forthrightly subtitled “Scathing Reviews for Bitchy People”). And second, from The Groovy Age of Horror. Writes Pajiba’s Daniel Carlson: “[I]t’s Season One that remains the sharpest crystallization of what ‘Veronica Mars’ promises: A show about a girl solving the mysteries and exploring the dangers of her own life, from the death of her best friend to the truth about her own family.”

• Pajiba’s Veronica Mars write-up, by the way, is just one of its critical looks back at “The Best 20 Seasons of the Past 20 Years” of American television. That series also includes: Murder One, Season One, Twin Peaks, Season One, The West Wing, Season Two, The Wire, Season Two, and Deadwood, Season One.

• Almost two years ago, author George Pelecanos chose to include Don Carpenter’s 1966 novel, Hard Rain Falling, in The Rap Sheet’s expansive rundown of overlooked, criminally forgotten, and underappreciated crime novels. He called it “a stunning, brutally honest entry in the social realist school of crime fiction.” Now, Pelecanos has written the introduction to a long-overdue new edition of Hard Rain Falling, coming from Random House in September. Good for him for reminding readers of this extraordinary novel. (Hat tip to Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind.)

• Uriah Robinson (aka Norman Price) reminds me of another older book worth rediscovering, The Polish Officer (1995), by Alan Furst.

• Judith Freeman, author of the biography The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved (more on that here), writes in today’s Los Angeles Times about meeting Chandler’s former secretary, Dorothy Fisher, who died in December 2008. You’ll find the Times piece here.

• Tom Bale (aka David Harrison) submits his latest novel, the cinematically told Skin and Bones, to Marshal Zeringue’s Page 69 Test. Click here for the results.

• For Pulp Pusher, Seth “Soul Man” Ferranti interviews gangbanger Terrell C. Wright, author of the new 2 Live and Die in L.A. and Home of the Body Bags (2005).

• And in case you haven’t noticed, novelist Alexandra Sokoloff (The Price) has been writing a terrifically thorough analysis of Roman Polanski’s 1974 private-eye film, Chinatown. “[T]here’s a good reason instructors love to talk about this movie--there’s just no film better to cover ALL the elements of filmic and dramatic structure with one single movie,” she explains. “I never watch it without seeing new things in it, and I always benefit from hearing what other people see in it.” If I have the parts in order, they are here, here, and here, with a character study of detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) here. It all makes me wants to watch Chinatown again--for what I think must be the 10th time.

The Swedish Family Larsson

Publisher Christopher MacLehose, Erland Larsson, publicist Nicci Praça, and Joakim Larsson in London

Even before those folks at UK publishing house Quercus/MacLehose Press began celebrating the fact that one of their books, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2008), was named last night as Crime Thriller of the Year at the Galaxy British Book Awards, a lucky cadre of Larsson fans had the opportunity to toast the novel during an informal, private celebration on Thursday.

Those festivities were hosted by legendary publisher Christopher MacLehose and his charming wife at their house in North West London. And they offered attendees the welcome chance to meet not only the late author’s father, Erland Larsson, but Stieg’s younger brother, Joakim, as well.

Shots editor Mike Stotter and I are both longtime Larsson fans; we’d met Erland Larsson before, during last October’s ITV3 Awards ceremony, and I had in fact interviewed Erland Larsson that same evening. So we were pretty sure we’d be invited to MacLehose’s fête, but we didn’t know who else would be attending.

In preparation for the party, I headed into London, planning to rendezvous with Stotter at a local hostelry. I was surprised to find my colleague in such casual attire. What, no tie? No suit? As it turns out, Stotter had been deliberately under-dressed all day long. He works in the City of London--the legendary Square Mile--where demonstrators had been busy protesting the G20 summit, and he’d been instructed, along with his members of his staff, to dress down, as threats had been made against obvious financial district workers.

After catching up a bit over drinks, we headed off to the MacLehose party. The publisher himself answered the front door and ushered us into his home. Quercus publicists Lucy Ramsey and Nicci Praça greeted us with glasses of chilled champagne, and MacLehose’s wife appeared with some remarkable finger nibbles. Also in attendance were critics Louise France from The Observer, Barry Forshaw, Michael Carlson, and Bob Cornwell. It seemed that Quercus/MacLehose Press had chosen the most Larsson-enthusiastic book reviewers for this gathering. I soon got to chatting with Forshaw, who told me that the last time he was in this residence was the time when Swedish novelist Henning Mankell (The Pyramid) was signed by Quercus/MacLehose, and he pointed to the sofa--rather like Inspector Kurt Wallander might--indicating where Mankell sat while Forshaw interviewed him many years ago.

Suddenly, I heard my name shouted--“Karim!”--and I spotted an enthusiastic Erland Larsson entering the room with his second son, who looked like a much younger version of the late Stieg Larsson.

Talking to Erland was like talking to an old friend. He greeted me with a warm embrace and, since this was the night before the Galaxy British Book Awards were handed out, I wished him luck with Dragon Tattoo. I said I had a good feeling about its chances of winning. He just laughed, and then told me about the Swedish film version of his late son’s “Millennium Trilogy.” It seems he’s quite happy with it. I asked about rumors that U.S. film companies are also swarming around Stieg Larsson’s stories. He confirmed such gossip, but added that so far, he’s declined Hollywood’s overtures, because he thinks the producers want to change Stieg’s material too much.

Presently, we were escorted out into the garden, where we found Quercus CEO Mark Smith chatting with MacLehose. I learned that the publisher has decided to move up the release date for Stieg Larsson’s third novel, so it will now come out in October 2009, rather than January 2010. The bad news is that this time, there won’t be any advance proof copies of the book issued. (Which means I won’t get to feel like a drug pusher again, the way I did during last fall’s Bouchercon in Baltimore, when I covertly slipped a handful of proofs to reviewers and editors.) However, selected critics will receive review copies of that third Millennium volume one month before its publication. I was reassured that my name was featured on that exclusive list. And then, to whet my appetite further, MacLehose disappeared into his office and returned bearing the edited and rubber-banded manuscript of Larsson’s third novel. My eyes went wide and it was all I could not to grasp the pages out his hands and run for my car. I did, though, bring out my camera. Quickly, MacLehose returned the manuscript to his bag--but not before I snapped a picture (shown here on the left).

Afterward, Joakim Larsson came over to me and said, “You know, Ali, my brother used your name in the books.” I laughed and said it had to have been a coincidence. Yes, there’s a minor character in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo named Lottie Karim--a fact that got my attention when I first read that book back in December 2007; but surely, that name hadn’t been inspired by me. Joakim wouldn’t let it go. He explained that his older brother was a voracious reader obsessed with crime fiction and the Internet. He added that Stieg followed book reviews and author interviews online, and often visited the British e-zine Shots, for which I’ve been writing for years. And I have often supplied my photographs to crime-fiction publications around the world, including to Sweden after Henning Mankell won the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award in 2001. This certainly wouldn’t be the first time that my name had been adopted by a fictional figure. But still ...

“Remember,” said Joakim, “my brother’s love of crime fiction is evident in the fact that his chief investigator, [Mikael] Blomkvist, reads the works of Sue Grafton, Val McDermid, Elizabeth George, and others. Stieg loved crime fiction--and was reading about its authors, and you’ve just about interviewed them all.” This was all getting to be rather Twilight Zone-like to me. What Joakim Larsson was telling me was that, a Swedish writer I never met had read my reviews and author interviews, and given a minor character in his stories my name as a result. Then, following that writer’s untimely death in late 2004, I had become obsessed with his English-translated work. Now, I’ve encountered some surreal things in my day, but this circle of events sounded positively nutty.

Nice story, I told Joakim, laughing. But he just smiled back and said, “You’re a scientist, so you don’t believe in coincidences?”

Before long it was time to say our farewells to Erland and Joakim Larsson, and the MacLehose and Quercus gang. During my drive home, as I revisited the evening’s events in my mind and pondered the contents of that final Millennium book manuscript MacLehose had shown me, I kept returning to Joakim’s words. “My brother, Stieg, was obsessed with crime fiction as well as the Internet.” That statement could also apply to me, I thought, so perhaps this world is more surreal than even I considered.

Quick and Dirty

• Mike Ripley is back with a new edition of “Getting Away with Murder,” his wonderfully droll Shots column about the British mystery-fiction scene. In this month’s installment, he celebrates debut novels by Jeremy Duns and Stav Sherez, touts the forthcoming non-crime release from Robert Ryan (Death on the Ice, “a magisterial piece of historical fiction which looks at that ‘worst journey in the world’--the race to be the first to reach the South Pole in 1912”), and suggests that Elizabeth Wilson’s new War Damage (which “charts the psychological damage inflicted by the Second World War on a disparate group of middle class would-be Bohemians most of whom struggle to keep up appearances in a changing social order”) might be a candidate for the Ellis Peters Historical Award.

• Martin Edwards shares his memories of historical novelist Michael Cox (The Meaning of Night and The Glass of Time), who died of cancer earlier this week at age 60. Click here to read more.

• This week’s short-story offering at Beat to a Pulp: “Preferred Customer, by Mike Sheeter.

• Chris Simms, whose new Detective Inspector John Spicer novel, The Edge, will be released later this month, talks with blogger Col Bury about his book deals, his writing discipline, the creation of protagonist Spicer, and his fictional use of real locations in and around Manchester, England. Their full exchange can be found here.

• What’s this about a connection between Agatha Christie’s bestselling novels and Alzheimer’s disease?

• For lovers of crime- and spy-fiction-related jazz. (Hat tip to Permission to Kill.)

• There’s no question the Irish writer Gene Kerrigan (Dark Times in the City) is a sharp writer. But he’s also a quick wit. When asked by blogger Declan Burke what choice he would make if “God appears and says you can only write OR read,” Kerrigan responds: “I couldn’t live without reading. I couldn’t make a living without writing. I’d tell him to go find something constructive to do. And there’s no shortage of things need doing, God knows.” Read more here.

“Dragon” Roars Again

It’s Friday night in London as I write this post, and I’ve just received the good news: Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a novel I have been talking up ever since it debuted in the UK in January 2008, has been named the Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year at the 2009 Galaxy British Book Awards ceremony. I’ve been sitting with bated breath all evening, anticipating a phone call from Lucy Ramsey, the publicity director at Quercus/MacLehose Press (which published Dragon Tattoo), knowing that the late Larsson’s first novel was facing tough competition for this “Nibbie” award from several Rap Sheet favorites:

• The Business, by Martina Cole (Headline)
• Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith (Simon & Schuster)
• No Time for Goodbye, by Linwood Barclay (Orion)
• Revelation, by C.J. Sansom (Macmillan)
• When Will There Be Good News?, by Kate Atkinson (Black Swan)

But in the end, Dragon Tattoo walked away with the prize. When Ramsey told me, I yelled with joy--much to my wife’s amusement.

Larsson’s family had flown in from Sweden to attend the awards event in the British capital, and it’s impossible not to be happy for them. The author and crusading journalist died in 2004, but he left behind three novels--his “Millennium Trilogy,” which began with Dragon Tattoo, and this year added The Girl Who Played with Fire. (One more installment, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest [aka Castles in the Sky] is yet to debut with an English translation.) It must warm the hearts of his family for them to know that Stieg Larsson’s name and fame live on.

I’ll have more to say about Larsson’s win later. But for now, let me just note this evening’s other crime-related Nibbie winners. Tom Rob Smith picked up the Waterstone’s New Writer of the Year for Child 44, Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News? won the Richard & Judy Best Read Award, and Sebastian Faulks walked away with the Sainsbury’s Popular Fiction Award for his James Bond novel, Devil May Care (Penguin). For her true historical crime book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher (Bloomsbury), Kate Summerscale captured not only the Galaxy Book of the Year Award, but also the Play.com Popular Non-fiction Award.

Not related to crime or crime fiction, but certainly interesting as well: U.S. President Barack Obama won the Tesco Biography of the Year Award for his best-selling Dreams of My Father.

A full list of tonight’s winners in all categories can be found here.

The Book You Have to Read: “No Orchids for Miss Blandish,” by James Hadley Chase

(Editor’s note: This is the 47th installment of our Friday blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. Today’s selection comes from James R. Benn, author of the Billy Boyle World War II Mysteries. The third and most recent entry in that series, Blood Alone (2008), was selected by BookPage as a Mystery of the Month. It was also an Indie Next Pick, and was tagged as a “Killer Book” by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. Benn’s fourth Boyle title, Evil for Evil, is set to be released in September 2009 by Soho Press.)

James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1934) and Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon, 1930) are often cited as the fathers of crime noir, frequently in the company of Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep, 1939).

Those three, and others of course, put their mark on this genre, a mark as genuinely American as were the authors and their settings. Los Angeles, San Francisco, and the backroads of California were all distinct New World settings for this new, groundbreaking genre in which the hero is a loner, a violent, individualistic man who makes his own rules and lives by his own code. Some definitions of noir crime fiction point to it as a clear reaction against the cozy and conventional British mysteries of the day.

But as I found recently, there’s an Englishman squatting in that noir family tree. James Hadley Chase (whose real name was Rene Brabazon Raymond) came out with his first novel, No Orchids for Miss Blandish, in 1939, and extinguished any faint light of hope that may have remained in the hard-boiled universe, as if the story had been telegraphed from the dark side of the moon.

That Chase borrowed themes and characters heavily, as well as playing fast and loose with his personal and writing history, is fairly clear. What is remarkable is that he composed this story at all. Inspired by a reading of The Postman Always Rings Twice, he set out to compose an American gangster novel, armed only with what he could learn from encyclopedias and books about Depression-era U.S. settings. Chase also firmly put the rape of a kidnapping victim at the center of his narrative, pulling so few punches (for the time) that in subsequent editions, some of the most violent acts were toned down or removed entirely.

The Miss Blandish of the title is the beautiful, red-haired daughter of a rich tycoon, who is known as the Meat King, a wonderful moniker for a book in which so much flesh is violated in so many different ways. Miss Blandish (she never has a first name) is kidnapped by a family gang, inspired by the real-life Ma Barker and her brood. Here, Ma Grisson sees in Miss Blandish not only the potential for ransom, but in a warped gesture of motherly love, a source of affection for her brutal and sadistic son Slim (not to mention a cure for his impotence). Using drugs and a rubber truncheon, Ma Grisson turns Miss Blandish into a sex slave for Slim. After months of captivity, with the police and FBI ineffectual in locating the young lady, the Meat King finally hires private eye Dave Fenner to track down the gang and free his daughter. He does have one requirement, though: “Better dead than deflowered.”

By the time Fenner is introduced, readers of this novel will be yearning for a hero, after the violence and death that precedes him. Chase, though, does not relent in his theme, which focuses on getting the job done, whatever it takes. Might is indeed right, so much so that George Orwell, in his famous Horizon magazine essay from 1944, “Raffles and Miss Blandish,” equates Chase’s realism with fascism, primly stating that “in lowbrow fiction one still expects to find a sharp distinction between right and wrong and between legality and illegality.”

Given the state of the world in 1944, Orwell’s concern about fascist tendencies infecting the populace through “lowbrow” fiction can be understood. Overblown or not, he was dead on about the lack of any sharp distinction in Chase’s debut novel. When Dave Fenner needs information from a gun moll, he succeeds by threatening to brand her boyfriend’s face with an electric grill. When he turns Eddie Schultz, who has critical information but who won’t spill the beans, over to the police for a good old-fashioned third-degree, Eddie takes the punishment. It’s Dave who gets impatient.

Fenner turned sour. “Quit playin’ with him, can’t you?” he said to the cops.

“This guy’s tough, ain’t he? Well, get tough too.”

They do. Eddie spills. The end justifies the means. Later, Fenner sends in a hat-check girl to look for Miss Blandish in Ma Grisson’s hideout, only to see her killed. No orchids for the hat-check girl, either. Not for nothing does Orwell introduce his description of the novel in his essay with this line:

Now for a header into the cesspool.

No Orchids for Miss Blandish is said to be one of the best-selling mysteries ever published. It was a huge and immediate success, and was the most popular book among British troops during the Second World War. At the height of the Blitz, it was said that in any bomb shelter, you could find someone reading it. Orwell chalked this up to “the mingled boredom and brutality of war.”

He may have been on to something, but his condescending tone gets in the way. In 1940, with the Blitz in full swing, England standing alone against Nazi Germany, and defeat following defeat, the situation may have seemed like a “daydream appropriate to a totalitarian age,” as Orwell characterized it. A British infantryman in the North African desert might have sharpened his bayonet, thinking of what had to be done in the coming battle, where might, if it did not mean right, certainly meant life.

One of the advertisements for No Orchids book laid this claim, that it “will take you by the scruff of the neck and beat the daylight out of you.” After years of political isolation, and having been dubbed a cranky old fool, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was doing much the same thing to the British people. Grabbing them by the scruff of the neck for a good shaking, at least.

I won’t spoil the ending, but the publisher’s blurb to a subsequent edition will prepare the reader. “The sufferings and ultimate fate of the kidnapped Miss Blandish leave one gasping ...” Indeed.

James Hadley Chase wrote more than 80 books during his lifetime, one other of which also featured Dave Fenner. In addition, he penned series about a former CIA agent and a California private eye. His protagonists were always Americans, even though Chase paid only three brief trips to the United States. One of my favorite lines is from his 1945 thriller, Eve, which was made into a film:

Do you know how much this weekend’s going to cost me? Two friends, thirty thousand dollars ... and a wife.

And who is the character talking to? His wife.

More from the Back Stacks

James R. Benn’s endorsement on this page of No Orchids for Miss Blandish, by James Hadley Chase, is hardly the only “forgotten book” being championed today in the crime-fiction blogosphere. Elsewhere, you can read about A Winter Spy, by MacDonald Floyd; Behind the Screen, by The Detection Club; The Phantom Spy, by Max Brand; Drury Lane’s Last Case, by Barnaby Ross (aka Ellery Queen); The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian, by Lawrence Block; the Cliff Hardy P.I. series, by Peter Corris; and Gotham by Gaslight, a Batman comic by Brian Augustyn and Mike Mignola.

In addition, Patti Abbott hosts several write-ups in her own blog, including Ed Gorman’s ode to Rogue Cop, by William P. McGivern. Also refer to Abbott’s blog for a full rundown of the sites participating today in the “forgotten books” project.

Don’t Wait Too Long

There are only three days left in our contest to win a free copy of Jerry Stahl’s fourth and latest novel, Pain Killers. To enter, all you have to do is 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 on Monday.

Unfortunately, only U.S. residents may enter this contest.

The Great American Invasion, Part I

(Editor’s note: This is the first installment of a two-part report from British correspondent Ali Karim. It was actually supposed to have appeared in The Rap Sheet before now, but Karim’s business schedule delayed him from finishing the posts. The second installment should appear in the next couple of days.)

Tess Gerritsen and Dennis Lehane, during their visit to the UK

“May you live in interesting times.” That ancient Chinese saying (or curse) has sounded many times in my head over the last few months, as economic storm clouds have gathered over the world. My own life has certainly been interesting since this new year dawned. The financial crisis, coupled with the appalling weather across Britain, challenged my business career immensely. But as is often true, in every downside there is a ray of sunshine. For me, the high promise of crime fiction and the feeling of paper between my fingers is a comfort when the world looks so cold and gray.

Then, on an otherwise miserable day in January, just as I seemed to be reaching new depths of depression, I stumbled across this little nugget on American author Tess Gerritsen’s blog, relating to her then upcoming UK book tour:

Thursday 12th February
Evening event, Borders London, Charing Cross Road
(This will be a joint event with Dennis Lehane!)

I spat my coffee across the table when I read that last line. Dennis Lehane was coming to London! I had missed seeing him in 1999, when he ventured across the Atlantic with George Pelecanos to participate in Crime Scene at the London Film Festival. And I’d only had a few tongue-tied minutes with him back in October, when I bumped into Lehane at Bouchercon and posed for a picture beside him, fellow author Roger Jon “R.J.” Ellory, and Rap Sheet editor J. Kingston Pierce. I hoped the approaching event with Gerritsen would allow me more time with this man I consider to be one of our finest modern fictionists--an author whose stories have fixed themselves firmly in my mind, and whose characters seem more real than some of the people I meet on a daily basis. (As stand-up comedian Bill Hicks often says, “Life is a ride,” and we shape our own reality.)

Without delay, I got on the phone to Patsy Irwin, the publicity director for Transworld, which publishes both Lehane and Gerritsen in Britain. I’ve known Irwin for many years, and she has set me up to interview such stars of this genre as Tom Cain, Lee Child, Mo Hayder, Simon Kernick. My wish was that she would arrange interviews for me with both of these visiting American authors. She said she would--no easy assignment, given how packed the writers’ schedules would be, as they toured on Transworld’s behalf in support of their latest novels: Lehane’s The Given Day and Gerritsen’s Keeping the Dead (or The Keepsake, as it’s known in the States).

During the weeks that followed, as I anticipated my interviews, I realized I had a problem. Not only did I wish to speak with Lehane and Gerritsen, but I wanted to have them sign my copies of their books. All of their books. Over the years, you see, I have collected various editions of their work. Pride of place in that collection is held by a rare Xerox copy of Lehane’s 2003 suspenser, Shutter Island, with their other novels scattered throughout piles of boxes in four different locations. (This is what happens to an inveterate book collector.) Luckily, I’ve bumped into Gerritsen several times over the years, because she publishes new books annually and frequently tours the British Isles; she was a guest, for instance, at last summer’s Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. So I’d already had her sign most of her books from my shelves. However, aside from a copy of a U.S. edition of The Given Day (which he was kind enough to ink in Baltimore at Bouchercon), my Lehane collection remained uninscribed.

So I spent more than a little time, when I could find any extra in my busy schedule, going through my book collection--box by box--and gathering the unsigned copies of novels by Gerritsen and Lehane. I added the Shutter Island manuscript and even an issue of Romantic Times magazine that featured interviews with both authors. By the time I was done, I had filled two giant hold-alls. I’d also distracted myself from all of the dire financial reports filling the newspapers. When times are bad, you need to fall back on activities and events that produce comfort and keep your outlook positive. For me, the main comforts come from my family and my books.

But I digress …

On the Friday before the appearance of Lehane and Gerritsen at the Charing Cross Borders store, and with huge snow falls blocking roads and causing mayhem across the country, I received a call from Selina Walker, the publishing director at Transworld. As with her colleague Patsy Irwin, I have enjoyed a long acquaintance with Walker, who’s recognized as one of the top crime-fiction editors in the UK. She informed me that she, too, was planning to interview the visiting American authors at Borders. Due to time constraints, I would probably have no more than 45 minutes before the February 12 event began to speak with Lehane and Gerritsen--not much time, but enough if I played my cards right. I went ahead and contacted Yoav Hessayon, the events manager for that Borders outlet, arranging for a room in which to conduct my interviews--and accepting the guidance of another Chinese proverb: “May you come to the attention of those in authority.”

* * *

When the appointed night arrived, the snow had cleared and the roads were back to normal (aside from the damned potholes that are caused by significant frost damage). I left work early, and with my book-filled hold-alls in the trunk and the help of my car’s handy satellite navigation system, I found parking close to the bookstore. No sooner had I entered Borders, with the intention of grabbing a cup of coffee first, than I heard someone shout, “Hey, Ali.” I turned, and at the crest of the escalator were Dennis Lehane and Patsy Irwin.

Lehane proffered his hand as he approached, and I shook it enthusiastically. I then apologized for acting like such a babbling fan-boy at Bouchercon; it’s just not everyday, I explained, that I encounter one of my literary heroes. He laughed it off and said he understood completely. As Irwin went to find Yoav Hessayon and the room I’d organized to use, Lehane and I chatted about our respective recent reads. (It turns out that he too has been enraptured by the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium” series.) He noticed my hold-alls, and I explained that I’d taken the liberty to bring my entire collection of his work--not only finished hardcovers, but advance reader versions, movie tie-ins, and paperback editions from both sides of the Atlantic. (I am nothing if not a completist.) Would he mind signing everything? I asked. Lehane just smiled and said, sure, he’d be flattered to do so.

As he began that task, both of us now comfortably settled in a room set off from the rest of the store, I turned on my tape machine to ask Lehane about his book titles, his much-anticipated return to penning private-eye fiction, the translation of his prose to film, and whether he knows where his writing career is bound.

Ali Karim: You started out, in A Drink Before the War [1994], writing a series of novels that featured Boston private eyes Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. Since then, you’ve written three standalones. Were you nervous when you first jumped out of the comfort zone of a very successful P.I. series?

Dennis Lehane: I got a little nervous after a point, sort of like that Chinese proverb that warns, “Be careful what you wish for.” At first I was a little excited to get back to the third-person narrative with Mystic River, and I felt that, wow, I can do anything. Then months later, I thought “Oh, shit” as I realized I had to make choices, which you don’t get to do with a first-person perspective. So it was strange at first with the standalones, but then I soon found a comfort zone in third-person.

AK: I’ve heard that one your earlier novels, Darkness, Take My Hand [1996], was originally titled Cold Cold Heart. But you changed it, because there was another novel with that same title, written by James Elliott [a pen name of J.C. Pollock]. Are there other occasions when you’ve altered a book title?

DL: Yes, well spotted. I’ve had a few title changes. For instance, Shutter Island was originally going to be titled The Barrens, but then found out that Joyce Carol Oates had a book out with the same title; hence, I went for Shutter Island. The Given Day was originally going to be A Country at Dawn, but I decided that title sounded a little pretentious. However, I discovered that The Given Day has been published in several countries under that title, such as France; my French publishers liked that title.

AK: You once made it sound as if you’d never go back to the Patrick and Angie P.I. series. But it has now been widely reported that you are indeed returning to their fictional world. Why the switch?

DL: I don’t want to say too much at this stage. Just, “Hey, they’re back,” and that’s it. In fact, I won’t say any more until the book comes out.

AK: I’m still going to pump you. … Boston seems to be a familiar location as a backdrop for your work. So will Patrick and Angie operate in Boston in the new book?

DL: [Laughs] To answer your question, “Yes.” Yes, they will. I took them once to Florida in Sacred (1997). That was fun, but as a reader I always hated reading a P.I. novel [in which] the P.I. and sidekick head to L.A. to hunt down a missing actress, and this was because all the writers were out in L.A. working on movie deals. So I decided that I’ll never do that; hence, Patrick and Angie will operate on their home turf of Boston. OK, if there was a reason to take them to Dublin, I’d do that. No West Coast travel, though.

AK: Will the next Patrick and Angie novel carry on immediately after the events contained in Prayers for Rain [1999]? Or will some time have elapsed? After all, it’s been a decade since that last novel appeared.

DL: I know there will be gap, but it won’t be a full 10 years. I don’t see them in a pre-9/11 America. A lot has happened in the last decade. It would be ridiculous to take them back in time, if you follow me.

AK: Back when the film version of your 1998 novel, Gone, Baby, Gone, was being released in the States, were you aware of the concurrent issues surrounding the disappearance of the British infant Madeline McCann in Portugal? The film release was delayed in the UK, partly because the actress who played the missing girl was also named Madeline [O’Brien].

DL: And hey, the actress Madeline O’Brien bore a very striking resemblance to the missing Madeline McCann. I remember having a conversation with [director] Ben [Affleck] about it at the time. We were on the same page. We totally understood that the film’s release at that time could be potentially hurtful, so why do it? We understood. It didn’t feel like censorship.

AK: There was a five-year gap between the release of Shutter Island and The Given Day. I’ve read that you had a bad experience finishing Prayers for Rain, and you vowed never to have to work to a tight deadline again. Could you tell us what happened in the composition of Prayers for Rain that caused this deadline problem? I did notice that Prayers seemed to end rather abruptly.

DL: The issue with Prayers for Rain was that I released the book from my hands faster than I normally release a manuscript. The book was written blindingly fast, but that’s not the issue here, as I have written books fast before. But I was never quite satisfied with the end result. I wished I had more time. I don’t mean taking three years, five years, 10 years, or whatever; it’s taking whatever time the book needs, and I know instinctively when a book needs more time to finish it. For example, The Given Day was completed a whole year before I sent it in, because I … actually needed the time. No one saw it until I felt it was ready.

AK: I’ve heard that The Given Day is the start of a trilogy. True?

DL: Possibly a trilogy. [Laughs] Possibly a deca-olgy. At this stage I really don’t know.

AK: Now on to one of my favorite novels of all time, Shutter Island, and the film Ashcliffe.

DL: Actually, Ashcliffe was just the working title when they were filming, but the finished film will be titled Shutter Island.

AK: Tell us why you never got involved in screen-writing, now that three of your novels have been adapted for the big screen.

DL: I’m not a good adapter, and certainly not a qualified adapter of my own work. I guess I feel it would be like a surgeon operating on his own child. Could I write an original screenplay? Maybe. Could I adapt someone else’s work for the screen? Maybe. But the last person who should be entrusted with adapting one of my novels is me.

AK: How did you feel when you heard Martin Scorcese was going to be associated with Shutter Island?

DL: I was totally bummed out. [Laughs] What can I say? It was embarrassing.

AK: [Laughs] Yeah, a real bummer. First Clint Eastwood [Mystic River, 2003)], and now Scorcese.

DL: I go from having home runs with my first two filmed novels, and then I get a call saying “the world’s greatest film director wants to direct one of your books.” I felt ... humbled, embarrassed, confused. I was so shocked that I didn’t tell anyone.

AK: You first opened up your Web site many years ago--

DL: Sorry to correct you, Ali, but I did not; that was my publisher’s Web site. I’d like to say that the way I chose to engage--or not engage--with that world of blogs, Web sites, etc., is, believe it or not, a way to maintain my creative edge. I don’t want to get into the persona of who I am. [Staying out of that world] allows me to be the man who writes books, gets home, and his wife says, “There’s dog shit in the backyard; go clean it up” without me saying, “Hey, I’m Dennis Lehane!” My only way to keep that part of myself stable is to not engage that world at all. Now, that’s not saying that’s the way it should be done. It’s purely my way ... But someone’s set up a Facebook page in my name. I don’t know who the guy is, but I hope people don’t think that’s me. I just can’t deal with it.

AK: Do you still split your time between Boston and Florida?

DL: Yes, my [optician] wife has a practice in Florida, so I can’t look her in the eye and say I can only write in Boston. So I have the tough job of having to spend time in Florida. [Laughs]

AK: One thing that intrigues me is the difference in the design of your book covers--those produced by William Morrow in the States, versus those from your UK publisher, Transworld. Would you care to comment on that?

DL: Unless one [of the covers] is particularly heinous, which has rarely happened to me, I assume each international publisher knows its people and country, and so I can’t presume to tell them what they should have on the covers. I’ve had issues perhaps only with four books, globally, in my time. And when that happened I’d say, “Hey, I’m not keen on that cover; but hey, you know your market, so go with it.” But that’s rare. Most of the time it’s me saying “fine by me.” Some of my British covers are gorgeous, as are some of my French, German, [and] Japanese covers. Some are not, but what am I going to tell my Japanese publishers? Can I say, “Hey, don’t do that cover, I don’t like it”? [Laughs] I just don’t know the market. All I do is hope for the best.

AK: Considering the path of your career from writing a P.I. series to penning a standalone crime thriller [Mystic River], Gothic noir [Shutter Island], and now a historical opus [The Given Day], let me ask you: Did you, or can you, see a “game plan” to your writing?

DL: I think the one commonality ... is that they are all urban novels. They are concerned with the machinery or soul of the city, if you will. So in the end that’s the canvas that I work--the urban novel--with the exception of that trip to the Gothic world in Shutter Island.

AK: And what a tremendous book Shutter Island was, in my opinion. I’m confident it will be one of the novels for which you are best remembered. It was magnificent in terms of ambition, with a Gothic dread that infuses the narrative.

DL: Wow, thank you, thank you. I go by the dictum that you write the book you want to read. If you have that sort of love and passion for a book, then I think it will translate and people will be entertained.

AK: How do you look at your popularity with readers? Even though your fans have clamored for more Kenzie and Gennaro books, they’ve been willing to follow you in all of these other directions.

DL: It’s simple, it’s such an honor to have loyal readers. I always remember, every day, that I have my success due to my readers. I have my house due to my readers, I have everything due to my readers. So I have no issues with my fans and readers--they make my career possible.

AK: Finally, what do you make of his dreadful economic crisis that’s affecting so much, including the publishing industry?

DL: I think we deregulated a bunch of regulations that were put in place for a very good reason during the Great Depression. We fucked it all up, and the poor are suffering as the poor always do, and I couldn’t be more serious about this--people should be going to jail over this. It’s disgusting. I don’t know what else to say. Another thread I write about in my work is this eternal war between the haves and the have-nots, and you see that war in clear focus right now. I just find the economic situation revolting.

(Part II can be found here.)