Achieving Aussies

The Crime Writers’ Association of Australia has announced the winners of its 2011 Ned Kelly Awards as follows:

Best Fiction: The Diggers Rest Hotel, by Geoffrey McGeachin (Penguin)

Best First Fiction: Prime Cut, by Alan Carter (Fremantle Press)

True Crime: Abandoned: The Sad Death of Dianne Brimble, by Geesche Jacobson (Allen & Unwin)

S.D. Harvey Short Story: “Hemisphere Travel Guides: Las Vegas for Vegans,” by A.S. Patric

The longlist of contenders for this year’s Neddies can be found here, while the subsequent shortlist is available here.

(Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

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In other Aussie awards news, crime writer P.M. Netwon is one of two authors to win the 2011 Asher Literary Award. She received this commendation for her 2010 novel, The Old School.

The Upside of Summer’s End

There’s so much to love about summer and so much we’ll miss when it’s gone. But for all of us who love books in general and mysteries in particular, the onset of the third season means a delicious new crop of reading material. As Rap Sheet editor J. Kingston Pierce tells us in his Kirkus Reviews column this week:

There are certainly downsides to the approach of Labor Day and the concurrent conclusion of summer: no more afternoons lost while swinging in hammocks, no more hours spent in sweaty attendance at barbecue grills and no more surreptitious studying of bikini-clad youths on remote beaches. On the other hand, the cooler weather provides more excuses for hunkering down with a cup of joe and a promising book.

The list of books Pierce is most looking forward to perusing over coffee might surprise some people. What won’t surprise: it’s a gorgeous rundown of mystery reading, well-rounded.

You can see Pierce’s choices here.

The Story Behind the Story: “We All Fall Down,” by Steven Hart

(Editor’s note: In this 25th installment of our “Story Behind the Story” series, Steven Hart illuminates the background of his new novel, We All Fall Down [Black Angel Press]. Hart, a lifelong New Jersey resident, allowed his early fondness for H.L. Mencken, Studs Terkel, and Ambrose Bierce to steer him into the newspaper business, where he worked for many years as a reporter and editor. He also did a stretch with a business newsletter, covering the arcana of commercial real-estate finance, and has placed freelance articles with The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Salon. His first book, a non-fiction study titled The Last Three Miles: Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America’s First Superhighway, was published in 2007, and he is under contract to Rutgers University Press to write a dual biography of political bosses Frank Hague and Enoch “Nucky” Johnson, to be published next year. Since last year, Hart has operated a used bookstore, Nighthawk Books, in downtown Highland Park, N.J. Having made the jump from newspapers to bookstores, Hart is now casting about for another dying industry to join, and may open a one-hour photo developing studio to complement Nighthawk Books.)

Newspaper reporting used to be the most fun you could have without getting arrested, and reporting on crime and court cases--dealing with cops, lawyers, prisoners, and judges--was the most fun I had as a newspaperman. I use the word “fun” advisedly: the crime beat exposed me to some of the menacing back alleys of human behavior, and gave a dark tint to my view of life. One lengthy murder trial was so upsetting to cover, that several reporters had to go on sick leave for a few days, simply to decompress. But I learned a lot from watching cops, and some of what I learned braided itself into the DNA of Karen McCarthy, the heroine of my new crime novel, We All Fall Down.

During my days as a beat reporter, I had plenty of contact with cops and cop shops, and the few women officers I met were nothing like the ones I saw in movies or on television, or even read about. They were extremely tough and capable, often underutilized by their departments, and were frequently viewed as misfits in the hyper-macho world of police work. Some of them were misfits, or had internalized that stereotype to a certain extent. Police humor is often unbelievably crude, and they were frequently the target of jokes that, if used on the street, would instantly cause a fistfight.

The more forward-thinking police departments, especially urban cop shops, have come to appreciate the qualities that women officers bring to the job and seek them for that reason. But many suburban departments have yet to see their first women recruits, or retain the ones that apply.

Since cops are averse to exposing too much of themselves, particularly to civilians and reporters, I often found myself wondering what sort of woman would want to enter such a workplace. The changes that this sort of job would impose on a woman recruit, both good and bad, seemed like a fertile ground to explore in fiction. Throughout We All Fall Down, Karen is presented with the question of how far she wants to go--at what point would she be justified in thinking “Enough is enough,” and walking away.

(Right) Author Steven Hart

On the one hand, she has had an extremely troubled past, including a brush with alcoholism, and the discipline of police work is toughening her up in ways she can appreciate.

On the other hand, the work is pushing her away from her civilian friends and forcing her to make queasy moral choices. In one scene, after she has bungled the capture of a man who is the lead suspect in a cop murder, Karen knows she has to do something to buy herself time to recover her credibility with the other officers. When a drunken creep in a bar spits at her and insults her during a lineup, she accepts his challenge of a fight and defeats him with far more force than necessary. Partly this is because the cop code demands that anyone who attacks a police officer will be met with crushing force, but she also knows that she has to show the other officers that she has the guts to do the job, and she coldly decides to make this jerk into an object lesson.

Most of all, I wanted to write a novel in which the heroine is neither an adorable ditz nor a hot babe with a pistol strapped to her thigh. I wanted a heroine who, to take a phrase from the novel, “had grown up in the gray, half-seen zone men created for unattractive women.” The core of my conception of Karen McCarthy is that she is the kind of woman men tend to ignore, working in a job that makes her impossible to ignore. Her blighted childhood and adolescence have filled her with rage that she is only partly aware of, and which might bring her to grief. But she is also smart and funny, unwilling to accept the idea that she is not entitled to the same happiness others enjoy.

I wouldn’t mind knowing a woman like Karen McCarthy, but since I don’t, there was nothing left to do but write her into existence.

Your Vote Counts

Shortlists of nominees for a variety of 2011 Dagger Awards, to be presented by the British Crime Writers’ Association, were announced last week. We’re scheduled to have winners by Friday, October 7. But between now and October 5, the British public is invited to cast ballots for the ITV3 People’s Bestseller Dagger. Here are the contenders:

• The Sixth Man, by David Baldacci (Macmillan)

• Worth Dying For, by Lee Child (Bantam)

• Good As Dead, by Mark Billingham (Little, Brown)

• Dead Man’s Grip, by Peter James (Macmillan)

• Before the Poison, by Peter Robinson (Hodder)

Click here to make your preference known.

That Old Peculier Criminal Brew

Authors Val McDermid and Denise Mina at Harrogate

(Editor’s note: Below we present British correspondent Ali Karim’s somewhat delayed report from last month’s Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival, which was held in Harrogate, England.)

I was delighted to hear from Harrogate’s chief executive, Sharon Canavar, that in its ninth year, the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival broke another record, selling more than 9,000 tickets. I’m not really surprised, as this year the festival had a truly remarkable line-up of events, managed by London author Dreda Say Mitchell.

My family and I enjoy our annual excursion to the heart of Yorkshire, where I can share my passion for crime and thriller novels with all of them, and my wife can share her equally strong passion ... for shopping in the spa town of Harrogate. With us went Ayo Onatade and Kirstie Long from Shots, and Chris Simmons and his Crime Squad gang--Michael Malone, Keith Walters and Graham Smith. Mike Stotter, the editor-in-chief of Shots, had wanted to attend too, but he had a scheduling conflict.

Thursday, July 21. This year the festival returned to the Old Swan Hotel, made famous by Agatha Christie’s vanishing act back in 1926. One joy of Harrogate as a venue is that there’s a wide selection of hotels available for every budget, and most of them are located within a 10-minute walk of the Old Swan.

The festival opened with the Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year Award presentation. The BBC’s Mark Lawson was on hand to welcome the shortlisted authors, but first there were opening welcomes from Sharon Canavar as well as principal sponsor Simon Theakston, who announced that this year his brewers had developed a limited-edition ale in celebration of crime fiction. Then Lawson welcomed Scottish author Val McDermid to the stage. It was her job, in turn, to introduce Baroness Phyllis Dorothy “P.D.” James as the recipient of this year’s award for Outstanding Contribution to the Crime Fiction Genre. McDermid’s speech was a very moving and insightful piece of oratory, especially when she said that Baroness James was living proof that no author should ever complain about not having enough time to write. After all, as a young mother, James lost her husband and had no livelihood to fall back upon, so she took up writing in order to secure an income, and then managed to bring up her young children with very little support. After that, a standing ovation welcomed Baroness James to the stage. She said how much she loved the Theakstons Crime Writing Festival, so this commendation meant a great deal to her. That set the crowd to clapping at a truly frenzied pace.

(Left) Baroness James congratulated by Simon Theakston

After Baroness James stepped down, Mark Lawson welcomed all six of this year’s Crime Novel of the Year nominees to the stage: Mark Billingham, S. J. Bolton, Lee Child, Stuart MacBride, William Ryan, and Andrew Taylor. And when the envelope containing the winner’s name was opened, another huge cheer went up, for festival favorite Child had picked up the award for his 2010 novel, 61 Hours. Child looked a bit shocked that he’d won, as he has been denied this prize in previous years. But he was gracious in accepting it this time around, saying how moved he was to follow P.D. James onto the stage at Harrogate.

By this point, most people were well clapped out and ready to settle into the nearest bar. But the Karim family took Ayo Onatade out for a Chinese dinner, instead, in part to pay her back for helping after our elder daughter, Sophia, had a bit too much to drink during the CrimeFest Gala Dinner in Bristol in May. (An event, by the way, that had led my wife to remark, while looking at me pointedly, “The acorn doesn’t stray far from the oak tree, does she?”)

Friday, July 22. The weather had turned glorious, so after a hearty breakfast it was back to the Old Swan to listen to best-selling London-based crime writer Martina Cole in conversation with programming chair Mitchell. When I saw Cole arrive on Thursday, she said she couldn’t have the sort of late-night drinking session we have enjoyed in the past, as her panel was to begin 9 a.m. Despite that early start, the room was full and vibrant. Again, though, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised: The Harrogate single-track presentation system does ensure full houses at most events.

Finally, after their own late breakfast, my family arrived for the 10:30 True Crime panel, moderated by novelist-journalist Duncan Campbell and featuring real-life ex-convicts who had turned their hands to writing. Although Noel “Razor” Smith was unable to attend, ex-Member of Parliament (MP) Jonathan Aitken, former football hooligan Cass Pennant, and former lifer (for murder) Erwin James together presented a insightful, if grueling hour’s entertainment. We learned that Aitken had been punched a few times by frustrated inmates, while Pennant explained that he had turned his life around after a fellow prisoner said, “I’m the free-est man in this prison.” When Pennant asked him to explain, his cellmate passed him a book and told him, “No four walls can hold my mind when I am reading, because reading is freedom.” Pennant told the audience that he was  soon thereafter referred to as the “Bookman,” due to his persistent reading--though he also told us about more harrowing experiences such as his having witnessed rape, and about the brutal violence that goes on behind prison walls. When asked what books were the post popular behind bars, we were told that Papillon (1969), by Henri Charrière, ranks as No. 1, while The Judas Pig (2004), by Horace Silver, has become a cult favorite in prisons due to Silver having been a criminal figure who changed his name after fleeing the underworld. This caused me to sink down into my chair a bit, as I had interviewed Silver for Shots back in 2004. I’d had my doubts at the time about whether Horace Silver was really a criminal, but Cass Pennant tells me he was, and that there are people still trying to find out where he’s been hiding himself.


Author Lee Child (right) with the Karim family

After that event, as after all other panels, there was a formal book-signing adjacent to the Waterstones bookshop, with the queues well managed and reasonably patient.

At noon, I attended the “Wrong ’Uns” panel, which found James Twining exploring the attraction of anti-heroes with fellow authors Mandasue Heller, Denise Mina, Craig Robertson, and Alex Wheatle. I was interested to see Mina again, as her latest novel, The End of the Wasp Season, has been broadly talked up, and I enjoyed her company last year during the Orion Publishing dinner at Bouchercon in San Francisco.

After a quick lunch, my family wandered off into Harrogate, while I looked forward to Martyn Waites’ “Old Blood” panel, which gave a new spin to the familiar “New Blood” panels focused on freshman authors. Waites’ intention was to look at writers who had broken through, and were now on their third or fourth novels--people such as Allan Guthrie, Cathi Unsworth, Mark Mills, and Nick Stone (who, after a few years in the wilderness, is back with another Max Mingus thriller, Voodoo Eyes.) The majority opinion among the panelists was that second and third novels are harder to write than debut works, due to the expectations of agents and publishers, as well as to the fact that they’re usually written to deadline--business-like--rather than as works driven by the author’s passion to finally get published.

Since I have much association with journalists, I was interested to hear Daily Mirror writer Henry Sutton (who, under the joint pseudonym “James Henry” concocted the Inspector Jack Frost prequel, First Frost) engage in a debate with fellow newsies Belinda Bauer, Stav Sherez, and Tony Thompson. They were joined by the tallest man in the room, former Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) recruit and spy novelist Charles Cumming. Their debate was wide-ranging, with key points being that they all used journalism as a door through with to enter fiction writing as a profession. Soon enough, though, their discussion moved on to the News International phone-hacking scandal. Oddly, the majority opinion seemed to be that this story has been exaggerated, and that all legitimate (and legal) tools need to be available to journos who are serious about reporting the news. That qualification “legal,” of course, is where things might go awry for Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.

Then it was time to rejoin my family for a quick dinner before moving on to the ITV3/Specsavers/Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Dagger Awards in the Old Swan’s Wedgewood Room. During my walk back to our own hotel to change, I bumped into former drug dealer, now crime writer Howard Marks. This was a total delight, as I’d loved his memoir, Mr. Nice (which was recently made into a movie). I think of Marks as a genuine, if rather odd character, and we had a hilarious chat about his debut novel, Sympathy for the Devil. This year’s Theakstons Harrogate event was certainly notable for its true-crime elements, both in terms of panelists and subjects. The ability to talk with ex-convicts such as Marks and Pennant in convivial surroundings made this convention special.

(Right) Co-interviewees Lisa Gardner and Linwood Barclay

The evening’s main event--the presentation of the first five Dagger Awards of 2011--was bristling with renowned novelists such as Philip Kerr, Lee Child, Joseph Finder, and Linwood Barclay. Presentations included video montages and featured CWA chair Peter James along with former chairs such as Natasha (N.J.) Cooper, publishers, authors, and bloggers announcing the awards and shortlists. Emma Tennant and Amanda Ross were the television hosts. James, Tennant, and Ross all spoke of the importance of crime fiction as a genre for the TV audience ... and we must not overlook the commercial benefits to the writing and publishing community when a work hits the nation’s flat screens. The evening’s award winners are named here.

Friday’s next event was billed as Linwood Barclay in conversation with Lisa Gardner, but when we took our seats, a woman whose name I can’t recall (from the Daily Express) strode onto the stage and announced that she would instead be asking those two best-selling writers questions. Well, I have to say, from the moment she opened her mouth, with her monotonous “one-pitch” voice introducing Barclay and Gardner, the audience members looked at one other, and some giggled, and I heard several whisper “Who the hell is that nut?” I have to give huge credit to Barclay and Gardner for keeping the dialogue amusing and very funny--a stark contrast to their dreadful interviewer, who kept looking at her notes; it was patently obvious that she hadn’t read any of their books and had little background in the genre. Her opening question to Linwood was the groaner, “And where do you get your ideas from?” In a surreal manner, this actually provided great entertainment, but of the cringe-inducing variety. It’s just a guess, but I don’t think we’ll be seeing her back at a Harrogate event anytime soon. Judging by the length of the signing queues after the event, though, we will be seeing a lot more of Linwood Barclay and Lisa Gardner.

As my family heading back to our hotel, I loitered in the bar and noticed coaches of “non-literary” types arrive to fill the Old Swan’s lobby. From their eclectic dress sense, I realized they were coming to see Howard Marks, who was scheduled to be interviewed by Mark Lawson.

By the time I joined the line to see that onstage interview, the queue stretched out into the car park. It was there that I bumped into Marks himself, looking confused. He spotted me and shouted me over, remembering me from earlier in the afternoon. He was swaying a bit and, bizarrely, not a single other person seemed to notice his presence. “Hey, Ali,” he said, “can you help me?” One of the benefits of being a rare black face in the crowd, with an easy name to remember, is that people always seem to remember who I am. “Sure, what’s the problem?” I asked. To which Marks replied, “I’m dying for a piss. You seem to know your way around, where’s the pisser?” This made me laugh, and so I took him off to the nearest toilet. While I waited outside, a concerned Lawson found me and queried, “You haven’t seen Howard Marks, have you? He was right behind me, and then he vanished. We’re on in a couple of minutes.” He was relieved when I told him that Marks was in the toilet.


Drug dealer-turned-author Howard Marks with Ali Karim

After Marks reappeared, I pointed him out to Lawson, and those two went off to the green room, while I grabbed another beer and took my seat for the well-attended interview. Which, I should note, was hilarious. Marks was eloquent, as well as being funny, but he kept losing the thread of the conversation, much to his audience’s amusement.

I ended up later drinking with author Steve Mosby and the Telegraph’s Jake Kerridge until past my bedtime--but not as late as the hollow-legged Simon Kernick, Kevin Wignall, and literary agent Phil Patterson, all of whom enjoyed watching the sunrise through beer-rimmed glasses.

Saturday, July 23. Again the first event was at 9 a.m., this time an interview with Tess Gerritsen by Jenni Murray. And again, the house was packed. Much of their discussion revolved around the TV series based on Gerritsen’s books, Rizzoli & Isles, which is scheduled to air on UK cable this fall (and has already been green-lighted for a third season in the United States). The queue to have Gerritsen sign books was almost as long as the previous evening’s line for Marks’ event.

From there it was on to the “Outer Limits” panel. Chaired by CWA Diamond Dagger winner Andrew Taylor, it explored the supernatural edge of the genre. Guest panelists were Sarah Pinborough, S.J. Bolton, Patricia Duncker, and Phil Rickman. During the signing session afterward, Pinborough mentioned that she’d been standing in line at a local kebab house the night before, at 2 a.m., and seen me. I apologized for not saying hello, but noted that I had been rather drunk. She said that was fine, as she’d been somewhat worse for wear at the time and in desperate need of a kebab, and didn’t have much time for small talk anyway. The other people waiting in the signing queue did not appear to be connoisseurs of the Harrogate kebab scene.

Then came the customary Harrogate “New Blood” panel, chaired this year by the champion of new writing, Val McDermid. Also up front were newbies S.J. Watson (Before I Go to Sleep), Julia Crouch (Cuckoo), Gordon Ferris (Truth Dare Kill), and Melanie “M.J.” McGrath (White Heat). There is no better chair for the new fiction writers panel than McDermid. Despite her international success (and TV series), she remains firmly grounded and asks questions that make the packed audience curious about all these fresh faces in the genre. In these tough times for publishing, McDermid’s efforts must be applauded.

The previous late night, and rushing around this morning, meant that I missed the “Legal Eagles” panel chaired by lawyer-crime writer Martin Edwards, and featuring some fellow writers and colleagues from the bench: Matthew “M.R” Hall, Francis Fyfield, Helen Black, and Peter McCormick. I heard that their discussion was much more amusing than the law would normally allow.

I went with my family in tow to one of the convention’s red-letter events: best-selling American authors Joseph Finder and David Baldacci in conversation. My wife and kids wanted to see this panel, as they had met Finder at previous Harrogate events. The session was lively and humorous, with much mention of the quirks of the writing life and the authors’ often odd brushes with Hollywood.

Then came the Criminal Consequences dinner, during which many crime writers and readers came together to celebrate Harrogate regular M.C. Beaton on her 75th birthday.

This was followed by the sold-out event during which Lee Child was queried about his pet hates by Independent columnist Christina Patterson. We gleaned from Child--“all-round nice guy and down-to-earth supporter of the genre”--that his principal gripes are (a) writers who purport to have inside knowledge of either espionage or FBI credentials, when in reality this is self-imposed delusion; and (b) writers who give sidekicks to their protagonist heroes, so that those heroes don’t have to engage in any morally dubious work that might soil their images. We also heard a bit more about Child’s experiment with an e-book, the new Second Son, which is a prequel of sorts to his famous Jack Reacher series and a companion piece to the forthcoming Reacher novel, The Affair. Altogether, it was an amusing hour.

In the wake of the Child interview came the much-heralded Harrogate Quiz, chaired this time around by Val McDermid and Mark Billingham. I had most of my family participating--wife Muriel, daughter Miriam, and son Alexander--and we added Ayo Onatade and Joe Finder to our ranks. We had a lot of fun, and it was great to see Miriam excited to get the answer to a question right. Muriel and Alex were only on the team as mascots. Joe, Ayo, Miriam, and I were the brains of the outfit. Unfortunately, we were defeated by Jake Kerridge’s team, which also featured Martyn Waites, Elly Griffiths, Jane Wood, and Laura Wilson.

After a long day I turned in early, even as the bar seemed to be teeming with writers and others oblivious to the effects of time and alcohol.


Mark Billingham and Dennis Lehane in conversation

Sunday, July 24. I was thankful to see that the first event of the day started at 10 a.m. and was Laura Wilson’s “No Place Like Home” panel. The topic of discussion was exotic locations for stories. We heard about Anne Zouroudi’s fondness for Greece, where she went when she fell in love with the place--and a man; Chuck “C.J.” Box, who sets his stories in rural Wyoming, which is where he was born; Urban Waite, who uses Seattle, Washington, as his setting; and Elly Griffiths, who employs rural Norfolk in the same manner. I particularly enjoyed Box’s insights into Wyoming, as I lived in Laramie during the 1980s. However, the funniest moment came when Laura Wilson got her words tangled and said to Box that she loves all that rugged Western territory populated by “well-hung cowboys.” She immediately turned traffic-light red, and the audience collapsed in laughter while she tried to recompose herself.

Harrogate’s concluding event for 2011 was sold out, and afterward boasted what had to have been the longest book-signing queue of them all. It found Dennis Lehane in conversation with Mark Billingham. In a rare UK visit, Lehane was in top form, highly amusing and insightful. Billingham, an extremely well-read crime novelist, was ready with a series of questions that allowed Lehane to fully traverse his life in writing, from his humble origins in blue-collar Boston, to his abandoning intentions of “literary writing” in order to pen the Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro private-eye series and such well-received novels as Mystic River, Shutter Island, and The Given Day. I’ve seen Billingham many times, as I have Lehane, but this session was the best I’ve witnessed--and maybe the best of all those I attended during this year’s Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. In fact, I’d go as far as to say it was the best event in all the previous Harrogate conventions I’ve visited.

So after a round of farewells, especially to people with whom I had spent copious amounts of bar time (such as the very knowledgeable Angus Cargill from publisher Faber & Faber), and some of my American contacts (including agent Ann Rittenberg, the uproarious Christa Faust, and Donna Moore), I managed to thank Sharon Canavar and Erica Morris for their organizational work that made this year’s convention run like clockwork. I also managed to corner the energetic Dreda Say Mitchell, who as programming chair was rarely in one spot for any length of time. And of course my last good-bye was to Simon Theakston, without whose support the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival would never have reached the stature it now enjoys internationally. I look forward to the 2012 convention--Mayan calendar be damned!

Next stop: Bouchercon in St Louis.

(A shorter version of this report will appear in next month’s Red Herrings Magazine from the Crime Writers Association.)

Postmodern Mystery: Concept or Enchantment?

Whether or not you agree with Ted Gioia’s take on the postmodern mystery--what it is, where it came from, and whether it even exists--the author has obviously put a lot of thought and time into his site, Postmodern Mystery, and what he’s talking about there is some pretty interesting stuff:

What do postmodern writers have against the mystery novel? For reasons that perhaps only a Lacan or Derrida could deconstruct, they have turned to it again and again, wreaking havoc with its rules and formulas, and transforming the conventional whodunit into a playground for the most experimental tendencies and avant-garde techniques. The culprits: Thomas Pynchon, Vladimir Nabokov, Paul Auster, Jorge Luis Borges, Alain Robbe-Grillet and a host of other literary hit men and hit women.

See? This is the part I’m not sure about. Well, one of the parts. While I’ve read and enjoyed many of the books on Postmodern Mystery’s list of 50 essential works, I’m not totally convinced that they need to be singled out of the herd in this way: for being “postmodern.” (Or even if they come close to my own understanding of the term.)

The titles on this list that I have read are just singularly terrific books; a few are among my personal favorites. Good ideas, brilliantly wrought. Is Gioia saying that a novel of crime has to be literary in nature to be considered postmodern? Or is it the other way around? I would argue that time and talent are having a sharp impact on the mystery novel as we know and love it, and that the evolution we’re watching is both natural and somewhat beautiful. But Gioia has thought this part through, as well:

In the process, they have created an entirely new genre: the postmodern mystery. These books possess a paradoxical beauty, both celebrating and undermining the precepts of crime fiction. To some degree, these are the emblematic books of our time. They recognize our desire for the certainty and affirmation of order epitomized by the traditional mystery story, yet they also play on our desire to reject formulas and move beyond the constraints of the past. We want to savor this reassuring heritage, with its neat and tidy solutions to all problems, even while enjoying the fun of toppling it over and watching the pieces fall where they may.

To my mind, here Gioia is describing the recipe for really good books. Not just good books, which are actually getting to be pretty common. But really heart-stoppingly awesome books. The kind that keep us from sleep and bring laughter and tears. Sometimes both at the same time and, always, while on the edge of our seats. Great books, is what I’m saying. Really super-duper good books that push at the boundaries of what we have come to think of as the conventions of mystery, while surprising and delighting us along the way.

But what the hell do I know? If either of us has the creds for looking at stuff and knowing that it’s cool (or hip or on point), it’s Gioia. While this cat clearly digs mystery, the author is a noted music historian and his area of expertise is jazz. Gioia is the author of The Birth (and Death) of the Cool and The History of Jazz, among other related titles. So, obviously, when it comes to recognizing cool, if I’m competing with this guy, I am going to get thoroughly trounced.

At the same time--and despite this--I’m reluctant to just give myself up to the idea of yet another aspect of genre. A ghetto within the ghetto, if you will. And even as I write these words I prepare myself for an onslaught of disagreement. And yet, look at the list: Gioia’s essentials. There are titles there that no one should miss. Well, at least I think so. Gioia does not. He cautions potential readers to prepare for disappointment and warns that “fans of conventional whodunits may do well to steer clear of these books, which will thwart their expectations, mess with their minds, and possibly undermine their faith in the triumph of law and order.”

I would argue that the contemporary reader of mysteries is a little more sophisticated than Gioia suspects. And his list? Well, it’s a good one, sure. But I think it’s incomplete. What titles would you add?

Applying Perspiration to Inspiration

Would-be crime fictionists in the Chicago area might consider spending a day with Libby Fischer Hellmann, the award-winning Windy City author of Set the Night on Fire and six other novels.

“They say that writing a publishable novel is five percent inspiration and 95 percent perspiration,” the course material tells us. “In this hands-on intensive session, you’ll sweat it out by exploring the elements of craft that make a crime-fiction novel impossible to put down.”

The author will be working with all types of crime fiction, talking and learning about how “effective use of plot, narrative, voice, setting, character, dialogue, and suspense can take your work to the next level.”

There is a theoretical component to Hellman’s course as well as a practical one. And there are both September and October dates available. More information is available here.

Gary Phillips Goes Back

People say you can never go home again. But, if you do and you’re a reporter, taking along a local author will make the ride more interesting.

That’s what the Los Angeles Times’ Hector Tobar found in a recent piece that focuses on Rap Sheet friend and contributing editor Gary Phillips, returning to the South Los Angeles neighborhood where the author grew up. It’s a gorgeous piece and Phillips’ recollections and reflections are moving and even poignant:

For Angelenos of a certain age, loss is part of the urban experience. Our families have left the place we once called home, and seemingly everything to which we attach nostalgia is gone. For some, change feeds resentment. Phillips isn't one of those people.

“I’m too old to be bitter,” he told me. Instead, he’s used his memories to feed his writing, the images and people of his youth showing up in the pages of his books alongside the Asian and Latino residents and merchants of South-Central's present.

The writing he speaks of has been filled with passion and a sharp sense of place. Violent Spring, Bad Night Is Falling, and other of Phillips’ novels feature private detective Ivan Monk, a character through whom the author skillfully manages to show community, political connections, and the mean streets about which he writes so well.

A more recent Phillips creation is Nate Hollis, the detective featured in the comic-book series Angeltown, inked by Shawn Martinbrough. The Angeltown series reflects Los Angeles “as a lot of different cities,” as Phillips said in an interview with Comic Book Resources. Angeltown, he explained then, is about “the dark and the light and how Nate Hollis navigates the in between.”

The L.A. Times piece can be found here.

“Don’t Let My Sex Mislead You, Mr. Solo”

Today brings the long-awaited, full-run DVD release of The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966-1967), a Man from U.N.C.L.E. spin-off starring Stefanie Powers as American secret agent April Dancer and Noel Harrison (son of Rex Harrison) as her English partner, Mark Slate. The complete manufactured-on-demand set from Warner Bros. Archive--29 episodes on eight discs--will put you back $59.95, or you can buy The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. in two parts (here and here) for $39.95 apiece.

But word of this set’s coming reminded us that Ms. Powers was certainly not the only girl “who infiltrated the secret world of U.N.C.L.E.” The delightful video above showcases myriad curvaceous lovelies who crossed paths and swords--and bedposts, on occasion--with agents Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) and Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum) on the original series. If you watch closely, you should spot Senta Berger, Joan Collins, Yvonne Craig (of Batgirl fame), Sharon Farrell, Anne Francis (Honey West), Jill Ireland, Carol Lynley, Mary Ann Mobley, Vera Miles, Susan Oliver, and ... well, let’s just say that being U.N.C.L.E. agents could test one’s talents at pitching woo as well as dodging bullets.

Stieg Saga Gets Pushed Another Notch

The ongoing Stieg saga got yet another push at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, where former Stieg Larsson colleague and fellow journalist Kurdo Baksi said that the fourth novel in Larsson’s Millennium Series may be further along than was previously thought. The Guardian is covering the Festival:

The fourth novel by Stieg Larsson, author of the 30m-selling Millennium Trilogy, is 70% complete, strongly features Camilla Salander, the twin of the series’ protagonist Lisbeth, and is set “between Ireland, Sweden and the U.S.,” according to Larsson’s former colleague Kurdo Baksi.

Baksi was at the Festival talking about his memoir, Stieg Larsson My Friend (Quercus) and, according to The Guardian, he claimed “to have been shown the draft novel by Larsson’s partner of nearly 30 years, Eva Gabrielsson, shortly after the author’s death.”

There has been much discussion about this mysterious fourth novel which Gabrielsson has been saying all along is only about 30 per cent complete. But disagreement between Baksi and Gabrielsson is not entirely a new thing:

Baksi said: “It is at 260 pages at the moment--about 70% complete. Eva has said the book is not so complete. She took the book after Stieg died and showed it to me and his father.”

Gabrielsson, who has also written a memoir, has previously hit out at Baksi’s representation of Larsson as a sloppy journalist who was not above rigging the facts, describing Baksi’s book as “pure slander” and calling for it to be withdrawn.

Stumbling Toward Redemption

If you poke around the Kirkus Reviews Web site today, you should discover my review of The Keeper of Lost Causes, by best-selling Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen. It’s a quite remarkable, if not flawless, novel that will more than likely appear on many Best of 2011 book lists at the end of the year. Here’s the intro to my Kirkus critique:

In the hierarchy of “reluctant detectives,” Danish homicide cop Carl Mørck ranks right up there with the most disinterested and disillusioned of the breed. Although once counted among his department’s best and brightest (“a tall, elegant man from Jutland who caused eyebrows to raise and lips to part”), after a quarter-century with the Copenhagen Police, and following a recent violent encounter that left one of his partners dead and the other paralyzed from the neck down, Mørck is now dismissed as “indolent, surly, morose, always bitching,” someone who “treats his colleagues like crap.”

In other words, he’s the perfect candidate for a brand-new, high-profile position.

To read the full post, simply click here.

The Story Behind the Story: “I Dreamt I Was in Heaven,” by Leonce Gaiter

(Editor’s note: In this 24th installment of our “Story Behind the Story” series, Northern California author Leonce Gaiter delves into the background of his new novel, I Dreamt I Was in Heaven: The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang [Legba Books], which melds crime and western fiction to convincingly recall an infamous historical rampage. Gaiter grew up as an “army brat”--rootless, restive, and disagreeable. He began writing in grade school and continued the habit through his graduation from Harvard. He moved to Los Angeles and put his disagreeability to work in the creative and business ends of the film and music industries. His non-fiction writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, L.A. Weekly, The Washington Post, and Salon. His thriller Bourbon Street was published in 2005.)

About 15 years ago a coworker dropped a newspaper clipping on my desk. It showed a photograph of five young men of wildly varying shades of brown, circa 1895. The lengthy caption identified the youths as members of the notorious Rufus Buck Gang, a multiracial band of teen outlaws--one black, three Creek Indians, and Rufus Buck, their half-black, half-Indian leader--who rampaged through Indian Territories for 13 days in 1895 with the stated purpose of reclaiming Indian lands from U.S. settlement. The clipping also explained that on the day of Rufus Buck’s hanging, a handwritten poem entitled “My Dream” was discovered in his cell. It was reproduced, eccentricities and all, and it began:

i, dreamP'T, i, was, in, HeaVen,
Among, The, AngeLS, FAir;
i'd, near seen, non, so HAndSome,
THAT TWine, in, golden, HAir;

I was hooked. First, the name “Rufus Buck” was awesome. Such a name would practically predestine one for outlawry. The idea of men so young embarking on such a mad scheme suggested both near-religious zeal, and childish naïveté--for me, an irresistible combination. That Buck fancied himself a poet was icing on the cake. In addition, Buck’s short life had crossed paths with grand historical figures, including the famous “Hanging Judge,” Isaac Parker, who had been the de facto ruler of Indian Territory for 20 years; notorious half-black, half-Cherokee outlaw Cherokee Bill; and the one-quarter Cherokee bandit Henry Starr, relative of the infamous outlaw Belle Starr.

The story seemed impossibly rich. It was the dawn of the 20th century. Elderly Judge Parker’s rein over Indian Territory was coming to an end, just as the Territory itself would soon be a memory. Research showed me that Indian Territory in 1895 was a shockingly multi-racial place. More whites than Indians occupied the Territory that many black freedmen also called home. The Buck gang’s first victim was a black lawman. Judge Parker’s principal marshal was a black man named Bass Reeves. The chief of the Creek Indian Territory was half white.

If there was a problem with this story, it’s that there was too much going on. I had famous historical figures, the end of an era for both Judge Parker and the Indians, and a burgeoning United States swallowing up Indian Territories, a tense melting pot with one group about to overwhelm all others. My question was how to portray this. How do you meld these multiple moving parts while entertaining the audience?

To get this right, I had to develop a personal sense of the time--not historical details, but an overriding sense of the zeitgeist that would inform everyone who swam within it. I researched Indian Territory history, black freedmen and their history with the Creek Indians, the politics of the Indian Territories with respect to the United States, Judge Parker’s career as the Territory’s overseer, and the outsized roles of Territorial outlaws.

(Left) Author Leonce Gaiter

Researching this book made me realize that I am a throwback. Much of today’s literary writing is inward and domestic. It explores principally inner lives and how the outside world intrudes upon them. I, however, am fascinated with the grandiose, with men and women whose ambitions threaten to outstrip those of the gods themselves, who seek to impose their inner lives on the world at large. My research allowed me to see Buck and Judge Parker as two such characters. Buck envisions heavenly guidance for his crimes, while Parker is convinced of his rightness with God until his encounter with a seminal text and the reality of Buck’s rampage put the match to all of his former assurances.

The multi-racial aspect of this story also drove me. Being a black man who has lived the vast majority of his life in overwhelmingly white surroundings has had a profound impact on me. That Buck and Cherokee Bill were half-black, reared by a black mother and grandmother, respectively, greatly influenced their depiction. Even within Creek society, Buck would have been an outsider. In addition, the Indian Territory of the time housed more whites than Indians, which would have multiplied the dissociating effect. Bill reacted to his state by dismissing unjust societal norms as shams and staking his claim as an outlaw; Rufus reacted to his by donning the mantel of a savior.

In this case, deep research fed my personal stake in the narrative as opposed to tempering it. I make no claim to accurately portraying Buck, or Cherokee Bill or Judge Parker. What I have done is examine them and their history and filtered both through my own sensibility. It had to be this way if the book was to read as compellingly as I wanted it to. I am not a historian. I am a novelist who is using history, and in the end, a novelist has no more guidance than his or her own background and sensibilities provide. For me, this book is as personal a statement as the average memoir, or any more academically birthed literary venture.

This piece has made me fear that writers are as much to blame for the decline in the popularity of literary fiction as anything. We have gone small, narrowing our worlds to tiny bubbles as opposed to exploding beyond our world’s confines--and taking our audiences with us. To suggest that works exploiting the touchstones of history or genre are inherently less literary is ignorance at its most base. To suggest that there is a limit to the “acceptable” literary themes, locales, or writing styles is likewise a pernicious ignorance.

I Dreamt I Was in Heaven is a personal novel that uses America’s iconic history as its canvas. My goal in writing it was to entertain an intelligent audience, explore a bit beyond this world’s confines, and with any luck, transport you with me in that adventure.

Law, Order, and Lucre

On and off over its 20-year run, until its cancellation in May 2010, I was an enthusiastic watcher of the original Law & Order TV series. But would I pay $700 for a 104-disc, complete DVD set of that NBC show? (Or even Amazon’s reduced price of $489.99 for the same set?) Yes, this collection--due to be released on November 8--is going to come with all sorts of bonus features, according to TV Shows on DVD, including deleted and extended scenes, a set tour with the late Jerry Orbach, and cast-member profiles. But still ... $700? Hmm. There might be a few other things I’d like to invest in first.

Cleave Does in His Competitors

First a little bit of drum roll, then the announcement of which book has won New Zealand’s 2011 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel. It’s the thriller Blood Men (2010), by Christchurch writer Paul Cleave.

As NZ blogger-critic Craig Sisterson explains, “The award was presented at the end of the fantastic ‘Setting the Stage for Murder’ event in Christchurch on Sunday afternoon ... It was a truly terrific event, with a great crowd first enthralled by Tess Gerritsen and John Hart (a session chaired by Ngaio Marsh Award judge Graham Beattie), then the four Ngaio Marsh Award finalists: Cleave, Paddy Richardson, Neil Cross, and Alix Bosco (Greg McGee).”

It sounds like a fun time was had by all. Especially Mr. Cleave.

Missing Mona

As is known to all dozen people who, like me, keep track of such minutiae, it was exactly 100 years ago today that Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous 16th-century portrait, the Mona Lisa, vanished from its home in Paris’ Musée du Louvre. As Wikipedia explains,

The painting’s increasing fame was further emphasized when it was stolen on 21 August 1911. The next day, Louis Béroud, a painter, walked into the Louvre and went to the Salon Carré where the Mona Lisa had been on display for five years. However, where the Mona Lisa should have stood, he found four iron pegs. Béroud contacted the section head of the guards, who thought the painting was being photographed for marketing purposes. A few hours later, Béroud checked back with the section head of the museum, and it was confirmed that the Mona Lisa was not with the photographers. The Louvre was closed for an entire week to aid in investigation of the theft.

French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who had once called for the Louvre to be “burnt down,” came under suspicion; he was arrested and put in jail. Apollinaire tried to implicate his friend Pablo Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated.

At the time, the painting was believed to be lost forever, and it was two years before the real thief was discovered. Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia had stolen it by entering the building during regular hours, hiding in a broom closet and walking out with it hidden under his coat after the museum had closed. Peruggia was an Italian patriot who believed Leonardo’s painting should be returned to Italy for display in an Italian museum. Peruggia may have also been motivated by a friend who sold copies of the painting, which would skyrocket in value after the theft of the original. After having kept the painting in his apartment for two years, Peruggia grew impatient and was finally caught when he attempted to sell it to the directors of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence; it was exhibited all over Italy and returned to the Louvre in 1913. Peruggia was hailed for his patriotism in Italy and only served six months in jail for the crime.

An excellent recounting of this theft can be found in The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection, by Dorothy Hoobler and Thomas Hoobler (2010). But Nashville, Tennessee, screenwriter and playwright Carson Morton has also used employed the case in a new mystery novel, Stealing Mona Lisa (Minotaur). He doesn’t stick completely to the facts, but uses them as the basis for a remarkably engaging and at times romantic yarn that offers a more complex story behind the Mona Lisa’s disappearance. (He’s even managed to incorporate Paris’ Great Flood of 1910 in his plot, though it required some jiggering with the timeline.)

I recently read Stealing Mona Lisa, and was very impressed. Although it spins off many an imaginary thread, the book certainly captures the spirit of that century-old pilferage. And Morton plumps up his tale with a fictional cast of eccentric and generally well-wrought secondary players. Entertaining, entrancing, and a times humorous, Stealing Mona Lisa is an ideal diversion for these waning days of summer.

“It’s an Important Story”

Someday I’m going to have to see the 1961-1962 TV crime drama 87th Precinct, which was based on Ed McBain’s long-running series of novels. Especially since Television Obscurities keeps talking it up.

Of “Curtain,” Castle, and Cloo

• At the Mulholland Books site, Spinetingler Magazine’s Brian Lindenmuth compiles a list of the “top ten noirs of the last ten years (or so).” There are a few familiar works listed, but also some--such as The Open Curtain, by Brian Evenson--that I don’t remember hearing of before. Lindemuth’s list is here.

• Spanish writer-publisher Óscar Palmer features a fine interview with the ever-prolific and seemingly ubiquitous Lawrence Block (Getting Off) in his blog, Cultura Impopular. Don’t worry, their exchange is in English.

• For the blog Criminal Element, Jake Hinkson provides an interesting look back at aspiring American star Peggie Castle, who, he writes, “would come to define pulp master Mickey Spillane’s view of women onscreen, a harrowing fate for any actress.” You’ll find Hinkson’s piece here.

• This story of murder during World War II was new to me, though it was evidently quite sensational in its day.

• Next month’s Bouchercon in St. Louis receives some good publicity from the city’s “alternative weekly,” the Riverfront Times.

• Check out Bill Crider’s impressive gallery of Harry Whittington book covers. I’d seen this before, but was reminded of it recently by Cullen Gallagher. To learn more about author Whittington, click here.

• This is just dumb. “From the company that morphed Sci Fi into Syfy comes another channel name destined to wreak havoc with your computer’s spell check. TV Guide Magazine has confirmed that NBCUniversal will change the name of Sleuth, its crime and mystery cable channel, later this spring. The new name? Cloo TV.” (Hat tip to Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine.)

• Speaking of dumb ...

• I, too, remember Kevin Baker’s Paradise Alley fondly.

• Richard L. Pangburn writes about The Genuine Article (1977), one of the few novels by A.B. Guthrie Jr.--best known as the author of The Big Sky and The Way West--that I think I don’t recall reading.

• If he can find time between reading briefing papers and daily broadsheets, President Barack Obama will be enjoying Daniel Woodrell’s The Bayou Trilogy during his comparatively brief summer vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. Excellent choice!

• Jedidiah Ayres has a double bill of Ray Banks on offer. In his blog, Hard-boiled Wonderland, he has posted an interview with the author of the new P.I. Cal Innes novel, Beast of Burden. Meanwhile, in Barnes & Noble’s Ransom Notes blog, Ayres asks Banks for a list of his five favorite short mystery series.

• All I can say is, it’s about damn time. Writes Spy-fi Channel’s Christopher Mills: “It's April in August--According to Stephanie “April Dancer” Powers herself, the complete The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. television series will be out on DVD from Warner Archives next week!” On Tuesday, August 23, to be precise.

Bloody Well Dunn

Those of us here at The Rap Sheet aren’t easily frightened by controversy. In the past we’ve published a short story by the pseudonymous Tom Cain (Carver) titled “Bloodsport,” a tale that his British publisher declined to pick up, due to legal concerns. We’ve highlighted novels based on the Princess Diana “conspiracy” that derived from from her death in Paris’ Alma Tunnel in 1997. We also covered the launch of Typhoon, ex-Intelligence recruit Charles Cumming’s deft, 2008 novel, --despite “concerns” about the Anglo/Chinese issues raised by his novel.

Now we bring you an interview with Matthew Dunn, whose debut novel, Spycatcher (aka Spartan in the UK), has just been released on both sides of the Atlantic.

Dunn is a former operative for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), more commonly referred to as “MI6” or simply “Six.” So there was some difficulty in gaining security clearance to talk with him. (Also, of course, I had to buy a new trenchcoat.) But I persevered, having been fascinated by Dunn’s work--as is evidenced in my review of the book for January Magazine, The Rap Sheet’s sister publication:

I cracked the spine of Dunn’s first novel. Totally against expectations (I had assumed I could read for a while, then put the book down easily and make off for bed), I soon found myself gripping the work tightly, like a steering wheel, and reading it all through that night. By the time light broke through my window again, I felt that Matthew Dunn had injected back into my life the exhilaration that only reading a top-notch thriller can do. It made me look more closely at the rest of my to-be-read mountain, thinking perhaps there were other gems there that I’d ignored.

What made Spartan/Spycatcher such an engaging journey?

Let me say, first, that the cliché of a British “super-spy” defeating an international terrorist plot was not what glued this novel into my sweaty palms. There are already far too many such works on my bookshelves, written by much better-known talents ranging from Eric Ambler, Ian Fleming and Alistair MacLean to John le Carré and Fredrick Forsyth. It should also be noted that Dunn’s book demonstrates strong American influences, from writers including Robert Littell and David Morrell.

During our recent exchange, Dunn and I talked about his early reading selections, his choice to enter either the academic community or the intelligence sphere, his views on the real world of spying versus what we see in espionage fiction, why the Iranians have become global bogeymen, and his rapid path to publication.

Ali Karim: Were you a reader of crime and thriller fiction in your youth?

Matthew Dunn: Absolutely, I was a voracious reader of those genres and would spend hours in second-hand bookstores browsing the shelves for novels that would fuel my passion for escapism and adventure. It’s fair to say that my reading in my youth heavily steered me toward MI6 in later years.

AK: Which books made a strong early impression on you?

MD: Many of them were obscure novels, but I also widely read better-known crime novels, thrillers, adventures, and the classics. I loved Arthur Conan Doyle’s complete works of Sherlock Holmes, as well as Alistair MacLean, Len Deighton, and the earlier novels of Le Carré.

AK: Did your family encourage reading?

MD: Wholeheartedly. My parents were always reading novels and were constantly encouraging me to read. Because I studied Shakespeare at school, my mother would take me to theaters all over England to see plays and then tell me to write about them. I also remember my father buying me a copy of Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal when I was about 11 years old.

AK: Tell us about your early years, and how you got involved with the security services. Did you have a military or academic background?

MD: I was talent-spotted while I was at university. Toward the end of my degree, I had the opportunity to do a Ph.D. at Cambridge University, and thereafter become an academic. But when MI6 simultaneously tapped me on the shoulder, I accepted their offer to put me through the selection process without hesitation. I sometimes wonder what my life might have been like if I’d pursued academia. One thing’s for sure: it wouldn’t have been as interesting.

AK: I guess you are restricted in what you can tell us about your life working at the SIS, but have you any anecdotes that you’re able to share?

MD: I have so many memories of fascinating events that would make great anecdotes, but regrettably I can’t share them.

AK: So it’s not all James Bond and Spooks, then?

MD: If you look at the movies and books within the espionage genre, they largely fall into three camps: those that present the world of spying as an escapist, playboy adventure; those that want you to believe that the world of spying is grimy, dark, and sordid; and those that show the world of espionage as high-tech, where the human element is less important than, say, what can be achieved with satellite imagery. All of them do capture aspects of intelligence work, but the reality of being a spy is rather more of a crossover between these camps, with the exception that an operative in the field doesn’t often have recourse to the high-tech aspect of intelligence work.

When I was in MI6, I could be flying first-class to an exotic location, while wearing an expensive suit and a Rolex watch, and then being driven in a limousine to a five-star hotel. That’s very Bond. But in the hotel I could be meeting an aged man who looked perfectly gentle and kind but had committed unspeakable atrocities in wars gone by. The work, therefore, could be very dark in nature, but at the same time it could often have the coating of a Bond movie.

Some commentators say that the world of espionage is not as exciting as it’s portrayed in fiction. That’s not my experience. As an operative, my work was relentless, complex, dangerous, rewarding, frustrating, and tough. I traveled the secret world and met captivating people--good and evil--and did things that some might think too incredible to put into fiction.

AK: Where did you feel least “safe” during your former life in operations?

MD: A lot of what I did was combating rogue states. I’ll leave your readers to draw conclusions as to where I traveled, but suffice to say, if I’d been caught in any of those countries I would have been brutally tortured and executed.

AK: Was Spartan/Spycatcher the first novel you’d written, or do you have uncompleted manuscripts or rejected work stuck in a bottom drawer?

MD: It was my first novel. Everything happened very quickly for me. I wrote the novel, sent it out to a handful of agents, and it was snapped up by Luigi Bonomi of LBA.

AK: So tell us, where did you get the idea to pen this novel? And did you have any issue with your former employers at SIS when you completed it?

MD: I was very clear that I wanted to write a novel that really captured the essence of what it feels like to be an operative in the field and to give the reader the feeling that they were actually on a real mission. The plot derives from my imagination, though it is grounded and inspired by real situations that I and others faced. I also wanted my antagonists to reflect the type of people that I was combating when in MI6--evil people, yes, but nevertheless highly intelligent, sophisticated, and often charismatic individuals rather than unintelligent fanatics.

SIS has to vet and approve all of my books. I’m on very good terms with them, and thankfully they made no deletions or amendments to my first novel.

AK: Tell us about your main character, Will Cochrane, as well as the mysterious Megiddo and Lana. And most writers I know mine their personal experiences to craft characters. Have you done the same here?

MD: Will Cochrane is an experienced MI6 operative and the Service’s most effective officer. He is a loner because of the extreme nature of his work and his complex and tragic background. He mentally toys with the idea of another life and love, but his problem is that he worries that if people get close to him, they will die.

Megiddo is a senior general in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He’s planning a massive terrorist operation against a location in the West. It will be his “masterpiece,” and Will is tasked to capture him. For most of the book you do not see [Megiddo] but, rather like Professor Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes’ day, you feel his presence at all times.

Lana is an Arab woman who is trying to carve out a living as a freelance journalist in Paris. She has a connection to Megiddo that goes back to the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s. Reluctantly, Will uses her to try to lure out Megiddo.

These characters, and all others in the novel, are fictional. But I met people like Megiddo and Lana. And Will is inspired by the man I used to be.

AK: What makes the Iranians the current global bogeyman?

MD: It’s the regime that’s the problem, not the people. Iranians are intelligent, warm, sophisticated, and generous people, and of course the Persian culture is one of the oldest in the world. It saddens me, and saddens most Iranians, that a country with such an incredibly rich history--one that has been a world leader in literature, mathematics, science, and other disciplines--is now perceived to be nothing more than a bogeyman. Iran could be a power for the good within the Middle East. One day, it will be. There are too many brilliant Iranians still living within the country for that not to happen.

I would like to add--and some may find this surprising--that MI6 officers love the people and cultures within the countries they target. You can’t effectively operate in a country unless you truly understand its culture, and in the process of obtaining that knowledge, a love affair of sorts ensues. I felt closer to the Iranians I knew than I did to most other people.

AK: During the writing process, did you worry that real-life events--such as an Allied attack on Iran--could overturn your fictional world?

MD: No. If that had happened, Iran could have been swapped in my novel with any other of a number of rogue states. It’s a great question, though. I wonder how many spy thriller authors had to tear up their draft manuscripts when Communism and the USSR collapsed.

AK: Considering the level of detail in your debut novel, can I assume you’re interested in geopolitics?

MD: I’m always interested in geopolitics and make every effort to keep up to date on events around the world. In tandem, I’m also very focused on history, because that’s where the lessons are learnt. Very few things that are happening now have not happened before. Regrettably, there is still a great deal of hatred, racism, laziness, snobbery, and cruelty amid the human species. It has been ever thus, but we are supposed to evolve and I see no signs of things getting better yet. On the contrary, things seem to be getting worse. Perhaps there are too many humans on the planet. Maybe, like all creatures, we need a bit of space to get on with each other.

AK: Tell us about your path to publication with Rowland White’s Swordfish imprint in the UK and William Morrow/HarperCollins in the States.

MD: It was all handled by my agent, Luigi Bonomi, and happened over 24 hours. It was a surreal but excellent day. Rowland White and David Highfill [the executive editor at HarperCollins) are great guys and have superb women and men in their teams.

AK: Are you still a great reader of thrillers? If so, what books have you enjoyed, both recent as well as classics of the genre?

MD: I love Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme series--like mine, his writing is clearly influenced by older writers and his objective is pure: he wants to thrill his readers and engage their brains within a story that has a gothic wrap. Deaver describes himself as a “craftsman, not an artist.” But I know he’s both.

Classics of the genre would include anyone who had the balls to sit down and craft a ripping yarn. There’s so much cynicism in the world right now, that it’s becoming harder to do that without being lambasted by the haters of the world. No matter how dark a novel, it can still make you feel good, and right now the world needs crime and thriller novelists, because we can help put that smile back onto the world’s face.

AK: So what’s next for Matthew Dunn?

MD: I’ve finished book two, and it’s with my publishers. [In it] Will Cochrane is sent to Russia to try to prevent a war between that country and the United States. I’m halfway through writing book three, so the Cochrane stories are well underway. It’s my intention to take the series of standalone novels through to at least 10, 15, or 20 books. I have loads of plot ideas for future novels.

As for me, I love writing the novels. I’m a million miles away from the hard man I used to be, but it’s great to write about the espionage world. It’s better to put fingers onto a keyboard than to put them on a gun.

Author photo © 2011 by Adam Scourfield. Used with permission.

Cutting Down the Daggers Field

Omnimystery News brings word that the British Crime Writers’ Association has announced its shortlists for three more 2011 Dagger Awards. They are as follows:

CWA Gold Dagger:

• Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin (Pan)

• Snowdrops, by A.D. Miller (Atlantic Books)

• The End of the Wasp Season, by Denise Mina (Orion)

• The Lock Artist, by Steve Hamilton (Orion)

CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger:

• Before I Go to Sleep, by S.J. Watson (Doubleday)

• Cold Rain, by Craig Smith (Myrmidon)

• The Good Son, by Michael Gruber (Corvus)

• The Lock Artist, by Steve Hamilton (Orion)

CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger:

• Before I Go to Sleep, by S.J. Watson (Doubleday)

• Kiss Me Quick, by Danny Miller (Robinson)

• The Dead Woman of Juárez, by Sam Hawken (Serpent’s Tail)

• The Dogs of Rome, by Conor Fitzgerald (Bloomsbury)

The longlists for those categories can be found here.

According to Omnimystery News, “The winners will be revealed at the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards on Friday, October 7th, 2011, at [London’s] Grosvenor House, and televised the following Tuesday, October 11th, on ITV3, along with the Film and TV Daggers.”

The Film Dagger:

• True Grit (Paramount Pictures)
• The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Momentum Pictures)
• Brighton Rock (Optimum Releasing)
• Source Code (Optimum Releasing)

The TV Dagger:

• Case Histories (Ruby Films, BBC One)
• Luther (BBC One)
• The Shadow Line (Company Pictures, BBC Two)
• Zen (Left Bank Pictures, BBC One)
• Vera (ITV Studios, ITV1)

The International TV Dagger:

• The Killing (Arrow Films, BBC4)
• Boardwalk Empire (HBO, Sky Atlantic)
• Castle (ABC Studios, Alibi)
• Dexter (Showtime Networks, FX Channel)
• Spiral (Son Et Lumiere, BBC 4)

Best Actress Dagger:

• Sofie Gråbøl for The Killing (Arrow Films, BBC4)
• Brenda Blethyn for Vera (ITV Studios, ITV1)
• Maxine Peake for Silk (BBC One)

• Olivia Williams for Case Sensitive (Hat Trick Productions, ITV1)
• Sue Johnston for Waking the Dead (BBC One)

• Kelly Reilly for Above Suspicion (La Plante Productions, ITV1)

Best Actor Dagger:

• Idris Elba for Luther (BBC One)
• Lars Mikkelsen for The Killing (Arrow Films, BBC4)
• Steve Buscemi for Boardwalk Empire (HBO, Sky Atlantic)
• Jason Isaacs for Case Histories (Ruby Films, BBC One)

• Rufus Sewell for Zen (Left Bank Pictures, BBC One)

Best Supporting Actor Dagger:

• Rafe Spall for The Shadow Line (Company Pictures, BBC Two)
• Bjarne Henriksen for The Killing (Arrow Films, BBC 4)
• Søren Malling for The Killing (Arrow Films, BBC 4)
• John Lithgow for Dexter (Showtime Networks, FX Channel)
• Aidan Gillen for Thorne (Stagereel / Cité Amérique, Sky One)

Best Supporting Actress Dagger:
• Ann Eleonora Jørgensen for The Killing (Arrow Films, BBC 4)
• Kelly Macdonald for Boardwalk Empire (HBO, Sky Atlantic)
• Ruth Wilson for Luther (BBC One)
• Amanda Abbington for Case Histories (Ruby Films, BBC One)
• Tara Fitzgerald for Waking the Dead (BBC One)

Here Come the Shamuses

The Private Eye Writers of America (PWA) tonight announced its 2011 list of nominees for the Shamus Awards, “given annually to recognize outstanding achievement in private eye fiction.” Winners in each of four categories will be declared during a banquet at Bouchercon in St. Louis (September 15-18). Without further ado, the contenders are ...

Best Hardcover P.I. Novel:

• No Mercy, by Lori Armstrong (Touchstone)

• The First Rule, by Robert Crais (Putnam)

• Voyeur, by Daniel Judson (Minotaur)

• If the Dead Rise Not, by Philip Kerr (Putnam)

• Naked Moon, by Domenic Stansberry (Minotaur)

Best First P.I. Novel:

• In Search of Mercy, by Michael Ayoob (Minotaur)

• One Man’s Paradise, by Douglas Corleone (Minotaur)

• Rogue Island, by Bruce DeSilva (Forge)

• Random Violence, by Jassy MacKenzie (Soho)

• City of Dragons, by Kelli Stanley (Minotaur)

Best Paperback Original P.I. Novel:

• Hostage Zero, by John Gilstrap (Kensington)

• Nightshade, by Tom Henighan (Dundurn Press)

• Mister X, by John Lutz (Pinnacle)

• The Panic Zone, by Rick Mofina (Mira)

• Asia Hand, by Christopher G. Moore (Grove/Atlantic)

• The Little Death, by P.J. Parrish (Pocket Star)

Best P.I. Short Story:

• “The God of Right and Wrong,” by Steven Gore (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, January/February 2010)

• “The Lamb Was Sure to Go,” by Gar Anthony Haywood (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, November 2010)

• “The Girl in the Golden Gown,” by Robert S. Levinson (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March/April 2010)

• “Phelan’s First Case.” by Lisa Sandlin (Lone Star Noir, edited by Bobby Byrd and Johnny Byrd; Akashic Books)

• “A Long Time Dead,” by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins (The Strand Magazine, June-Sept. 2010)

Congratulations to all of the nominees!

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By the way, if you wish to attend this year’s PWA awards banquet in St. Louis, know that it will be held on Friday, September 16, beginning at 6:30 p.m. The cost per ticket is $60. E-mail Christine Matthews here for more information, or to order your tickets.

A site for this dinner hasn’t been chosen yet, or at least has not yet been declared (PWA honcho Robert J. Randisi says only that it will be held “at a St. Louis institution”). However, buses to transport attendees from the conference hotel, the Renaissance St. Louis Grand, to the appropriate venue are already scheduled to be available.