Bullet Points: Eve of Haunts Edition

• Online voting has begun in the contest for the 2014 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards. There are seven categories of nominees, but the one that may interest Rap Sheet readers most is the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Book of the Year. Here are the contenders:

-- Unravelling Oliver, by Liz Nugent (Penguin Ireland)
-- The Kill, by Jane Casey (Ebury Publishing)
-- The Final Silence, by Stuart Neville (Harvill Secker)
-- Can Anybody Help Me?, by Sinead Crowley (Quercus)
-- The Secret Place, by Tana French (Hachette Books Ireland)
-- Last Kiss, by Louise Phillips (Hachette Books Ireland)

Choose your favorites here. I don’t see anything about this competition being restricted to Irish citizens, but note that the voting will close at midnight on November 21.

• Unbidden but nonetheless willing, John Harvey--whose recent Charlie Resnick novel, Darkness, Darkness, I appreciated so much--has put together a list of what he says are his 25 favorite crime novels. “It will immediately become clear there are exceptions: no Hammett, no Chandler nor other ‘classic’ crime--so obvious that to mention them was, to my mind, unnecessary; and some writers--Michael Connelly would serve as an example--are not there on the grounds that the stream of their work is so strong, I would find it impossible to lift one prime example from the rest.” Among the novels that did merit inclusion are Megan Abbott’s The End of Everything, Kent Anderson’s Night Dogs, George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle, and Daniel Woodrell’s Give Us a Kiss. You’ll find all of Harvey’s picks here.

• Who remembers the 1979 TV series A Man Called Sloane? My only recollection is that star Robert Conrad left another series, Stephen J. Cannell’s The Duke, after only a handful of episodes in order to play freelance spy Thomas R. Sloane III in this nearly as short-lived Quinn Martin production. Writer Christopher Mills, though, appreciated Sloane enough to compose an episode-by-episode series of posts in a blog called Spy-fi Channel. That blog is now defunct, but Mills is in the midst of revising those Sloane posts (“editing them a bit and adding a few new thoughts and observations”) for another of his blogs, Atomic Pulp and Other Meltdowns. Keep up with his series here.

• The latest update of The Thrilling Detective Web Site is now live. It includes editor Kevin Burton Smith’s “spontaneous tribute” to the late Rockford Files star, James Garner, and expanded entries on characters ranging from Stryker McBride and Joey Fly to Yakov Semenovich Stern and Steve Allen’s Los Angeles gumshoe, Roger Dale. Smith also brings the welcome news that Thrilling Detective finally has “a decent search engine,” which you can access here.

• I must admit, I envy author-educator Art Taylor for his recent opportunity to interview Otto Penzler on behalf of the Los Angeles Review of Books. They had a nice long talk about editor Penzler’s work on a couple of new short-story collections, The Best American Mystery Stories of the 19th Century (which I reviewed here) and The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries. Penzler also clues Taylor in on what he’s been working on “since January”: another major compilation, The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories.

• Edward A. Grainger (aka David Cranmer) asks, in Criminal Element, why Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896) hasn’t received more attention over the years--why has it “slipped through the cracks of popular reading?” He suggests it’s “because nothing can live up to the Great American Novel--Huckleberry Finn--that preceded it. Ernest Hemingway famously said, ‘All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.’ No such praise met Tom Sawyer: Detective, with the British Guardian’s original review harshly noting, ‘The whole story is poorly conceived and badly put together.’”

• Although I’ve missed the actual anniversary, I still want to bring attention to the fact that last week the Paul Newman-Robert Redford picture Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid marked 45 years since its general release on October 24, 1969. I’ve watched that romantic adventure many times, and hope for multiple more viewings. It’s just a fantastic film, with one of the best knife-fight scenes ever!

• There are now only two weeks left before the start of Bouchercon 2014 in Long Beach. In his BOLO Books blog, Kristopher Zgorski offers a selection of interesting “non-panel-related activities which will be happening during the conference.” Those include the “Author Speed Dating” event scheduled to be held at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, November 13, during which more than 100 authors will “pitch” their books to Bouchercon attendees, hoping to attract new readers.

• Haven’t registered for Bouchercon? You can still do it here.

• Apparently, author Max Allan Collins (for whom the adjective “prolific” seems to have been invented) composed the liner notes for a new eight-CD set called Jazz on Fillm: Crime Jazz. He describes the line-up of pieces as “astonishing”: “77 Sunset Strip,” “Hawaiian Eye,” “Checkmate,” “Shotgun Slade,” “The Naked City,” “Richard Diamond,” “Bourbon Street Beat,” “M-Squad,” “The Untouchables,” “Peter Gunn,” “Mr. Lucky,” “Staccato” and “Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer”--“both the TV series soundtrack and the music from the rare Stan Purdy ‘Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer Story’ LP,” Collins explains. A list of the musicians represented in this CD set is here.

• Patricia Highsmith--comic book writer?

• One of my fellow Kirkus Reviews bloggers, John DeNardo, this week posted a list of “10 Things This Fan Was Surprised to Learn About Science Fiction.” I was no less taken aback by one of his factoids:

Robert A. Heinlein’s 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land is about a man named Valentine Michael Smith who was born and raised on Mars. The story concerns Smith’s trip to Earth and his first-ever interaction with Earth culture. The book is considered one of the most popular science-fiction novels of all time. What surprised me was learning that in 1968, the book inspired a man to found a Neopagan religious organization modeled after the religion founded by Smith in the novel, the beliefs of which include polyamory, social libertarianism and non-mainstream family structures.

You learn something new (and maybe weird) every day, I guess.

• I’m not convinced that we really need a new, American version of Wire in the Blood, the British ITV series that ran from 2002 to 2008 and was based on Val McDermid’s novels about a university clinical psychologist who works with police on serial-killer cases. Yet Crimespree Magazine brings word that ABC-TV is developing such a program with the help of a couple of veterans from the underappreciated Detroit 1-8-7. I know I’ve asked this before (and I shall probably ask it again in the future), but why can’t Hollywood come up with new ideas, rather than recycling old ones?

• This doesn’t sound good: In Reference to Murder reports that “CBS reduced the episode order for CSI to 18 episodes, down from 22. The show is in its 15th season, and this is the first time the drama will have produced less than a full season of episodes.”

• While looking back on the 1959 thriller Night Without End, Vintage Pop Fictions remarks that its author, Alistair MacLean, “does not deserve the relative oblivion into which he has fallen.” I made that same point last year in this piece for Kirkus Reviews.

• Brian Drake interviews Anonymous-9 (aka Elaine Ash) on the subject of Bite Harder, the sequel to her 2013 novel, Hard Bite.

• Finally, since tomorrow is Halloween, I’d be remiss in not linking you up with a few associated postings around the Web. TopTenz chooses the “Top 10 Most Haunted Cities in America,” while The Bowery Boys--an excellent New York City history blog--looks back at Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stunning announcement, in April 1922, of “an extraordinary discovery--the existence of ectoplasm, the ghostly goo that emits from mediums possessed with the spirits of the dead.” Publishers Weekly tries to identify “The 10 Best Ghost Stories,” but both The Poisoned Martini and Too Much Horror Fiction have other suggestions. Terence Towles Canote rounds up his favorite horror film postings from A Shroud of Thoughts, while Vintage45’s Blog revisits Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), the 1969-1971 British TV program about a London private eye whose late partner is still helping him solve crimes--a show I previously wrote about here. And since this post can’t be completely serious, check out Cracked History’s eye-catching rundown of the “10 Sexiest Halloween Costumes.”

Pierce’s Picks: “Darkness, Darkness”

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

Darkness, Darkness, by John Harvey (Pegasus)

The Gist: “And so after 12 novels, 16 short stories, two television adaptations, and four radio plays, Darkness, Darkness marks the final appearance of John Harvey’s stalwart and long-serving detective, Charlie Resnick,” explains the blog Crime Fiction Lover. A Polish-descended detective inspector with the police in the East Midlands city of Nottingham, Resnick made his debut in 1989’s Lonely Hearts, conceived of by author Harvey as “very much in the mold of Frank Furillo,” the middle-management type in charge of the eccentric squad on television’s Hill Street Blues—only “instead of wearing smart off-the-pegs suits, [he] was outfitted by the same tailor as Columbo.” The redundantly titled Darkness, Darkness finds Resnick “even more melancholy than usual, filled with regrets and thoughts of his own mortality,” writes Adam Woog in The Seattle Times. “The rumpled, canny and jazz-loving Resnick is also retired and bored--until a young detective, Catherine Njoroge, asks for help investigating the recently discovered remains of a woman [Jenny Hardwick] who had disappeared in the mid-1980s. That period was a dark moment in England’s history: a bitter coal miners’ strike that devastated the nation. It also tore friends and family apart--as with the murder victim, a strike supporter, and her husband, a miner who became a scab rather than strike.” Harvey, says Kirkus Reviews, “seamlessly weaves together the present-day investigation into Jenny’s death--a process complicated by not only the passage of time, but also the lingering distrust stirred up by the strike and its aftermath--and the last weeks of Jenny’s life.” A secondary plot line about Njoroge’s confrontations with an abusive ex-lover adds further emotional depth to this yarn.

What Else You Should Know: Jake Kerridge, who writes about crime fiction for Britain’s Telegraph newspaper, had a nice take on Resnick’s legacy, when this book was first published in the UK this last summer:

In the early-to-mid-1990s it looked like Resnick was set to be the new star British sleuth, and although by the end of the decade he had been superseded in the public’s affections by Ian Rankin’s [John] Rebus, Harvey’s books have hogged the critics’ superlatives, even being compared by Elmore Leonard, no less, with Graham Greene, no less.

Rebus may be the greater imaginative creation, but Resnick seems to me to be the more authentic portrayal of what the average real-life copper is like. Over the years he has become more of an observer than a man of action, and indeed this book finds him retired from the fray and advising the police in a civilian capacity. There are intimations of obsolescence--he is baffled by some aspects of modern life and no longer even recognizes most of the names on the bill at Ronnie Scott’s--but unlike Ruth Rendell’s increasingly bewildered Inspector Wexford, Resnick still convinces as a competent detective.

However, it’s Raven--a pseudonymous reviewer for Crime Fiction Lover--who gets the final word here: “Obviously to avoid spoilers, I will make no reference to how Resnick bows out [at the end of Harvey’s new novel], but think I am definitely not alone in mourning the loss of this character [from the] crime fiction arena. With Darkness, Darkness, Harvey has conjured up a fitting and emotive final outing for this long-lasting and influential character. As a stolid fan of John Harvey I thank him for it--the final scene is perfect. We’ll miss you, Charlie Resnick.”

READ MORE: “Author John Harvey Interview: Resnick’s Last Case,” by Lynette Pinchess (Nottingham Post).

Bullet Points: Of Sin, Shaft, and Snoopathon

• Did you know that June is International Crime Month? Yeah, neither did I. So at first blush, this seems like a P.R. failure of cataclysmic proportions--nothing like the triumphal event it was been billed to be: “a month-long initiative featuring internationally acclaimed crime-fiction authors, editors, critics, and publishers who will appear together in a series of readings, panels, and discussions from four of America's most influential independent publishers--Grove Atlantic, Akashic Books, Melville House, and Europa Editions.” But as it turns out, other people are preparing to celebrate. There’s a free commemorative magazine being given out at bookstores this month, plus a schedule of book launches and other happenings. The bookstore MysteryPeople in Austin, Texas, has its own events planned, including a double-feature film series matching books such as Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye and Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress with the movies adapted from them. I’m hoping the International Crime Month Web site will keep us apprised of further developments along this line.

• Now, that’s a movie poster for you! The graphic on the left features gorgeous Eva Green of Casino Royale fame, this time promoting Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, which is being readied for theatrical release in August. Everything you need to know about both this poster and today’s crisis level of U.S. idiocy is clear from the news that the Motion Picture Association of American wants to ban the advertisement “for being too sexy.” More here.

• The A&E-TV series Longmire, based on Craig Johnson’s series of novels starring small-town Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire, will return tonight for a third season, beginning at 10 p.m. ET/PT.

• Thirty-nine years after the final John Shaft novel--appropriately titled The Last Shaft--was brought to market, comic-book publisher Dynamite Entertainment has announced its plans to reprint Ernest Tidyman’s seven original novels about the black New York City private eye who’s “a sex machine to all the chicks.” Read my Kirkus Reviews piece about the Shaft novels here. (Hat tip to Gary Phillips.)

• And it was 35 years ago this month that Moonraker--the 11th big-screen James Bond flick, and the fourth to star Roger Moore--was released. The HMSS Weblog heralds this with a look back at how viewers and reviewers originally saw the movie.

• Check out “Snoopathon: A Blogathon of Spies,” currently underway and hosted by Movies, Silently. Included among the many offerings are films about Nazis, amateur espionage agents, Peter Lorre’s Mr. Moto and of course Bond, James Bond. The “Snoopathon” will continue through tomorrow, June 3. Click here for all the vital links.

• That reminds me: Another blogathon began today, this one focusing on television programs featured in MeTV’s summer broadcast schedule. Among the first posts is Mitchell Hadley’s tribute to Peter Gunn, found in It’s About TV!. Other commentators will take on such shows as Adam-12, The Saint, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Columbo. You’ll find a full catalogue of elements from this blogathon--which runs through Thursday--by clickety-clicking here.

• Both CSI and Chuck number among Neatorama’s picks of “The 25 Most Powerful TV Shows of the Last 25 Years.”

• Janet Rudolph offers this preview of Endeavour, Season 2, which will premiere in the States as part of PBS’ Masterpiece series, beginning on Sunday, June 29.

• The delightful Ms. Rudolph also has some advice for attendees at this year’s Bouchercon in Long Beach, California.

• The Classic TV History Blog’s Stephen Bowie offers up, this time in the A.V. Club blog, a fine essay about what might have been one of the last great private detective series, Mannix. He writes, in part:

Mannix was easy to take, period. The low-key personality of Mike Connors, the former basketball player and B-movie actor who played the title character, set the tone. Likable but flinty, Connors was a tough guy who didn’t have to show off. An idealist and a nice guy, Mannix was perfectly willing to take on a lost little girl as a client and negotiate his fee in lunch money (never actually collected, of course). Connors had a rare sincerity that kept scenes like that from getting corny. (When cynical private eye shows like Harry O and The Rockford Files made a point of their protagonists’ pragmatic eye for a buck, it was mainly Mannix they were rebuking.) Working out of a comfy Spanish-styled home office, dressed in plaid sport coats made out of fabric as thick as carpet, driving a snazzy muscle car painted a hideous shade of army-Jeep green, Joe Mannix was functional but square. It was all of a piece. Mannix was the audience’s uncle or its brother-in-law--that quiet, comforting fellow who never let on that he’d mowed down a whole squadron of advancing enemies during the war.

I said my own piece about Mannix in this 2008 Rap Sheet post.

• In Killer Covers, I’ve begun a week’s worth of postings about cool vintage books that feature days of the week in their titles.

• R.I.P., The Brady Bunch’s Ann B. Davis.

• BOLO Books’ Kristopher Zgorski recaps his days spent at the Book Expo America conference in New York City, May 28-30.

• Bob Byrne serves up a short but notable encomium to John D. MacDonald and his many novels, in the blog Black Gate.

• The June 2014 edition of The Big Thrill, sponsored by the International Thriller Writers, is currently available here.

• I somehow missed this Newton Thornbury novel from 1968.

• I’d forgotten that Liam Neeson will star as unlicensed private detective Matthew Scudder in the film adaptation of Lawrence Block’s 1992 novel, A Walk Among the Tombstones. Fortunately, Crimespree Magazine remembered, and recently posted this trailer for the picture, which is set to premiere in theaters on September 19.

• British novelist John Harvey deserves critical attention, and he gets lots of it in two new pieces by Michael Carlson. The first one--located here--applauds “the downbeat beauty” of Harvey’s main series star, Nottingham Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick, who appears (for one last time) in the novel Darkness, Darkness, already available in the UK and set to debut in U.S. bookstores in mid-September of this year. Carlson’s second Harvey piece, here, identifies the critic’s five favorite Resnick novels.

• The NBC-TV spy drama The Man from U.N.C.L.E. first flickered across boob-tube screens on September 22, 1964. To note the passage since of 50 years, a two-day extravaganza billed as “The Golden Anniversary Affair” will be mounted “somewhere in Los Angeles” on September 26 and 27 of this year. “This once-in-a-lifetime event will feature a reunion of cast and crew members, panels and presentations by U.N.C.L.E. aficionados, as well as a display of original props and other surprises,” promises a promotional Web site. “A special feature will be an exclusive The Man from U.N.C.L.E. MGM/Sony Studios tour, on Sept. 26th, that features a visit inside Stage 10 where U.N.C.L.E. HQ once stood.” It looks as if there are many more details to work out before this observance can take place, but an associated Facebook page has already been launched, and donations are being raised. It all sounds like an “Affair” to remember.

• The Boston Globe profiles Joseph Finder, explaining:

After publishing 10 suspense novels, two of them bestsellers turned into Hollywood movies, Joseph Finder had what most writers would sell their souls for: brand-name author status; a seven-figure, multibook deal with a major publisher; a list of his previous works aggressively marketed by his publisher; and a loyal readership for virtually anything he wrote.

Then, two years ago, in a plot twist befitting one of Finder’s didn’t-see-that-coming thrillers, he made an abrupt change. After his last novel, “Buried Secrets,” failed to make the bestseller list, the Boston-based author bought out his contract with a seven-figure check, left his longtime publisher and agent, and wrote his next novel without a signed deal in place.

He took an additional risk by not publishing anything for nearly three years, an eternity in the life of a popular thriller writer. His goal was to remake his brand, and aim at a larger audience.

• Don Johnson talks with Salon about Miami Vice, “his wild years with Andy Warhol and Hunter S. Thompson--and his recent comeback.”

• Finally, after a four-year hiatus, historian-author Laura James’ blog, Clews: Your Home for Historic True Crime, has suddenly reappeared with an overview of Harold Schechter's The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Murder that Shook the Nation. I’ve reinstalled a link on this page under “True Crime.”

Of Kitty, Kay, and Kolchak

• Julia Buckley interviews UK author John Harvey, whose 100th novel, Far Cry, is due out in the States from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in June. They discuss not only that new book, but also music, Harvey’s interest in America, and how he’s “not really an animal person.”

• So, what was the name of “the only soap opera to have a private eye in the leading role”? It was Kitty Keene, Incorporated, a 15-minute-long serial that featuring a Ziegfeld Follies showgirl turned detective. The program ran for four years, beginning in September 1937, and at least three actresses voiced the title role. Kitty Keene’s creator was Day Keene (né Gunnar Hjerstedt), who shared script-writing responsibilities with Wally Norman. There are apparently only four episodes of the show still available, one of which can be sampled here.

• Paul Tremblay submits his new novel, No Sleep Till Wonderland (the sequel to last year’s The Little Sleep) to Marshal Zeringue’s Page 69 Test. The results are here.

• Sarah Weinman directs us to The Washington Post, in which the full text of David Parker’s February 7 eulogy to his father, Robert B. Parker, has been printed.

• Really? Angelina Jolie is going to play Kay Scarpetta, Patricia Cornwell’s medical examiner protagonist in a possible movie franchise? Oh, yawn ...

• Lights out for the inventor of the Easy-Bake Oven.

• In Episode 50 of the CrimeWAV podcast, author (and all-too-infrequent Rap Sheet contributor) Mark Coggins reads an excerpt from his latest novel, The Big Wake-Up.

• Republican’t whining about how majority Democrats are planning to complete their passage of landmark health-care reform legislation through the budget reconciliation process (a step taken by the GOP itself many times, including to approve a welfare reform bill in 1996) seems finally to be emboldening center-right Dems who’ve become disgusted with the right’s lies and do-nothing attitudes. About damn time ...

• Being a fan of the 1971-1973 ABC-TV western series, Alias Smith and Jones, I’m pleased to hear that Timeless Media will finally release that show’s second and third seasons to DVD on June 8.

• It was four years ago yesterday that film and TV actor Darren McGavin passed away at age 83. Pulp International uses the occasion to revisit his starring role in the mystery-and-monsters series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. My own McGavin obit from 2006--which also mentions the performer’s title role in the 1958-1960 series Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer--can be found here.

• Spare me a moment of nostalgia for the 1965-1967 animated TV series, The Beatles, showcased this week by the blog Classic Television Showbiz. Watch here.

• Oh, great. Another hateful beauty queen.

• Authors Michael G. Jacob and Daniela De Gregorio, who together write historical mysteries as “Michael Gregorio,” have posted an original short story on their Web site. It’s called “William Hodge’s War” and can be found here.

• R.I.P., Ed Thomas of Orange County’s renowned Book Carnival. UPDATE: There’s more on Thomas here.

• And Mark Sarvas denounces Elmore Leonard’s 10 rules of writing fiction (see his comments here), while the ever-clever Declan Burke comes up with “William Shakespeare’s 10 Rules O’Writing” here.

The Book You Have to Read: “The Devil’s Home on Leave,” by Derek Raymond

(Editor’s note: This is the 74th installment of our ongoing Friday blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. It is also, however, the second entry in a special miniseries honoring all five of the Factory novels penned by UK writer Derek Raymond [aka Robin Cook]. Today The Rap Sheet welcomes John Harvey, winner of the Crime Writers’ Association [CWA] Silver Dagger, recipient of CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger, and the author most recently of Far Cry. He shares his thoughts about The Devil’s Home on Leave.)

I knew Robin Cook by reputation long before I ever met him. His publisher in France, François Guerif, had talked at such length and with such enthusiasm for both the man and his writing, that when I finally laid eyes on Robin himself, standing up to the bar in the conference hotel hosting Nottingham’s Shots in the Dark International Mystery and Thriller Festival some years back, I was more than a little in awe. Everything about him was immediately recognizable: the leather jacket, the black beret, the cigarette, even the blonde on his arm. We were introduced and shook hands and he was nice enough to say he knew my work, though I suspect he was being polite; he was affable and friendly, greeting me as a colleague, a co-conspirator, both then and on the several further occasions we were to meet.

I must have read The Devil’s Home on Leave (1985), the second of the Factory novels he wrote as Derek Raymond, round about that time, and I read it again before writing this.

He knows how to get you, Derek/Robin; knows how to pull you in.

This, it its entirety, is Chapter One.

I knocked at a second-floor flat in a dreary house, one of two hundred in a dreary Catford street.

After a while I heard steps the other side of the door. “McGruder?”

“Who’s that?” said a man’s voice. “Who wants him?”

“I do,” I said. “Open up. Police.”

Right. As a reader, you’re nicked.

The novel, as it develops, becomes, at its heart, a duel between the copper telling the story--the detective sergeant who works in The Factory, a small, under-resourced, off-the-wall unit that investigates low-level murders, the kind where nobody usually gives a shit about the victim, including, at times, the victims themselves--and the principal villain, Billy McGruder, an ex-Squaddie who grew up in Northern Ireland in a brutal loveless home that’s infected his behavior ever since.

It’s this clash of opposites who are, in fact, in so many ways alike, that is the nerve center of the book and gives it its main focus and strength. The Factory copper has lost his wife, other than as a demented non-person, and lost his child. He’s a man alone with his grievances against the world and his heart of stone. And McGruder is ... well, this is McGruder:

He stared at me without any expression at all, and I knew it was no use. He would always come out in pieces, in fury and despair, his way of describing a sense of loss. He would feel for a second, or a minute, if you reached out far enough to him; but he was too far gone, with violence behind him, violence in front and behind him. Like a broken piano, he could only make discords.

It’s the violence, of course, that lies at the heart of the novel, at the heart of all of Factory novels, at the terrible heart of Robin’s Derek Raymond enterprise, culminating in I Was Dora Suarez (1990), a book I have several times started reading and never, squeamish as I am, been able to finish.

Violence in these books, it seems to me, is both a reality and a metaphor: a metaphor for Robin’s growing disgust at the world around him. I can understand, I think, what he is doing, where he is going, without wanting to take that journey all the way with him.

I was reminded in places of an interview I heard with the late J.G. Ballard, in which he expressed an old-fashioned regret for the fact that when we jettisoned the certainties of the post-World War II world in Britain, we neglected to replace them with anything else other than thoughtless consumerism and a love for vacuous celebrity. Robin, I think, might have gone along with that--his protagonist certainly would.

There used to be dignity in life; I used to see it all around me when I was young. But now it’s gone. People no longer care about each other the way they used to--not the way my old man used to tell me life was when he worked in the Fire Service during the war and the bombing. Then, people who didn’t even know each other would go down into flattened buildings after a raid and shovel to get at the people buried down there as if the victims were their brothers. Even after the war there was some trust left; it ran on nearly into the Sixties. But now it’s all sorry, squire, don’t want to know.

And there’s a beautifully written section--Chapter 14--in which the narrator harks back to his time as a young policeman in London and muses on the effects of the war, and it’s in extended passages like this, and the occasional down-to-earth and precise metaphor--“She was a hard-looking woman in her thirties with about as much pity in her face as an empty plate.”--that the strengths of Robin Cook’s writing come through most clearly.

Elsewhere, when he allows the plot to take him into areas he doesn’t truly seem interested in or to be capable of rendering convincingly--such as a late subplot involving Russian spies and a threat to the life of the defense minister--the tension drops and the quality of the book suffers.

Robin’s compass in these novels is a limited one--the scruffy low-life of down-at-heel pubs and seedy London back streets, the very real anguish of personal pain and loss, the extremities of violence itself. Limited but, once acknowledged, none the worse for that. Indeed, that very concentration is the books’ great gain; it gives them, at their best, an intensity that is rarely matched elsewhere.

NEXT UP: How the Dead Live (1986)

Bullet Points: All Over the Map Edition

• CrimeFest 2009 concluded yesterday in Bristol, England. Undoubtedly, the wrap-up posts will continue for a while yet (I’m expecting Ali Karim, for one, to recount highlights in The Rap Sheet at some time soon), but a few have already trickled in. Ayo Onatade drops a sixth report into Shotsmag Confidential (the rest of her coverage can be found here), while Peter Rozovsky covers the doings of Day IV here (with all of his CrimeFest posts available here), and Uriah Robinson offers the first of his related posts at this location. UPDATE: Petrona blogger Maxine Clarke has some things to say about her own “three special highlights” from CrimeFest.

• Fans of the late George C. Chesbro should be on the lookout for the June 2009 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, if they don’t have a copy already. It contains the author’s last short story, “Home Inversion,” featuring Garth Frederickson.

• Bury Me Deep, the latest novel from Rap Sheet contributor Megan Abbott, is among New York Magazine’s picks of the best books to read this summer. Carl Rosen summarizes the plot thusly:

In 1931, a young wife, Marion Seeley, is deposited by her husband on the steps of a TB ward in Phoenix. Eager to escape her job as a medical secretary among the “lungers,” as patients are known, Marion quickly falls in with the wrong crowd: fading flappers with marcelled bobs and blank eyes. Enter Gentleman Joe, a married “wet druggist” who is all about the “business of ruin.” He unlocks a dark obsession in Marion, and, true to noir style, desperate passions lead to despicable actions. In this novel based on the true-life case of the “Trunk Murderess,” Abbott turns the stuff of sensational confession magazines into a rich meditation on the unclouded depths of the soul.

Bury Me Deep is due out in early July. Also chosen by New York: Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places. Two more books I must find time to read in the coming months.

• It hardly makes up for the bad news that NBC’s Life has been cancelled after only two seasons. But fans of that distinctive TV cop series starring the quirky Damien Lewis and the fetching Sarah Shahi will be happy to learn that a five-disc set of Season 2 is scheduled for DVD release on August 25.

• Looking for reading recommendations? Acclaimed British writer John Harvey (Far Cry) has posted a list of “20 crime, or close, novels from which I have derived more than usual pleasure, and which I’ve re-read at least once if not several times.” I’m feeling pretty smug that I have read most of his selections. Harvey’s list is here.

• Making the publicity rounds: Reed Farrel Coleman (Empty Ever After) is interviewed by National Public Radio’s Maureen Corrigan, while Laura Lippman (Life Sentences) chats it up with late-night TV host Craig Ferguson.

• Derringer Award-winning writer John Weagly is the author of this week’s short story at Beat to a Pulp, “Oral Eruptions.”

• From the “Fun Facts to Know and Tell” file: Chris Knopf, author of the new Sam Acquillo, Hard Stop, was “‘personally rejected from graduate school in writing’ by none other than novelist John Barth”--or so he informs the Hartford Courant.

• Jeremy Duns, author of the new Cold War thriller Free Agent, “reveals his ten favorite real espionage inventions” to the London Times. Read all about them here.

• Along the same lines, but strictly for amateurs ...

• Author and old movie buff Arthur Lyons may have passed away in March 2008, but his name lives on. What used to be known simply as the Palm Springs Film Noir Festival has been rechristened the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival, and will begin this year on May 28.

• John Hart, the Edgar Award-winning author of the new novel The Last Child, is the guest all this week at Minotaur Books’ Moments in Crime blog. You can keep up with his posts here.

• Castle Freeman Jr. (All That I Have) is interviewed by John Kenyon at Things I’d Rather Be Doing.

• Blogger Jen Forbus of Jen’s Book Thoughts interviews Stanley Trollip and Michael Sears, who under the combined pseudonym “Michael Stanley” wrote last year’s A Carrion Death--introducing Botswanan detective David “Kubu” Bengu--and next month follow up with The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu.

• Readers who enjoyed Philip Kerr’s fifth Bernie Gunther novel, A Quiet Flame (one of January Magazine’s favorite books of 2008) will be pleased to hear that Kerr has another installment of that series, If the Dead Rise Not, planned for release by Quercus in September of this year. The write-up at Amazon UK casts it as a prequel:

Berlin 1934. The Nazis have been in power for just eighteen months but already Germany has seen some unpleasant changes. As the city prepares to host the 1936 Olympics, Jews are being expelled from all German sporting organizations--a blatant example of discrimination. Forced to resign as a homicide detective with Berlin’s Criminal Police, Bernie is now house detective at the famous Adlon Hotel. The discovery of two bodies--one a businessman and the other a Jewish boxer--involves Bernie in the lives of two hotel guests. One is a beautiful left-wing journalist intent on persuading America to boycott the Berlin Olympiad; the other is a German-Jewish gangster who plans to use the Olympics to enrich himself and the Chicago mob. As events unfold, Bernie uncovers a vast labour and construction racket designed to take advantage of the huge sums the Nazis are prepared to spend to showcase the new Germany to the world. It is a plot that finds its conclusion twenty years later in pre-revolution Cuba, the country to which Bernie flees from Argentina at the end of A Quiet Flame.

• Will you be attending the 75th anniversary celebration of the killings of Depression-era robbers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker this weekend in Gibsland, Louisiana? As the Associated Press reports, the place where those larcenous lovers made their last stand “will again buzz with activity on Saturday when actors re-create the ambush that pumped more than 100 bullets into the couple. It’s one of four re-enactments planned for the festival, which will also include a pancake breakfast, parade, Bonnie and Clyde look-alike contest.”

• Lee Child is Molly Pesce’s latest guest on the Barnes & Noble video series Tagged! What may be most interesting about their exchange is the estimation that Child (Gone Tomorrow) sells “a book a second.” Absolutely astonishing!

• Stephanie Pintoff, winner of the 2008 St. Martin’s Minotaur/Mystery Writers of America Best First Crime Novel Award, talks with blogger Lesa Holstine about her debut historical thriller, In the Shadow of Gotham.

• Being rather modest, I tend to downplay compliments to me or the products with which I am associated. However, veteran novelist Ed Gorman had such a nice comment about The Rap Sheet recently that I’d like to share it with the other people who have helped make this now almost-three-year-old blog a success. To quote:

If there’s such a place as the indispensable mystery site, it has to be The Rap Sheet. This week editor-writer Jeff Pierce demonstrates his talent for constantly giving his readers the kind and quality of material they won’t find anywhere else. I’m referring here to his interview with the son of the late paperback writer Robert Terrall. A good share of Jeff's material should be preserved in book form and this piece is just one example.

• And two more books go through the Page 69 Test ringer: Rebecca Cantrell’s A Trace of Smoke and Philip Baruth’s The Brothers Boswell.

At the Top of His Game

One writer whose work I have enjoyed for more years than I care to mention is John Harvey, so it was with delight that I recently received an invitation from Random House UK to attend the launch of Harvey’s latest novel, Cold in Hand. This occasion was made extra special by the fact that in this new book, Harvey is bringing back his most beloved protagonist, Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick, last seen in the novella Trouble in Mind (2007) and before that in Last Rites (1998).

Harvey is a crime writers’ crime writer--“among the greats of British crime fiction,” to quote fellow novelist John Connolly. Or, as Reginald Hill puts it, “If Harvey gets any better, the rest of us may have to kill him.” Beyond being the author of the richly praised Resnick tales, the first of which, Lonely Hearts (1989), was named by the London Times as one of the “100 Best Crime Novels of the Century,” his first novel featuring retired Detective Inspector Frank Elder, Flesh and Blood, won the British Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Silver Dagger in 2004. Then last year, he picked up the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence in this genre. If the accolades from his work in crime fiction are not enough to convince you of his worth, then perhaps his work as a poet, dramatist, and occasional broadcaster should conclude the matter here.

What are readers to expect from Cold in Hand, the 11th Resnick yarn? Random House synopsizes the plot this way:

Valentine’s Day, and a dispute between rival gangs escalates into bloody violence. One teenage girl dead is left dead, another injured, and a police officer is caught in the crossfire. Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick, nearing retirement, is hauled back to the front line to help deal with the fallout. But when the dead girl’s father seeks to lay the blame on DI Lynn Kellogg, his colleague and partner, Resnick finds the line between personal and professional dangerously blurred. Meanwhile, a murder case in which Kellogg was the chief investigating officer has stalled. One vital witness is threatened, and another is missing. But when SOCA--the Serious and Organised Crime Agency--start to show a keen interest in the case, believing there are links to international gun running and people trafficking, Lynn Kellogg finds herself drawn into a web of deceit and betrayal that puts both her and Resnick in mortal danger.

A short excerpt from the text gives you a flavor for Harvey’s writing:

A few of those standing at the front turned to see what was happening and she was able to force her way to the centre. Faces, all shades, stared at her, showing everything from indifference to pure hate ... The two young women--girls--who’d been at the heart of the fighting had broken apart when Lynn pushed her way through. Fifteen, she guessed, sixteen at most ... ‘Okay, put the knife down.’ Two steps more, then three. Slow, measured, as assured as she could be. Somewhere in the middle distance, the sound of a police siren coming closer. Overhead, the street lights seemed to be getting brighter with each second. ‘Put it down.’ The girl’s eyes were bright, taunting, only the merest flicker of fear. Of doubt ... Another half step and the expression on the girl’s face changed, her shoulders seeming to relax as she shifted her hold on the knife and lowered it to her side ... Lynn reading too late the widening of her eyes, too slow to counter the movement, lithe, as she sprang past, the blade slashing at the right side of the other girl’s face and opening it like a ripe plum ... Lynn pivoted on her left foot, seizing the attacker by the sleeve and swinging her hard round ... from the corner of her vision, she saw the youth step forward from the retreating crowd, arm raised. Time enough, as she swung towards him, to note the black-and-white bandana wound tight around his head, and the pistol held almost steady in his hand, the contempt in his eyes.

Random House had organized this last week’s soirée not only to celebrate Cold in Hand, but also to acknowledge the American release of Harvey’s last novel, Gone to Ground. It was being held at the Union Club in London’s Soho district. Wrapped up in my signature blue trench coat, garb appropriate to the stormy weather outside as well as the world in which Resnick operates, I arrived at the party with my colleague, Shots editor-in-chief Mike Stotter.

The first person we bumped into was writer, critic, and man-about-town Barry Forshaw (The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction), who had already pronounced his verdict on Harvey’s new novel, calling it “quite possibly Harvey’s most authoritative [book] in years: visceral, engaged and, yes, unputdownable.” From there, I had a chat with writer, critic and bookstore owner Maxim Jakubowski, who--I was amazed to discover--had enjoyed Tom Rob Smith’s coming debut novel, Child 44, just as much as I did. (Read my comments here.) This is the first time in a very long while that Jakubowski and I have shared the same opinion on a book (unlike our differences on Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), and it was worth a toast. He also let me know that his partner, who is well versed in Russian history, had read Smith’s novel too, and said that the backdrop of Stalinist Russia in Child 44 is remarkably without imperfection or error.

Unfortunately, Jakubowski and Forshaw had to leave these festivities early. After reminding us of the February 7 North London writers’ event, which will feature Rap Sheet contributor Roger “R.N.” Morris (A Vengeful Longing), they set off for a pre-arranged dinner. Stotter and I were left behind to listen to the three-piece jazz band that Random House, knowing Harvey’s taste in music, had brought in to play for guests. Although they were a little loud loud for the size of the venue, their music did give the evening some added flair.

Mingling and munching a bit, we ran into British crime writer Jo Hines (The Murder Bird) and talked about the coming award ceremony in May for U.S. novelist Sue Grafton, who will receive the Cartier Diamond Dagger for her work. We also chatted up Gaby Young, publicity manager for Orion Publishing, who has introduced me to many of Orion’s authors over the years (including Michael Connelly and Robert Crais), and has arranged for me to have lunch with Linwood Barclay (No Time for Goodbye) during his approaching trip to London. And we spent some time with playwright and crime novelist Stella Duffy, as well as stand-up comic-turned-crime writer Mark Billingham, the latter of whom has taken a break from his police-procedural series to produce a standalone entitled In the Dark (due out this summer in both the UK and the States).

Finally, Harvey’s editor, Susan Sandon, took the microphone and welcomed us all to the party. She spoke about Harvey’s breadth of work, and said that despite her love for world-weary Detective Inspector Frank Elder--Harvey’s more recent protagonist--she was pleased to have worked on the return of Charlie Resnick ... even though she thinks Elder is much sexier! This was greeted with a few good-hearted laughs from the assemblage. Sandon also reminded us of Harvey’s recent Cartier Diamond Dagger Award presentation and asked us to raise our glasses to the author, which we of course did.

Harvey followed with a very modest speech telling everyone how pleased he was to see that Sue Grafton would be the next Cartier Diamond Dagger recipient, and how much he enjoyed her work. Then he talked about his own life and his relationship with Random House and how much in debt he was to the sales and marketing teams for getting his work to readers. I must say that the new-style British covers capture the mood of his work perfectly. There has been a huge campaign to promote Harvey’s work in British railway stations, tube stations, bus shelters, and associated locales.

At the conclusion of Harvey’s remarks, Stotter went off to speak with fellow author Rob Ryan (After Midnight) about all things military, including his recent training session with American writer Vince Flynn. I, on the other hand, managed to draw John Harvey away into a quiet corner, where I could conduct a short interview about his work and the unexpected return of Charlie Resnick.

Ali Karim: So, the most obvious question first: Why did you decide to bring back DI Charlie Resnick in your latest work?

John Harvey: I hadn’t written about him at length for 10 years, but had given him walk-on roles in several other novels as well as having written several short stories in which he featured, so his fictional life had been continuing during that gap, which meant it wasn’t too difficult to pick him up at the start of Cold in Hand. I knew what he’d been involved in, both professionally and personally. Also, I’d been living in Nottingham again for two years, more or less, immediately prior to writing, so I felt I had got to know the city again--and had spent enough time there to register some of the changes that had occurred. I was interested in writing about Resnick as he approaches retirement (to no small degree inspired by K.C. Constantine’s wonderful book, Blood Mud) and also in writing in a little more detail about his relationship with his fellow officer and now live-in lover, Lynn Kellogg. Lastly, prompted all too sadly by the premature deaths of several close friends, I wanted to see if I could write well and convincingly about grief.

AK: I was pleased to read that Resnick’s debut in Lonely Hearts had been voted one of the “100 Best Crime Novels of the [20th] Century.” Is that your own favorite Resnick tale, too?

JH: Lonely Hearts is not my favorite, really, other than as a first-born. There are too many places where I can see myself trying to get a grip on Resnick’s character, which is a little uncertain in places, and perhaps the tone is too varied. Oh, and I think the abrupt ending was a mistake. I wouldn’t do that again now.

I have a particular fondness for Cold Light [1994], partly as it features Lynn quite heavily, but also as the story doesn’t run out of steam before the end, which some of the others might seem to do. My personal favorite is Easy Meat [1996]. For me it’s the strongest in terms of its theme and its language--some sections were not easy to write and I guess they’re not easy to read, but it’s perhaps the one book, up to that point, which comes closest to doing what I set out to do. And I do love the last chapter of this one [Cold in Hand]!

AK: To what do you attribute Resnick’s success as a fictional cop?

JH: I’m not sure. Women seem to find him kind of cuddly and want to mother him a little, sew his buttons back on and maybe a little more. Men like his taste in music. Somehow I seem to have given him a humanity which readers respond to, possibly through showing his compassion in his dealings with other people.

AK: Your editor at Random House seems to be more a fan of Frank Elder than Charlie, so what has your relationship been with your editors over the years?

JH: Mostly pretty good. I had an excellent editor in the States, Marian Wood, who was at Henry Holt during the period in which the first 10 Resnick books appeared, and since they were published more or less simultaneously, Marian acted as senior editor on most of those books. She was the one who sent me copious notes and, without a doubt, the books were greatly improved by her editorial input. Now I enjoy a similar situation with Susan Sandon, my UK editor at Random House, who is both an excellent close editor as well as being a strong in house supporter of my work.

Otto Penzler has always championed my writing in the States, and when Holt didn’t pick up my contract after the 10th Rensick, it was Otto who picked up the ball, first with Carroll & Graf and currently with Harcourt.

AK: Can you tell us a little about Trouble in Mind, the short Resnick work you saw published in the Crime Express series? How did you get involved in that project?

JH: Simple. I’d had close dealings with Ross Bradshaw, the publisher of Five Leaves, whose idea the Crime Express books was, so when he approached me with his idea for the series and asked me to contribute one of the first stories, I was delighted to agree. I love writing short stories and am usually happy to be asked. And because this was to be a much longer story than any of the others I’d attempted, it was an interesting challenge. But since the Crime Express books do not have a large print run, and will mostly only be sold in the UK, I’m happy to say that Trouble in Mind will appear in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine in the States, possibly later this year.

Five Leaves, incidentally, are publishing my novel for young adults, Nick’s Blues, which was written for my French publisher and published there in translation a couple of years ago. Its central character is a teenage boy who is coping with life on a tough London estate and trying to discover why his father, who has been an acoustic blues musician, killed himself when he, Nick, was still quite young.

AK: What, in practical terms, has your winning the Cartier Diamond Dagger brought you? You’ve already been nominated for and won many commendations over the years.

JH: I think many people see it as a sort of summit of achievement--the award of awards, if you like. And in practical terms, my publisher has been able to use it to advantage in terms of sales and publicity. On this point, I was really pleased that my friend Sue Grafton, who was also one of Marian Wood’s authors at Henry Holt, is to be this year’s winner.

There I am, sandwiched between [recipients] Elmore Leonard and Sue Grafton. What a fine position to be in!

AK: Your books are making ripples in the U.S., so is there much tinkering necessary to bring them to an American audience?

JH: Not really. Otto Penzler runs a keen eye and a light hand over them, ironing out some of the Anglicisms he feels might confuse U.S. readers--nothing at all that I would call tinkering.

AK: And what are your plans for your visit as International Guest of Honor at this year’s Bouchercon in Baltimore, Maryland?

JH: Oh,God! Make a speech that isn’t too abstruse, give good interviews, drink some--but hopefully not too much--Scotch (or Irish) in the bar; then hang out with some of the U.S. authors I like and rarely get to see, people like John Straley, Bill Moody, Lise McClendon, George Pelecanos, et cetera. Also, I’m hoping Laura Lippman will live up to her promise and persuade her husband, David Simon, to take Mark Billingham and myself round some of the locations used in Homicide: Life on the Streets and The Wire.

AK: My father really enjoyed your radio dramatization for Paul Scott’s “Raj Quartet” for the BBC, which is one of many you have done over the years. Can you tell us how much work such an endeavor entails?

JH: Thank heavens, the one and only trouble with radio is that you almost never get to hear whether people have listened and enjoyed what you’ve done. Dramatizing the Raj Quartet was a big task and, fortunately, my friend writer Shelley Silas (who happens to be Stella Duffy’s partner) worked with me on the project. It takes a lot of careful reading and re-reading to pick out the major incidents in the story and then put them into some linear order (as the books themselves do not progress in a linear way), and that sort of reading and planning that takes place before the actual writing is the longer part of the process. Then, once the writing has started, you know you will be doing two or three later versions of the scripts, at least before the actors get to see them--at which point more changes will usually need to be made. Indeed, you’re changing lines right up to and during the actual recording. So it’s a lot of work for comparatively little money, compared to writing for TV or film, and you don’t know who or if anyone hears it. But it’s a good challenge, excellent discipline, and when you hear good actors saying your lines everything is worthwhile.

AK: What books have passed across your reading table recently that you’ve enjoyed?

JH: Hmm, last book I read was a proof of Stella Duffy’s The Room of Lost Things, a marvelous novel about south London life--quite the best thing she’s done so far. Before that I read the latest Jonathan Coe, The Rain Before It Falls, which I liked far more than his comic novels, and a ’60s novel by John Wain, Strike the Father Dead, about a young man who casts aside his education to play jazz piano in Paris and the fleshpots of London’s Soho. I’m also reading Time and Materials, the new book of poetry by Robert Hass, he former U.S. poet laureate, who I think is the best poet currently writing, bar none. The only crime novel I’ve read lately to make me really stand up and take notice is James Lee Burke’s The Tin Roof Blowdown--not so much for the crime plot, though that’s fine, but for the impassioned stuff about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in New Orleans.

AK: And what are you working on currently?

JH: Well, “working on”--other than in my head and on my whiteboard--is a bit of a misnomer. But, hopefully, it will be a novel which has the provisional title of Almost Grown, and will feature Will Grayson and Helen Walker, the two police detectives from Gone to Ground, and will be set in Cambridgeshire and Cornwall and, probably, London.

Of Daggers, Toasts, and Tie Pins

In the world of British crime fiction, no honor is greater than the annual Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Cartier Diamond Dagger Award, sponsored of course by Cartier jewelers. Nominees have to meet two essential criteria: first, their careers must be marked by sustained excellence; and second, they must have made a significant contribution to crime fiction published in the English language, whether originally or in translation. The award is made purely on merit without reference to age, gender, or nationality.

I’ve been fortunate enough to attend the Diamond Dagger awards ceremonies at London’s Savoy Hotel for a few years running, during which I have met Lawrence Block and his wife in 2004, Ian Rankin in 2005, and Elmore Leonard last year. Naturally, I was also looking forward to this year’s event, celebrating recipient John Harvey, a UK novelist often described as “the crime writer’s crime writer.”

Joining the festivities this last Wednesday evening were a plethora of British fictionists, editors, publishers, and agents, plus teams from both the CWA and Cartier. I mingled among the notables, who included H.R.F. Keating (to whom I mentioned that my father is a huge fan of his Indian Inspector Ganesh Ghote mysteries), Colin Dexter, Peter Lovesey, Robert Barnard (last year’s CWA Short Story Award winner), Russell James, Stella Duffy, James Twinning, Lesley Horton, Natasha Cooper, Caroline Carver, Rebecca Tope, Laura Wilson, Zoё Sharp, and Peter Guttridge, as well as Christopher Fowler, about whom I am writing for Barry Forshaw’s mammoth Harcourt Encyclopaedia of British Crime Fiction, due out in 2008. (Apparently, Fowler has sold off his film-promotion business, and is now writing full-time--which, ironically, he finds challenging to his fiction output, forcing him to be rather more disciplined in his scheduling.) I also had the chance to chat with Lizzie Hayes from the Mystery Women blog, David Stuart Davies (my editor at the CWA magazine Red Herrings), Guardian critic and legal eagle Marcel Berlins, Thalia Proctor and David Shelly of Little, Brown, Richard Reynolds of Heffers Booksellers in Cambridge, and my friend Geoffrey Bailey of London’s Pan Bookshop.

As is customary at these occasions, the newest CWA chair, Philip Gooden (author of the Nick Revill historical series), welcomed everyone and then handed the microphone off to departing chair Robert Richardson. He, in turn, told us about his recent telephone call with previous Diamond Dagger winner Sara Paretsky. Seems she’d recently lost her dagger-shaped diamond Cartier tie pin while jumping through the hoops of airport security. She rang Richardson and told him that the only thing she cherished more than this little piece of jewelry was her wedding ring, and she was hoping the CWA could arrange a replacement--naturally, she would pay. The long and the short of it is, Richardson contacted Cartier, they made a replacement and sent it to Paretsky free of charge, and she was delighted at Cartier’s generosity and rapid response.

There has been a worrying rumor of late that Cartier was considering not renewing its longstanding (since 1986) sponsorship of the Diamond Dagger Awards, so we were all interested--or perhaps “anxious” would be a better word--when Monsieur Arnaud Bamberger, the managing director of Cartier UK, took to the mike for his annual witty speech. He told everyone that Cartier had valued its association with the CWA--but alas, he noted, lowering his eyes significantly to the carpet, things change, and the company had been looking to drop its support of the Diamond Dagger. However, he added into the hush, after hearing about Paretsky’s affair of the missing tie pin, and how much she valued it, he’d decided that the relationship should not only continue, but that Cartier would be making a long-term commitment to the award. This was met with a great cheer, as well as some discernible relief from CWA organizers.

M. Bamberger then quoted other writers on the subject of John Harvey’s literary excellence. Most amusing was his reference to the fact that both Harvey and Elmore Leonard, last year’s winner, had begun their careers penning westerns. With his tongue firmly planted in cheek, Bamberger then read a statement from the Dean of Detroit Letters himself, which suggested that Harvey’s lovely young wife might think to investigate this matter further, as Harvey and Leonard might be much closer than they ought to be! The audience broke out laughing at this, but Harvey blushed.

Finally, Harvey took center stage and said that, due to the day’s heat, he’d try to keep his speech short. After thanking everyone for coming to celebrate this occasion with him, he offered special appreciation to his family and to his publisher, Random House. Bamberger followed this by presenting the author formally with both the Dagger and the accompanying tie pin. But he warned that if Harvey were to lose the latter, he had better think of a better excuse for replacing it than Paretsky had offered ...

Afterward, everyone stepped up to shake Harvey’s hand, and we all raised our champagne flutes in tribute to his talent. This won’t be the last time he’s so celebrated, however; Harvey is also to be the guest of honor at Bouchercon 2008, to be held in Baltimore from October 9 to 12.

The Crime Writers’ Crime Writer

One of the delights of being involved with the British Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) is that I get to attend the annual Cartier Diamond Dagger Awards celebration, which are traditionally held at the swank Savoy Hotel in London.

I’ve been attending that event (and providing photographs to Shots and the CWA’s Red Herrings Magazine) for quite a while now. And during previous years, that event has served to introduce me to a variety of literary giants, among them Lawrence Block, Ian Rankin, and last year, Elmore Leonard.

But I am particularly looking forward to sharing a glass of champagne this coming May with John Harvey, when he receives the prestigious Diamond Dagger. The commendation has been given out annually since 1986, to mark a lifetime’s achievement in crime writing. The first recipient was Eric Ambler, with subsequent award winners including P.D. James, John le Carré, Dick Francis, Julian Symons, Ruth Rendell, Leslie Charteris, Ellis Peters, Michael Gilbert, Reginald Hill, H.R.F. Keating, Colin Dexter, Ed McBain, Margaret Yorke, Peter Lovesey, Lionel Davidson, Sara Paretsky, and Robert Barnard. Fine company, and Harvey already has in his collection the CWA’s much-coveted Silver Dagger (which he won for his 2004 novel Flesh and Blood), among other international prizes.

In today’s London Times, legal eagle and crime-fiction critic Marcel Berlins uses the occasion of the publication of Harvey’s latest novel, Gone to Ground, to ask why he isn’t better known for his work:

Harvey spent 12 years as a teacher before turning to writing Westerns and pulp fiction, under pseudonyms. “I had this double life. I was making a living writing those kind of books, and at the same time I was writing poetry and I founded a small press, Slow Dancer.” His transition to superior crime novels came in his late forties. “In my early pulp days I wrote excruciatingly bad pseudo-Chandler mid-Atlantic novels. But it didn’t work for me. I thought, I can’t do this. Fortunately, at the time, there was a healthy market for Westerns. Then that dried up.”

Harvey returned to crime writing because of Elmore Leonard. “I had written a television series about the probation service, set and filmed in Nottingham, with several story-lines, a bit like Hill Street Blues, and I thought maybe I could write a crime novel like that. Round about that time I’d been reading Elmore Leonard books, and two things struck me--the delight you get as a reader, and the presumed delight that he has in writing them. You get a sense almost of joy from his characters. That’s what made me think, I’d like to try to do that, and somehow combine that use of dialogue and lightness of touch with the multi-strand police procedural. Elmore Leonard got me back into crime writing.”

Take it from me, Harvey is a multi-talented wordsmith, writing in many forms. The last time I bumped into him, I told him how much my father enjoyed his BBC Radio adaptation of Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet. If you haven’t yet been exposed to his fiction, try to do so before May (as good a deadline as any), when the Dagger will fall on this crime writers’ crime writer.