Trust in Barclay

(Editor’s note: This is Part II of a feature by British correspondent Ali Karim. Part I appeared yesterday in The Rap Sheet.)

I’m still reeling from my reading last week of Linwood Barclay’s new techno-thriller, Trust Your Eyes (NAL), and marveling at the author’s skill in producing such a captivating and elegant work. Before moving on to other projects, I contacted Barclay because I wanted to ask him a few questions about this novel--which came out earlier in the month in the United States, but was released only yesterday in Britain.

During our exchange, Barclay--who lives in Ontario, Canada--explained why the title of this new book underwent a change; why Bill Clinton figures into the narrative; the link between Trust Your Eyes and Rear Window; and why his supporting character, Keisha Ceylon, from 2007’s No Time for Goodbye, is making a comeback in his latest novella.

Ali Karim: What was the genesis of Trust Your Eyes?

Linwood Barclay: Wow. Where does any idea come from? However, I think I should thank Winston, our friend’s dog. When the Google Street View car passed by their house, Winston was looking out the window. If you look up the address, you can see him. I got thinking, What if, instead of a dog, that car driving past, capturing millions of images for its online mapping system, happened to catch something happening in that window that was far more sinister?

AK: Your novel can be described as a reworking and updating of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, using modern technology. But of course, the source material for that 1954 film was Cornell Woolrich’s short story, “It Had to Be Murder.” Have you ever read Woolrich’s original tale?

LB: I’ve only seen the movie Rear Window--and probably 25 times. The similarities between the book and the movie didn’t actually occur to me until the project was underway. But there is one line in the novel that is a direct lift from the movie. It’s my homage to Hitchcock. I wonder how many readers will find it.

AK: This book has a very intricate plot. Did you have to map it out or storyboard it extensively, or did you do a “high-wire act”?

LB: I didn’t really map it out or storyboard it. But I had a lot of it figured it out in my head before I got started.

AK: I understand that your original title was 360. Can you tell us why you changed the title to Trust Your Eyes?

LB: We were worried that a numeric title might be confusing and difficult to find online. We were afraid anyone trying to order the book would end up with an Xbox. My agent, Helen Heller, came up with the alternative title. I didn’t like it at first, but now it seems perfect. Don’t tell her I said that.

AK: So was Helen Heller the first to read the manuscript, or did Bill Massey of Orion Publishing read it before her? Or what is the process you deploy when you feel a manuscript is ready for sending on?

LB: Helen’s the first. I’ll usually send her the first 100 pages, too. Once Helen thinks the book is in shape, we will send it to Bill and my U.S. and Canadian editors.

AK: Did Massey or Heller suggest other changes in the book?

LB: Nothing too horrendous. Probably the biggest changes concerned the [journalist] Julie [McGill] character. She was poorly drawn in the first draft, so I ditched her from the last half of the novel. But when I rewrote her, everyone liked her so much, I had to put her back into the last half of the book. There were other changes, too, but this was not one of my more difficult books.

AK: There’s some real darkness in this story. Yet there’s also subtle humor, usually connected to the eccentric nature of Thomas Kilbride. Did you have to rein yourself in when it came to light relief?

LB: I don’t make a point of trying to inject humor into the story. I just let it come out where it seems to make sense. I think, when your heroes are regular people who are ill-equipped for dealing with bad guys, there can be humor in how they react. And Thomas’ characteristics do allow for some light touches, so long as you remain respectful of the condition he has to live with.

AK: Your use of former U.S. President Bill Clinton in this yarn is really amusing. Did you know that he’s a big mystery reader?

LB: I know Bill Clinton is a big thriller reader. He particularly likes Lee Child, Janet Evanovich, Daniel Silva, and Sue Grafton. I actually used George W. Bush in an earlier draft, but for reasons I can’t explain, it didn’t feel right. Maybe because Bush is an even more polarizing figure than Clinton (at least in my mind). Clinton just seemed right.

AK: You wrote sections of this novel in first-person from Ray Kilbride’s point of view, but then peppered third-person sections in between. Why didn’t you just write the whole narrative in third-person?

LB: I like first-person. Ray tells the bulk of the story, and I can get more into a character’s point of view when I write in first.

AK: Without giving away the ending, especially the final reveal(s), how happy were you that readers would not be able to second- or third-guess you?

LB: I love pulling the rug out from under people. I think I did it better here than in any of my other books, although Fear the Worst [2009] and The Accident [2001] have twists I’m very proud of.

AK: I see you have released your childhood memoir, Last Resort, as an e-book. Can you tell us a little about that work and why you felt compelled to write it?

LB: That book was published in Canada--and only in Canada--in 2000. It had gone out of print, and a lot of people, from beyond Canada, were asking about it. We got the digital rights back on it so we could give it a second life as an e-book. It’s my own coming-of-age story, which I think is unique enough to make it worth writing about. It’s also about my development as a writer, including the story of how I came to know Ross Macdonald, who wrote the Lew Archer novels, and whose real name was Kenneth Millar.

AK: Tell us a little about your e-book novella Never Saw It Coming, as it’s a coda to the 2007 thriller No Time for Goodbye.

LB: Never Saw it Coming is a much-expanded version of the [2011] novella Clouded Vision, which I wrote for the UK Quick Reads program. The novella was very open-ended. There was much that could come after it, and in Never Saw it Coming I tell you the end of the story. And yes, it does star a minor character from No Time for Goodbye, the bogus psychic.

AK: So why did Keisha Ceylon resonate so strongly as a character, that you had to write about her again?

LB: We only see one dimension of her in No Time for Goodbye. She’s a con artist, plain and simple, who preys on families where someone has gone missing. She offers, for a price, to use her psychic powers to help find them. She’s still up to her tricks in the new book, but we see other aspects to her now. As a mother, as someone in an abusive relationship, as someone seeking some redemption. This book is a bit shorter than my regular novels, but I think it’s every bit as much fun.

AK: Why is Never Saw It Coming already available as an e-book in the States, but not scheduled for release in the UK until early 2013?

LB: In the U.S. they’re asking, how come the UK gets it as an actual book you can hold in your hands, and we don’t? It’s out in North America as an e-book only, and its release was timed to build interest in Trust Your Eyes.

AK: So tell us what you are working on currently. And how do you plan to top Trust Your Eyes?

LB: I don’t know whether I can top Trust Your Eyes right away, but next year’s novel, A Tap at the Window, is done. Next up, I plan to write a sequel to No Time for Goodbye. I’ll plan that in November and December, and probably start writing the first of the new year.

AK: Finally, I hear that you’ll be attending Bouchercon in Cleveland next week. What are your plans while you’re there, and do you have any panel assignments?

LB: I’m on one panel, on thrillers. Mostly, I’ll be dining and drinking and hanging out with friends, like you, that I only see once a year.

(Author photo © 2012 Ali Karim)

Books with a Past

There’s a wealth of great reading material in this week’s selection of “forgotten books.” Among the titles considered are: Salt River, by James Sallis; Maigret and the Madwoman, by Georges Simenon; The Man in the Net, by Patrick Quentin; Ripley’s Game, by Patricia Highsmith; Baptism, by Max Kinnings; The Case of the Sleepwalker’s Niece, by Erle Stanley Gardner; A Gentle Murderer, by Dorothy Salisbury Davis; and The Red Scar, by Anthony Wayne.

A full list of today’s participating critics and their book choices can be found in Todd Mason’s Sweet Freedom blog.

Won’t Get Fooled Again

(Editor’s note: This is Part I of a feature by British correspondent Ali Karim. Part II should appear in The Rap Sheet tomorrow.)

I have followed Linwood Barclay’s work ever since the 2007 publication of his breakout novel, No Time for Goodbye, and as much as I was captivated by last year’s The Accident, I still found myself unprepared for the intensity and elegance of Trust Your Eyes (NAL).

During the experience of reading this new novel, I found myself laughing, touched, puzzled, and horrified. Even as someone who can usually see well beyond technical misdirection in narratives, this book’s twists got me every time. There’s no deus ex machina deployed by Barclay. The clues are clearly visible and in plain sight; but as the book’s title suggests, you have to trust your eyes. That’s something I failed to do. Although this is not a puzzle book, per se--because its characters are fully realized, breathing a compassionate dimension to every chapter--it is still a work of labyrinthine plotting, containing all the defects and nuances of human nature.

Frankly, I am amazed that Linwood Barclay was not forcibly committed to an insane asylum, injected with Thorazine and strapped to a gurney in a straitjacket after completing this manuscript. Because I’ll tell you, every little detail, every location, every character’s nuances and back-story added to the narrative, propelling it slowly, gently, inch by inch to a final, shocking dénouement. To have worked on this book must have required the mental fortitude of Zeus. Trust Your Eyes is a remarkable book, a Zeitgeist-affecting work that you won’t walk away from without your worldview having been nudged, or maybe wounded.

What makes Trust Your Eyes so special is the author’s voice, empathetic and nonjudgmental. It leads you into places you would probably rather avoid. The easygoing manner in which you are thus directed will result in many shocks--chilling and troubling--along the dark length of narrative that Barclay has laid.

Barclay writes in what some observers would term the “cheating first-person.” His main story is relayed from the perspective of Ray Kilbride, a freelance cartoonist in a fast-changing media market. His younger brother, Thomas--who suffers from a form of schizophrenia--sees changes in modern life too, but from the point of view of cartography. The world of maps and mapping is shedding paper presentation and moving into the digital realm, thanks to advances in satellite navigation and the Internet’s “Whirl360,” a fictionalized version of Google Street View. Ray’s journey between the rigid covers of this book is interspersed with third-person prose, highlighting a cast of complex characters--some real, some hidden, and some very bad, all converging in the story like passengers in a slow-motion car crash, destined to result in multiple fatalities.

Among the attractions of Trust Your Eyes is that no one here is totally bad, just as nobody is wholly good (or completely innocent); even the really bad guys claim flaws and redeeming aspects. Barclay shows a deep understanding of human facets and flaws. The inner psyches and motivations of both the protagonists and antagonists in this book can be directly related to the decisions they’ve made in their lives. There is morality suffused through this narrative, though at times it’s so murky, you may need to bring a torch.

This is a troublesome book to review, as spoiling its complex, sometimes dizzying plot would be a sin. The simplest description of Trust Your Eyes is to say that it’s a rebooting for our digital age of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 film Rear Window (which was based on Cornell Woolrich’s short story, “It Had to Be Murder”).

After 62-year-old widower Adam Kilbride dies in a sudden, tragic accident while operating a lawn-mowing tractor, family lawyer Harry Peyton contacts Kilbride’s elder son, Ray, the graphic artist who lives in Burlington, Vermont, urgently calling him back to the family home in Promise Falls. Ray comes as soon as he can, because Adam Kilbride had been living in the family home and looking after his younger, paranoid son, Thomas, who cannot be left on his own. Ray is not surprised, but is certainly irritated with his brother when Thomas refuses to attend their father’s funeral. However, he chalks that up to Thomas’ mental instability.

Ray’s return to his father’s house is troubling, as Thomas’ mania about mapping the world from the safety of his bedroom has taken over his life. It seems that Thomas hears voices. He says that he receives calls from former U.S. President Bill Clinton and is working on a clandestine mission for the CIA. That mission demands that Thomas memorize all of the world’s maps, using the online computer program Whirl360. Thomas believes--via the CIA--that an immanent threat has been identified, one that will wipe out all of Earth’s digital maps. Because of Thomas Kilbride’s astounding memory and mental abilities (not unlike those of Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man), the Agency--apparently under Clinton’s direction--has supposedly recruited Thomas Kilbride to memorize and map all of the world’s cities, so when the anticipated “incident” occurs, Thomas can guide the Agency’s various assets around the globe to safety. Thomas is convinced that as world maps are being digitized, the paper versions are being discarded--so after the “incident,” the world will be thrown into chaos.

Ray learns from Thomas’ psychiatrist, Dr. Laura Grigorin, that his sibling’s delusion regarding President Clinton’s voice and the CIA assignment is all-encompassing. Furthermore, Grigorin suggests that the voices inside Thomas’ head are associated with a childhood trauma that her patient refuses to talk about, or even acknowledge. Instead, Thomas spends all of his free time between meals and sleep working through Whirl360, trying to commit to memory every alleyway from Lincoln, Nebraska, to Osaka, Japan, and e-mailing progress reports to the CIA in Langley, Virginia.

This all seems like reasonably innocent behavior from a troubled and deluded mind--until the day that Thomas sees in the window of a New York City apartment what he believes is the face of a woman being murdered by suffocation!

Ray is understandably skeptical of his brother’s interpretation. After all, what he saw might actually have been a storefront mannequin with a plastic bag over its head; or he might have witnessed some sort of sick prank, rather than a homicide in progress. However, Thomas’ obsessive nature will not let that image of the woman go, and he prints it out and hands it to Ray in hopes that the latter will investigate.

Ray’s attempts to make sense of what Thomas witnessed--as halfhearted as they are initially--introduce into Barclay’s yarn an assorted cast of flawed and driven individuals, all harboring their own agendas. Among them: waitress Allison Fitch, who is behind on the rent she must pay for an apartment on Orchard Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan that she shares with one Courtney Walmers--the very same apartment in which the troubled Thomas Kilbride says he saw (thanks to the World Wide Web) a woman with a plastic bag knotted over her noggin.

Also looped into this mystery is New York Attorney General Morris Sawchuck. A politician with ambitions toward higher office, Sawchuck’s future has been threatened by his wandering eye for women as well as by a deal he struck with CIA Director Barton Goldsmith--now dead from suicide--to protect possible Al-Qaeda terrorists. But Sawchuck has been saved from his own errors more than once by Howard “The Taliban” Talliman, his longtime friend and Machiavellian adviser. It was Talliman, too, who arranged for Sawchuck to marry his third wife, the beautiful young Bridget. Now, though, another dangerous difficulty has arisen: It seems Bridget Sawchuck and the financially troubled Allison Fitch have an unexpected linkage, one that could destroy AG Sawchuck’s political career once and for all. The desperate Talliman will have to depend on all of his connections--especially those with ex-NYPD tough guy Lewis Blocker and an assassin named Nicole--if he’s to keep Sawchuck’s reputation at all clean.

As Barclay’s story develops further, we learn not only how Nicole became a ruthless killer, but also how Allison Fitch discovered that her true inner purpose is to be ruthlessly selfish. This aspect of Allison’s character will lead her down a path that collides with Nicole’s own past. Those two women, and the other characters in these pages, are shown to be largely the creations and victims of choices they’ve made.


Linwood Barclay and Ali Karim at Bouchercon 2008 in Baltimore, Maryland (© 2008 Ali Karim).

With encouragement from his love interest, journalist and former high school acquaintance Julie McGill, Ray Kilbride eventually goes to Manhattan hoping to take a look-see at the apartment where Thomas alleges a murder was committed. Ray is hoping to put an end to speculations about what his brother really saw; instead, he helps spark a sequence of events that will lead to death, tragedy, and the realization that even simple liaisons can trigger the worst aspects of human nature. As events tumble over one another, and killings escalate in number to protect a political machine, readers are offered some of the most emotionally wrenching scenes I’ve ever found in thriller fiction. Thankfully, Barclay leavens his plot occasionally with lighthearted moments (most of which play on the madness of Thomas Kilbride) that help a bit to balance the shocking developments with humanity and compassion.

The Kilbride brothers soon realize that the voice of Bill Clinton may be on to something more important than either of them realized.

Despite being well read in the thriller genre, I found myself caught out on occasion, because Barclay’s ability to misdirect is quite phenomenal. In the center of this book, for example, there is a pivotal scene that reminds me of the closing section of Thomas Harris’ The Silence of the Lambs, in which FBI agent Clarice Starling knocks at serial killer Buffalo Bill’s house ... while members of a well-armored SWAT team also knock on what they’re convinced is Buffalo Bill’s house. To misdirect readers this successfully in a novel is a tall order, and as in Harris’ book, I was totally fooled by Barclay--so much so that I had to go back and re-read the chapter, and was then compelled to cry out into the silence of my house, “Barclay, you had me!”

The closing sections of Trust Your Eyes are like Russian nesting dolls: every time you open one up, you find another complication inside. Once the political dirty games are revealed, the plot shifts back to Adam Kilbride’s tragic accident, and then Barclay delivers a shock with his very last line. After digesting that ending, I went back to re-read the Prologue, only to understand the significance of what I’d considered Barclay’s theme here: The windows we open in our lives to show people who we are may be less significant than what we don’t show people--because most of the time we place curtains over those windows to protect ourselves from seeing what fate, circumstance, and the decisions we’ve made did to shape us.

This must have been an extremely difficult novel to write, edit, and ultimately polish, as the level of detail is fairly mind-boggling. There is not a word, phrase, or so much as comma out of place or unnecessary in this work. Even in a world, like ours, that already offers ample excellence in thriller fiction, Trust Your Eyes stands out. It made the synaptic pathways in my brain fire like detonation charges.

Trust me on that.

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If you’d like to learn more about Trust Your Eyes, check out this dramatic book trailer or this excerpt from the novel, read by none other than the author himself.

Part II: an interview with Linwood Barclay

READ MORE: “Todd Phillips to Direct Thriller Trust Your Eyes,”
by Jeff Sneider (Variety).

Pronzini Has a Lock on Hoch

Kevin R. Tipple brings us the news that 69-year-old California novelist Bill Pronzini--creator of the long-running Nameless Detective series--is this year’s recipient of the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award, given out by the Short Mystery Fiction Society. This commendation is of course named after prolific short-story writer Hoch, who died back in 2008.

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In addition, Lee Lofland’s blog, The Graveyard Shift, has just announced that Ann Kellett is the winner of the 2012 Golden Donut Short Story Contest for “Closure.” You can read that 2oo-word tale, along with the runners-up in this year’s competition, here.

Pierce’s Picks: “The Paris Deadline”

A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.

The Paris Deadline, by Max Byrd (Turner):
This book was originally scheduled for release in mid-October; however, I see that it’s already available from Amazon and other online retailers, so let’s go ahead and consider its virtues. Set in the City of Light, beginning in 1926, Byrd’s colorful, often clever tale spotlights Toby Keats, a still-traumatized veteran of the so-called Great War, who now works as a rewrite man for the Chicago Tribune. Keats is accustomed to a fairly peaceful, near-monkish existence, sampling Paris’ gourmet wares as he observes girls herding goats through the streets and mutilated French ex-soldiers trying to survive without too obviously begging. But then into his life falls what may be Vaucanson’s Duck, a “somewhat scandalous” 18th-century automaton that’s coveted by an American banker and a delightful and resourceful young woman named Elsie Short of the Thomas Edison Doll Company, as well as by criminals who may desire the phony fowl for its interior mechanism--technology that could further advance weapons development. Byrd won a Shamus Award for California Thriller (1981), the first in a trio of novels starring San Francisco private eye Mike Haller. During the 1990s he penned historical fiction about a trio of U.S. presidents: Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Ulysses S. Grant. Now, in The Paris Deadline, he delivers a sparkling and suspenseful caper with a mystery plot well-rooted in a loving re-creation of Jazz Age Paris.

Reserve a Banquet Seat Today

This year’s Bouchercon is slated to begin next Thursday, October 4, in Cleveland, Ohio, and run through Sunday the 7th.

On Friday night, October 5, the annual Shamus Awards Banquet--sponsored by the Private Eye Writers of America--is set to take place. Although it’s chiefly focused around the presentation of the Shamuses (click here for a full list of the 2012 nominees), the event also highlights, in general, the important contributions made to modern crime fiction by literary gumshoes, and is attended by authors, reviewers, and grateful members of the reading public.

Author and PWA founder Robert J. Randisi informs me that tickets--at $60 apiece--are still available for this banquet. E-mail him here to reserve a seat or obtain more information.

Playing Catch-up

• The Showtime series Homeland, starring Claire Danes and Damien Lewis, “dominated” last night’s Emmy Awards ceremony, winning commendations for drama, actress, actor and writing. “The wins were not just well-deserved, they saved the broadcast from being a complete and utter bore,” writes Mary McNamara in the Los Angeles Times. I’m sorry now that I missed the show.

• Although the American version of The Killing was cancelled after two very disappointing years, the third season of the original, Danish version of that crime drama is scheduled to return to BBC4 in mid-November. (Hat tip to Eurocrime.)

• As previously announced, the Manhattan bookstore Partners & Crime closed with a party last week after 18 years in business.

• Wow, you don’t see book covers like the top one here anymore.

• Spinning off a new post theme, “competition,” A.V. Club contributors do their best to dissect the more-than-metaphorical chess game played out in “The Most Dangerous Match,” a 1973 episode of Peter Falk’s Columbo. Even though they insist this installment, written by Jackson Gillis, is not one of the series’ best, their words and video clips make me want to slip that episode into my DVD player soon.

• Buddies in the Saddle blogger Ron Scheer’s futuristic Western tale, “Half-Breed,” is this week’s new offering in Beat to a Pulp.

• Today brings an end to the Web’s “What a Character!” Blogathon, which--over these last three days--has highlighted “scene-stealing, delightful character actors that we all love to see on the big screen.” Among the performers discussed are Eve Arden, Lee J. Cobb, Richard Jaeckel, Ward Bond, Ann Miller, and Charles McGraw. A full list of participating bloggers and their subjects is here.

• And since it is National Punctuation Day here in the United States, let me just mention one of my biggest pet peeves: people who fail to use commas properly around the names of cities and the states or countries that contain them. The Associated Press Stylebook offers two correct usage examples: His journey will take him from Dublin, Ireland, to Fargo, N.D.; and The Selma, Ala., group saw the governor. Too many writers fail to insert a comma after the state or country name. This sentence, for instance, is incorrect: The Selma, Ala. group saw the governor. Having now made my point, I hope never to see that kind of mistake made again. Yeah, fat chance ...

Flash of Genius

Take a few minutes today to sample the results of Patti Abbott’s latest flash-fiction challenge. She suggested last month that people try to “write a story of 1,000 words or less entitled ‘Frank, Jr.’” It could be in any genre or style. Abbott’s own entry can be found here, along with a list of the other participating bloggers.

Cold, Hard Truth

Tonight will bring the third and last episode in the current run of Wallander episodes, running under the umbrella of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! series. This final installment, “Before the Frost,” will begin at 9 p.m. ET/PT. It’s based on a novel of the same name, written by Henning Mankell and published in English in 2005.

The Story Behind the Story: “A Fine and Dangerous Season,” by Keith Raffel

(Editor’s note: This 37th contribution to The Rap Sheet’s “Story Behind the Story” series brings back Northern California author Keith Raffel. This is, in fact, his third “Story Behind the Story” essay. He wrote previously about his 2009 Silicon Valley novel, Smasher, and his 2011 political thriller, Drop By Drop. Below, Raffel traces the inspiration and research that went into his new work of speculative historical fiction, A Fine and Dangerous Season, which is available from Amazon as well as from Barnes & Noble. Read an excerpt from the novel here).

Who knew that future president John F. Kennedy had spent the fall quarter of 1940 at Stanford Business School in my hometown of Palo Alto, California? Well, once I found out, I asked myself the two-word question that all thriller authors ask: “What if?” What if during his time at Stanford, JFK becomes fast friends with someone from a completely different background who is Jewish, not Catholic, San Franciscan rather than Bostonian, with a famous left-wing father, not a buccaneering capitalist one? And what if JFK and this fictitious character, Nate Michaels, have a falling out? Kicking around these ideas with college pal Rick Wolff, he asked the best “what if” of all: What if JFK needs this guy’s help 22 years later during the Cuban Missile Crisis?

In the fall of 1940, Kennedy was just killing time at Stanford. He’d already graduated from Harvard College. His book Why England Slept (based on his senior thesis) had hit the bestseller lists in the spring. He figured war was coming, and he’d enlist. His father, the formidable Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., the American ambassador to Great Britain, wanted him to go to Yale Law School. But his older brother’s college roommate had expounded on two major differences between Harvard and Stanford--the weather and co-education. That was argument enough to make JFK beat it to Palo Alto as a special student at the business school. What better place to hang out?

I could empathize with “Jack” Kennedy. After graduating from college, I was trying to figure out what to do as well. To get far away from my hometown (which, after all, is Palo Alto), I headed over to England to study history. Good decision. I am just now realizing that what I loved about studying history is the same thing I love about composing thrillers. In both, I get to look at how people react to an emergency, a time of high drama, and how they show courage--or not. That’s a theme I explore in my new e-book, A Fine and Dangerous Season. Using primary research whenever possible, I try to fit the events of the novel into the interstices of the historical record.

As a first step, I drove by 624 Mayfield on campus where Kennedy lived in a guest house that he rented for $60 per month. (The house is long gone.) JFK used to head down to Los Angeles, too. In his 1980 memoir, Straight Shooting, actor Robert Stack of The Untouchables fame describes how JFK took advantage of Stack’s “little pad” on Whitley Terrace for rendezvous with various Hollywood starlets. At the Palo Alto Library, I found old menus from JFK’s favorite hangout, L’Omelette. The prices seemed reasonable enough--a quarter for a martini and six bits for a French lamb chop dinner! I discovered JFK’s favorite courses at Stanford weren’t business classes at all, but--no surprise--courses on politics and international relations. From the archives of the student newspaper, The Stanford Daily, I learned that the closest call in Stanford’s 1940 undefeated football season came against the University of California, Los Angeles, where a fellow named Jackie Robinson almost beat the Stanford team single-handed.

(Right) The bar at L’Omelette

Back at the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, I found a teasing and witty letter from Kennedy’s Stanford girlfriend Harriet “Flip” Price, who chided, “You wouldn’t exactly win a prize for the world’s best correspondent.” I got the biggest kick of all when I came across the schedule of movies at the Stanford Theatre--which, amazingly enough, is still showing great films from the 1940s in downtown Palo Alto. In one scene of my novel, set on a Saturday night in October 1940, my man Nate and his girlfriend eat popcorn and hold greasy hands while the movie showing is The Quarterback. Wayne Morris plays twins, one a star football player without too much upstairs and the other an egghead studying to be a professor. Inevitably, both loved the same girl, an oblique metaphor to what was happening in the “real life” laid out in my book.

Now, how was I going to find a role for Nate Michaels in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis? I remembered from a college course that John Scali, an ABC News correspondent, had opened a back channel during the crisis with a known KGB agent in Washington, D.C. In the history of that crisis, as recounted in Fine and Dangerous, Scali was out and Nate was in. Back in the 1930s, a Soviet consular official in San Francisco named Maxim Volkov had kept in touch with potential sympathizers like Nate’s own father, a lawyer for the communist-leaning Longshoremen’s Union. Now, in the 1962 of my novel, Volkov is head of the KGB in Washington, and JFK needs Nate to reach out to him to see if there is a way to stop the headlong rush to nuclear war.

Doing the research on the Cuban Missile Crisis itself was much easier than the work I did on Stanford in 1940. Few modern events have been more scrutinized by historians. With my preference for primary sources, I relied on the book The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, some 500 pages of word-for-word transcriptions of administration deliberations. That volume was co-edited by the late Ernest R. May, a great historian and a favorite college professor of mine. Thanks to May’s work, characters in my own book could use the same words they’d spoken in 1962. The only difference is that I place Nate in the room sitting just behind JFK.


ExComm meeting at the White House, October 29, 1962

I kept a book called Designing Camelot: The Kennedy White House Restoration next to me as I wrote to ensure that I accurately described White House rooms and the labyrinthine passages between them. It was much easier to get the architecture of the KGB safe house right. As a model, I used the house on Swann Street NW in D.C. where I’d lived myself for three years. Online, I found snapshots of the Steuart Motor car dealership in the nation’s capital, where U2 reconnaissance photos of Soviet missiles in Cuba were in fact analyzed. A person in the parish office at St. Stephens Martyr Church told me there is a little brass plate on her building, noting that JFK frequently worshipped there. One early reader of my manuscript suggested that the flight from Washington to San Francisco that Nate catches at the end of the book seemed too short for half a century ago. Nope. Fifty-year-old flight schedules show that 707s high-tailed it across the country faster than today’s advanced jetliners.

Oh yes, airplanes. In the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Nate frequently harks back to his years flying bombers during World War II. When a B-17 Flying Fortress showed up at Moffett Field, just a few miles from my place in Palo Alto, my son and I hustled down there and crawled through the plane. I spent more than my fair share of time squeezed into the pilot’s seat and then came down to chat with B-17 veterans who recounted in unadorned words what it was like on those long, cold flights from southeast England to targets in the German industrial heartland.

Certainly, the risk in writing a historical thriller is losing the thread of the plot and making readers feel that they are being subjected to a graduate thesis. Believe me, I did try hard not to make that mistake with A Fine and Dangerous Season. I promise I murdered lots of darlings. Still, the magic of writing this book transported me right back to Palo Alto in 1940 and the White House in 1962. Even today, when driving down El Camino Real in Palo Alto, I pass the corner where the old L’Omelette stood and see a hazy outline of John F. Kennedy at the bar surrounded by a passel of admiring women.

Speaking of Joys ...

You’ve just got to love the Glen Orbik artwork prepared for the cover of Joyland, a brand-new Stephen King thriller that is currently scheduled for release by Hard Case Crime in June 2013.

Pierce’s Picks: “A Death in Valencia”

A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.

A Death in Valencia, by Jason Webster (Minotaur):
This may be another terrible week for president-wannabe Mitt Romney, but it’s working out to be a pretty terrific week for crime-fiction readers, offering several new and interesting books. Notable among those is A Death in Valencia, the second Max Cámara adventure from California-born author Jason Webster (following 2001’s Or the Bull Kills You). In these pages we find Chief Inspector Cámara of the Policía Nacional at a rather low emotional ebb, but with his plate full of cases. A prominent paella chef, Pepe Roures, has been murdered, his body found washed up on eastern Spain’s Mediterranean coast. An imminent visit by the Pope has incited the inevitable denunciations of abortion clinics, and a vibrant fisherman’s quarter on the Valencia waterfront has been put at risk by local politicians. It all threatens to become too much for the flamenco-loving, brandy-tippling Cámara, until he spots connections between these various troubles. Through the form of a detective story, Webster introduces us to the wonders of Valencia, at the same time as he explores some of the larger social struggles facing modern Spain.

* * *

Also new in bookstores: The Cocktail Waitress (Hard Case Crime), a never-before-published tale by James M. Cain that focuses on a captivating young mother caught in a dangerous relationship between two men; Outrage (Minotaur), by Arnaldur Indridason, which finds Icelandic sleuth Erlendur Sveinsson missing, and policewoman Elínborg left in charge of case involving a suspicious homicide victim and a long-gone girl; Gun Church (Tyrus), a non-series novel by Reed Farrel Coleman about a teacher who’s initiated into a handgun-worshipping cult; and Daughter of Fu-Manchu, the fourth of Titan Books’ recent reissues of Sax Rohmer’s classic Fu-Manchu thrillers.

Of All the Gault

Though I already own most of the works in vintage paperback formats, and remain a very reluctant reader of e-books, I’m still excited to receive this news: The Mysterious Press has released nine of Shamus Award winner William Campbell Gault’s crime novels in electronic versions. Perhaps people who’ve never before sampled Gault’s excellent stories will take a shot at one of these.

The majority of these e-books star Los Angeles peeper Brock Callahan, a “compassionate” gumshoe in the style of Thomas B. Dewey’s Mac and Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer. However, Shakedown--which Gault published in 1953 under the pseudonym Roney Scott--introduced another of his private-eye protagonists, Joe Puma.

Look for the whole set of e-tales here.

Frankly, My Dear ...*

Don’t forget about Patti Abbott’s latest flash-fiction challenge. “Write a story of 1,000 words or less entitled ‘Frank, Jr.,’” she instructs. “The end date will be September 24, 2012. I will post stories for people who have no blog. No winners or losers. Just good fun. Any genre, any style.” Click here to let Abbott know if you plan to participate.

* Of course you know the source of that line.

Almost Boston

Before he became well-known for his starring role on Magnum, P.I. (1980-1988), it seems actor Tom Selleck signed on to play “Tom Boston” in a 1979 TV pilot film called The Chinese Typewriter. That film was written by Stephen J. Cannell of The Rockford Files fame and also starred James Whitmore Jr. (who’d previously been in Cannell’s Baa Baa Black Sheep). The Web site Modcinema, which sells this 78-minute movie, offers a description of its plot:

It’s a story about two opposites (one’s a genius, the other’s a weapons expert) who team up to bring back a stolen jet for their rich, powerful client. Parts were filmed in Hawaii (apparently at the estate that would later be used for Magnum, P.I.) and Los Angeles. Tom Selleck is a work in progress in this vehicle providing the eye candy. James Whitmore Jr. gets to play a more interesting set of characters throughout the story. This movie, paired with all the other pilots that Selleck did in the ’70s prior to Magnum, make for a fun evening of mindless entertainment.

I’d never heard of The Chinese Typewriter until earlier today, when--during a swing through YouTube--I stumbled across the film clip embedded atop this post. I can’t say it immediately attracts me, or that I am a candidate to purchase my own copy. But Cannell’s work could usually be depended on for good action and dialogue.

Does anybody else remember this pilot?

Famous Faces Fill Felonious Cases

I’m starting something this morning that I have never tried to do before with my fortnightly Kirkus Reviews column: devote two successive installments to a single subject. In this case, the topic is “celebrity sleuths,” notable historical characters who have been recruited as amateur detectives in modern mystery yarns.

Today’s post--which can be found here--focuses on the growing number of “stories that employ the distinguished (or sometimes notorious) real-life player from the past as principal crime-solver.” My next Kirkus column will concentrate on stories pairing genuine characters “with an imagined ally who can undertake most of the legwork and perhaps undergo most of the injuries, thus saving the author from having to digress overmuch from the historical record.”

I hope you enjoy the results of my research. Drop a comment onto the Kirkus site if you have anything to share on this subject.

Of Comebacks, Classics, and Commandments

• Tonight will bring Episode 2 of the latest Wallander series, “The Dogs of Riga,” starring Kenneth Branaugh. That 90-minute broadcast begins at 9 p.m. ET/PT as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery!

• Speaking of Masterpiece Mystery!: Three new installments of the very popular World War II-era crime drama Foyle’s War, starring Michael Kitchen and Honeysuckle Weeks, are currently being filmed for Britain’s ITV and are expected to show in the States sometime next summer

under the Mystery! umbrella. Omnimystery News catches us up a bit on what to expect from those fresh episodes.

• It seems rather early to be announcing this, but registration is now open for ThrillerFest VIII, scheduled to take place from July 10 to 13, 2013, in New York City. According to a press release, “This year, spotlight guests will include 2013 ThrillerMaster Anne Rice, 2011 ThrillerMaster R.L. Stine, T. Jefferson Parker, and Michael Connelly.”

• Although it has zero to do with crime fiction, it’s worth noting that tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of the debut of M*A*S*H.

• Better late than never: Yesterday was the 79th birthday of Henry Darrow, described by the Los Angeles Times as “the first Puerto Rican star of an hour-long TV series, playing the charismatic and devilish Manolito Montoya on the 1967-71 NBC western The High Chaparral.” Many of us, though, will recall Darrow best for his role as San Diego Police Lieutenant Manuel “Manny” Quinlan on Harry O.

• Hard Case Crime editor Charles Ardai picks Hollywood’s top seven femmes fatales for The Huffington Post. In the course of it, he manages to promote only two of his popular line’s titles.

• As Shotsmag Confidential notes, British publisher Orion has launched The Murder Room, “a dedicated Web site which makes out-of-print and hard-to-find classic crime novels available as e-books.” A list of available titles can be found here.

• There certainly are plenty of supposed “commandments” in regards to the writing of crime, mystery, and detective fiction. Here are several such lists, none of which--in my humble opinion, anyway--need to be followed slavishly.

• In advance of Bouchercon, taking place this year in Cleveland, Ohio, from October 4 to 7, the blog Murder, Mystery & Mayhem recaps the lists of contenders for a wide variety of commendations to be given out during that convention.

• As part of its “Classics in September” series, the blog Crime Fiction Lover features an interview with editor, publisher, and bookstore proprietor Otto Penzler. His interrogator doesn’t ask enough questions, and Penzler is too brief in his responses, but the results are still worth reading here.

• Another installment of “Classics in September” is this new tribute to Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet.

• Blogger Rhian Davies reports that Charles Cummings has won the inaugural Scottish Crime Book of the Year award.

• It’s been a long while since I watched the pilot for the 1984-1986 private-eye TV series Riptide, starring Perry King, Joe Penny, and Anne Francis. But it has suddenly appeared on YouTube in its entirety, along with the introductory film for another Stephen J. Cannell series, Hardcastle & McCormick, and the pilot for the Cybill Shepherd/Bruce Willis series, Moonlighting. Sheesh! If you’re not careful, you could spend all day just watching old TV shows on the Web.

• Or maybe you’d prefer lower-tech entertainment.

• As a veteran newspaper guy, I’m glad to see that U.S. publishers remain optimistic about the future of their printed news medium. With the intent of helping out, I’ve recently returned to my tradition of spending a couple of hours just reading The New York Times on Sunday mornings. It’s much more peaceful than finding news online.

• And not long after I posted a list on this page of book-oriented blogs that deserve greater attention, the author of one such product--Jedidiah Ayres from Barnes & Noble’s Ransom Notes--wrote to tell me that “I got my pink slip this afternoon--no more Ransom Notes for me.” Ayres adds: “I’m not sore. Of course I’d rather continue with that gig, but I think they made a business decision and I couldn’t speak to the advisedness of that.” Well, at least Ayres still has his personal blog, Hard-boiled Wonderland.

Celebrating a Queen of Crime

Happy birthday to British mystery writer Agatha Christie, who--had she not died in 1976--would today be celebrating her 122nd birthday. To honor this occasion, the blog Mystery Fanfare has posted a guest submission from John Curran, award-winning Christie expert and the author of Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making. His subject: the annual Agatha Christie Festival in Torquay, Devon, England.

Promoting the Pack

I admit, I didn’t even realize this was Book Blogger Appreciation Week until I happened upon a note in Man of la Book earlier today. But since it is, and since I rarely pass up an opportunity to celebrate hard-working writers, I would like to mention some bloggers whose efforts I check on regularly. Not all of these people confine their coverage and commentary to books, or even to crime fiction, but they all clearly cherish the written word.

Bill Crider -- Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine

Paul Bishop -- Bish’s Beat

Book Reviews by Elizabeth A. White

Elizabeth Foxwell -- The Bunburyist

Marshal Zeringue -- Campaign for the American Reader

Les Blatt -- Classic Mysteries

Declan Burke -- Crime Always Pays

Peter Rozovsky -- Detectives Beyond Borders

Martin Edwards -- ‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’

Nick Jones -- Existential Ennui

Jiro Kimura -- The Gumshoe Site

Jacques Filippi -- The House of Crime and Mystery

B.V. Lawson -- In Reference to Murder

“Puzzle Doctor” -- In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel

Glen Harper -- International Noir Fiction

Jen Forbus -- Jen’s Book Thoughts

Ronald Tierney -- Life, Death and Fog

Janet Rudolph -- Mystery Fanfare

Steve Lewis -- Mystery*File Blog

Omnimystery News

Patti Abbott -- Pattinase

John “J.F.” Norris -- Pretty Sinister Books

Andrew Nette -- Pulp Curry

Jedidiah Ayres -- Ransom Notes

J. Sydney Jones -- Scene of the Crime

Ayo Onatade -- Shotsmag Confidential

Sergio Angelini -- Tipping My Fedora

Vince Keenan

Wow, no wonder I can never seem to find enough time to write, what with having to read all these blogs ...

But seriously, if you are not visiting with these writers at least on an occasional basis, you’re missing out on some fun, some wisdom, and--in the best of cases--some damn fine writing.

If you’d like to suggest a few of your own favorite books-oriented blogs, please do so in the Comments section below.

Fixing ’Em Up with “Breakdown”

Last week, when I posted on this page an interview with D.E. “Dan” Johnson, author of the new historical mystery Detroit Breakdown, I also announced a short competition to give away four copies of that novel, supplied by publisher Minotaur Books. That offer drew dozens of entries, and from those we have now selected--completely at random--our quartet of winners. They are:

• Kent Morgan of Winnipeg, Manitoba
• Kathleen Simpson of Simi Valley, California
• Paul McMurray of Milton, Wisconsin
• Craig Miller of Kitchener, Ontario

Congratulations to all of these Rap Sheet readers. The good folks at Minotaur should soon be dropping your free books into the mail.

If your name wasn’t drawn this time, don’t despair: we have more book giveaways planned for the very near future.

Pierce’s Picks: “Death in Breslau”

A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.

Death in Breslau, by Marek Krajewski (Melville International Crime):
It’s 1933 in the city of Breslau, then under Nazi control (but now part of Poland). Criminal Counsellor Eberhard Mock is called away--much to his chagrin--from his regular chess assignation at a high-end brothel to investigate a railroad yard crime scene. Seventeen-year-old Marietta von der Malten has been found half naked and fully murdered in a train carriage, her intestines strung out like garlands beside her body and a “small, vigorous scorpion” inspecting her abdominal cavity. Her governess, the 40-something Mlle. Francoise Debroux, lies strangled nearby, while “two lines of strange signs”--writing of a peculiar sort?--decorate the wall in blood. Mock, a Freemason who needs to tread carefully in corrupt, spy-ridden Breslau--strikes a deal with the Gestapo to blame these atrocities on an aged Jew, Isidor Friedländer, who is known to have traded in scorpions. But after evidence turns up to prove that Friedländer wasn’t guilty, Mock finds himself helping a troubled young policeman from Berlin who’s been sent to identify the real killer. Their path will soon lead them into Breslau’s darkest corners and to the conclusion that these slayings have centuries-old roots. Author Krajewski is a Polish linguist, whose flawed and abundantly eccentric protagonist, Mock, has already been featured in four English-translated novels, the first of which is Death in Breslau. Fans of Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther books and Jonathan Rabb’s Detective Inspector Nikolai Hoffner trilogy will want to pick this one up, too.

READ MORE: “An Interview with Marek Krajewski” and “More from the Marek Krajewski Interview,” by Uriah Robinson (Crime Scraps Review).

Bullet Points: 9/11 Edition

• The program schedule for Bouchercon 2012, taking place in Cleveland, Ohio, from October 4 to 7, has now been posted. Two of the panel discussions I shall miss most (since I am unable to attend this convention) will be Les Blatt’s “What Would Rockford Do?” (about private eyes in mystery fiction) and Peter Rozovsky’s “Murder Is Everywhere” (concerning international settings for the genre).

• Criminal Element has a wrap-up of events linked to Global James Bond Day, October 5, 2012. This occasion will mark 50 years since the theatrical premiere of Dr. No, the first James Bond spy film. Expect the number of commemorations to grow as that date draws nearer.

• Raymond Burr’s 1956 screen test for the CBS-TV legal drama Perry Mason shows that he had the right stuff for that role from the first--even though he auditioned originally for the lesser part of District Attorney Hamilton Burger. Interestingly, this clip offers a much different, sexier version of secretary Della Street. Somehow, I can’t see Barbara Hale replicating that performance.

• Also worth watching: Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead in the 1959 film The Bat, based on the 1920 Broadway play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood. Elizabeth Foxwell explains that “Moorehead is a mystery writer hosting an array of guests searching for hidden money, as the notorious killer The Bat threatens the residents.” You can take in the whole picture here.

• If you haven’t yet noticed, the blog Crime Fiction Lover is in the midst of rolling out a month’s worth of “Classics in September” posts, all focusing on “great crime-fiction reading from years gone by. Books that we believe have stood the test of time.” Thus far, the series has brought us a look back at Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s first Martin Beck novel, Roseanna; a list of “The Top Five Women of Noir”; an interview with Charles Ardai, the co-founder and editor of Hard Case Crime; UK critic Barry Forshaw’s rundown of early 21st-century crime “classics”; and a fond remembrance of one of Ross Macdonald’s oft-overlooked standalones, Meet Me at the Morgue. You should find links to all of this series’ posts here.

• President Obama’s recent criticism of Mitt Romney, that the Republican is “still stuck in a Cold War time warp,” has inspired pretty YouTube songstress Taylor Ferrara to concoct this clever little ditty.

• Crime Beat has posted an interview with Jassy Mackenzie, the South African author of Random Violence, Stolen Lives, The Fallen, and her latest private eye Jade de Jong novel, Pale Horses, which I’m looking forward to seeing published in this hemisphere next year.

• Mischa Hiller submits his new novel, Shake Off, to Marshal Zeringue’s daunting Page 69 Test. Hiller previously imagined an ideal cast for the filming of his book.

• And, because it’s September 11, the 11th anniversary of the devastating attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., let me connect you to a collection of “7 Bizarre Ways You Didn’t Know 9/11 Changed the World.”

Are You In?

Don’t forget, today is your last opportunity to enter The Rap Sheet’s contest to pick up one of four free copies of D.E. Johnson’s new historical mystery, Detroit Breakdown. To have a chance at winning, all you need do is e-mail your name and snail-mail address to jpwrites@sprynet.com. And be sure to write “Detroit Breakdown Contest” in the subject line. Sorry, but this drawing is open only to residents of the United States and Canada. You really don’t want to miss this giveaway!

A Fresh Take on Crime Fiction’s Stars

(Editor’s note: As I’ve reported before, I am among the contributors to an encyclopedic work titled 100 American Crime Writers, which appeared last month in the UK and this month in the States, courtesy of publisher Palgrave Macmillan. My editor on that project was British scholar Steven Powell, who also wrote Conversations with James Ellroy, released earlier this year. In the following essay, Powell recalls the process of assembling 100 American Crime Writers and several of the difficulties he faced in completing that 392-page volume.)

I began working on 100 American Crime Writers as a contributor. Chris Routledge, the editor of the book at the time, asked me to write three biographical entries: James Ellroy, James M. Cain, and Mickey Spillane. I considered this to be an exciting and daunting task in itself, between uncovering new biographical details through researching and re-reading each man’s considerable collection. Despite this, when Chris asked me to take over as editor so that he could focus on other projects, I didn’t hesitate to say “yes.” As although it required researching and writing many more entries, communicating with 14 contributors, and dealing with the details of proofreading, bibliographies, editing proofs, and what-not, I was enthusiastic about the great wealth of interesting and engaging material and the opportunity to ensure it reached a broad audience.

100 American Crime Writers is published as part of Palgrave Macmillan’s Crime Files Series, which features some of the best contemporary scholarship on crime fiction. Previous volumes in the series include Lee Horsley’s The Noir Thriller and Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, by Barry Forshaw. The purpose of 100 American Crime Writers was to provide short critical biographies of (you guessed it) 100 of the greatest and most influential crime writers in American literary history.

The project was full of challenges. I had long been an admirer of anthologies such as William L. DeAndrea’s Encyclopedia Mysteriosa (1994) and the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection (1976), by Chris Steinbrunner and Otto Penzler. These books were mammoth reads, and it was difficult to imagine what they would be like to write and edit. Fortunately, I was blessed with a great set of contributors, some of whom I inherited off Chris and others I recruited myself. A few of the names will be familiar from the blogosphere: there is J. Kingston Pierce from The Rap Sheet, for instance, plus Juri Nummelin of Pulpetti and Chris himself, who wrote more entries than any other contributor.

One of the first tasks was to revise the list of authors to be included. Deciding which names would stay in 100 American and who to take off was always going to be a difficult task. There are some authors which no anthology of this kind can do without: Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Elmore Leonard, etc. But I decided to add some relatively new names in the field, such as Megan Abbott, and take off John Grisham and Scott Turow, who--good as they are--just did not fit as neatly into any crime genre. However, some authors such as William Faulkner and Truman Capote, who would not traditionally be considered crime writers, are included for their influence on the genre through such works as Sanctuary (1931) and In Cold Blood (1966).

The entries themselves are a combination of a writer’s biography and an analysis of his or her key works. I was struck by the writers whose lives seemed as remarkable as their novels. Authors such as Harlan Coben and Janet Evanovich seem as emotionally fulfilled as they are professionally successful, while others carry an air of tragedy about them. It’s hard not to be moved when reading about the hardships Edward Bunker or Iceberg Slim endured in prison, or about Ross Macdonald’s slow mental decline. These guys wrote their legend, and a few of them lived it too, but they paid a high price.

100 American Crime Writers should fit comfortably onto the bookshelf of any student, scholar, or fan of crime fiction. My aim was to produce a book which could be either read in sequence or dipped into at will, with many pleasing return visits. Covering writers from Edgar Allan Poe to James Ellroy, the volume of material we were dealing with was immense, and Palgrave gave me a wide berth to explore the subject. At 130,000 words the book is almost twice the length of an average scholarly text, and we had to make sure that every word mattered. The volume also contains two essays, “‘Out of the Venetian Vase’: From Golden Age to Hard-boiled’” and “After These Mean Streets: Crime Fiction and the Chandler Inheritance,” which I wrote to contextualize the entries in terms of developments in the genre and literary themes. One recurring theme of the genre is the dynamic between fantasy and realism. In his entry on Ed McBain, Martin Lightening wrote of McBain’s contribution to this debate:

Unlike Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and other charismatic private eyes, the policemen McBain created are just people coming into work every day to earn a living. They are people trying to do their job well despite the attendant frustrations, such as lack of monetary rewards, physical dangers and the psychological effect of continually dealing with the darker side of human nature. The detectives, who alternate as the main characters, are a microcosm of the ethnic mix of New York, here renamed Isola which translates as ‘island’ in Italian. The most regular character, Steve Carella, is Italian, Meyer Meyer is Jewish, Bert Kling and Cotton Hawes are all American WASPs, Arthur Brown is black, Peter Byrnes is Irish, Frankie Hernandez is Puerto Rican and there is even a Japanese detective named Takashi Fujiwara. McBain deftly trod the path between mystery fiction and social realism. ‘A mystery should be exciting, believable and entertaining,’ McBain said. The problem was that crime is not this way in real life.

It was a problem that McBain would successfully overcome. Indeed, in their distinct styles, whether they strived for realism or not, the most memorable crime writers--Patricia Highsmith, James Crumley, Joseph Wambaugh, Walter Mosley, etc.--never failed to entertain. With any project this size there are usually snags along the way which can lead to anxious moments, but my overwhelming feeling now that the book, as finished, is one of gratitude and pride. More than anything else, I hope anyone who reads 100 American Crime Writers will feel compelled to find the time to pick up a good crime novel.

Speaking of which ...

READ MORE: “Extract from 100 American Crime Writers,” by Steven Powell (The Venetian Vase); “100 American Crime Writers, Steven Powell, Editor,” by Barry Forshaw (Crime Time).

Killer Concept?

Here’s an interesting crowd-funding project: Noir, a crime-fiction-oriented periodical designed for tablet computers, co-founded by magazine veterans Nancie Clare and Rip Georges.

According to a video introduction here, Noir intends to “combine coverage of the mystery, thriller, and true-crime genre with spectacular photography, illustrations, animation, video, and audio.” Author (and sometime Rap Sheet contributor) Megan Abbott has already been recruited as Noir’s editor at large, and other genre notables are lending their expertise, including Michael Connelly, Denise Hamilton, Robert Crais, John Harvey, Ian Rankin, and April Smith.

The plan is to release 10 new issues of Noir each year, beginning next month, October. But as I said at the top, this is a crowd-funding project. Pledges are still being solicited through Kickstarter to make this publication a reality. The goal is to raise $35,000, of which $13,792 has already been promised. If you would like to pitch in--and receive one of several levels of rewards--click here.

Bullet Points: Sunny Sunday Edition

• Series 3 of the British crime drama Wallander, starring Kenneth Branaugh, will debut this evening as part of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! at 9 p.m. ET/PT. There are three, 90-minute episodes scheduled to run over succeeding Sundays. Tonight’s installment, “An Event in Autumn,” finds habitually forlorn Swedish police inspector Kurt Wallander hoping to make a fresh start in a home outside Ystad, accompanied by his new girlfriend, only to become involved in a pair of cases concerning slain women--one of whose skeleton turns up in his own backyard. This episode is

based on a short story, Händelse om hösten (The Grave), that Wallander creator Henning Mankell published in The Netherlands in 2004. The trailer for “An Event in Autumn” is embedded on the left. Next Sunday will bring viewers “The Dogs of Riga,” set mostly in Latvia and adapted from Mankell’s novel of that same name, while the show of September 23 is titled “Before the Frost,” also based on a Mankell novel--and certainly my favorite installment of Series 3. “Before the Frost” has Wallander already probing a particularly gruesome murder, when his estranged daughter Linda’s childhood friend suddenly appears at his home in the night, obviously troubled, and then vanishes soon afterward. Much of the plot revolves around religious cults and a strangely missing father, and presents Wallander a chance to find common cause with his only child.

• Meanwhile, Dorothy Hayes defends The Troubled Man, Mankell’s last Kurt Wallander novel, from readers who believe the character should have enjoyed a much longer literary career.

• Another defensive tactic: Ace Atkins, whose remarkably well-received 2012 novel, Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby, continues Parker’s series about Boston private eye Spenser, voices his support for Irish author John Banville’s assignment to write a new book starring Raymond Chandler’s classic Los Angeles P.I., Philip Marlowe.

• Issue No. 11 of Crimefactory has just been released in a Kindle edition as well as a PDF version. The magazine features new stories by Jonathan Woods, Matthew C. Funk, Robin Jarossi, John Kenyon and others, packed in beside an interview with Max Allan Collins and a discussion of boxing pulp novels. You can learn more here.

• Sony Pictures has optioned Olen Steinhauer’s three Milo Weaver novels--The Tourist, The Nearest Exit, and An American Spy--for big-screen adaptation. For anyone who hasn’t read these books, Omnimystery News explains that “Milo Weaver is a former ‘tourist,’ an undercover agent for the CIA on assignment to anywhere and everywhere around the globe. But do CIA agents ever retire ... at least in spy thrillers? Of course not.” Matt Corman and Chris Ord (Covert Affairs) will pen the script for the film version of The Tourist.

• A new issue of The Big Click is now available.

• I can’t say that the trailer for the forthcoming (in late December) movie Jack Reacher, based on Lee Child’s best-selling series of thrillers, makes me want to plunk down my hard-earned dough to see it in a theater. As one commenter wrote, “[Tom] Cruise couldn’t be any farther from the character Child wrote.”

• Are you a hopeful but unpublished writer? If so, then listen up: The William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grants Program is now calling for submissions to its 2012 grant program. These grants are “designed to foster quality Malice Domestic literature and to help the next generation of Malice Domestic authors get their first works published.” More information is available here.

• There’s a pretty good interview with UK author Russel D. McLean--whose third J. McNee novel, Father Confessor, is due out in the States in October--in Crime Fiction Lover.

• Are the best mysteries really written in English? Yes, contends editor, critic, and New York bookstore proprietor Otto Penzler. He presents his argument in Publishers Weekly.

• The Webzine Beat to a Pulp is open for short-story submissions between now and October 15. Tales must be new and not exceed 4,000 words in length. “Excerpts from upcoming novels” also accepted.

• Among the numerous TV pilots that never made it to series development was 1959’s The Fat Man, which Vintage45’s Blog recalls as an “uninteresting attempt to make a series out of the successful radio show and 1951 movie. Robert Middleton is Lucius Crane, a P.I. who is an intellectual and epicurean. While TV detectives of the day were quick with fist and gun, Crane is fast with brain and fork.” At least for now, you can watch all of that hour-long, ABC-TV pilot film, subtitled “The Thirty-Two Friends of Gina Lardelli,” on YouTube. As the person responsible for posting it asserts, “The show was apparently an attempt to merge Dashiell Hammett’s The Fat Man radio show (which Hammett apparently had very little to do with, anyway) with more than a few elements of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, and seemed to foreshadow Cannon.” If The Fat Man was indeed based on Hammett’s concept, then its producers took more than a few liberties. For instance, Hammett’s protagonist was named Brad Runyon, not Lucius Crane, and was voiced on the wireless by J. Scott Smart. Furthermore, he had no Archie-esque assistant named Bill Gregory, portrayed in this pilot by Tony Travis. (You can listen to episodes of Smart’s The Fat Man here. According to The Thrilling Detective Web Site, its writers included Robert Sloane, Dan Shuffman, and Frank Kane.) As a historical artifact, ABC’s Fat Man pilot--which also starred Rita Moreno--is worth watching. But it’s easy to understand why it failed to find a spot on the small-screen schedule.