Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Au Revoir, Eileen
Film blogger Edward Copeland reports the sad news that Eileen Brennan, “one of our most treasured character actresses, particularly when it came to roles with a comic spin, lost her battle with bladder cancer Sunday at 80.” Copeland adds that the Los Angeles-born performer “probably will be best remembered as Capt. Doreen Lewis in the 1980 comedy Private Benjamin opposite Goldie Hawn.” However, one of my first strong memories of Brennan comes from the 1978 Neil Simon comedy, The Cheap Detective, which starred Columbo’s Peter Falk as a Humphrey Bogart-ish private eye. To honor Brennan’s memory, then, I have installed above a clip of her from that picture, performing an offbeat rendition of “La Vie en Rose.”
READ MORE: “Eileen Brennan Passes On,” by Terence Towles Canote
(A Shroud of Thoughts); “Eileen Brennan, 1932-2013,” by Ryan (Wordsmithonia).
Monday, July 29, 2013
Pierce’s Picks: “The Long Shadow”
A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.
The Long Shadow, by Mark Mills (Headline Review UK):
Although he’s best known for his works of historical crime fiction, such as last year’s languid but nonetheless gripping House of the Hunted, British author Mills takes a different course with his
fifth novel. The Long Shadow is set in the present day and draws readers into the circle of Ben Makepeace, a self-loathing and nearly ruined screenwriter in his 40s, who’s been living in one of London’s drearier corners ever since his wife ditched him for a flourishing businessman. But then a seeming miracle happens: a “hedge-fund whiz” determines to back Ben’s latest screenplay. What could go wrong? Well, maybe everything, for this deep-pocketed supporter turns out to be none other than Victor Sheldon, whom Ben knew when they were both boys. Their relationship back then was complicated by assorted jealousies, deceptions, and resentments; and as much as Ben would really like everything to work out in his favor now--giving him a chance to put aside recent disappointments and do right by his teenage son--it soon becomes clear that there is more behind Sheldon’s reappearance in his life than chance or good fortune. Mills, who won the Crime Writers’ Association’s New Blood Dagger in 2004 for his first novel, Amagansett, brings to his latest tale poignancy and
psychodrama, as well as elegantly rendered sentences that make the plot go down that much easier.
The Long Shadow, by Mark Mills (Headline Review UK):
Although he’s best known for his works of historical crime fiction, such as last year’s languid but nonetheless gripping House of the Hunted, British author Mills takes a different course with his
fifth novel. The Long Shadow is set in the present day and draws readers into the circle of Ben Makepeace, a self-loathing and nearly ruined screenwriter in his 40s, who’s been living in one of London’s drearier corners ever since his wife ditched him for a flourishing businessman. But then a seeming miracle happens: a “hedge-fund whiz” determines to back Ben’s latest screenplay. What could go wrong? Well, maybe everything, for this deep-pocketed supporter turns out to be none other than Victor Sheldon, whom Ben knew when they were both boys. Their relationship back then was complicated by assorted jealousies, deceptions, and resentments; and as much as Ben would really like everything to work out in his favor now--giving him a chance to put aside recent disappointments and do right by his teenage son--it soon becomes clear that there is more behind Sheldon’s reappearance in his life than chance or good fortune. Mills, who won the Crime Writers’ Association’s New Blood Dagger in 2004 for his first novel, Amagansett, brings to his latest tale poignancy and
psychodrama, as well as elegantly rendered sentences that make the plot go down that much easier.
On the Hunt for “Faraday”
I know this is the longest of longshots, but I’m going to ask it anyway: Does any reader out there have full video or even video clips from the 1973-1974 NBC Wednesday
Mystery Movie series Faraday and Company, which starred Dan Dailey and James McNaughton? If so, please contact me via e-mail at your earlier convenience. I would very much appreciate some assistance in this matter.
“Ripper Street” Fans, Take Note
BBC America has scheduled the second-season debut of that addictive crime series--set in Victorian London and starring Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, and Adam Rothenberg--for Sunday, December 1. Information about the premieres of this and other fine BBC America programs can be found here.
FOLLOW-UP: Subsequent to my penning this post, Ripper Street’s second-season debut on BBC America was postponed until the evening of February 22, 2014. Learn more here.
FOLLOW-UP: Subsequent to my penning this post, Ripper Street’s second-season debut on BBC America was postponed until the evening of February 22, 2014. Learn more here.
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Gage Passes Away
This comes as a shock: Leighton Gage, the author of half a dozen crime novels (including this year’s Perfect Hatred) starring Mario Silva, a middle-aged chief inspector with Brazil’s Federal Police, has apparently died. He was in his early 70s and had yet another Silva tale, The Ways of Evil Men, scheduled for publication by Soho Crime in January of next year.
A note on Leighton Gage’s Facebook page, but written by his daughter Melina Gage Ratcliffe and quoting Gage’s Brazilian wife, Eide, reads:
UPDATES: The Gumshoe Site’s Jiro Kimura says Leighton Gage was 71 years old, and that he “died from pancreatic cancer on July 26 at his home in Ocala, Florida, according to his daughter.” There are also a number of condolences posted in the blog Murder Is Everywhere, to which Gage had long contributed.
READ MORE: “Obituary Note: Crime Novelist Leighton Gage,” by Juliet Grames (Soho Crime); “Leighton, a Personal Remembrance,” by Annamaria Alfieri (Murder Is Everywhere); “Leighton Gage: Mensch,” by J. Sydney Jones (Scene of the Crime).
A note on Leighton Gage’s Facebook page, but written by his daughter Melina Gage Ratcliffe and quoting Gage’s Brazilian wife, Eide, reads:
My mother, my sisters and I are devastated to announce the passing of our father, Leighton Gage. Thank you friends and family for all the love and support.Our condolences go out to Gage’s family. We’ll offer more information here about the novelist’s demise after it is revealed.
A message from Eide Gage:
The light of my life was extinguished last night.
Leight passed to eternity peacefully in his sleep.
Should we cry because he died or smile because he lived?
UPDATES: The Gumshoe Site’s Jiro Kimura says Leighton Gage was 71 years old, and that he “died from pancreatic cancer on July 26 at his home in Ocala, Florida, according to his daughter.” There are also a number of condolences posted in the blog Murder Is Everywhere, to which Gage had long contributed.
READ MORE: “Obituary Note: Crime Novelist Leighton Gage,” by Juliet Grames (Soho Crime); “Leighton, a Personal Remembrance,” by Annamaria Alfieri (Murder Is Everywhere); “Leighton Gage: Mensch,” by J. Sydney Jones (Scene of the Crime).
Prizing a Pulp Insider
Tonight, on the third day of the PulpFest gathering in Columbus, Ohio, Garyn G. Roberts was named the winner of the 2013 Munsey Award. That commendation takes its moniker from early pulp-fiction publisher Frank A. Munsey and is presented annually “to a person who has worked for the betterment of the pulp community.”
According to a news release from the convention, “Garyn has worked in the field of higher education for many years, teaching English and popular culture studies. He is also an unabashed fan of the pulps. Garyn has written extensively about the pulps, both professionally and as a fan. He has edited or co-edited some of the best collections from the pulps including A Cent a Story: The Best from Ten Detective Aces, More Tales of the Defective Detective in the Pulps, The Compleat Adventures of the Moon Man, The Magical Mysteries of Don Diavolo, and The Compleat Great Merlini Saga. His insightful essays in these books and elsewhere have led to a greater understanding of the pulps both inside and outside of the pulp community.”
A full list of this year’s nominees is here.
READ MORE: “Con Report: PulpFest 2013,” by Walker Martin (Mystery*File).
According to a news release from the convention, “Garyn has worked in the field of higher education for many years, teaching English and popular culture studies. He is also an unabashed fan of the pulps. Garyn has written extensively about the pulps, both professionally and as a fan. He has edited or co-edited some of the best collections from the pulps including A Cent a Story: The Best from Ten Detective Aces, More Tales of the Defective Detective in the Pulps, The Compleat Adventures of the Moon Man, The Magical Mysteries of Don Diavolo, and The Compleat Great Merlini Saga. His insightful essays in these books and elsewhere have led to a greater understanding of the pulps both inside and outside of the pulp community.”
A full list of this year’s nominees is here.
READ MORE: “Con Report: PulpFest 2013,” by Walker Martin (Mystery*File).
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Bullet Points: Racking Up Records Edition
Depending on which statistics counter you choose to believe--either the one positioned at the bottom of this page’s right-hand column or Blogger’s own tallying software--The Rap Sheet has clocked in between 1.441 million and 1.854 million visitors over its now seven-plus years of existence. What’s not in
dispute is that Tuesday’s lengthy post about prolific novelist Ed Gorman was the 5,500th entry on this blog. That’s a hell of a lot of writing--not just by me, but also by The Rap Sheet’s less-frequent cadre of contributors--for the sheer joy of covering this genre in all its forms. I want to thank the blog’s plenitude of readers from all over the globe. You give us the motivation and energy to keep The Rap Sheet going. Now, in other news ...
• This sounds like a most worthwhile project: “In a little less than two weeks, the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio will turn its attention to an almost forgotten character who appeared in books, radio, and movies for over a century,” explains blogger Andrew Graham. “Nick Carter made his debut in 1886, the year before Sherlock Holmes came on the scene in London. That’s where the comparison ends. None of Carter's mysteries or adventures were in the ballpark of the greatest detective of them all, but what Carter didn’t have in quality, he made up for (as best he could) in quantity with hundreds of novels and short stories being written.” I’ll keep you posted on the debut of this series. In the meantime, refresh your memory of the Carter character here and here.
• In tribute to Dennis Farina, the American actor who died earlier this week at age 69, I’m embedding here the opening titles from Buddy Faro, a short-lived 1998 CBS-TV series in which he played a legendary private eye who vanished in 1978 while trying to track down the woman he loved. Twenty years later, he’s found by a much less talented investigator, played by Frank Whaley, and the two soon go into business together. Yes, the concept was more than a little reminiscent of Dan Dailey’s Faraday and Company (1973-1974), but that fact didn’t make Buddy Faro any less worth watching. Too bad it hasn’t won a DVD release yet.
• James Lee Burke, author of the new Dave Robicheaux mystery, Light of the World (Simon & Schuster), is Jeff Rutherford’s latest guest on the Reading and Writing podcast. You can listen here.
• Some excellent news from Max Allan Collins: After recently welcoming into the world Complex 90, the fifth of Mickey Spillane’s unfinished Mike Hammer novels that he’s completed and brought to market since Spillane’s death seven years ago, Collins now reports that he’s signed with publisher Titan Books to turn three more partial Spillane tales into full Hammer books. “These are smaller fragments (in one case, two fragments combined), but all are significant ... usually two chapters or so with notes,” he says. “What I am really excited about is the era of these novels: it’s the lost years between Kiss Me, Deadly in 1952 and The Girl Hunters in 1961.” Before any of those books sees print, however, Collins has King of the Weeds--“conceived by Mickey as the last Mike Hammer novel”--awaiting publication, presumably in 2014.
• Meanwhile, Canadian author J. Robert Janes, who I had the privilege of interviewing last year, has since published two books: Tapestry, another in his acclaimed mystery series featuring Chief Inspector Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the French Sûreté and his partner, German Detektiv Inspektor Hermann Kohler; and The Hunting Ground, a standalone thriller, also set during World War II. More recently, he let me know that he’s also signed contracts to produce two more novels, Carnival (the 15th St-Cyr/Kohler outing) and Betrayal (another thriller), and has agreed to a TV option on the St-Cyr/Kohler series. “[T]here were two groups interested [in a television adaptation],” Janes tells me. “Both had very strong film and California connections. Story Mining and Supply Company, in Santa Monica, have the option for a year and a half, and it can then be renewed. While I’m sure they will be seeing the project as an international one, I really have had little personal contact as yet, though I did send off a brief run-through of the series (about 14 pages).”
• The second edition of Grift Magazine is now available.
• Responding to a notice, in Ed Gorman’s blog, about the first segment of my interview with that veteran Iowa wordsmith appearing on the Kirkus Reviews Web site, his fellow author, Bill Pronzini, wrote: “Well-deserved accolades and fine interview, Ed. If I had my way, you’d be MWA’s [the Mystery Writers of America’s] next Grand Master.” Hmm. And why shouldn’t that happen? In recent years the MWA has bestowed its highest honor upon Ken Follett and Margaret Maron, Martha Grimes, Sara Paretsky, Dorothy Gilman, James Lee Burke and Sue Grafton, and of course Pronzini himself. Why not Gorman? By the measurements of talent, longevity, and his contributions to the genre, he has certainly earned it! This idea seems worthy of MWA consideration. How can we make that happen?
• Aliya Whiteley has a very good piece in Den of Geek! about English-born American stage and movie performer Claude Rains (1889-1967), the co-star of Casablanca, Notorious, and The Invisible Man. “Rains,” she writes, “brought a quiet realism and a penetrating intelligence to the many movies in which he acted; he could work in any genre and improve any film. Sometimes he played amoral characters, or downright evil ones. Or he could play otherworldly figures--he may be the only actor to play both a devil and an angel.”
• I’m not sure that NBC-TV’s forthcoming “sex ’n’ blood retelling” of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is for me. Watch the trailer here.
• Check out Madison, Wisconsin’s new Mystery to Me bookshop.
• A mystery solved at Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion.
• John Connolly’s Charlie “Bird” Parker series gets some love from Shelf Inflicted. Contributor Brandon Sears writes, “If it wasn't for Connolly, I wouldn’t read half of the material I consume each year. His Parker series was a gateway drug that caused me to seek out novel after novel after novel, making sure I always had something new and exciting to read.”
• William Schallert, the 91-year-old former co-star of The Patty Duke Show (1963-1966) and The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries (1977-1979), is a guest on the latest episode of Ed Robertson’s nostalgic radio show, TV Confidential. That program airs from July 24 through 30 on stations across the United States. Check the TV Confidential Web page for broadcast dates and times.
• Rap Sheet contributor Gary Phillips has a story in Moonstone’s brand-new pulp-style fiction anthology, The Spider: Extreme Prejudice, edited by Joe Gentile and Tommy Hancock. “In it,” says Phillips, “the dark avenger teams up with Jimmy Christopher, Operator 5, another iconic pulp character who, before [24’s Jack] Bauer and [James] Bond, was the first super spy. He had his own title from 1934 to 1939, and this is the first-ever such pairing of these two in prose.”
• As a onetime resident of Detroit, I’ve been following coverage of that city’s Republican-engineered bankruptcy proceedings with interest. I’ve particularly enjoyed David Sirota’s Salon piece, “Don’t Buy the Right-wing Myth About Detroit,” and Jonathan Cohn’s article in The New Republic, “Three Charts that Show Obama Isn’t to Blame for Detroit’s Bankruptcy.” Fingers crossed for the Motor City’s future.
• I usually avoid 3-D films, but a new IMAX version of The Wizard of Oz--which celebrates that picture’s 75th anniversary in 2014--is being released this coming September, and I might just have to go see it.
• Production on a movie version of the old TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., starring Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer, is only just gearing up in the UK. But already, it may be facing financial troubles.
• Worth reading in The Atlantic Monthly: “Why Stephen King Spends ‘Months and Even Years’ Writing Opening Sentences.”
• Think Progress’ Alyssa Rosenberg ponders the parallels between Florida’s notorious Trayvon Martin murder and director Norman Jewison’s 1967 film, In the Heat of the Night.
• If you have fond memories of the 1970s TV anthology series Police Story (created by Joseph Wambaugh), then you should enjoy Marty McKee’s write-up about the pilot movie for that crime drama.
• BBC One has finally announced the titles of all three episodes to be included in the third season of the TV series Sherlock.
• And is no place on earth safe from being immortalized in a noir-fiction collection? Akashic Books has already brought us myriad such anthologies. Now there’s KL Noir, those initials standing for Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. Pulp Curry’s Andrew Nete writes: “Kuala Lumpur may not seem like the most obvious place to set an anthology of noir fiction. On the surface, at least, it has a reputation as an orderly, well behaved city. But if this book is anything to go by, a lot is going on under the surface.”
• This sounds like a most worthwhile project: “In a little less than two weeks, the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio will turn its attention to an almost forgotten character who appeared in books, radio, and movies for over a century,” explains blogger Andrew Graham. “Nick Carter made his debut in 1886, the year before Sherlock Holmes came on the scene in London. That’s where the comparison ends. None of Carter's mysteries or adventures were in the ballpark of the greatest detective of them all, but what Carter didn’t have in quality, he made up for (as best he could) in quantity with hundreds of novels and short stories being written.” I’ll keep you posted on the debut of this series. In the meantime, refresh your memory of the Carter character here and here.
• In tribute to Dennis Farina, the American actor who died earlier this week at age 69, I’m embedding here the opening titles from Buddy Faro, a short-lived 1998 CBS-TV series in which he played a legendary private eye who vanished in 1978 while trying to track down the woman he loved. Twenty years later, he’s found by a much less talented investigator, played by Frank Whaley, and the two soon go into business together. Yes, the concept was more than a little reminiscent of Dan Dailey’s Faraday and Company (1973-1974), but that fact didn’t make Buddy Faro any less worth watching. Too bad it hasn’t won a DVD release yet.
• James Lee Burke, author of the new Dave Robicheaux mystery, Light of the World (Simon & Schuster), is Jeff Rutherford’s latest guest on the Reading and Writing podcast. You can listen here.
• Some excellent news from Max Allan Collins: After recently welcoming into the world Complex 90, the fifth of Mickey Spillane’s unfinished Mike Hammer novels that he’s completed and brought to market since Spillane’s death seven years ago, Collins now reports that he’s signed with publisher Titan Books to turn three more partial Spillane tales into full Hammer books. “These are smaller fragments (in one case, two fragments combined), but all are significant ... usually two chapters or so with notes,” he says. “What I am really excited about is the era of these novels: it’s the lost years between Kiss Me, Deadly in 1952 and The Girl Hunters in 1961.” Before any of those books sees print, however, Collins has King of the Weeds--“conceived by Mickey as the last Mike Hammer novel”--awaiting publication, presumably in 2014.
• Meanwhile, Canadian author J. Robert Janes, who I had the privilege of interviewing last year, has since published two books: Tapestry, another in his acclaimed mystery series featuring Chief Inspector Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the French Sûreté and his partner, German Detektiv Inspektor Hermann Kohler; and The Hunting Ground, a standalone thriller, also set during World War II. More recently, he let me know that he’s also signed contracts to produce two more novels, Carnival (the 15th St-Cyr/Kohler outing) and Betrayal (another thriller), and has agreed to a TV option on the St-Cyr/Kohler series. “[T]here were two groups interested [in a television adaptation],” Janes tells me. “Both had very strong film and California connections. Story Mining and Supply Company, in Santa Monica, have the option for a year and a half, and it can then be renewed. While I’m sure they will be seeing the project as an international one, I really have had little personal contact as yet, though I did send off a brief run-through of the series (about 14 pages).”
• The second edition of Grift Magazine is now available.
• Responding to a notice, in Ed Gorman’s blog, about the first segment of my interview with that veteran Iowa wordsmith appearing on the Kirkus Reviews Web site, his fellow author, Bill Pronzini, wrote: “Well-deserved accolades and fine interview, Ed. If I had my way, you’d be MWA’s [the Mystery Writers of America’s] next Grand Master.” Hmm. And why shouldn’t that happen? In recent years the MWA has bestowed its highest honor upon Ken Follett and Margaret Maron, Martha Grimes, Sara Paretsky, Dorothy Gilman, James Lee Burke and Sue Grafton, and of course Pronzini himself. Why not Gorman? By the measurements of talent, longevity, and his contributions to the genre, he has certainly earned it! This idea seems worthy of MWA consideration. How can we make that happen?
• Aliya Whiteley has a very good piece in Den of Geek! about English-born American stage and movie performer Claude Rains (1889-1967), the co-star of Casablanca, Notorious, and The Invisible Man. “Rains,” she writes, “brought a quiet realism and a penetrating intelligence to the many movies in which he acted; he could work in any genre and improve any film. Sometimes he played amoral characters, or downright evil ones. Or he could play otherworldly figures--he may be the only actor to play both a devil and an angel.”
• I’m not sure that NBC-TV’s forthcoming “sex ’n’ blood retelling” of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is for me. Watch the trailer here.
• Check out Madison, Wisconsin’s new Mystery to Me bookshop.
• A mystery solved at Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion.
• John Connolly’s Charlie “Bird” Parker series gets some love from Shelf Inflicted. Contributor Brandon Sears writes, “If it wasn't for Connolly, I wouldn’t read half of the material I consume each year. His Parker series was a gateway drug that caused me to seek out novel after novel after novel, making sure I always had something new and exciting to read.”
• William Schallert, the 91-year-old former co-star of The Patty Duke Show (1963-1966) and The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries (1977-1979), is a guest on the latest episode of Ed Robertson’s nostalgic radio show, TV Confidential. That program airs from July 24 through 30 on stations across the United States. Check the TV Confidential Web page for broadcast dates and times.
• Rap Sheet contributor Gary Phillips has a story in Moonstone’s brand-new pulp-style fiction anthology, The Spider: Extreme Prejudice, edited by Joe Gentile and Tommy Hancock. “In it,” says Phillips, “the dark avenger teams up with Jimmy Christopher, Operator 5, another iconic pulp character who, before [24’s Jack] Bauer and [James] Bond, was the first super spy. He had his own title from 1934 to 1939, and this is the first-ever such pairing of these two in prose.”
• As a onetime resident of Detroit, I’ve been following coverage of that city’s Republican-engineered bankruptcy proceedings with interest. I’ve particularly enjoyed David Sirota’s Salon piece, “Don’t Buy the Right-wing Myth About Detroit,” and Jonathan Cohn’s article in The New Republic, “Three Charts that Show Obama Isn’t to Blame for Detroit’s Bankruptcy.” Fingers crossed for the Motor City’s future.
• I usually avoid 3-D films, but a new IMAX version of The Wizard of Oz--which celebrates that picture’s 75th anniversary in 2014--is being released this coming September, and I might just have to go see it.
• Production on a movie version of the old TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., starring Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer, is only just gearing up in the UK. But already, it may be facing financial troubles.
• Worth reading in The Atlantic Monthly: “Why Stephen King Spends ‘Months and Even Years’ Writing Opening Sentences.”
• Think Progress’ Alyssa Rosenberg ponders the parallels between Florida’s notorious Trayvon Martin murder and director Norman Jewison’s 1967 film, In the Heat of the Night.
• If you have fond memories of the 1970s TV anthology series Police Story (created by Joseph Wambaugh), then you should enjoy Marty McKee’s write-up about the pilot movie for that crime drama.
• BBC One has finally announced the titles of all three episodes to be included in the third season of the TV series Sherlock.
• And is no place on earth safe from being immortalized in a noir-fiction collection? Akashic Books has already brought us myriad such anthologies. Now there’s KL Noir, those initials standing for Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. Pulp Curry’s Andrew Nete writes: “Kuala Lumpur may not seem like the most obvious place to set an anthology of noir fiction. On the surface, at least, it has a reputation as an orderly, well behaved city. But if this book is anything to go by, a lot is going on under the surface.”
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
What Ed Said
Turnabout’s fair play, right? Three years ago, novelist, editor, and anthologist Ed Gorman interviewed me for Mystery Scene magazine. (You’ll find that piece here.) Today my Kirkus Reviews column is devoted to a brief inquisition of Gorman.
I’ve wanted to ask this author about his life and career and literary contributions for what seems like a very long time. But I never found the right reason or opportunity to do so until just recently, after I enjoyed reading his new novel, Flashpoint (Severn House)--the fifth and possibly final entry in his series about
Dev Conrad, a modern American political consultant and troubleshooter, who debuted in Sleeping Dogs (2008). The now 71-year-old Gorman, an almost lifelong resident of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has been laboring in the trenches of crime fiction (as well as horror fiction and western fiction) ever since the mid-1980s, following his transition from commercial advertising work to full-time writing. During those decades--and occasionally under the pseudonyms Daniel Ransom or E.J. (for Edward Joseph) Gorman--he’s turned out something between 70 and 100 novels, enough that he’s actually lost count. He’s penned novels in series as well myriad briefer
tales, and edited numerous anthologies of short stories (several, like By Hook or
By Crook, with Martin H. Greenberg). He’s been so prolific over the years, Bookreporter once joked that he “seems to have printer’s ink flowing through his veins ...”
Gorman’s efforts have not gone unrecognized. As I mention in today’s Kirkus column, he has at various times received the Shamus Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Spur Award, and The Eye, the lifetime achievement award given out by the Private Eye Writers of America (PWA). But his influence doesn’t stop there. Together with author Robert J. Randisi, in 1985 he created Mystery Scene magazine, for which he still pens a regular column, “Gormania.” From 2008 to 2009 he served as president of the PWA. And he’s been a frequently enthusiastic supporter (occasionally through his blog) of efforts by other wordsmiths looking to break into the fiction-writing game or win greater recognition for their talents.
“Ed Gorman’s talent as a writer is matched only by his generosity to other writers,” Randisi told me in a recent e-note. “Indeed, he’s a true Renaissance man because he has also been columnist, reviewer, and publisher in this business. But I’ve also been privileged over the years to have Ed as a friend, and perhaps that is where he has been the most invaluable.”
Although Gorman himself leans heavily in the direction of modesty, it’s certainly not uncommon to hear colleagues sing his praises.
“I became an Ed Gorman fan in the mid-’80s after buying one of his Jack Dwyer books, Murder Straight Up [1987], on impulse,” explains author Dick Lochte (Blues in the Night), another PWA ex-president. “Since then I’ve never read a sentence he’s written that I didn’t like, but I’ve a special fondness for his Sam McCain novels which, aside from being cleverly crafted whodunits, are evocations of small-town America on the brink of the 1960s shake-up; [they’re] as sweetly nostalgic and poignant and politically astute as any you can find in fiction. Aside from being a fine writer and a tireless supporter of genre fiction, Ed happens to be a good friend. No matter what’s going on in his life--and a lot usually is--he always seems to find time to offer help when needed. Were it not for his encouragement,
my admittedly thin bibliography would be a couple of books and at least half a dozen short stories shy. Bottom line, the man is a true gent.”
(Left) The prolific Ed Gorman
Muscatine, Iowa, novelist Max Allan Collins (Target Lancer), who Gorman acknowledges was instrumental in showing him how to compose fiction at length, says that “One of my proudest achievements is being part of Ed Gorman’s transition from writer of literary short stories to full-fledged mystery novelist. This is not to say he stopped writing short stories or being literary, either--I think he’s probably my generation’s best writer of short crime fiction, meaning not to take away from his fine and distinctive novels. Ed’s work is characterized by melancholy and compassion, and he is among the most human and humane of contemporary crime writers. We’ve been friends for many years and he is generous and thoughtful, to say the least, and I get a kick out of having once been thought to be Ed Gorman. Ed is notoriously reluctant to make public appearances, despite an affability second to none. For the first 10 years of his crime-writing career, people would occasionally assume that that other Iowa writer was me under a pen name. I’m pleased that anybody would think I’m that good.”
Although he’s been slowed down over the last dozen years by an incurable cancer, multiple myeloma, Gorman continues to get up every day and fulfill the demands of his self-inflicted sentence as an author. It’s what he does. It’s what he loves. Earlier this month, I sent him dozens of questions via e-mail, asking him about his personal and professional history, his proclivity toward writing in a variety of genres, his debts to the classic Gold Medal novels, his dislike of rewriting, why he thinks we’re seeing another “golden age” of crime fiction, and ... well, many other subjects. His responses to a few of those fit into today’s Kirkus column; the rest can be found below.
J. Kingston Pierce: Were your parents big readers?
Ed Gorman: My mother and father both came from Irish farming communities and moved to Cedar Rapids when they were young. My mother consumed magazines by the ton and my father was a reader of pulp magazines until the ’50s, when he switched to paperbacks. He especially enjoyed hard-boiled mysteries, westerns, and history.
JKP: And were they the ones who got you interested in reading?
EG: My mother started taking me to the library when I was 4. I was hooked immediately.
JKP: As a boy, what did you want to be when you grew up?
EG: From fifth grade on I wanted to be writer. I never thought about being anything else.
JKP: I understand that you grew up in some fairly rough neighborhoods, and practiced a certain amount of petty thievery and shoplifting in your youth, but that you were eventually scared straight. What’s the story there?
EG: My criminal career, as such, ended because of two experiences. A guy who wanted to get back at a friend of mine convinced his [female] cousin to accuse [my friend] of stealing one of their purses. I happened to be with him the night she came into the Rexall where we were having burgers after pumping gas for six hours. We didn’t know either one of them. We ate and left, and later that night detectives came to our homes and accused us of stealing the purse, which, according to the girl, contained enough money to make it grand larceny. That was followed by two weeks of hell--the line-up, four or five times at the police station, and a lawyer who advised my parents maybe I should plead guilty to avoid reform school, though there was no guarantee I wouldn’t wind up there. Finally the girl, apparently feeling guilty about setting us up, turned herself in.
The other incident concerned a friend of mine who started hanging around this guy who’d just gotten out of prison and come back to the old neighborhood. We all remembered him. He was a punk, violent but a coward. I’d seen him back out of two or three fights he’d started. But he had a big influence on my friend. One night they held up a gas station and killed a poor 16-year-old kid with a shotgun.
During this time I’d been expelled from two high schools. My girlfriend had broken up with me and I’d gone insane. ... I was in pain 24/7. Alcohol helped. Then much later I started in on various drugs. I was a terrible angry drunk.
JKP: But you went on to attend Coe College in Cedar Rapids, right? With what sort of degree did you graduate from there?
EG: I didn’t graduate. The alcohol took its toll. I love Coe and owe it a great deal. Such great professors. I was a bum; my occupation for a long time.
JKP: Like your fellow mystery writers Dorothy L. Sayers and Philip Kerr, you started out doing advertising work. Can you tell us what you did in that field?
EG: I started out as a copywriter in Des Moines, then worked by phone and mail for a small group in Chicago, then went back to Cedar Rapids and worked there for three different agencies, and finally had a three-person shop of my own. I worked for a time out of Chicago producing commercials.
I should say here that in my 18 years of editing Mystery Scene I probably talked to 50 writers who were or had been in advertising, and only three or four of them had anything good to say about the experience. I met some decent, humane people, for sure, in the business, but more often than not I met people who saw advertising as this great romantic calling. I worked for two weeks for a creative director who said that if you didn’t own a Porsche after two years of working for him you weren’t doing your job. A deep thinker, obviously. He just couldn’t believe I was walking away from such a very nice salary. That was when I started writing political speeches. I’m sure I learned things writing copy. Brevity if nothing else.
JKP: In what year did you stop drinking, and why?
EG: In May of 1974. One Friday night I got into some drunken, angry scene in a restaurant and was reminded of this by a young woman who called me at 2 a.m. She said she’d gotten my name off a toilet wall. I still have no idea who she was. Or why she called. I remember, being semi-sober by then, telling her all sorts of lies about myself. We must have talked for half an hour.
When I woke up the next morning one of the first things I thought of was going to a pawn shop and buying a gun. I really was at the end. My life was completely out of control. I’d realized that for years, but for some reason that morning I couldn’t handle it any longer. I’d destroyed a marriage, been a terrible father, had turned myself into both a demon and a public joke--and knew I couldn’t go on. I rented a rustic cabin far up on the Iowa River. I stayed there and got clean. I walked a lot and cried a lot. I was terrified of going back. I was also scared that I couldn’t stay away from alcohol and drugs, that the cabin stay had been a fluke. And facing [the past] 16 years of various selfish sins and moments of bottle and drug craziness--facing my past sober was really scary. Every once in a while, as the months rolled on, I’d buy a fifth of whiskey and just set it on the table. Tempting myself but never giving in. I loved being clean and I still do. I’m one of the blessed ones.
JKP: I read online that you “began writing to fill time after giving up drinking.” Is that an accurate statement?
EG: Partly. Even during my drinking days I managed to do some writing, but after I got clean I had so much time on my hands--I used to sit in bars for hours--that I went at it seriously, writing a lot of short stories, selling them mostly to downscale literary magazines and some very downscale men’s magazines. In 1976 I won a Charles Scribner’s prize for a short story and that gave me a lot of encouragement.
JKP: Were you still laboring away in the advertising trenches at the time you began working on fiction?
EG: Yes, after I’d sobered up. I always tried to sneak an hour or two on my stories during the workday. I was not what you’d call a loyal employee.
JKP: Is it correct that you became a full-time writer in 1989?
EG: Yes. That was when I turned my three-person agency over to my artist co-worker, Gail Cross, who is now one of the most in-demand book designers in the field. As I said, I needed to take on quickie writing gigs from time to time. I had no trouble selling novels generally, but publishers are not noted for their quick pay practices.
JKP: My understanding is that you’ve been married twice. During what period did your first marriage last?
EG: From 1964 to 1968. I destroyed it with my drinking.
JKP: And later you wed the former Carol Maxwell, who’s now an author in her own right. How and when did you meet her?
EG: In 1979 I did TV commercials for a bank. Somebody told me that a Carol Maxwell was a good actress with a lot of work behind her at the University of Iowa and numerous other venues, so I called her and asked her to audition. Sometimes I pulled in Chicago talent, but I’d taken a bath on an industrial film I’d done and wanted to make up for it with this campaign. She read beautifully and was great looking, It took awhile for us to get together romantically, but it was worth the wait. She’s given me the life I’d always longed for. Thirty-plus years of it. I got the better end of the deal, believe me.
JKP: I’m pretty sure that my initial exposure to your work was the 1995 novel The First Lady, a standalone tale about a president’s wife who’s accused of murder. However, that book came out a decade after you started publishing fiction. I believe your first two novels to see print were Rough Cut and New, Improved Murder, both released in 1985--and both of which starred cop-turned-private eye Jack Dwyer, who solved crimes in a barely disguised Cedar Rapids. Were those actually the first two novels you wrote, or did you try your hand at earlier books that never saw print?
EG: The First Lady was one of three bestseller-type novels I wrote. They weren’t personal books.
I’d never been able to finish a novel until I met Max Allan Collins. I must have started and stopped novels 50 times (not an exaggeration) over the years. Max let me read his books in manuscript. Seeing novels in typed form took away the mystery. Plus, he gave me the single best piece of writerly advice I’ve
ever gotten: Write the book all the way through without looking back. Then do your revision. Don’t stop and start.
Two agents and six or seven houses turned down Rough Cut. They all complained that the narrator was a borderline psychotic. A young junior editor at St. Martin’s picked it up out of slush, liked it, fought for it, and bought it. One of the big Eastern newspapers headlined the review, “A Hate Letter to the Advertising Industry.” I still don’t think that’s accurate. As I said, I met a lot of decent people in advertising. By the time Rough Cut was published (a year and a half after I finished it), I’d written two more novels and they both sold quickly.
JKP: Can you describe how you felt, seeing your first novels in print?
EG: Thrilled. When the first copy arrived I just sat down and stared at it. I was 40 years old and this had been my dream since I was 8 or 9.
JKP: How has publishing changed for the better--and for the worse--since the time you sold your first novel?
EG: It’s corporate now. I feel sorry for the editors. So many have lost jobs, so many can’t get published books that they love.
JKP: Your fiction has been all over the map, falling into genres from crime fiction and political thrillers to horror and westerns. Most people would be pretty happy to master just one field of fiction. Was a tighter focus ever in the cards for you?
EG: Being all over the map has seriously damaged my career. Most successful writers stick to one genre; some successful writers write the same book again and again. I didn’t choose all these genres consciously. It was just that I’d grown up reading all over the place, so I had genuine interest in them. I also had heroes in each of these genres and I tried to emulate them.
JKP: In an interview you did three years ago with Diabolical Radio, you suggested that some of the books you’ve produced have been of, let’s say, lesser quality than others. And Mike Ashley wrote in The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Modern Crime Fiction that you’ve actually dismissed the horror/science fiction novels you wrote under the pseudonym Daniel Ransom as “trash.” Being as prolific a writer as you are, do you simply accept that you have to put your name on a clunker now and then? Or have you only decided in retrospect that some of your books didn’t measured up to your expectations?
EG: The first three or four Daniel Ransom novels really are trash. One of them I don’t even have a copy of. Don’t want one. Starting with Night Caller [1987] they began getting respectable, even--sometimes--enthusiastic reviews. The early ones I wrote strictly to market, trying to make sales. When I moved Ransom to [publisher] DAW the books improved a good deal, thanks to my fine editor, Sheila Gilbert. I’ve learned a lot from her. I do my best with every novel and story. As John D. MacDonald, a man even more prolific than I used to be, said, no matter how hard you try, some just work out better than others.
I will say that I’ve tried my best to honor the genres I’ve worked in. [Critic] Dorothy B. Hughes felt that The Autumn Dead [1987] was a successful new approach to the private-eye novel; and The Washington Post ran a long rave by the literary writer Carolyn See about the first Sam McCain novel, The Day the Music Died [1999]. In thrillers, both Blood Moon [1994] and The Midnight Room [2009] were hailed as significantly fresh approaches to the serial-killer novel. In horror, Cage of Night [1996] is still in print after 18 years, and my collection Cages [1995] won the International Horror Award for the year, the previous winners being Stephen King and Richard Matheson. And I won a Spur award for my
short story “The Face,” and of my four Leo Guild novels, Publishers Weekly said that my westerns were “written for grown-ups.”
JKP: It’s been said that the two “overriding influences” on your fiction are old Gold Medal novels and Ernest Hemingway. Do you think that’s true?
EG: Certainly the Gold Medal novels shaped me, Hemingway less so as the years go on. I owe a great debt to Max Collins and Bill Pronzini for my crime fiction; I made a study of their books just as I did the work of Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block, Ed McBain, and John D. MacDonald.
JKP: Younger readers might not be familiar with Gold Medal Books. What contributions would you say that that publisher made to the crime-fiction genre?
EG: The key Gold Medal writers such as John D. MacDonald, Peter Rabe. Charles Williams, Vin Packer, Gil Brewer, Lawrence Block, Malcolm Braly, and others brought style and shrewd social and psychological assessments of various American societies to the crime novels.
JKP: You told Vince Keenan in a 2010 interview that “Ross Macdonald was the finest writer of private detective fiction ever. Flat out.” First off, why do think that way?
EG: Voice, style, and a generous troubled heart. There are scenes in his novels that can hurt you. And haunt you.
JKP: And in what ways has Macdonald’s work influenced your own?
EG: I’ve never felt any influence. I would never even try to imitate him in any way, because he was too good.
JKP: You’ve also mentioned Ed McBain as a principal influence on your fiction. In what specific ways do you think that’s been true?
EG: Voice and a social sense and scene structure. He could move you through a book like nobody else.
JKP: You’ve been working hard at this game a long time, so it’s likely that you’ve influenced other writers, in turn. Being immodest for a moment, tell me: What do you think other, younger wordsmiths can learn from your own fiction?
EG: I see on various blogs that some of the younger writes like my books and stories--and a number of them have written me letters--but the only impression I have is that they like the writing itself and my viewpoint as an outsider. They also like the consistency of that viewpoint being the same whichever genre I’m working in.
JKP: You have said that you think your fiction is, on the whole, generally optimistic. Yet so many others define it as “dark.” How do you explain that difference of viewpoints?
EG: By that I meant that I’m not nihilistic. Certainly a good deal of my work is dark. Both Publishers Weekly and Kirkus have pointed out that the Sam McCain books, for all their wry humor, are dark and serious books. Booklist even compared them to novels by Lawrence Block and Elmore Leonard. But I’m not much for good and evil writ large. I do believe there are some truly evil people, but in my experience most folks will do the decent thing when they have to consciously choose.
JKP: I’ve heard that you are not fond of rewriting, that you’d rather throw a book away than go through any significant efforts to rework it. Is that true, and if so, how many books do you think you’ve round-filed over the course of your career?
EG: That was true until I got cancer the first time. I can no longer afford that indulgence. Now I do two and sometimes three drafts of everything. I also have a private editor, Linda Seibels, read my final draft. She tears into it for one more go-around. As for how many I’ve round-filed, I’d say at least 10 and maybe a few more.
JKP: OK, since you’ve brought it up, let’s talk about your health. As I understand it, you were diagnosed around 2001 with an incurable cancer. What sort of cancer do you have?
EG: In November of 2001 I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. A few people thought I was sort of cavalier about it--in denial--but my chances of survival were 90 percent. Three months later, though, I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, which is incurable. I was not cavalier about that.
JKP: Earlier this year, I believe, you went to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota for a stem-cell transplant. How did that go, and what’s your current prognosis?
EG: It was the worst physical experience of my life. Nothing ever came close. But I’m now 100 percent cancer free, so it was worth it. Because multiple myeloma is incurable, it will come back. I know people who’ve gone only three years before it’s returned, and I’ve also known a man who’s 12 years cancer free and a woman who’s eight.
JKP: You’ve written eight or nine series over the last 30 years, but also dozens of standalone novels. What, to you, are the relative merits or producing series versus standalones?
EG: I prefer standalones. They offer me more freedom.
JKP: Do you identify with any one of your series protagonists more than the others?
EG: I suppose Sam McCain and Dev Conrad are the two most like me, but they really aren’t in any strict sense me.
JKP: You’ve earned a great number of fans with your series about Sam McCain, a compassionate lawyer/private eye in 1950s and ’60s Iowa. How did that series come in to being, and what is it about McCain that makes him such a durable protagonist?
EG: I got tired of all the Happy Days B.S. The ’50s were a good time if you were white, Christian, middle-class, and straight. If you weren’t you had big problems. I wanted to tell the truth about the ’50s.
JKP: Reading the McCain tales, I get the impression that you identify strongly with the era in which they’re set. Is that the case?
EG: I do identify with the ’50s and ’60s. For all the turmoil writhing beneath the official Ozzie and Harriet mentality, the country was more understandable. For good and ill alike there was a commonality that was destroyed during the anti-[Vietnam] War years. I hated the war, but the political schism it created has never been resolved. And it was then that the destruction of the middle-class began.
JKP: I keep hearing that you’re going to end the Sam McCain series ... and yet you continue to come up with new installments, mostly recently 2011’s Bad Moon Rising. That makes nine
McCain books. Do you expect to keep the series going?
EG: One more I think. Sam was drafted at the end of Bad Moon Rising. I think readers will be surprised by Riders on the Storm.
JKP: Your 2008 novel, Sleeping Dogs, introduced yet another series star, resourceful political consultant Dev Conrad. You’d concocted novels before about politicians and their races and woes before, but here you were committing yourself to a succession of books that examine the ins and outs, ups and downs and turnarounds of modern American campaigning. What do you hope to achieve with the Conrad series?
EG: As I said earlier, those three political best-seller type novels I wrote were done for market. My editor, a very wise and nice guy, wanted me to sell better. But they weren’t personal novels for me. Dev Conrad is very personal. He’s a version of me, for one thing, and he certainly reflects my cynical opinion of our political sewer.
JKP: What do you see in Conrad that makes him a distinctly different character from your previous series protagonists?
EG: He’s hipper, more worldly, more jaded.
JKP: Your new Conrad novel, Flashpoint, focuses on a longtime U.S. senator from Illinois, Robert Logan, who’s implicated in the beating death of a younger woman who had been present at several of his recent campaign events, and with whom some of his staffers (as well as his aggrieved wife) are convinced he’s been having a relationship. However, the tale is also about the feeding frenzy that the modern media engage in when they think an officeholder has been tripped up by scandal. You spent some time penning political speeches during your early years as a freelance writer. Did you see these dynamics at work then, or was your story inspired by more recent developments?
EG: I think being deserted by your friends in political scandals has always been the case. I remember that a few of [Richard] Nixon’s friends stood by him till the end. Whatever you thought of Nixon, you had to be moved by the loyalty of his friends.
JKP: Deep into Flashpoint, someone says to Conrad: “I’ve talked to a few of your other clients. We all think that deep down you hate politicians.” Conrad insists that he doesn’t hate politicians any more than he despises political consultants, that “we’re all guilty” of turning politics into a sporting event divorced from real-world outcomes. Does that reflect your own viewpoint?
EG: Absolutely. And it’s true. Pols are certainly cynical; the people who handle them even more so, including Dev.
JKP: Are you currently working on another Dev Conrad book?
EG: There may not be another Dev. I haven’t made up my mind yet.
JKP: What other projects are you laboring over right now?
EG: I’m writing a Sam McCain short story to help me feel my way through the next novel. I’ve done this trial-run thing before and it generally helps.
JKP: In 1985 you co-founded Mystery Scene magazine with fellow author Robert J. Randisi. Why did you think that the world needed such a publication? And did you expect Mystery Scene to still be available and popular in 2013?
EG: Science fiction had the great news magazine Locus, we just thought mystery deserved its own. I have to say that I ran the magazine for 18 years pretty much as my own fanzine--I covered anything I felt like: Westerns, horror, even romance sometimes. [Publishers] Kate Stine and Brian Skupin have turned it into a brilliant, beautiful professional magazine.
JKP: When critics talk about the “Golden Age of Crime Fiction,” they’re most often referencing the 1920s and ’30s. Yet you’ve referred to the 21st century as being another such Golden Age. How do you make that case?
EG: Marcia Muller, Laura Lippman, Megan Abbott, Michael Connelly, Nancy Pickard, James W. Hall, Lawrence Block, Vicki Hendricks, James Lee Burke, and so on. The so-called Golden Age didn’t come close.
JKP: Among the folks who might be considered up-and-coming writers in this genre, whose work has impressed you?
EG: Tom Piccirilli, Dave Zeltserman, Duane Swierczynski, and many more.
JKP: As an author, what do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment? Conversely, what has been your greatest regret?
EG: I think the voice in my best books is their greatest recommendation and the voice informs the writing. My regret is that I wish I had tried larger-scale novels, but I am a child of Gold Medal. To me the ideal number of words is still 60,000. Look at those perfect little novels of [Georges] Simenon, how rich they are.
JKP: Now this: As a man, what’s been your greatest accomplishment? And your greatest regret?
EG: Accomplishment--getting clean and sober. Regret--how I destroyed my first marriage.
JKP: If you could have grown up to be any other novelist, who would it have been? And why?
EG: Graham Greene. To be such a great storyteller and at the same time such a gifted and powerful observer of the human condition.
JKP: After all these years, what weakness do you still have as a writer?
EG: I still think I wander away from the story sometimes. I revere tight novels, which is just one of the reasons I’m such a Megan Abbott fan. Not a word too many, not a word misplaced.
JKP: Finally, you weren’t among the guests at the 2011 Bouchercon in St. Louis, during which the Private Eye Writers of America named you the recipient of its Lifetime Achievement Award, The Eye. But how did it feel to win that sort of recognition from a group of writers dedicated to the detective story?
EG: I was completely surprised when Bob [Randisi] and Max [Collins] told me about it over one of the long lunches we have with our wives in Amana, Iowa. I’m not sure I deserved it--I mean that--but I am not about to give it back. It is a real milestone in my career and I really appreciate it.
I’ve wanted to ask this author about his life and career and literary contributions for what seems like a very long time. But I never found the right reason or opportunity to do so until just recently, after I enjoyed reading his new novel, Flashpoint (Severn House)--the fifth and possibly final entry in his series about
Dev Conrad, a modern American political consultant and troubleshooter, who debuted in Sleeping Dogs (2008). The now 71-year-old Gorman, an almost lifelong resident of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has been laboring in the trenches of crime fiction (as well as horror fiction and western fiction) ever since the mid-1980s, following his transition from commercial advertising work to full-time writing. During those decades--and occasionally under the pseudonyms Daniel Ransom or E.J. (for Edward Joseph) Gorman--he’s turned out something between 70 and 100 novels, enough that he’s actually lost count. He’s penned novels in series as well myriad briefer
tales, and edited numerous anthologies of short stories (several, like By Hook or
By Crook, with Martin H. Greenberg). He’s been so prolific over the years, Bookreporter once joked that he “seems to have printer’s ink flowing through his veins ...”Gorman’s efforts have not gone unrecognized. As I mention in today’s Kirkus column, he has at various times received the Shamus Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Spur Award, and The Eye, the lifetime achievement award given out by the Private Eye Writers of America (PWA). But his influence doesn’t stop there. Together with author Robert J. Randisi, in 1985 he created Mystery Scene magazine, for which he still pens a regular column, “Gormania.” From 2008 to 2009 he served as president of the PWA. And he’s been a frequently enthusiastic supporter (occasionally through his blog) of efforts by other wordsmiths looking to break into the fiction-writing game or win greater recognition for their talents.
“Ed Gorman’s talent as a writer is matched only by his generosity to other writers,” Randisi told me in a recent e-note. “Indeed, he’s a true Renaissance man because he has also been columnist, reviewer, and publisher in this business. But I’ve also been privileged over the years to have Ed as a friend, and perhaps that is where he has been the most invaluable.”
Although Gorman himself leans heavily in the direction of modesty, it’s certainly not uncommon to hear colleagues sing his praises.
“I became an Ed Gorman fan in the mid-’80s after buying one of his Jack Dwyer books, Murder Straight Up [1987], on impulse,” explains author Dick Lochte (Blues in the Night), another PWA ex-president. “Since then I’ve never read a sentence he’s written that I didn’t like, but I’ve a special fondness for his Sam McCain novels which, aside from being cleverly crafted whodunits, are evocations of small-town America on the brink of the 1960s shake-up; [they’re] as sweetly nostalgic and poignant and politically astute as any you can find in fiction. Aside from being a fine writer and a tireless supporter of genre fiction, Ed happens to be a good friend. No matter what’s going on in his life--and a lot usually is--he always seems to find time to offer help when needed. Were it not for his encouragement,
my admittedly thin bibliography would be a couple of books and at least half a dozen short stories shy. Bottom line, the man is a true gent.”(Left) The prolific Ed Gorman
Muscatine, Iowa, novelist Max Allan Collins (Target Lancer), who Gorman acknowledges was instrumental in showing him how to compose fiction at length, says that “One of my proudest achievements is being part of Ed Gorman’s transition from writer of literary short stories to full-fledged mystery novelist. This is not to say he stopped writing short stories or being literary, either--I think he’s probably my generation’s best writer of short crime fiction, meaning not to take away from his fine and distinctive novels. Ed’s work is characterized by melancholy and compassion, and he is among the most human and humane of contemporary crime writers. We’ve been friends for many years and he is generous and thoughtful, to say the least, and I get a kick out of having once been thought to be Ed Gorman. Ed is notoriously reluctant to make public appearances, despite an affability second to none. For the first 10 years of his crime-writing career, people would occasionally assume that that other Iowa writer was me under a pen name. I’m pleased that anybody would think I’m that good.”
Although he’s been slowed down over the last dozen years by an incurable cancer, multiple myeloma, Gorman continues to get up every day and fulfill the demands of his self-inflicted sentence as an author. It’s what he does. It’s what he loves. Earlier this month, I sent him dozens of questions via e-mail, asking him about his personal and professional history, his proclivity toward writing in a variety of genres, his debts to the classic Gold Medal novels, his dislike of rewriting, why he thinks we’re seeing another “golden age” of crime fiction, and ... well, many other subjects. His responses to a few of those fit into today’s Kirkus column; the rest can be found below.
J. Kingston Pierce: Were your parents big readers?
Ed Gorman: My mother and father both came from Irish farming communities and moved to Cedar Rapids when they were young. My mother consumed magazines by the ton and my father was a reader of pulp magazines until the ’50s, when he switched to paperbacks. He especially enjoyed hard-boiled mysteries, westerns, and history.
JKP: And were they the ones who got you interested in reading?
EG: My mother started taking me to the library when I was 4. I was hooked immediately.
JKP: As a boy, what did you want to be when you grew up?
EG: From fifth grade on I wanted to be writer. I never thought about being anything else.
JKP: I understand that you grew up in some fairly rough neighborhoods, and practiced a certain amount of petty thievery and shoplifting in your youth, but that you were eventually scared straight. What’s the story there?
EG: My criminal career, as such, ended because of two experiences. A guy who wanted to get back at a friend of mine convinced his [female] cousin to accuse [my friend] of stealing one of their purses. I happened to be with him the night she came into the Rexall where we were having burgers after pumping gas for six hours. We didn’t know either one of them. We ate and left, and later that night detectives came to our homes and accused us of stealing the purse, which, according to the girl, contained enough money to make it grand larceny. That was followed by two weeks of hell--the line-up, four or five times at the police station, and a lawyer who advised my parents maybe I should plead guilty to avoid reform school, though there was no guarantee I wouldn’t wind up there. Finally the girl, apparently feeling guilty about setting us up, turned herself in.
The other incident concerned a friend of mine who started hanging around this guy who’d just gotten out of prison and come back to the old neighborhood. We all remembered him. He was a punk, violent but a coward. I’d seen him back out of two or three fights he’d started. But he had a big influence on my friend. One night they held up a gas station and killed a poor 16-year-old kid with a shotgun.
During this time I’d been expelled from two high schools. My girlfriend had broken up with me and I’d gone insane. ... I was in pain 24/7. Alcohol helped. Then much later I started in on various drugs. I was a terrible angry drunk.
JKP: But you went on to attend Coe College in Cedar Rapids, right? With what sort of degree did you graduate from there?
EG: I didn’t graduate. The alcohol took its toll. I love Coe and owe it a great deal. Such great professors. I was a bum; my occupation for a long time.JKP: Like your fellow mystery writers Dorothy L. Sayers and Philip Kerr, you started out doing advertising work. Can you tell us what you did in that field?
EG: I started out as a copywriter in Des Moines, then worked by phone and mail for a small group in Chicago, then went back to Cedar Rapids and worked there for three different agencies, and finally had a three-person shop of my own. I worked for a time out of Chicago producing commercials.
I should say here that in my 18 years of editing Mystery Scene I probably talked to 50 writers who were or had been in advertising, and only three or four of them had anything good to say about the experience. I met some decent, humane people, for sure, in the business, but more often than not I met people who saw advertising as this great romantic calling. I worked for two weeks for a creative director who said that if you didn’t own a Porsche after two years of working for him you weren’t doing your job. A deep thinker, obviously. He just couldn’t believe I was walking away from such a very nice salary. That was when I started writing political speeches. I’m sure I learned things writing copy. Brevity if nothing else.
JKP: In what year did you stop drinking, and why?
EG: In May of 1974. One Friday night I got into some drunken, angry scene in a restaurant and was reminded of this by a young woman who called me at 2 a.m. She said she’d gotten my name off a toilet wall. I still have no idea who she was. Or why she called. I remember, being semi-sober by then, telling her all sorts of lies about myself. We must have talked for half an hour.
When I woke up the next morning one of the first things I thought of was going to a pawn shop and buying a gun. I really was at the end. My life was completely out of control. I’d realized that for years, but for some reason that morning I couldn’t handle it any longer. I’d destroyed a marriage, been a terrible father, had turned myself into both a demon and a public joke--and knew I couldn’t go on. I rented a rustic cabin far up on the Iowa River. I stayed there and got clean. I walked a lot and cried a lot. I was terrified of going back. I was also scared that I couldn’t stay away from alcohol and drugs, that the cabin stay had been a fluke. And facing [the past] 16 years of various selfish sins and moments of bottle and drug craziness--facing my past sober was really scary. Every once in a while, as the months rolled on, I’d buy a fifth of whiskey and just set it on the table. Tempting myself but never giving in. I loved being clean and I still do. I’m one of the blessed ones.
JKP: I read online that you “began writing to fill time after giving up drinking.” Is that an accurate statement?
EG: Partly. Even during my drinking days I managed to do some writing, but after I got clean I had so much time on my hands--I used to sit in bars for hours--that I went at it seriously, writing a lot of short stories, selling them mostly to downscale literary magazines and some very downscale men’s magazines. In 1976 I won a Charles Scribner’s prize for a short story and that gave me a lot of encouragement.
JKP: Were you still laboring away in the advertising trenches at the time you began working on fiction?
EG: Yes, after I’d sobered up. I always tried to sneak an hour or two on my stories during the workday. I was not what you’d call a loyal employee.JKP: Is it correct that you became a full-time writer in 1989?
EG: Yes. That was when I turned my three-person agency over to my artist co-worker, Gail Cross, who is now one of the most in-demand book designers in the field. As I said, I needed to take on quickie writing gigs from time to time. I had no trouble selling novels generally, but publishers are not noted for their quick pay practices.
JKP: My understanding is that you’ve been married twice. During what period did your first marriage last?
EG: From 1964 to 1968. I destroyed it with my drinking.
JKP: And later you wed the former Carol Maxwell, who’s now an author in her own right. How and when did you meet her?
EG: In 1979 I did TV commercials for a bank. Somebody told me that a Carol Maxwell was a good actress with a lot of work behind her at the University of Iowa and numerous other venues, so I called her and asked her to audition. Sometimes I pulled in Chicago talent, but I’d taken a bath on an industrial film I’d done and wanted to make up for it with this campaign. She read beautifully and was great looking, It took awhile for us to get together romantically, but it was worth the wait. She’s given me the life I’d always longed for. Thirty-plus years of it. I got the better end of the deal, believe me.
JKP: I’m pretty sure that my initial exposure to your work was the 1995 novel The First Lady, a standalone tale about a president’s wife who’s accused of murder. However, that book came out a decade after you started publishing fiction. I believe your first two novels to see print were Rough Cut and New, Improved Murder, both released in 1985--and both of which starred cop-turned-private eye Jack Dwyer, who solved crimes in a barely disguised Cedar Rapids. Were those actually the first two novels you wrote, or did you try your hand at earlier books that never saw print?
EG: The First Lady was one of three bestseller-type novels I wrote. They weren’t personal books.
I’d never been able to finish a novel until I met Max Allan Collins. I must have started and stopped novels 50 times (not an exaggeration) over the years. Max let me read his books in manuscript. Seeing novels in typed form took away the mystery. Plus, he gave me the single best piece of writerly advice I’ve
ever gotten: Write the book all the way through without looking back. Then do your revision. Don’t stop and start.Two agents and six or seven houses turned down Rough Cut. They all complained that the narrator was a borderline psychotic. A young junior editor at St. Martin’s picked it up out of slush, liked it, fought for it, and bought it. One of the big Eastern newspapers headlined the review, “A Hate Letter to the Advertising Industry.” I still don’t think that’s accurate. As I said, I met a lot of decent people in advertising. By the time Rough Cut was published (a year and a half after I finished it), I’d written two more novels and they both sold quickly.
JKP: Can you describe how you felt, seeing your first novels in print?
EG: Thrilled. When the first copy arrived I just sat down and stared at it. I was 40 years old and this had been my dream since I was 8 or 9.
JKP: How has publishing changed for the better--and for the worse--since the time you sold your first novel?
EG: It’s corporate now. I feel sorry for the editors. So many have lost jobs, so many can’t get published books that they love.
JKP: Your fiction has been all over the map, falling into genres from crime fiction and political thrillers to horror and westerns. Most people would be pretty happy to master just one field of fiction. Was a tighter focus ever in the cards for you?
EG: Being all over the map has seriously damaged my career. Most successful writers stick to one genre; some successful writers write the same book again and again. I didn’t choose all these genres consciously. It was just that I’d grown up reading all over the place, so I had genuine interest in them. I also had heroes in each of these genres and I tried to emulate them.
JKP: In an interview you did three years ago with Diabolical Radio, you suggested that some of the books you’ve produced have been of, let’s say, lesser quality than others. And Mike Ashley wrote in The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Modern Crime Fiction that you’ve actually dismissed the horror/science fiction novels you wrote under the pseudonym Daniel Ransom as “trash.” Being as prolific a writer as you are, do you simply accept that you have to put your name on a clunker now and then? Or have you only decided in retrospect that some of your books didn’t measured up to your expectations?
EG: The first three or four Daniel Ransom novels really are trash. One of them I don’t even have a copy of. Don’t want one. Starting with Night Caller [1987] they began getting respectable, even--sometimes--enthusiastic reviews. The early ones I wrote strictly to market, trying to make sales. When I moved Ransom to [publisher] DAW the books improved a good deal, thanks to my fine editor, Sheila Gilbert. I’ve learned a lot from her. I do my best with every novel and story. As John D. MacDonald, a man even more prolific than I used to be, said, no matter how hard you try, some just work out better than others.
I will say that I’ve tried my best to honor the genres I’ve worked in. [Critic] Dorothy B. Hughes felt that The Autumn Dead [1987] was a successful new approach to the private-eye novel; and The Washington Post ran a long rave by the literary writer Carolyn See about the first Sam McCain novel, The Day the Music Died [1999]. In thrillers, both Blood Moon [1994] and The Midnight Room [2009] were hailed as significantly fresh approaches to the serial-killer novel. In horror, Cage of Night [1996] is still in print after 18 years, and my collection Cages [1995] won the International Horror Award for the year, the previous winners being Stephen King and Richard Matheson. And I won a Spur award for my
short story “The Face,” and of my four Leo Guild novels, Publishers Weekly said that my westerns were “written for grown-ups.”JKP: It’s been said that the two “overriding influences” on your fiction are old Gold Medal novels and Ernest Hemingway. Do you think that’s true?
EG: Certainly the Gold Medal novels shaped me, Hemingway less so as the years go on. I owe a great debt to Max Collins and Bill Pronzini for my crime fiction; I made a study of their books just as I did the work of Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block, Ed McBain, and John D. MacDonald.
JKP: Younger readers might not be familiar with Gold Medal Books. What contributions would you say that that publisher made to the crime-fiction genre?
EG: The key Gold Medal writers such as John D. MacDonald, Peter Rabe. Charles Williams, Vin Packer, Gil Brewer, Lawrence Block, Malcolm Braly, and others brought style and shrewd social and psychological assessments of various American societies to the crime novels.
JKP: You told Vince Keenan in a 2010 interview that “Ross Macdonald was the finest writer of private detective fiction ever. Flat out.” First off, why do think that way?
EG: Voice, style, and a generous troubled heart. There are scenes in his novels that can hurt you. And haunt you.
JKP: And in what ways has Macdonald’s work influenced your own?
EG: I’ve never felt any influence. I would never even try to imitate him in any way, because he was too good.
JKP: You’ve also mentioned Ed McBain as a principal influence on your fiction. In what specific ways do you think that’s been true?
EG: Voice and a social sense and scene structure. He could move you through a book like nobody else.
JKP: You’ve been working hard at this game a long time, so it’s likely that you’ve influenced other writers, in turn. Being immodest for a moment, tell me: What do you think other, younger wordsmiths can learn from your own fiction?
EG: I see on various blogs that some of the younger writes like my books and stories--and a number of them have written me letters--but the only impression I have is that they like the writing itself and my viewpoint as an outsider. They also like the consistency of that viewpoint being the same whichever genre I’m working in.
JKP: You have said that you think your fiction is, on the whole, generally optimistic. Yet so many others define it as “dark.” How do you explain that difference of viewpoints?
EG: By that I meant that I’m not nihilistic. Certainly a good deal of my work is dark. Both Publishers Weekly and Kirkus have pointed out that the Sam McCain books, for all their wry humor, are dark and serious books. Booklist even compared them to novels by Lawrence Block and Elmore Leonard. But I’m not much for good and evil writ large. I do believe there are some truly evil people, but in my experience most folks will do the decent thing when they have to consciously choose.
JKP: I’ve heard that you are not fond of rewriting, that you’d rather throw a book away than go through any significant efforts to rework it. Is that true, and if so, how many books do you think you’ve round-filed over the course of your career?
EG: That was true until I got cancer the first time. I can no longer afford that indulgence. Now I do two and sometimes three drafts of everything. I also have a private editor, Linda Seibels, read my final draft. She tears into it for one more go-around. As for how many I’ve round-filed, I’d say at least 10 and maybe a few more.
JKP: OK, since you’ve brought it up, let’s talk about your health. As I understand it, you were diagnosed around 2001 with an incurable cancer. What sort of cancer do you have?
EG: In November of 2001 I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. A few people thought I was sort of cavalier about it--in denial--but my chances of survival were 90 percent. Three months later, though, I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, which is incurable. I was not cavalier about that.
JKP: Earlier this year, I believe, you went to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota for a stem-cell transplant. How did that go, and what’s your current prognosis?
EG: It was the worst physical experience of my life. Nothing ever came close. But I’m now 100 percent cancer free, so it was worth it. Because multiple myeloma is incurable, it will come back. I know people who’ve gone only three years before it’s returned, and I’ve also known a man who’s 12 years cancer free and a woman who’s eight.
JKP: You’ve written eight or nine series over the last 30 years, but also dozens of standalone novels. What, to you, are the relative merits or producing series versus standalones?
EG: I prefer standalones. They offer me more freedom.
JKP: Do you identify with any one of your series protagonists more than the others?
EG: I suppose Sam McCain and Dev Conrad are the two most like me, but they really aren’t in any strict sense me.
JKP: You’ve earned a great number of fans with your series about Sam McCain, a compassionate lawyer/private eye in 1950s and ’60s Iowa. How did that series come in to being, and what is it about McCain that makes him such a durable protagonist?
EG: I got tired of all the Happy Days B.S. The ’50s were a good time if you were white, Christian, middle-class, and straight. If you weren’t you had big problems. I wanted to tell the truth about the ’50s.
JKP: Reading the McCain tales, I get the impression that you identify strongly with the era in which they’re set. Is that the case?
EG: I do identify with the ’50s and ’60s. For all the turmoil writhing beneath the official Ozzie and Harriet mentality, the country was more understandable. For good and ill alike there was a commonality that was destroyed during the anti-[Vietnam] War years. I hated the war, but the political schism it created has never been resolved. And it was then that the destruction of the middle-class began.
JKP: I keep hearing that you’re going to end the Sam McCain series ... and yet you continue to come up with new installments, mostly recently 2011’s Bad Moon Rising. That makes nine
McCain books. Do you expect to keep the series going?EG: One more I think. Sam was drafted at the end of Bad Moon Rising. I think readers will be surprised by Riders on the Storm.
JKP: Your 2008 novel, Sleeping Dogs, introduced yet another series star, resourceful political consultant Dev Conrad. You’d concocted novels before about politicians and their races and woes before, but here you were committing yourself to a succession of books that examine the ins and outs, ups and downs and turnarounds of modern American campaigning. What do you hope to achieve with the Conrad series?
EG: As I said earlier, those three political best-seller type novels I wrote were done for market. My editor, a very wise and nice guy, wanted me to sell better. But they weren’t personal novels for me. Dev Conrad is very personal. He’s a version of me, for one thing, and he certainly reflects my cynical opinion of our political sewer.
JKP: What do you see in Conrad that makes him a distinctly different character from your previous series protagonists?
EG: He’s hipper, more worldly, more jaded.
JKP: Your new Conrad novel, Flashpoint, focuses on a longtime U.S. senator from Illinois, Robert Logan, who’s implicated in the beating death of a younger woman who had been present at several of his recent campaign events, and with whom some of his staffers (as well as his aggrieved wife) are convinced he’s been having a relationship. However, the tale is also about the feeding frenzy that the modern media engage in when they think an officeholder has been tripped up by scandal. You spent some time penning political speeches during your early years as a freelance writer. Did you see these dynamics at work then, or was your story inspired by more recent developments?
EG: I think being deserted by your friends in political scandals has always been the case. I remember that a few of [Richard] Nixon’s friends stood by him till the end. Whatever you thought of Nixon, you had to be moved by the loyalty of his friends.
JKP: Deep into Flashpoint, someone says to Conrad: “I’ve talked to a few of your other clients. We all think that deep down you hate politicians.” Conrad insists that he doesn’t hate politicians any more than he despises political consultants, that “we’re all guilty” of turning politics into a sporting event divorced from real-world outcomes. Does that reflect your own viewpoint?
EG: Absolutely. And it’s true. Pols are certainly cynical; the people who handle them even more so, including Dev.
JKP: Are you currently working on another Dev Conrad book?
EG: There may not be another Dev. I haven’t made up my mind yet.
JKP: What other projects are you laboring over right now?
EG: I’m writing a Sam McCain short story to help me feel my way through the next novel. I’ve done this trial-run thing before and it generally helps.
JKP: In 1985 you co-founded Mystery Scene magazine with fellow author Robert J. Randisi. Why did you think that the world needed such a publication? And did you expect Mystery Scene to still be available and popular in 2013?
EG: Science fiction had the great news magazine Locus, we just thought mystery deserved its own. I have to say that I ran the magazine for 18 years pretty much as my own fanzine--I covered anything I felt like: Westerns, horror, even romance sometimes. [Publishers] Kate Stine and Brian Skupin have turned it into a brilliant, beautiful professional magazine.
JKP: When critics talk about the “Golden Age of Crime Fiction,” they’re most often referencing the 1920s and ’30s. Yet you’ve referred to the 21st century as being another such Golden Age. How do you make that case?
EG: Marcia Muller, Laura Lippman, Megan Abbott, Michael Connelly, Nancy Pickard, James W. Hall, Lawrence Block, Vicki Hendricks, James Lee Burke, and so on. The so-called Golden Age didn’t come close.
JKP: Among the folks who might be considered up-and-coming writers in this genre, whose work has impressed you?
EG: Tom Piccirilli, Dave Zeltserman, Duane Swierczynski, and many more.
JKP: As an author, what do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment? Conversely, what has been your greatest regret?
EG: I think the voice in my best books is their greatest recommendation and the voice informs the writing. My regret is that I wish I had tried larger-scale novels, but I am a child of Gold Medal. To me the ideal number of words is still 60,000. Look at those perfect little novels of [Georges] Simenon, how rich they are.
JKP: Now this: As a man, what’s been your greatest accomplishment? And your greatest regret?
EG: Accomplishment--getting clean and sober. Regret--how I destroyed my first marriage.
JKP: If you could have grown up to be any other novelist, who would it have been? And why?
EG: Graham Greene. To be such a great storyteller and at the same time such a gifted and powerful observer of the human condition.
JKP: After all these years, what weakness do you still have as a writer?
EG: I still think I wander away from the story sometimes. I revere tight novels, which is just one of the reasons I’m such a Megan Abbott fan. Not a word too many, not a word misplaced.
JKP: Finally, you weren’t among the guests at the 2011 Bouchercon in St. Louis, during which the Private Eye Writers of America named you the recipient of its Lifetime Achievement Award, The Eye. But how did it feel to win that sort of recognition from a group of writers dedicated to the detective story?
EG: I was completely surprised when Bob [Randisi] and Max [Collins] told me about it over one of the long lunches we have with our wives in Amana, Iowa. I’m not sure I deserved it--I mean that--but I am not about to give it back. It is a real milestone in my career and I really appreciate it.
Rejoicing in Chandler’s Birth
Since I’ve been more or less faithful in making note of Raymond Chandler’s birthday ever
since 2006, I was planning to let today--which marks 125 years
since the author took his very first breath in Chicago, Illinois--pass by without any significant remarks. However, I was apparently alone in that decision.
In this new piece, The Daily Telegraph’s Jake Kerridge looks back at Chandler’s roots and his entry into the detective-fiction field. Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph highlights a recorded 1958 conversation between Chandler and James Bond creator Ian Fleming (which The Rap Sheet also noted a few years ago). Jason Diamond of Flavorwire has posted a list of what he thinks are the finest film adaptations of Chandler’s fiction. (Click here to watch trailers for those pictures.) And The Paris Review acknowledges the author’s natal day by posting one of many memorable quotes from The Big Sleep.
While we’re on the subject of birthdays, perhaps I should remind everyone that tomorrow would have been the 97th birthday of John D. MacDonald. Unfortunately, he died back in 1986.
In this new piece, The Daily Telegraph’s Jake Kerridge looks back at Chandler’s roots and his entry into the detective-fiction field. Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph highlights a recorded 1958 conversation between Chandler and James Bond creator Ian Fleming (which The Rap Sheet also noted a few years ago). Jason Diamond of Flavorwire has posted a list of what he thinks are the finest film adaptations of Chandler’s fiction. (Click here to watch trailers for those pictures.) And The Paris Review acknowledges the author’s natal day by posting one of many memorable quotes from The Big Sleep.
While we’re on the subject of birthdays, perhaps I should remind everyone that tomorrow would have been the 97th birthday of John D. MacDonald. Unfortunately, he died back in 1986.
Monday, July 22, 2013
Farina Steps Off the Stage
I was saddened to read this morning that Chicago cop-turned-performer Dennis Farina
has passed away at age 69. This comes from The Hollywood Reporter:
READ MORE: “Dennis Farina Dead at 69” (Chicago Tribune); “Dennis Farina (1944-2013),” by Edward Copeland (Edward Copeland’s Tangents).
The actor, whose body of work included TV roles on Law & Order, Luck and New Girl, and such films as Saving Private Ryan, Out of Sight and Snatch, died Monday in Scottsdale, Ariz., from a blood clot in his lung.That publication should also have added to Farina’s numerous credits the TV series Crime Story (1986-1988) and short-lived Buddy Faro (1998), both of which I enjoyed immensely.
READ MORE: “Dennis Farina Dead at 69” (Chicago Tribune); “Dennis Farina (1944-2013),” by Edward Copeland (Edward Copeland’s Tangents).
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Pierce’s Picks: “Light of the World”
A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.
Light of the World, by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster):
I admit it, I’ve fallen behind in my Burke reading. My only excuse is that there are so many other interesting authors whose work I have sought to sample in recent years, and I only have a limited number of hours each day that I’m awake and ready for reading. The last installment I read in Burke’s series about
Louisiana Sheriff’s Detective Dave Robicheaux was 2007’s near-brilliant Tin Roof Blowdown; that was four books ago. Now comes the new, 20th Robicheaux adventure, Light of the World, and though I’m only partway through its chapters, I can already tell that the full 548-page ride will be worth my time. It finds Dave spending a summer vacation up in Montana (where the author himself lives for part of each year), together with his wife, Molly, and their adopted daughter Alafair. They’re joined at a ranch in the Bitterroot Mountains by Dave’s old New Orleans Police Department partner, Clete Purcell, and Clete’s daughter, Gretchen Horowitz. To get the action rolling, Alafair survives being shot at with an arrow. Then a 17-year-old Shoshone girl, Angel Deer Heart, goes missing, only to turn up dead under conditions that remind lawyer-novelist Alafair all too frighteningly of the work of serial murderer Asa Surette, whom she’d once interviewed in prison, and who later perished in a van smash-up. Or so the story goes. Is it possible that Surette survived? Or is a copycat slayer now at work? In their quest to discover the truth, Dave and Clete will have to confront a dangerous rodeo pro, an oil-rich family, and local lawmen who are none too pleased to have a couple of Southern investigators showing them up.
READ MORE: “Q&A with James Lee Burke,” by Erica Ruth Neubauer (Crimespree Magazine).
Light of the World, by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster):
I admit it, I’ve fallen behind in my Burke reading. My only excuse is that there are so many other interesting authors whose work I have sought to sample in recent years, and I only have a limited number of hours each day that I’m awake and ready for reading. The last installment I read in Burke’s series about
Louisiana Sheriff’s Detective Dave Robicheaux was 2007’s near-brilliant Tin Roof Blowdown; that was four books ago. Now comes the new, 20th Robicheaux adventure, Light of the World, and though I’m only partway through its chapters, I can already tell that the full 548-page ride will be worth my time. It finds Dave spending a summer vacation up in Montana (where the author himself lives for part of each year), together with his wife, Molly, and their adopted daughter Alafair. They’re joined at a ranch in the Bitterroot Mountains by Dave’s old New Orleans Police Department partner, Clete Purcell, and Clete’s daughter, Gretchen Horowitz. To get the action rolling, Alafair survives being shot at with an arrow. Then a 17-year-old Shoshone girl, Angel Deer Heart, goes missing, only to turn up dead under conditions that remind lawyer-novelist Alafair all too frighteningly of the work of serial murderer Asa Surette, whom she’d once interviewed in prison, and who later perished in a van smash-up. Or so the story goes. Is it possible that Surette survived? Or is a copycat slayer now at work? In their quest to discover the truth, Dave and Clete will have to confront a dangerous rodeo pro, an oil-rich family, and local lawmen who are none too pleased to have a couple of Southern investigators showing them up.
* * *
This month is shaping up to be a favorable one for crime-fiction enthusiasts. In addition to Burke’s latest, try Massacre Pond (Minotaur), Paul Doiron’s fourth novel featuring Maine game warden Mike Bowditch; David Gordon’s darkly satirical Mystery Girl (New Harvest), about an unsuccessful
novelist who accepts the assignment to follow a mystifying young beauty--and
thereby becomes involved with underground filmmakers and Satanists; Ivy Pochoda’s
new Visitation Street (Dennis Lehane/Ecco), about a
teenage girl who vanishes from a raft cast off from the Brooklyn waterfront,
and how the neighborhood she leaves behind--Red Hook--copes with that event’s
fallout; These Mortal Remains (Minotaur), the late Milton T. Burton’s fifth book, about a Texas sheriff who must confront white supremacists in the aftermath of an assault on his skilled black deputy; The Homecoming (Knopf), Carsten Stroud’s sequel to Niceville (2012); and--finally in a U.S. edition--First Frost (Minotaur), the pseudonymous James
Henry’s initial prequel to R.D. Wingfield’s acclaimed Inspector Jack Frost series.READ MORE: “Q&A with James Lee Burke,” by Erica Ruth Neubauer (Crimespree Magazine).
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Hart Throb
We want to extend our warmest wishes to Lola Albright. The Ohio-born model turned actress--best known for her co-starring role as nightclub entertainer (later restaurateur) Edie Hart on the TV series Peter Gunn (1958-1961)--today celebrates her 88th birthday. It’s only too bad that Craig Stevens, who appeared with her as private eye Gunn, isn’t around to help her blow out candles. He passed away in 2000 at age 81.Let’s not forget, either, that today marks the 75th birthday of onetime Avengers co-star Diana Rigg. Since we presented a good-size post about Rigg on the occasion of her 70th birthday, back in 2008, there’s probably no need to repeat that. We’ll settle, instead, for drinking a champagne toast in her honor later this evening.
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Mina on Their Minds
For the second time in a row, Scottish author Denise Mina has won the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, on this occasion for her novel Gods and Beasts (Orion), the third entry in Mina’s Alex Morrow series. The announcement came during this week’s Theakstons Old
Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England.
A news release quotes Mina’s response to the news: “I’m really quite flabbergasted. This was such a hard book. I really love this book and it means a lot other people appreciate it as it could have crashed and burned. I’m so delighted and so glad to have another gigantic ostentatious award in the shape of a Theakstons beer barrel that I don’t have room for on my mantelpiece!”
Gods and Beasts was one of six works shortlisted for this prize. The others were Rush of Blood, by Mark Billingham (Little, Brown); Safe House, by Chris Ewan (Faber and Faber); The Lewis Man, by Peter May (Quercus); Stolen Souls, by Stuart Neville (Vintage); and A Dark Redemption, by Stav Sherez (Faber and Faber).
Congratulations to all of the nominees.
(Hat tip to Crime Fiction Lover.)
A news release quotes Mina’s response to the news: “I’m really quite flabbergasted. This was such a hard book. I really love this book and it means a lot other people appreciate it as it could have crashed and burned. I’m so delighted and so glad to have another gigantic ostentatious award in the shape of a Theakstons beer barrel that I don’t have room for on my mantelpiece!”
Gods and Beasts was one of six works shortlisted for this prize. The others were Rush of Blood, by Mark Billingham (Little, Brown); Safe House, by Chris Ewan (Faber and Faber); The Lewis Man, by Peter May (Quercus); Stolen Souls, by Stuart Neville (Vintage); and A Dark Redemption, by Stav Sherez (Faber and Faber).
Congratulations to all of the nominees.
(Hat tip to Crime Fiction Lover.)
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Perils of Writing a Real-Life Protagonist
Editor’s note: I was sorry to read today, in Mystery Fanfare, that San Francisco-area author (Ava) Dianne Day--the creator of “plucky” turn-of-the-last-century heroine Caroline Fremont Jones (introduced in 1996’s The Strange Files of Fremont Jones)--died on July 11 in 
Eureka, California. I never had the chance to meet Day (pictured at left), but like many of you, I read and enjoyed several of her Fremont Jones novels.
In addition, about a decade ago, I solicited an article from Day for January Magazine. At the time, I was planning a package of stories and essays about the use of real-life characters in crime fiction, and asked Day to write something about how she’d concocted her latest novel, Cut to the Heart (2002), which featured pioneering American nurse and educator Clarissa Harlowe “Clara” Barton (1821-1912). For reasons I don’t now recall, I eventually abandoned that January project (though I did revisit the subject of celebrity sleuths in two columns--here and here--for Kirkus Reviews). However, I held on to Dianne Day’s submission, hoping I could use it someday in another way. It’s only too bad that its posting had to wait until after her passing. You’ll find her essay below.
Clara-as-sleuth was an idea tossed out at a Bantam-Doubleday-Dell staff meeting a few years ago (back when there still was a BDD), and relayed to me by my Bantam editor, who asked if I was up for creating a series. I was tapped for this job, most likely, because I was already writing the Fremont Jones mysteries for Bantam and Doubleday, so my editors knew I was interested in history and enjoy research. There had been an article in The New York Times circulated at that staff meeting, which was faxed to me, and piqued my interest; this article told of documents and letters from the late 1860s that had been discovered in an
attic of an apartment building in Washington, D.C., where the post-Civil War Missing Soldiers Office had once been located. I had never heard of the Missing Soldiers Office before, and I was intrigued to learn that Clara Barton was head of this government bureau, and was the first woman ever to have occupied such a position.
That was how it began, with reading that article and telling my editors that I’d learn more about Barton before saying yes or no to the series sleuth idea. I started my research the same way I do for any historical project, by reading a book that gives an overview. (For a further example of a book that grew directly from its overview research, read 1997’s Fire and Fog, the second Fremont Jones mystery, which focuses on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.) On the basis of that overview, I told the editors that I would be interested in writing one book about Clara Barton--a standalone, and possibly one more as a sequel--but not a series. Why not? Because I saw that the real Clara Barton was too intense a person for me to write more than one or two books about her. They wanted the standalone, and that’s how Cut to the Heart was born.
I have a couple of strong beliefs about writing historical fiction. The first is that the history should be absolutely, completely accurate. I won’t bend the truth, not even a little, to make it fit my fictional purpose. To me that would be cheating, creating a false impression of the historical record. So I must thoroughly know the record of the time, place, and people before I can write a book about them.
I knew I could write about Clara when, from my research, I discovered there was a hiatus in what had been generally known about her life; that this hiatus happened to have occurred in a part of the country I was already familiar with, the South Carolina Sea Islands; and that during the hiatus Clara, who never married, had a love affair with a married Union officer, Lieutenant Colonel John J. Elwell. The historical reality of that love affair humanized her for me--as did the abundant evidence of her stubbornness, which happens to be one of my qualities too, so I knew I could identify. It was Clara’s stubborn refusal to allow wounded soldiers to die unnoticed and unnamed that led her to keep the notes, which after the war allowed her to convince Congress to set up the Missing Soldiers Office. Clara was able to identify almost 3.000 missing soldiers from those notes of hers, and more from research she did with the assistance of her small paid staff. In an epilogue to my book I mention Clara’s raising of the Stars and Stripes over Andersonville Cemetery--another historical event that inspired me the moment I learned of it.
So there was a lot to go on with, but the most important thing was that hiatus in the historical record--because I knew there I could build my fictional story without disturbing any of the historical facts. I would be, so to speak, filling in the blank.
The second thing I believe strongly about writing historical fiction is that, when the research is done and the writing has begun, the history must stay firmly and forever in the background. The fiction--the story--always comes first. In order to write that way, keeping the fiction first, I have to be so steeped in my chosen historical time and place that in my head I’m living there myself. The whole time I’m writing a historical book it’s like being in a time-warp. I have to be able to see it, hear it, feel it, smell it all around me. It takes time to achieve this state of mind--and for Cut to the Heart to reach that state took me a solid year of research. Along with books of history and local color, I read Clara’s own unpublished diaries from the months of 1863 that I wrote about, and unpublished letters that she wrote before, during, and after those months. And I read John Elwell’s unpublished diary, which included some of the tender little notes he wrote to her during their affair. In the back of Cut to the Heart there's a complete list of references.
Elwell was easy for me to re-create, but Clara was hard. In part, Elwell was easier because he had less page-time in the book, but primarily it was a matter of language. Elwell’s notes to Clara, in which he called her “My Little Bird,” were self-revealing. But life had taught Clara Barton to be careful, and the primary sources with which I was dealing reflected that. The jottings of her diary are brief, workmanlike; she kept a separate “journal” in which she filtered her thoughts and refined her handwriting. Likewise, in her letters and speeches she achieved distance by using the formal language of the time. In searching for her “voice,” I became unconsciously steeped instead in her formality--I lost my contemporary ears, and so I made a false start. I had unwittingly adapted Clara Barton’s self-protectiveness and wasn’t letting
the reader in. My agent, Peter Lampack, had the insight I needed to help me recognize and break through that problem. I had to start over.
(Left) Clara Barton
I’ve often been asked if the Clara Barton on the pages of Cut to the Heart is an accurate portrayal. I believe she is--but to create her, I had to back to her diary and letters and read the way a mother listens to her children, read between the lines. Clara was a woman who concealed her feelings, always; her lover, John Elwell, wasn’t nearly so good at hiding things. Their real-life affair occurred more openly than I’ve portrayed it--there were a number of things I felt I had to leave out for the sake of not provoking disbelief in the readers. One example: During South Carolina’s Battle of Battery Wagner, at one point Elwell ran out onto the field even though, as quartermaster for the Union Army’s whole Department of the South, he wasn’t supposed to be part of the assault. Elwell fell in the line of fire, and Clara--who, as usual, was closer to the fighting than she should have been--ran out onto the field and pulled him back, thus saving his life a second time (he had been recovering from a compound fracture of the thigh when she first arrived on Hilton Head Island, and he credited her nursing for his survival). More than one historian writes of her dash onto the battlefield, but I felt it wouldn’t be believable in my novel. Nor did I write as much as I could have about their affair, for the same reason.
Most of Cut to the Heart is a highly involving and totally invented story about a very bad guy who is using the Civil War as his opportunity to perform some medical experiments--experiments in keeping with the gruesome state of medical science at that time. Also, I developed a fictional subplot about the newly freed Gullah slaves, which was enjoyable because of my long-standing love of and interest in the Gullah culture of South Carolina. At the conclusion of the book I have a list detailing which characters are real and which are fictional. I put it at the end so that people who’d rather read it all as fiction won’t be distracted--but letters from readers have since made me think that, if I were ever to do this kind of thing again, I’d put the list at the beginning of the book.
Which leads me to some relevant questions I’m often asked: Will I write another book about Clara Barton? Or write one about some other real-life historical character? Or will I stick with my fictional historical creation, Fremont Jones?
I’ve learned, as long as the decision is entirely up to me, never to rule out anything. I have a pattern of thinking something is too much, that I can’t do it, only to find that as soon as I’ve given it up, the way through whatever had seemed insurmountable becomes suddenly clear to me. So I won’t say no, no more historicals. I will say instead, “Not at any time soon.” I need time away from all the research. I need to be able to live in the present inside my own head for a while.
Does that apply also to Fremont Jones? Sadly, the decision regarding Fremont is not mine to make. I have an exclusivity clause in my contract with Doubleday, and they’re not publishing series mysteries anymore, including Fremont Jones.
Creating a fictional framework for Clara Barton was a privilege as well as a challenge. Whether or not I have met the challenge is for the readers to decide.
AND FURTHERMORE …: Jiro Kimura of The Gumshoe Site included a few extra details of Day’s career and death in this obituary:
Eureka, California. I never had the chance to meet Day (pictured at left), but like many of you, I read and enjoyed several of her Fremont Jones novels.In addition, about a decade ago, I solicited an article from Day for January Magazine. At the time, I was planning a package of stories and essays about the use of real-life characters in crime fiction, and asked Day to write something about how she’d concocted her latest novel, Cut to the Heart (2002), which featured pioneering American nurse and educator Clarissa Harlowe “Clara” Barton (1821-1912). For reasons I don’t now recall, I eventually abandoned that January project (though I did revisit the subject of celebrity sleuths in two columns--here and here--for Kirkus Reviews). However, I held on to Dianne Day’s submission, hoping I could use it someday in another way. It’s only too bad that its posting had to wait until after her passing. You’ll find her essay below.
* * *
In my current historical suspense novel, Cut to the Heart, the protagonist is Clara Barton, whose long and very real life encompassed most of the 19th century. The name Clara Barton is both familiar and synonymous with the word “nurse,” for most people. Yet the historical reality is that Clara Barton was never, officially, a nurse--that’s what I call a “myth-understanding.” It’s also one of the problems I was up against when I chose to write about her. Clara’s life was so remarkable, it’s one of those cases where the truth really is stranger than fiction--“strange” in the sense of unexpected--and some people don’t like the unexpected messing with their myths. As soon as an author takes on the task of creating fiction about a real person, fiction and reality begin a struggle for dominance, and the balance that makes the whole thing work isn’t easy to achieve.Clara-as-sleuth was an idea tossed out at a Bantam-Doubleday-Dell staff meeting a few years ago (back when there still was a BDD), and relayed to me by my Bantam editor, who asked if I was up for creating a series. I was tapped for this job, most likely, because I was already writing the Fremont Jones mysteries for Bantam and Doubleday, so my editors knew I was interested in history and enjoy research. There had been an article in The New York Times circulated at that staff meeting, which was faxed to me, and piqued my interest; this article told of documents and letters from the late 1860s that had been discovered in an
attic of an apartment building in Washington, D.C., where the post-Civil War Missing Soldiers Office had once been located. I had never heard of the Missing Soldiers Office before, and I was intrigued to learn that Clara Barton was head of this government bureau, and was the first woman ever to have occupied such a position.That was how it began, with reading that article and telling my editors that I’d learn more about Barton before saying yes or no to the series sleuth idea. I started my research the same way I do for any historical project, by reading a book that gives an overview. (For a further example of a book that grew directly from its overview research, read 1997’s Fire and Fog, the second Fremont Jones mystery, which focuses on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.) On the basis of that overview, I told the editors that I would be interested in writing one book about Clara Barton--a standalone, and possibly one more as a sequel--but not a series. Why not? Because I saw that the real Clara Barton was too intense a person for me to write more than one or two books about her. They wanted the standalone, and that’s how Cut to the Heart was born.
I have a couple of strong beliefs about writing historical fiction. The first is that the history should be absolutely, completely accurate. I won’t bend the truth, not even a little, to make it fit my fictional purpose. To me that would be cheating, creating a false impression of the historical record. So I must thoroughly know the record of the time, place, and people before I can write a book about them.
I knew I could write about Clara when, from my research, I discovered there was a hiatus in what had been generally known about her life; that this hiatus happened to have occurred in a part of the country I was already familiar with, the South Carolina Sea Islands; and that during the hiatus Clara, who never married, had a love affair with a married Union officer, Lieutenant Colonel John J. Elwell. The historical reality of that love affair humanized her for me--as did the abundant evidence of her stubbornness, which happens to be one of my qualities too, so I knew I could identify. It was Clara’s stubborn refusal to allow wounded soldiers to die unnoticed and unnamed that led her to keep the notes, which after the war allowed her to convince Congress to set up the Missing Soldiers Office. Clara was able to identify almost 3.000 missing soldiers from those notes of hers, and more from research she did with the assistance of her small paid staff. In an epilogue to my book I mention Clara’s raising of the Stars and Stripes over Andersonville Cemetery--another historical event that inspired me the moment I learned of it.
So there was a lot to go on with, but the most important thing was that hiatus in the historical record--because I knew there I could build my fictional story without disturbing any of the historical facts. I would be, so to speak, filling in the blank.
The second thing I believe strongly about writing historical fiction is that, when the research is done and the writing has begun, the history must stay firmly and forever in the background. The fiction--the story--always comes first. In order to write that way, keeping the fiction first, I have to be so steeped in my chosen historical time and place that in my head I’m living there myself. The whole time I’m writing a historical book it’s like being in a time-warp. I have to be able to see it, hear it, feel it, smell it all around me. It takes time to achieve this state of mind--and for Cut to the Heart to reach that state took me a solid year of research. Along with books of history and local color, I read Clara’s own unpublished diaries from the months of 1863 that I wrote about, and unpublished letters that she wrote before, during, and after those months. And I read John Elwell’s unpublished diary, which included some of the tender little notes he wrote to her during their affair. In the back of Cut to the Heart there's a complete list of references.
Elwell was easy for me to re-create, but Clara was hard. In part, Elwell was easier because he had less page-time in the book, but primarily it was a matter of language. Elwell’s notes to Clara, in which he called her “My Little Bird,” were self-revealing. But life had taught Clara Barton to be careful, and the primary sources with which I was dealing reflected that. The jottings of her diary are brief, workmanlike; she kept a separate “journal” in which she filtered her thoughts and refined her handwriting. Likewise, in her letters and speeches she achieved distance by using the formal language of the time. In searching for her “voice,” I became unconsciously steeped instead in her formality--I lost my contemporary ears, and so I made a false start. I had unwittingly adapted Clara Barton’s self-protectiveness and wasn’t letting
the reader in. My agent, Peter Lampack, had the insight I needed to help me recognize and break through that problem. I had to start over.(Left) Clara Barton
I’ve often been asked if the Clara Barton on the pages of Cut to the Heart is an accurate portrayal. I believe she is--but to create her, I had to back to her diary and letters and read the way a mother listens to her children, read between the lines. Clara was a woman who concealed her feelings, always; her lover, John Elwell, wasn’t nearly so good at hiding things. Their real-life affair occurred more openly than I’ve portrayed it--there were a number of things I felt I had to leave out for the sake of not provoking disbelief in the readers. One example: During South Carolina’s Battle of Battery Wagner, at one point Elwell ran out onto the field even though, as quartermaster for the Union Army’s whole Department of the South, he wasn’t supposed to be part of the assault. Elwell fell in the line of fire, and Clara--who, as usual, was closer to the fighting than she should have been--ran out onto the field and pulled him back, thus saving his life a second time (he had been recovering from a compound fracture of the thigh when she first arrived on Hilton Head Island, and he credited her nursing for his survival). More than one historian writes of her dash onto the battlefield, but I felt it wouldn’t be believable in my novel. Nor did I write as much as I could have about their affair, for the same reason.
Most of Cut to the Heart is a highly involving and totally invented story about a very bad guy who is using the Civil War as his opportunity to perform some medical experiments--experiments in keeping with the gruesome state of medical science at that time. Also, I developed a fictional subplot about the newly freed Gullah slaves, which was enjoyable because of my long-standing love of and interest in the Gullah culture of South Carolina. At the conclusion of the book I have a list detailing which characters are real and which are fictional. I put it at the end so that people who’d rather read it all as fiction won’t be distracted--but letters from readers have since made me think that, if I were ever to do this kind of thing again, I’d put the list at the beginning of the book.
Which leads me to some relevant questions I’m often asked: Will I write another book about Clara Barton? Or write one about some other real-life historical character? Or will I stick with my fictional historical creation, Fremont Jones?
I’ve learned, as long as the decision is entirely up to me, never to rule out anything. I have a pattern of thinking something is too much, that I can’t do it, only to find that as soon as I’ve given it up, the way through whatever had seemed insurmountable becomes suddenly clear to me. So I won’t say no, no more historicals. I will say instead, “Not at any time soon.” I need time away from all the research. I need to be able to live in the present inside my own head for a while.
Does that apply also to Fremont Jones? Sadly, the decision regarding Fremont is not mine to make. I have an exclusivity clause in my contract with Doubleday, and they’re not publishing series mysteries anymore, including Fremont Jones.
Creating a fictional framework for Clara Barton was a privilege as well as a challenge. Whether or not I have met the challenge is for the readers to decide.
AND FURTHERMORE …: Jiro Kimura of The Gumshoe Site included a few extra details of Day’s career and death in this obituary:
Dianne Day died on July 11 in Eureka, California, after a long illness. The ex-psychologist wrote first romantic suspense novels such as Obsidian (Pocket Book, 1987), UnderREAD MORE: “San Francisco: The True Home of Fremont Jones,” by Dianne Day (Mystery Fanfare).
Venice (Harlequin, 1991; as by Madelyn Sanders), and Eyes of the Night (Berkley, 1992; as by Diana Bane). Her first “real” mystery novel is The Strange Files of Fremont Jones (Doubleday, 1995), featuring Fremont Jones, owner of a typewriter service in the 1900s in San Francisco. She wrote six Jones novels, finishing with Beacon Street Mourning (Doubleday, 2000). She also wrote a standalone, Cut to the Heart (Doubleday, 2002), under the Ava Dianne Day name. She was active in several mystery mailing lists, and reviewed mystery novels for Mystery Scene. She was 75.
Greeting the Groaners
The winners of this year’s Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest to produce the opening sentence for “the worst of all possible novels” have been announced, and the victor in the Crime category is Tonya Lavel from Barbados, West Indies. Her submission:
It was such a beautiful night; the bright moonlight illuminated the sky, the thick clouds floated leisurely by just above the silhouette of tall, majestic trees, and I was viewing it all from the front row seat of the bullet hole in my car trunk.Actually, I think I prefer the runner-up, which comes from Eric J. Hildeman of Greenfield, Wisconsin:
Seeing Mrs. Kohler sink, Detective Moen flushed as he plugged the burglary as the unmistakable work of Cap Fawcet, the Mad Plumber, for not only had her pool of assets been drained, but her clogs were now missing, and the toilet had been removed, leaving them with absolutely nothing to go on.You’ll find several “dishonorable mentions” in this same category, plus victorious entries in other fields of fiction, right here.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Child Takes It Like a Man
Ali Karim, The Rap Sheet’s generous and energetic British correspondent, was on hand during last evening’s Dagger Awards presentations in London. He has now sent along the video embedded below, which shows author Lee Child speaking in response to his receiving this year’s Diamond
Dagger from the Crime Writers’ Association. The 2012 Diamond Dagger
winner, Frederick Forsyth (who can be seen in the right of the frame, wearing a gray suit) presented Child with his prize. “Though this clip won’t be appearing at the Sundance Film Festival,” Ali writes, “I hope you enjoy it.”
Monday, July 15, 2013
Carving Up the Daggers
During a celebratory dinner held earlier this evening at
Kings Place in London, the British Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) announced which books and authors had won six of its prestigious annual
prizes.
The CWA Debut Dagger: Finn Clarke (UK), Call Time
(Hat tip to It’s a Crime! [Or a Mystery …])
The CWA
International Dagger: TIE -- Alex, by Pierre Lemaitre,
translated by Frank Wynne (Quercus); and The Ghost Riders of Ordebec, by Fred
Vargas, translated by Siân Reynolds (Harvill Secker)
Also nominated: The Missing File, by D.A.
Mishani, translated by Steven Cohen (Quercus); Two Soldiers, by
Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström, translated by Kari Dickson (Quercus); Death
in Sardinia, by Marco Vichi, translated by Stephen Sartarelli (Hodder
& Stoughton); and The Collini Case, by Ferdinand von Schirach,
translated by Anthea Bell (Michael Joseph)
The
CWA Non-Fiction Dagger: Midnight in Peking, by Paul French
(Penguin Viking)
Also nominated: The Boy in the River, by
Richard Hoskins (Pan Macmillan); Against a Tide of Evil, by Mukesh
Kapila, with Damien Lewis (Mainstream); A Fine Day for a Hanging,
by Carol Ann Lee (Mainstream); Injustice, by Clive Stafford Smith
(Random House); and Murder at Wrotham Hill, by Diana Souhami
(Quercus)
The CWA Ellis
Peters Historical Dagger: The Scent of Death, by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins)
Also nominated: The Heretics, by Rory Clements
(John Murray); Pilgrim Soul, by Gordon Ferris (Corvus); The
Paris Winter, by Imogen Robertson (Headline); Dead Men and Broken
Hearts, by Craig Russell (Quercus); and The Twelfth Department,
by William Ryan (Mantle)
The
CWA Short Story Dagger: “Come
Away with Me,” by Stella Duffy (from The Mammoth Book of
Best British Crime, Volume 10, edited by Maxim Jakubowski; Constable)
Also nominated: “Method
Murder,” by Simon Brett (from The Mammoth Book of Best British
Crime, Volume 10); “Stairway C,”
by Piero Colaprico (from Outsiders, edited by Ben Faccini;
MacLehose Press); “The Case of Death and
Honey,” by Neil Gaiman (from The Mammoth Book of Best British
Crime, Volume 10); “Ferengi,” by Carlo Lucarelli (from Outsiders);
and “Lost and Found,” by
Zoë Sharp (from Vengeance, edited by Lee Child; Corvus)
The CWA Dagger in the
Library: Belinda Bauer
Also nominated: Alison Bruce, Gordon Ferris, Christopher
Fowler, Elly Griffiths, and Michael Ridpath
The CWA Debut Dagger: Finn Clarke (UK), Call Time
Also nominated: Aine
Oomhnaill (Ireland), The Assassin’s Keeper; Sue Dawes (UK), TAG; Alex Sweeney (UK), Working in
Unison; Marie
Hannan-Mandel (USA), Lesson Plan for Murder; Ron Puckering (UK), Honour or
Justice; David Evans
(UK), Torment; Jayne
Barnard (Canada), When the Bow Breaks; D.B. Carew (Canada), Fighting Darkness: The
Killer Trail; Mike Craven
(UK), Born in a Burial Gown;
Emma Melville (UK), The Journeyman; and Joanna Dodd (UK), A Cure
for All Evils
Lee Child received this year’s Diamond
Dagger.
In addition, longlists of nominees were announced for three
other annual CWA commendations:
• Rubbernecker, by Belinda Bauer (Bantam/Transworld)
• The Shining Girls, by Lauren Beukes (HarperCollins)
• Tequila Sunset, by Sam Hawken Serpent’s Tail)
• Dead Lions, by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)
• Rage Against the Dying, by Becky Masterman (Orion)
• Breakdown, by Sara Paretsky (Hodder &
Stoughton)
• Say You’re Sorry, by Michael Robotham (Sphere)
• The Kings of Cool, by Don Winslow (Heinemann)
• Ghostman, by Roger Hobbs (Transworld)
• The Uninvited, by Liz Jensen (Bloomsbury)
• The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter, by Malcolm
Mackay
(Pan Macmillan)
(Pan Macmillan)
• Ratlines, by Stuart Neville (Random House)
• The Sentinel, by Mark Oldfield (Head of Zeus)
• The Poison Tide, by Andrew Williams (John Murray)
• Capital Punishment, by Robert Wilson (Orion)
• Ghostman, by Roger Hobbs (Doubleday)
• Something You Are, by Hanna Jameson (Head of Zeus)
• The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter, by Malcolm
Mackay (Mantle)
• Rage Against the Dying, by Becky Masterman (Orion)
• Norwegian by Night, by Derek B. Miller (Faber and
Faber)
• Shadow of the Rock, by Thomas Mogford (Bloomsbury)
• The City of Shadows, by Michael Russell (Avon)
• City of Blood, by M.D. Villiers (Harvill Secker).
These last longlists are supposed to be trimmed to four titles apiece by later in the summer, with the eventual winners to be
revealed during the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards this coming fall.
(Hat tip to It’s a Crime! [Or a Mystery …])
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