Tidbits Both Meaty and Minor

• As CrimeReads’ Dwyer Murphy notes, there have been “hundreds of editions” of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye produced since that novel first appeared in 1953. “Some are beautiful, some bizarre; often they’re both,” he writes. Click here to see what Murphy says are “47 of the best covers of The Long Goodbye from around the world. They’re organized by language (almost certainly some are placed in the wrong section—my apologies), and chit-chat has been favored over rigorous analysis of aesthetics. Better, I think, to embrace the chaos. This is, after all, The Long Goodbye.” By the way, Murphy says, “My own personal favorite from the English language paperbacks is the 1962 Pocket edition, with cover art by the great Harry Bennett.”

• I was not previously familiar with arts supporter Deen Kogan, who passed away on March 28 at age 87, but Janet Rudolph’s obituary of her in Mystery Fanfare provides a bit of background:

She and her husband, Jay Kogan, founded Society Hill Playhouse, a staple of Philadelphia theatre for over 60 years. The theatre’s mission was to serve the community, and over the years it did just that with the first integrated cast in Philadelphia in the ’60s, a summer theatre ‘camp’ for kids, and free tickets to Philadelphia high school classes. She was a theatre legend.

In terms of mystery, Dean Kogan put on several mystery conventions, including Bouchercon in Philadelphia in 1998 and in Las Vegas in 2003 and stepped in to co-chair the Chicago [Bouchercon] in 2005 when Hal Rice passed away. … She also put on a Mid-Atlantic Mystery convention in Philadelphia for several years. More recently she was active in the organizing of NoirCon, also held in Philadelphia. She served for many years as a reader for the International Association of Crime Writers’ Hammett Awards.

The Gumshoe Site adds that Kogan died “at her home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, while recovering from a recent back injury.”

• Also in Mystery Fanfare: Dozens of crime and mystery novels that would be appropriate to tackle this coming Easter weekend.

• British books critic Barry Forshaw—author of the new-in-the-UK work Historical Noir (Pocket Essentials)—selects “10 of the best historical crime novels” for Crime Fiction Lover. His choices, arranged by era, include Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose (representing the Middle Ages), Antonia Hodgson’s The Devil in the Marshalsea (the 18th century), Philip Kerr’s A Man Without Breath (World War II), and David Peace’s The Red Riding Quartet (the 1970s).

• Are you feeling at something of a loss now that TNT-TV’s The Alienist has ended? For more murder and mystery in the New York City of old, turn to The Bowery Boys. That history blog has gathered together five of its foremost podcasts having to do with real-life crime of the 19th and early 20th centuries, stories ranging from journalist Nellie Bly’s infiltration of an insane asylum to the never-solved disappearance of wealthy young socialite Dorothy Arnold.

• Meanwhile, Simon Baatz—an associate professor of history at Manhattan’s John Jay College and the author of The Girl on the Velvet Swing: Sex, Murder, and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (Mulholland)—picks works by seven authors that illuminate New York during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Click here.

• In Reference to Murder brings this news:

Former Major Crimes star Kearran Giovanni has landed a lead role opposite Derek Luke, Jeri Ryan, and Paula Newsome in NBC’s drama pilot, Suspicion.

Based on the book by Joseph Finder and directed by Brad Anderson, Suspicion is described as a Hitchcockian thriller about how far one man will go to save the people he loves. After Danny Goldman (Luke) accepts a handshake loan from his new friend and millionaire neighbor, he gets a visit from the FBI and learns that the decision is one he will regret for the rest of his life. Coerced to work as an informant for the FBI to earn back his freedom, Danny is forced to infiltrate a world of violence and corruption while trying to protect his family. Giovanni will play Lucy Fletcher, a psychotherapist.

• Also worth investigating: Kate Jackson names more than a dozen of her favorite country house mysteries in Cross-Examining Crime.

• Finally, did you know that Steve Hockensmith was working on a new “Holmes on the Range” mystery starring cowpokes-turned-gumshoes Big Red and Old Red Amlingmeyer? Yeah, neither did I. But his Web site says he’s completed more than half of a sixth novel in that series, to be titled The Double-A Western Detective Agency. I look forward to reading the finished product sometime soon.

Private Eye? No, Private Spy

When I bumped into New York author Joseph Finder last fall at Bouchercon in Baltimore, he told me that he was working on a new series. But (and this may have to do with his being a former intelligence officer) he was tight-lipped about the project. All I knew was that he was changing direction in his writing, from penning standalone corporate thrillers (such as Company Man and Power Play) to composing books that feature one character, corporate investigator Nick Heller. Knowing that I enjoy his work immensely, Finder assured me that I would receive one of the first advance reader’s copies off his new novel, Vanished.

While I waited impatiently for that review copy to reach me, I received word that the film rights to Finder’s groundbreaking 2004 novel, Paranoia, had been sold to a French company. Shortly thereafter, the e-book version of Paranoia reached the No. 1 spot on Amazon’s Kindle Chart. These developments were pleasant surprises to me, as Paranoia occupies a treasured place on my bookshelves.

Finally, Vanished came plopping down on my doorstep. Twice on the same day. Both Finder’s American editor, Keith Kahla of Minotaur Books, and his UK editor, Headline Publishing’s Vicki Mellor, sent me copies. Immediately, the novel went to the top of my review pile. I not only read the U.S. version of Vanished, but straight afterwards cracked the spine of its British cousin, noticing some minor tweaks for UK readers. Why read it twice in such close succession? Here’s part of my review from Shots:

Kicking off on a regional airfield outside of L.A., corporate security consultant Nick Heller is on the trail of $1 [billion] of U.S. funds that went missing while en route to Iraq. While back in Washington, it seems that Nick’s brother Roger, a high-powered M&A (mergers and acquisitions) corporate executive has “vanished,” leaving his wife, Lauren, in hospital following what appears to be a random mugging. Nick, despite his dislike of his brother, agrees to help uncover what happened to Roger, due to a plea from his nephew Gabe (Roger’s stepson). Utilizing all the resources Heller has via his working contacts, friends and people he meets, he spreads out his techno-web to try and discover what happened to his brother. During the investigation, we realize that Roger was working on a project that has a sinister side. It doesn’t help that Roger’s wife, Lauren (who also worked at Gifford Industries), is concealing something, and perhaps she knows more than she will reveal. [Meanwhile] Lauren’s son, Gabe, while working out his teenage angst, may also hold a key to the disappearance of his stepfather. The theme in Vanished is that no one is what they seem, and that “‘face values” can hide aspects of our lives that perhaps were better left concealed in the shadows.

Vanished is written with real compassion, while the backdrop is peppered with technology. The true merit of this novel is its heart, for the characters resonate with humanity and Heller is a decent man concealed behind a rock-hard exterior. There is no cardboard in sight, as all the characters are molded from flesh, despite the deployment of plenty of silicon devices. The novel is edited ruthlessly so there’s not a single wasted word rattling behind the slipstream of the narrative. Coupled with baited hooks carefully hanging at the end of each chapter; you’ll curse Finder for keeping you up into the early hours. Another interesting aspect is the peppering of insights into how our changing world interfaces dangerously with
new technology.

As I often do after finishing a novel that really engaged me, I called up its author. Finder patiently answered all of my questions, providing me with insight into his new book, his adventures on Twitter, his work in the film world, his recent foray into comic books, and his newfound love of Spanish chocolate and churros.

Ali Karim: First off, let me ask you the obvious question: After writing eight popular standalones, why did you decide to start a new series with Vanished?

Joseph Finder: I’d been wanting to do a series, with a continuing character, for a while, but I couldn’t figure out how. My editor and publisher and agent all urged me to do a series, because readers become quite loyal to series characters they like, and your readership can really grow that way. And whenever I’d do book signings, I’d meet readers who would tell me they really connected with one of my characters and wanted to know when and if he or she was coming back. My answer has always been, “Are you kidding? I can’t put those guys through it again! That’s cruel.”

I had other reasons to hesitate, too. I didn’t want to give up the turf that I’d discovered in my recent books, which reached so many readers (Paranoia was my first book to hit the New York Times hardcover bestseller list). I love that real-world yet shadowy world of intrigue and conspiracy within the world of the modern corporation. It felt modern and different and cool, to me anyway. How was a private eye going to work in that world? And I felt that private eyes and cops and CIA agents and the like have just been done so many times by so many talented writers. Private-eye series have been done to death since Hammett and Chandler, then Ross Macdonald and John D. McDonald. There didn’t seem to be much juice left in that lemon. If I was going to do a series hero, it would have to be something original. Otherwise, I’d get quickly bored.

So one day a couple of years ago I ran into a source of mine who’d been a high-ranking CIA officer for a long time. And he told me that he’d resigned from the Agency to go into the private sector. Now, he said, he was doing the same work--for the CIA, for corporations, for foreign governments, for politicians--that he used to do just for the CIA. But at three or four times the money. Turns out that the CIA has been outsourcing most of its intelligence work in the last few years. And my friend wasn’t alone: a lot of intelligence professionals (in the U.S. and the UK) have been leaving government work to go private.

So there I had it: the private spy. James Bond, but private. An updated Travis McGee (one of my all-time favorites), but without The Busted Flush. And when I realized how many great plots my hero--whom I named Nick Heller--could get involved in, I knew that I had something I could happily do for years. So far, so good.

AK: How did you come up with the name Nick Heller?

JF: Interesting question. The name just came to me. Later, one of my early readers pointed out that “Nick” was the hero of Company Man [2005] and Claire Heller was the hero of High Crimes [1998]. So maybe it was an unwitting homage to my earlier books. Or maybe I was just plagiarizing myself. Plus, doesn’t Heller connote “hell-raiser”? Sounds that way to me.

AK: How supportive were your British and American publishers about this change of writing direction?

JF: They were all, without exception, delighted to hear it. My U.S. and UK agents, too. I did tell them, however, that I might do the occasional standalone, and they were OK with that--just so long as I kept doing Nick Heller. I told them I’d keep writing Nick Heller books until I got bored, because when a writer gets bored with his literary creations, a reader can always tell.

AK: In Vanished, you alternate between the first-person perspective, with Nick Heller, and third-person. Did you find those switches difficult to juggle?

JF: Not really. Writers far more skilled than I have written great novels with alternating points of view. F. Scott Fitzgerald did it in Tender Is the Night. Ann Patchett, in Bel Canto, switches POV within paragraphs, but it somehow works. Still, it’s considered a bit unorthodox, and it does bother some purists. But I think readers are fine with shifting narrative perspectives, just so long as it’s not confusing. And from my standpoint, it was necessary, because I was unwilling to give up the narrative pleasures of a standalone novel. Here’s what I mean: when you read a standalone, you don’t know whether your hero is going to make it. (Well, you do, actually--how often is the hero killed? But on some level you believe your hero might die. Rationally or not.) Also, and perhaps more important, the hero in a standalone goes through a dramatic arc: he’s a very different person at the end than he is at the beginning. Well, you can’t do that with a series character. He can’t change significantly in each book, right? So I decided I wanted to try something a bit unusual: to introduce, in each series novel, a different protagonist through whose eyes we see the story, rendered in third-person. And Nick Heller’s story would always be told in first-person. I haven’t seen that done all that often in a series, which was another reason to try it. And that way I was guaranteed to produce a thriller each time, and not just a mystery.

AK: The difference being ...?

JF: A mystery is a whodunit. A thriller is a howdunnit. A mystery is about solving a crime. A thriller is about the protagonist’s
dangerous adventure.

AK: Despite this new novel’s high-tech backdrop, Heller is very human behind his tough exterior. So which came first for you, the plot or the character?

JF: Definitely the character. All novels are about characters. Even when I write standalones, where the premise comes first, I can’t start plotting or writing until I figure out the character. Believe me, I love a great plot, and I work awfully hard at devising clever ones. But clever plots can never substitute for a character that readers
fall in love with.

AK: I found Vanished to be a very fast read, even though it offers huge insights into the darker side of the corporate world. But when compared with your standalones, was this also a fast book to write?

JF: That’s hard to say, because it took me a while to figure out not only Nick but his biography and family. Plus I had to do some extensive research into what a “private spy” does, and how. And you know me--I love delving into secrets so that my readers get inside information they can’t get anywhere else. I did a lot of that with Vanished. But once I had the tools assembled, the work went pretty fast.

AK: The start of a series always poses an issue: you don’t want to allow the back story to slow the narrative. Heller’s back story is drip-fed in this book, very intriguing, and integral to the plot. Heller’s father, Victor, is an interesting character in a Bernie Madoff sort of way. How did you manage to work your back story into the plot without it hobbling the narrative?

JF: Thank you. I thought a lot about that. I hate encountering undigested globs of back story when I read a novel. So I thought of the novel as, narratively, like a movie: give the readers/viewers only just enough to understand and bond with Nick by titrating his story in drop by drop. After all, this is only the first Nick Heller book. I don’t want to give away his whole back story in one novel. I have to save stuff up for the next ones.

AK: What is it about the dark side of the corporate world that attracts you and that makes it an exciting backdrop for thrillers?

JF: It started with Paranoia. I wanted to do a classic spy novel, à la John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, but set it in a high-powered but very cool corporation. But I knew nothing about the corporate world. So I started visiting companies like Apple Computer and Hewlett-Packard, interviewing all sorts of executives and secretaries, poking around, getting the sort of real-world texture that anyone who actually works in a corporation stops seeing because it’s so routinized. To me, though, it was all new and fascinating. I felt like an anthropologist doing field work in Fiji: all the natives were strange and different, and their tribal customs were peculiar.

And I realized two things. One was that the corporate world was not at all a bland, colorless, hostile place. This is where most of us work, and most of us basically enjoy our work lives. In fact, we spend more time at work than we do at home. Work has become family in some ways. So I needed to render the appeal of it--what was cool about it--and not just what could be scary about it.

The other thing was that, in the corporate world, the stakes can be immense. When it comes to billions of dollars, people will do some really bad things if they have to. And when you work somewhere and something really bad is going on and no one’s telling you anything--well, that breeds some powerful paranoia. Michael Crichton showed this in Disclosure and Airframe--there’s some fantastic intrigue in the corporate world. Anyone who thinks the corporation is a boring setting doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

AK: There was close to a two-year gap between Power Play [2007] and Vanished. What happened? You used to be a book-a-year author.

JF: That was because of all the research I had to do into the work of the “private spy”--what these guys really do and how they do it. I wanted to get the world right, particularly since I was going to keep going back to this well, year after year. That added several months to my writing cycle, which I considered the start-up costs of the series. So my publishers decided to delay the launch of the series by a whole year. That gave them a nice long lead time to get the word out about the series, so the launch would be as strong as possible.

AK: How tough is it to balance your writing and all of the promotional work that now comes with publishing books?

JF: I find it quite difficult. The more successful I get, the more travel I have to do, the more interviews, the more events. And believe me, I’m not complaining--I’m extremely grateful that anyone cares. It’s sort of nice to think that, even in this era of Facebook and Twitter, and with every author having a Web site and being accessible by e-mail, people still want to meet writers. So I’m happy to do all that. I just have to be really careful to defend the boundaries of my writing life, so that when I need to go to ground, I can do it.

AK: Are you still working in the journalism field? And what are your thoughts on the current state of print journalism?

JF: For several years I swore I’d never do journalism again, since I’d become a novelist. But because of my intelligence expertise--the research I’ve done, the contacts I’ve made--I’m increasingly asked to write pieces. It’s so much faster these days, with Web sites like The Daily Beast and The Huffington Post, and with the separate Web presences of magazines like Time, Newsweek, and Forbes. There’s a great hunger for content. The [electronic publications] don’t edit your stuff to death. (Of course, that’s a mixed blessing: a lot of the stuff that appears on blogs and Web sites sure needs some
serious editing.)

I’m actually extremely worried about the state of print journalism. Not just because I love newspapers, but for other reasons as well. Newspapers and magazines give you an experience you can’t get on the Internet: serendipity. You come across articles you’d never search out on the Internet. And there’s just no substitute for the very expensive news bureaus and in-depth investigative reporting of our finest newspapers. We are losing something extremely important, I fear.

AK: One of my favorite novels is Paranoia. I hear that you’ve now sold the film-making rights to that book. Can you provide any more details of the sale?

JF: Yes, it has [been sold]. A few years ago it was optioned by Paramount, which developed several screenplays, including a great one (I thought) by Michael Tolkin, who wrote that excellent Hollywood movie The Player. But there was a change at the top of Paramount and it went into turnaround as a result ... the typical story. My agent was determined to avoid that happening [again], if at all possible. So when the CEO of the French movie company Gaumont contacted him and told him he was in love with that book, and made a strong case for why he could actually get the movie made, my agent asked me to meet him and talk, which I did. He wanted to make an American movie, with American stars and an American director, in English--but with most of the financing coming from France. Since the biggest hurdle in making a movie is always the financing, I thought that sounded pretty good to me. Then I got on the phone with the screenwriter they hired, a very smart guy named Barry Levy, who wrote Vantage Point, a clever and well-written movie (even if it wasn’t a big commercial success). So I was reassured. Then again, this being Hollywood, it’s all a crapshoot. We’ll see.

AK: With a couple of reservations, I enjoyed the 2002 movie High Crimes, which was adapted from your 1998 novel of the same name. While filming was going on, didn’t you get a chance to meet stars Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman?

JF: I sure did. The director, Carl Franklin, invited me to play a small part, as a featured extra, so I did five days of shooting, met Ashley and hung out some with Morgan Freeman around the crafts-services table. A very cool experience to act in a movie made from your own book. Very Escher-like, if you know what I mean.

AK: Is it true that Company Man was retitled in some countries, as it was suggested that it could be misunderstood as some sort of business textbook?

JF: I’m not sure why it was retitled, as it was in the UK, where it was renamed No Hiding Place. But I know that I’m always getting grumpy letters from readers telling me that they just bought that book and, damn it, they’d already read it when it was called Company Man!

AK: Tell us how you’re getting on at Headline Publishing in the UK, and something about its plans for the Nick Heller novels.

JF: I love Headline. Vicki Mellor, their crime-fiction editor, is super-smart and extremely savvy and enthusiastic. They’ve done a really impressive job already with Power Play, the first in my contract with them. Headline, like only a few other publishers in the UK (one of them being Little, Brown and the other being Transworld), understand the effectiveness of the slow and steady build. They have long-range plans and are very strategic about it, and they fully intend to make me at least as big a seller in the UK as I am in the U.S. And--knock wood--I’m convinced they’re going to do it.

AK: So you’ll stick with Nick Heller novels for the time being?

JF: For the foreseeable future--which for me is the book I’m writing now and the one after that, which is starting to take shape in my head. I’m thinking only about doing Nick Heller books. I love writing this character. But if an idea comes to me that just won’t work as a Nick Heller, I’ll do a standalone.

AK: Tell us about The Cowl, the comic book you worked on with writer Brian Azzarello, and its relationship to Vanished.

JF: This was a very cool story, and it started with research. I was at Bouchercon, the annual U.S. mystery convention, while I was working on Vanished, and I had a subplot in the book involving Nick’s 16-year-old nephew, Gabe, who’s secretly writing and illustrating a “graphic novel.” He gives it to Nick at one point, and it turns out to reveal something very important concerning the boy’s father, which helps Nick solve the big overhanging
mystery of the story.

But I knew nothing about how comics are really done. So there I was at Bouchercon, talking to my friend Jason Starr [Panic Attack], in fact, when he pointed out a couple of guys from DC Comics. I went up to them and asked if they’d mind giving me a quick “Comics for Dummies” course, which they did. One of them was a senior editor at DC Comics, Will Dennis. The other was a comic-book writer named Brian Azzarello. I had no idea who Brian was.

When I talked to my editor later and mentioned I had met some guy named Brian Azzarello, he said, “You don’t know who Brian Azzarello is? He’s only one of the most brilliant comic writers alive.” He’s the author of the 100 Bullets series and, better known to those of us who don’t regularly read comics, of The Joker, which is twisted and dark and brilliant, and is the basis of The Dark Knight.

Azzarello and I e-mailed back and forth, and I became increasingly interested in the modern comics world. I asked him what he thought about the idea of taking Gabe’s fictional comic from Vanished and turning it into an actual comic. And he said not only did that sound cool, but he’d be willing to write it himself. Meanwhile, Will Dennis, the DC editor, found me an amazingly talented artist who lives in Spain, named Benito Gallego, who drew in the style of some of the Silver Age comics artists like Joe Kubert and John Buscema. Names that mean nothing to you if you aren’t a comics reader, but are legendary if you are. The comic that these guys produced is called The Cowl, and it’s set in a dystopian future Washington, D.C. It’s shorter than an average comic book, but I think it’s darkly brilliant.

AK: Many other thriller writers, such as David Morrell, Richard K, Morgan, and Victor Gischler, have worked in the comics field. So will you start writing comics now?

JF: No plans at the moment. Azzarello and I have been toying with an idea for a series, but we’re both over-committed, so we’ll see.

AK: Last year you served as a head judge for the 2008 Thriller Awards, handling the Best Novel nominees. What sort of work did you face in that position?

JF: It involved reading hundreds of novels, which was incredibly time-consuming. There was plenty of crap, but there were also a lot of really good thrillers. The problem my fellow judges and I faced was how to choose among some very different sorts of thrillers--romantic suspense, action, military, high-tech, quiet and literary, fast and gripping. We ended up choosing Robert Harris’ The Ghost, which is a wonderful book. But there were other novels equally good that year, to be honest. They just didn’t grip everyone in the same way.

AK: I guess, considering your interest in high tech, that it shouldn’t be a surprise to find you on Twitter. How are you getting on there?

JF: I started on Twitter for purely promotional reasons, at the suggestion of my publisher. But I learned very quickly that it’s a true community. I learn all kinds of things, get links to articles I ordinarily wouldn’t have come across, and I connect to some really interesting, clever people. I’ve become reluctant to be too promotional, except when I’m passing along good news that I think they might be interested in. My only problem with Twitter is that it’s
dangerously addictive.

AK: I saw that you “tweeted” while in Spain recently. Tell us
about your travels there.

JF: It was great. I went there to do some publicity for the Spanish edition of Power Play, but also to see Barcelona with my wife and daughter, which we loved. And my Twitter friends (“followers” is the word, which sounds cult-like) recommended restaurants that turned out to be wonderful. And a number of them ordered me to try churros and chocolate, which I’d never had before. I left Barcelona a lot heavier as a result.

AK: Can you supply any hints of what’s in store for Nick Heller in his forthcoming second adventure?

JF: Just that Nick has moved to Boston. I’m in the middle of writing it right now, and I really hate stopping work to do anything else.

AK: Are you going on tour for Vanished? I know you attended ThrillerFest in New York a couple of years back. Do you have plans to attend Bouchercon in Indianapolis this fall?

JF: I go to Bouchercon and ThrillerFest. I really enjoy both of them, particularly because it gives me the chance to reconnect with my fellow writers, whom I love spending time with. My U.S. tour this year is fairly short, because apparently August is a lousy time to do book signings. And I believe I’ll be touring the UK in February
or so for Vanished.

AK: Finally, what books have you enjoyed recently?

JF: A long list, far too many. The latest from Lee Child and Harlan Coben, of course, which are both excellent. As are the latest from Lisa Gardner and Lisa Scottoline. Gregg Hurwitz’s Trust No One. Mark Sullivan’s Triple Cross. Steve Berry’s The Paris Vendetta. All really good. Sean Black’s Lockdown is fast-paced and totally gripping. I know I’m going to accidentally omit some of my favorites. Of course, I’ve definitely left out the ones I didn’t like.

* * *

For more information about Joseph Finder, click here. An excerpt from Vanished can be found here, and a video of him discussing that novel is available here.

Finder Has “Vanished”

Among my favorite writers is Joseph Finder, who is certainly in the top echelon of today’s thriller novelists. He composes what can be termed “high concept” stories, including Paranoia (2004), one of the all-time-great techno-thrillers. His subsequent works--Company Man (2005; UK title: No Hiding Place), Killer Instinct (2006), and Power Play (2007)--were equally remarkable.

The last time Finder was in London, he talked with me about those novels over lunch, and he even had an amusing anecdote about meeting Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman to share. I saw him subsequently at 2008’s Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, during which he made a fan of my son, Alex. He also told me then that he was working hard on a new series, which he’d sold to Headline Publishing here in Britain. Since then, I’ve been wondering when I might lay my hands on those new books. So it was with delight that I received this e-mail note as a member of Finder’s mailing list:

A month or so ago, I told someone I couldn’t do something because I was on a deadline. That person was offended, and snapped that they didn’t know how I could be on deadline, since they hadn’t seen any news of a book coming out in the next couple of months.

It is true that writers tend to use “I’m on deadline” as a handy, all-purpose excuse. It’s also true, however, that putting a book out takes much longer than you might think, even after an author turns in the manuscript.

As you saw, I turned in the manuscript of VANISHED in September; my editor had notes, and sent it back to me for revisions. I turned those in before the end of the year, and have just finished going over the many corrections suggested by my excellent copy editor, who fixes my punctuation, corrects my spelling and brings it to my attention when I use the same phrase three times in two pages. And catches most, if not all, of my dumb little glitches. Sometime this month, I’ll see proposed cover art for VANISHED, and if all goes well, the first bound galleys (advance reading copies) will be available in March--or April, at the latest.

Once I know exactly when to expect the advance copies, I’ll announce a contest to give a few copies away. I’m also working on a really cool tie-in to promote the book--I’m not saying anything more right now, but it’s a completely new medium for me, and I hope you’ll be as excited about it as I am.

Look for an announcement of this Vanished contest at Finder’s Web site. Meanwhile, pick up this author’s Paranoia or one of his other books, and see if you agree that he’s one of the best thriller novelists going.

Finder’s Keepers

Let’s face it, friends, I can talk about crime and thriller fiction over breakfast, lunch, and dinner--and I frequently do, when my diary permits. I relish the opportunity to talk, to break bread and sip wine with writers and critics who might share their insights into this genre. So, when Emily Furniss of Britain’s Headline Publishing called to ask if I’d like to join American novelist Joe Finder (Power Play, Company Man, Killer Instinct) for lunch at the swanky P.J.’s Bar and Grill in London’s Covent Garden, I responded immediately by saying, “absolutely”--and then cleared my schedule for the day. I’ve known Furniss now for many years (she works with Headline publicity manager Becky Fincham), so she knows my reading tastes perfectly.

It seems that Headline is working to shore up its crime and thriller offerings, following the recent departure from its author stable of UK library champion James Patterson (who has moved to Random House UK), and Finder, a resident of Boston, Massachusetts, has been brought on board to help take up the slack. Further strengthening Headline’s response is senior commissioning editor Vicki Mellor (shown above with Finder), who has a passion for crime and thriller fiction and a deep knowledge of the field. (She also happens to edit two of my favorite writers, David Morrell and relative newcomer Scott Frost.)

So I headed off to Covent Garden on the appointed day, looking forward to seeing Finder again. I’m a longtime fan of his prose, especially since he changed directions with Paranoia in 2004, a work that was nominated for the British Crime Writers’ Association’s Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award. And the last time I saw him was at the 2007 ThrillerFest in New York City, when he was so obviously shocked to hear that Killer Instinct had won the International Thriller Writers’ (ITW) Best Novel commendation. (As the story goes, Finder was attending a St. Martin’s Press party elsewhere in Manhattan that night, when his editor suggested that he might want to get ready for the ITW awards banquet. Apparently, it had slipped Finder’s mind, as he thought his chances of winning were remote. But he suited up and headed over to ThrillerFest--only to be there, with his palms sweating, when he was called to the podium to receive his award.)

Entering P.J.’s, I found that among my lunch companions would be critics Maxim Jakubowski and Barry Forshaw, and the crime-fiction buyer from Borders UK. Headline marketing manager Lucy Le Poidevin and Vicki Mellor represented our hosts, and Emily Furniss arrived in style with a very dapper-looking Joe Finder in tow. Evidently, Finder had been in Britain all week, not only promoting the paperback release here of Power Play, but discussing his future books with senior Headline managers. Finder hinted at the outset of our meal that his follow-up to Power Play will be the start of a new series, in which some of the principal players survive--and others do not. Finder has mostly composed standalone novels, so this will be a departure for him. When asked to supply more details, however, the author just smiled at us and said he was having fun with the series.

As expected, the luncheon was a delight, in large part because Forshaw and Jakubowski are both so knowledgeable about the genre, with many anecdotes to share. Finder informed us that, in addition to helping Headline promote Power Play, he’ll be attending the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival in July. He’s also doing radio and TV interviews, as well as poster campaign on the London Underground, and will be featured in magazine articles. Mellor made it known that she, too, will be going to Harrogate this year, too. She added in an aside to Finder that he should watch out for the Shots e-zine team, when it comes to the festival’s trivia quiz. But, as I know that Finder is a student of the genre, I decided the smartest course would be to ask him to join our team. Other teams, beware!

Finder then recounted for us a little about his experiences with last year’s ITW original audiobook release, The Chopin Manuscript, which was narrated by British thespian Alfred Molina. It seems Finder--who’s a big fan of the ITW--was involved in this venture right from the start, and penned Chapter 9 of Chopin.

He went on to tell us that he’s head judge this year on the panel that will select the ITW’s Best Novel Award winner. It’s a lot of work, he made clear, not only because of the number of submissions, but the high quality of each work. I can certainly sympathize; I sat on that same panel during the awards’ inaugural year, when the head judge was Alex Kava (Whitewash). On one hand, it is an exciting task to be evaluating the merits of books; but it is also thankless, because any shortlist will provoke debate, which sometimes turns unpleasant, as it did in 2006. Despite the controversy that awards often court, however, they do bring attention upon this genre, which in turn attracts readers. So they’re vitally important.

As our main courses arrived, I mentioned to Finder that Maxim Jakubowski had opened his London Crime Scene festival in 2002 with the movie adaptation of his 1998 novel, High Crimes. (In fact, Jakubowski noted, Crime Scene had hosted the UK premiere of director Carl Franklin’s suspenseful film.) It was at that same festival where Forshaw and I were privileged to meet and talk with guest of honor Richard Widmark.

Finder told us about spending some time on the High Crimes set. Apparently, he made five appearances in the movie as a minor character. The author recalled how patient Franklin had been, when senior movie studio execs rang to suggest changes in the script, even though everything was supposed to have been firmed up beforehand. Franklin often relied on Finder to draft entire new scenes “on the fly,” or rewrite scenes completely, even as the cameras were rolling. Naturally, I asked whether he had had any opportunities to fraternize with the lovely actress Ashley Judd, but he answered that no, in fact, she would do her scenes and then disappear into her trailer; she didn’t really socialize on the set. The same was true of co-star Morgan Freeman. Finder made us all laugh, as he recounted meeting Freeman for the first time. He recalled spotting Freeman on the first day of shooting, but waited to introduce himself until the actor was alone. Then he went up to him and began, “Mr. Freeman, I just want to say that I love your work, and my name is Joe Finder and I wrote the novel that this film is based on.” Freeman’s eyes squinted and his brow furrowed, and sucking in a lungful of air, he looked Finder in the eye and bellowed, “So you being the writer of this film is meant to impress me?” Finder backed away in shock. He’d always understood that Morgan Freeman was a nice guy, but rethought his position at that moment: maybe he had confused the actor with some of his roles. Backing away, Finder said, “Sorry to have disturbed you.” At which point Freeman broke out laughing. “Gotcha! You fell for that!” Freeman said, and after that, the two got along well together on the set.

As coffee was being served at our table, the topic switched from crime fiction to this year’s U.S. presidential elections, which are being covered heavily by the UK media. Barry Forshaw wanted to know from Finder whether he thought it makes any difference to American voters that the leading contender to succeed the bumbling George W. Bush in the White House is a black man. Finder observed that the electorate may already have been prepped for such a turn of events, what with Morgan Freeman’s appearance as the president in Deep Impact (1998) and Dennis Haysbert’s President Palmer in the television series 24. He said that he likes Democrat Barack Obama very much, but added that there’s still a hard-core racist element within the United States that will resist--perhaps violently--having an African American at the head of the government.

I suggested that if Obama wins this year’s election, presidential security might have to be the tightest it’s ever been. To which Finder responded, “Oh, man, they’ll have to watch him like no other president before him.”

With lunch winding down, I had one more question for author Joe Finder, and it related to Power Play. I observed that, while I’ve enjoyed his work thoroughly, his plots frequently unfold in a high-concept but fairly traditional format. I was thinking specifically of Paranoia (which tells about a wise-guy young “slacker” in a high-tech electronics firm, who is forced to spy on a competitor by a ruthless boss), Company Man (in which a CEO, forced to lay off a huge number of workers in a small town, becomes the most hated individual in town--but soon finds that more than his company is endangered), and Killer Instinct (about a mid-level sales manager whose climb up the corporate ladder become far easier, after he hires a new security officer and his rivals start to vanish--or worse). On the other hand, I remarked that Power Play feels ... well, different. Less intricately plotted somehow, less high-concept. And it is edgier than his previous work, almost raw and stripped down until there’s no rattle.

Finder laughed and went on to explain that prior to writing Power Play, he’d had dinner with fellow novelist Lee Child (Bad Luck and Trouble). The two had discussed their respective writing methods. Child said that when he sits down to compose a Jack Reacher novel, he has no outline at all--not even a page. He just starts with an opening line, and goes on from there. Finder apparently found this approach interesting, and decided to try it out with Power Play--though he was nervous about it. The experience, he confessed, was a nightmare, although the book finally did come together. When Finder next saw Child, he told him about what had happened, and that he’d wasted a lot of time and written himself into some impossible corners, trying to work without an outline. But Child had said simply, “Can I ask you one question? Tell me how Power Play is selling.” Finder admitted with a smile that “It’s been the highest selling book of mine ever.”

Lesson learned, I guess. And Lee Child gave the British edition of Power Play a favorable blurb.

We all tried to favor Finder and his Headline reps with our thanks, as lunch broke up and we went our separate ways. I told the author that I look forward to drinking with him at Harrogate this summer, and am especially interested in seeing what he can make of a thriller series. Just that much more to talk about in the future.

Hey Joe!

I’m an old Jimi Hendrix fan, so I have longed for the excuse to title an article with those two words, Hey Joe. And I finally found my chance today, after dragging one of my favorite American thriller novelists, the award-winning writer Joseph Finder (shown here on the left, with Lee Child), away from his other business to ask him a few questions.

A bit of history on Finder and his fiction first: His debut novel, The Moscow Club (1991), imagined a coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and was published mere months before the real coup occurred. His second novel, Extraordinary Powers (1994), detailed the hunt for a mole in the top echelon of the CIA, and was published only days prior to real-life traitor Aldrich Ames was unmasked. His third novel, The Zero Hour (1996), delved into an FBI hunt for a terrorist in New York City, while High Crimes (1998) was filmed by U.S. cult director Carl Franklin and featured Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd. Talk about uncanny timing!

Finder hit it big again with a change of direction in 2004, after his publisher released Paranoia, which was nominated for the British Crime Writers’ Association’s Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. January Magazine nominated Company Man (UK title: No Hiding Place), as one of its favorite novels of 2005, and followed that up by picking Killer Instinct among its favorite books of 2006. Killer Instinct also won the inaugural Barry Award for best Thriller in 2006, and is one of the five nominees this year for the International Thriller Writers’ (ITW) Best Thriller Award. (The winner will be announced during ThrillerFest, to be held in New York City in mid-July.) If you haven’t yet read a Finder novel, I strongly suggest that you pick up a copy of Killer Instinct. It proves why in some circles Joe Finder is referred to as “the CEO of Corporate Thrillers.”

Having spent some time with Finder last summer during the first ThrillerFest, he e-mailed me the cover art for Power Play, his eight thriller, due out in August in the States and in September in the UK. That image accompanied this little teaser:

POWER PLAY is a nonstop thriller that takes place in a single day. The top executives of a major corporation have gathered for an offsite retreat at a luxurious, remote lodge--no phones, no cell phones, no BlackBerrys, no cars. A band of backwoods hunters crashes the lavish open[ing]-night festivities, and suddenly, the execs are being held hostage by hard men with guns ... cut off from the rest of the world, their lives at stake. The only one who can save them is the one guy who wasn’t supposed to be there--a last-minute replacement and low man on the totem pole.

In the midst of Finder’s recent visit to London, during which he met with the folks from his British publisher, Orion, I had the chance to ask him about his work schedule, his switch of American publishers, his interest in corporate criminality, and of course, Power Play.

Ali Karim: Hey Joe, congratulations on the International Thriller Writers’ nomination for Killer Instinct. Can I assume that you’re coming to ThrillerFest in July?

Joseph Finder: Thanks, Ali! It’s especially great to be recognized by my fellow practitioners, talented thriller authors all. And if I lose, I’ll know I’ve lost to someone really good. At least that’ll soften the blow. I’ll be at ThrillerFest in New York, and I’ll be on a panel, but I haven’t yet been told which one. And [this summer] I also do the BackSpace Writers Conference and then BEA [BookExpo America], so it’s a busy couple of months.

AK: I heard you were involved in the set-up of the ITW. Is that right?

JF: Yes, [but] I’m ashamed to say that I backed out. When [thriller writer] Gayle Lynds came up with the idea for ITW, she asked me and David Morrell to help brainstorm, come up with ideas about how to organize it, how to get it started, all that sort of thing. I loved it--it was a great break from writing, and I could sense that it was a very big idea in the making. But I also quickly found that it was taking up way too much of my writing time. And being on a book-a-year schedule as I am, I barely have time for anything else. So I told Gayle and David that, with regret and with the greatest respect, I had to get back to my book. So I’m one of the very few people who know how much time David and Gayle spent getting ITW off the ground. I’m still an active participant, and I was a founding member (and gave money to help finance it at the outset), but I don’t run it.

AK: I’ve read your work for years, but met you for the first time in Phoenix last year, during ThrillerFest. Tell me: What are your memories from that conference?

JF: Hot. Really hot. I think it got over 110 degrees most days. It was like stepping into a blast furnace. But it was a blast of another kind-- I got to catch up with a lot of old friends, meet a bunch of new ones, writers I’ve long admired. And to meet some of my readers as well. It’s a really collegial bunch of people, and a great organization.

AK: What does the ITW mean to you as a writer?

JF: I belong to several writers’ organizations: PEN, which is more literary (as a commercial crime writer, I’m a rarity there); the Mystery Writers of America (which is oriented more toward mystery writers than thriller writers, though lots of thriller/crime authors belong); and ITW. ITW is like my own people--writers who do only thrillers/suspense novels. It’s a great pleasure to spend time with people who do what I do. We writers tend to be solitary, so it’s important to stay in touch with our colleagues, and ITW provides that opportunity for us. So I don’t see it as a rival group to MWA. I see it as a more specialized group.

AK: What’s this I hear about a new deal at St. Martin’s Press (SMP)? And a brand-new series? Tell us more!

JF: I recently signed a four-book deal with St. Martin’s, my U.S. publisher since Paranoia. They’re paying me a whole lot of money, so they must have some confidence that my readership will keep growing. And it’s a sign of their desire to keep building me. I couldn’t be happier about them--they made Paranoia a bestseller and have managed to increase my readership quite a bit from book to book. They’re great. For several years, my editor, Keith Kahla, as well as Sally Richardson (SMP’s publisher) and Matthew Shear (who runs their paperback arm) have been very timidly suggesting to me that I try writing a continuing character. They know how much readers love bonding with series characters--I do, too, frankly, whether it’s Lee Child’s Jack Reacher or Nelson DeMille’s John Corey. But for a long time I’d resisted [using a continuing protagonist], because I didn’t want to do the same old gumshoe or P.I. or FBI agent that you see so often. Then I got to know a source who travels the world doing top-secret investigations into scandals and conspiracies and crime for powerful corporations and wealthy individuals, and I knew I’d found my character. I told St. Martin’s my idea, and they went for it right away. And I can’t wait to start it. (Actually, I really can’t wait very long--book-a-year, you know ...)

AK: What’s happening with your books in the UK?

JF: Headline, the terrific publisher of Martina Cole and James Patterson and others, came to me and made a wonderful offer for my next three books. It was wrenching, believe me, leaving my longtime publisher, Orion, which has published me from my second novel onward and done so with elegance and enthusiasm. But it seems like a good move and the right time, and Headline is committed to building me in the UK the way St. Martin’s has done in the U.S. I’m looking forward to working with my editor there, Vicki Mellor, and of course Jane Morpeth, the mastermind behind Headline’s powerful fiction line.

AK: I’ve heard a few things already about Power Play, your book for 2007. Care to tell us a little more?

JF: I think it’s my most exciting novel yet--honestly! I’ve taken the sort of office-intrigue stuff of my last novels ... and moved it all way out of the office. The result is an action-packed story with a relentless pace. I was inspired by my favorite TV show, 24. I saw how you could maintain a breathless pace but at the same time have well-fleshed-out characters, and I thought, Lemme try that! Basically, [Power Play] is the story of a group of high-powered corporate guys--the top officers of an aerospace company--who go off on one of those offsite retreats to do “team-building” at a very high-end, luxurious lodge in the wilderness. No phones, no cell phones, no BlackBerries, no Internet. They’re totally cut off from the rest of the world. [Theirs is] also a company in trouble. Their brand-new CEO is a woman, and the whole leadership team is men, and they resent her. Plus, there are rumors of corruption going on, which the female CEO is threatening to uncover. And all of a sudden, a gang of backwoods hunters crashes in and takes them all hostage. And the hostages have no way to call for help. Among the hostages is one young guy, Jake Landry--a last-minute addition, who wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. And he turns out to be the only one who’s willing to risk his life to try to save everyone else. I think it’s a pretty cool story.

AK: Your most recent work is set in the corporate world. What interests you about that milieu?

JF: It’s a world that’s incredibly full of material--it’s the place where most of us spend most of our days, and yet amazingly, novelists rarely write about it. (I think that’s because most writers haven’t worked in a corporation. Of course, neither have I, which allows me to see all the strange and fascinating things a regular would never see.) I also like the fact that it hasn’t yet been done to death like law firms or police departments--it’s fresh to most readers.

AK: You populate your corporate world with sociopaths as well as full-blown psychopaths. So, are you familiar with the work of Paul Babiak and Robert D. Hare, and do you agree that the corporate world is a good hiding place for these “types”?

JF: Ah--[the authors of] Snakes in Suits, right? I haven’t read it, but they’re on to something, I think. There’s something about the corporate world, with the stakes so high, that encourages certain people to get away with all the bad stuff they can. They’re a real minority, of course--but they’re fun villains. And as anyone who’s worked in a company can testify, some of these snakes can achieve a great deal of power--and make your life hell. Which is why so many of my readers love it when my heroes finally get their revenge on these jerks ...

AK: I’ve also heard that you are penning a few short stories. Is this true?

JF: True. I’ve agreed to write a couple of stories to be published in two different collections. But, man, [short] stories are hard. Much harder than novels.

AK: Are you still involved in journalism?

JF: No. Hardly at all. Once in a great while, I agree to review a book for The New York Times or The Washington Post. But I rarely have time anymore. And once in a while, when an idea grabs hold of me, I’ll do an essay for the Times Op-Ed page or the Book Review. But less and less often these days.

AK: What else is new in your world?

JF: Nothing. I work and work and work, tour or do bookstore appearances, and try to see my wife and daughter. People are always asking me what I do in my free time, and I say, “What free time?” Oh, wait. I have a new Web site--that’s big news in my world. It should be launching any day now. Does that count?

AK: Finally, which books have found their way to your reading table lately?

JF: I do make a point of reading whenever I can. I loved Jason Starr’s [forthcoming] new book, The Follower. Also Laura Lippman’s latest. I’ve got a tall stack of books to read, including the latest ones by Barry Eisler, Dean Koontz, Michael Palmer, Tess Gerritsen, Chris Mooney ... the list goes on. I got my hands on an advance copy of Lee Child’s latest, Bad Luck and Trouble, and I was right in the middle of reading it, enjoying it a lot, and someone smashed the window of my Lexus and stole my briefcase, with Lee’s book inside. So I’ve been left hanging. Oh, and they also stole my BlackBerry and my iPod, too.