Lippman and the Lieutenant

Peter Falk in his famous role as Lieutenant Columbo.

This last weekend brought the 16th CrimeFest convention to Bristol, England. Although, much to my regret, I was unable to be there in person, I did play a modest role in its programming.

Two months ago, author and past chair of the Crime Writers’ Association Maxim Jakubowski sent me the following e-mail note:

For the past 10 years or so, I’ve run the Criminal Mastermind quiz at the Bristol CrimeFest. It’s a mystery and thriller variation on a highly popular British TV programme where participants have to answer a set of questions on both a specialist subject and then on general knowledge.

Laura Lippman has agreed to participate and as her specialist subject chosen the Columbo TV series!

I was wondering whether you’d be willing to set these questions, in view of your own expertise and knowledge of the subject? I’d need 20 or so questions by mid-April ranging from easy to more arduous. The questions should be around 2 lines long. Would you be willing?

Now, I can’t legitimately claim to be a Columbo “authority,” not like writers Mark Dawidziak (The Columbo Phile) and David Koenig (Shooting Columbo and Unshot Columbo), or the anonymous Australian author of The Columbophile Blog. But I have written about that long-running series for The Rap Sheet on many occasions (notably here), and did score a lengthy interview with Columbo co-creator William Link back in 2010. Plus, I own all of the episodes (if not the later teleflicks, which I have never thought quite measured up to the original NBC Mystery Movie drama), as well as Link’s 2010 short-story compilation, The Columbo Collection. So I am at least a fan.

After pondering the matter, I finally deciding to take Jakubowski up on his invitation. It sounded like fun, and the opportunity to test the popular culture competence of Laura Lippman—a novelist I very much respect—at a British crime-fiction convention I hope to someday attend was simply too enticing to pass up.

In the end, I sent Jakubowski 21 questions, just to be sure he had enough good ones from which to choose. I arranged them in descending order, beginning with those I thought were the least challenging and finishing with others that might test a real Columbo nerd’s knowledge. My questions were finally posed to Lippman midday on Sunday, as part of this year’s Criminal Mastermind quiz. Joining her as contestants were Stuart Field, creator of the Detective John Steel thrillers, who had volunteered to answer trivia questions about M.J. Craven’s Washington Poe novels; and Zoë Sharp, fielding queries about the Amazon Prime TV series Reacher, which had been submitted by my friend and fellow Rap Sheet contributor, Ali Karim.

(Left to right) Novelists Zoë Sharp, Stuart Field, and Laura Lippman prepare to meet the challenge of this year’s CrimeFest Criminal Mastermind quiz. (Photo © Ali Karim 2024.)

So how did Laura Lippman fare against my trivia test? “Very well—she is a Columbo fan,” Ali tells me. “And she enjoyed your questions, though she did say they were tough (with a twinkle in her eye), as she got most of them correct.” There was evidently some controversy regarding the breed of the Los Angeles police detective’s dog, but Ali suggests that was provoked by Jakubowski trying to pull Lippman’s leg. (It seems the attendees all had a good laugh about it.) In the end, Lippman earned second place in this quiz, behind Zoë Sharp.

Are you curious about your own Columbo expertise? Rather than shove my quiz questions into a dusty corner of my computer, and forget about them, I have decided to post them below. See how many you can answer. The correct responses can be found here.

1: Richard Levinson and William Link co-created the series, but how many of the shows in which Columbo appeared did they actually write?

2: Link said that he and Levinson never had a first name in mind for Columbo. But in a Season 1 episode, we got a quick screen shot of the lieutenant’s LAPD badge, which featured a first name. What was it?

3: Columbo came from a large Italian family. How many siblings did he have?

4: Columbo often arrives hungry at murder scenes in the middle of the night. What snack item does he commonly bring with him?

5: What musical instrument can Columbo play?

6: Columbo once said that his boyhood hero was who?

7: Name the single most featured recurring guest character on the show.

8: What was his dog’s favorite food?

9: In the Season 10 episode “No Time to Die,” Columbo says that he and his never-seen wife were married where?

10: And what was said to be Mrs. Columbo’s favorite piece of music?

11: Columbo episodes generally followed an “inverted mystery” format, showing the crime taking place first and then having Lieutenant Columbo solve it. But there was one episode that reversed that format, and was a genuine whodunit—what was the episode’s title?

12: Peter Falk personally supplied the tatty wardrobe for his L.A. police detective. He purchased the famous raincoat from a store on 57th Street in New York City when he was caught in a rainstorm in 1967. How much did he pay for that garment?

13: Columbo drove a battered and unreliable 1959 (or 1960) Peugeot 403 convertible. Over the course of the show’s 69-episode run—first on NBC-TV, then on ABC—that car sported two different license plate numbers. What was the second one?

14: In only one episode did Lieutenant Columbo let the killer get away with the crime. Which episode was that, and who was its big-name guest murderer?

15: “Forgotten Lady” was one of Peter Falk’s four favorite Columbo episodes. Name one of the other three.

16: Beginning with an ad-libbed performance in the Season 3 episode “Any Old Port in a Storm,” Columbo is periodically heard whistling a traditional children’s song. What is it?

17: It was a love of magic that first brought Levinson and Link together, when they were boys and shopped at the same magic store in downtown Philadelphia. But it wasn’t until Season 5 that they and their writing collaborators finally built an episode around magic. What was the name of that episode, and who played the illusionist?

18: Speaking of that episode, the solution to its crime turned on a once-ubiquitous piece of office equipment. What was that instrument?

19: Columbo’s first police assignment was with New York City’s 12th Precinct. There he trained under an Irish officer who mentored him and who he mentions often. What was that officer’s name?

20: Even before Lieutenant Columbo’s first introduction to TV audiences, in “Enough Rope,” a 1960 Chevy Mystery Show production that starred Bert Freed in the role, Levinson and Link created a prototype for the character in “Dear Corpus Delicti,” a short story they sold to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine in 1960. What name did they give to their slight, seemingly insignificant police detective in that story?

21: During the early 2000s, Falk was asked by a newspaper reporter which other actor he could have imagined playing Columbo instead of him. Who did he suggest? (Hint: It wasn’t Bing Crosby.)

I don’t how many of these 21 queries “inquizitor” Jakubowski had a chance to fire at Lippman, or which of them she answered without fault. But the big question is, how did you do at this same game? Please let us all know in the Comments section of this post.

Maxim in Overdrive

Author, editor, critic, and onetime London bookseller Maxim Jakubowski has been named as the new chair of the British Crime Writers’ Association (CWA). He has been part of the CWA committee ever since 2014, and has served as its joint vice-chair from 2017 and its publishers’ liaison officer for the last two years.

A CWA press release relates a bit of Jakubowski’s professional background, as follows:

Maxim has compiled over 120 anthologies including the Mammoth Book of Best British Crime, Pulp Fiction, Vintage Crime, Future Cops and London, Paris, Rome and Venice Noir. He won the Anthony award for non-fiction for 100 Great Detectives. He is also the author of 20 novels, several of which have made The Sunday Times Top 10 bestseller list in another genre [namely, erotic fiction].*

A director of London’s past Crime Scene festival, Maxim was also the co-chair of the Nottingham Bouchercon and is a regular broadcaster on matters literary on TV and radio, and a frequent participant in crime festivals around the world. He was for 12 years the Guardian's crime reviewer.

The notice also quotes Jakubowski on the importance of his ascension to this new post: “As a member for several decades of the CWA, I am excited to take the helm of a vital organisation, which is constantly in the process of reinventing itself and am keen to see it becoming even more relevant to writers in a changing literary and publishing landscape, and currently troubled social landscape. With board members past and new at my side, I hope that my stewardship will do honour to my illustrious predecessors in the chair.”

Jakubowski will take over as chair from Victorian crime specialist Linda Stratmann, who has held that post since 2019. Other previous chairs include Martin Edwards, L.C. (Len) Tyler, and Peter James.

The Bookseller notes that in addition to promoting Jakubowski, “The [CWA’s recent] annual general meeting also saw two new faces join the committee. Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin joined as a board member. She writes crime novels as Sam Blake and is founder of the writing resource website, Writing.ie and Murder One, Ireland’s international crime writing festival. She was joined by Simon Michael, a barrister since 1978, who began writing crime fiction in the 1980s alongside a successful Legal 500 career and retired early in 2016 to resume his writing. He has also established and managed a national charity.”

* Jakubowski also edited Following the Detectives: Real Locations in Crime Fiction, a 2010 travel/reference book to which I contributed an essay.

Knowing Their Places

Among the bills and books in yesterday’s mail delivery was a copy of Following the Detectives: Real Locations in Crime Fiction (New Holland Publishers), a British non-fiction work I contributed to, and which I very much looked forward to seeing in print.

During the summer of 2009, UK editor and former bookstore proprietor had asked 11 authors, including me, to contribute to this volume of 21 essays about cities and other places in the world that are closely associated with famous fictional sleuths. Given that he wanted me to write about Dashiell Hammett and San Francisco, a city I have long adored (and about which I had penned two previous books), I was pleased to accept his invitation. Although I’ve composed numerous crime novel reviews over the years, and have been writing The Rap Sheet (separately and as part of January Magazine) for almost a decade, this was the first time I’d been asked to submit a chapter for a book about crime fiction.

I’m not really in a position to review Following the Detectives, but I will say that the results are pretty darn impressive. Oversized and suffused with photographs and colorful maps of the regions over which the fictional crime-solvers roam, it is a reference book for mystery and crime-fiction fans, but also a travel guide of sorts for literature lovers.

Chapters cover such pairings as Ian Rankin and Inspector Rebus’ Edinburgh (written by Ross Macdonald and Lew Archer’s Southern California (Michael Carlson), Colin Dexter and Inspector Endeavour Morse’s Oxford (Martin Edwards), Arnaldur Indridason and Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson’s Iceland (Peter Rozovsky), Philip Kerr, Leonardo Padura, Boris Akunin, and Michael Walters.

This book is fairly heavily designed, and there are a few pages on which the type is hard to read against a colorful backdrop. But for the most part, the visual appearance of Following the Detectives contributes to the text’s intrigue. Jakubowski has sprinkled the chapters with sidebars, some of them featuring quirky facts about the authors or their protagonists (did you know, for instance, that Donna Leon “will not sanction translation of her books into Italian”?), others looking at how the fictional characters under discussion have been featured in films. In many cases, lists have been made of other novelists who set their stories in the cities addressed in the main chapters, and in the Boston section--which concentrates instead on works by and Robert B. Parker--there’s a longer sidebar about Dennis Lehane. Jakubowski must have recognized from the outset of this project that he would be criticized for not commissioning separate chapters about Loren D. Estleman and Detroit, Martin Cruz Smith and Moscow, Kathy Reichs and Montreal, Robert Wilson and Seville, Frank Tallis and Vienna, Earl Emerson and Seattle, and other such obvious pairings, but covering all of that territory might have made Following the Detectives several volumes long. He’s found a middle ground in at least mentioning as many imaginary investigators as possible in this 256-page work.

I shall leave it up to others to applaud more of this book’s assets and nitpick its deficiencies. I can only say that I am proud to appear in these pages with such excellent company, and I look forward to giving copies of Following the Detectives away as Christmas presents (even though I’ll have to order them from Britain). There’s lots of material here to satisfy longtime crime-fiction enthusiasts as well as newcomers to the genre.

The Book You Have to Read: “Tony and Susan,” by Austin Wright

(Editor’s note: This is the 99th installment of our ongoing Friday blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. Today’s reading selection comes from Maxim Jakubowski, the former London bookseller, prolific editor, author, and literary director of London’s Crime Scene Film Festival. Among Jakubowski’s forthcoming works are an erotic thriller, I Was Waiting for You, and Following the Detectives, a well-illustrated collection of essays about fictional sleuths and the cities they inhabit.)

Were you aware that Saul Bellow once blurbed a thriller?

This is what he said of Tony and Susan: “Marvelously written--the last thing you would expect in a story of blood and revenge. Beautiful.” Sadly, that rare encomium did not put this terribly neglected novel on the road to fame and fortune. It appeared in the USA in 1993, and enjoyed similar favorable reviews but like too many good books, it came and went, creating no significant ripples on the commercial publishing waters--not helped by the fact that it had been published by a now-defunct small house, Baskerville, with little sales and marketing clout to capitalize on the critical response to the book’s publication.

Tony and Susan was the fourth novel to be published by American writer and academic Austin McGiffert Wright (1922-2003). A Faulkner specialist who taught during most of his career at the University of Cincinnati, Wright’s main claim to literary posterity until this book’s appearance was the fact that he was a nephew of Austin Tappan Wright, the author of that utopian science-fiction classic Islandia. His other novels, equally forgotten, are Camden’s Eyes (1969), First Persons (1973), The Morley Mythology (1977), After Gregory (1994), Telling Time (1995), and Disciples (1997). A couple of these also have thriller elements, but none of his other books ever saw the light of day as mass-market paperbacks in his lifetime and enjoyed rather small print runs. Tony and Susan’s paperback incarnation in the States was also short-lived and a film sale for a substantial advance came to nothing.

Tony and Susan is a tough book to summarize without indulging in a variety of spoilers, which would detract from its reading and its often surprising twists. But let’s have a go. Many years before the book opens, Edward and Susan were childhood sweethearts who belatedly came together whilst at university and married. Edward has always thought of himself as a writer, and initially Susan doesn’t begrudge his lofty and impractical ambition. She supports the both of them as an assistant teacher while Edward seeks his muse, albeit in vain, until the time comes when Susan begins to resent his pursuit of the seemingly unattainable, and begins an affair with Arnold, a doctor who happens to live in the same building and offers her a better prospect of a bourgeois life. Edward and Susan part, with few bad feelings, divorce and go their separate ways. Later, Edward gives up on his writing and launches a career in the insurance business. Susan has children with Arnold, who has become a successful if sometimes philandering surgeon, and settles into a comfortable life in the suburbs.

Twenty-five years after their separation, out of the blue, Susan hears from Edward again. He has finally written a novel and is keen for her to comment on his manuscript. Surprised by this development, she reluctantly accepts and the book arrives in the post. For a week or so, Susan can’t get herself to open the package and begin reading, but the opportunity finally comes when Arnold leaves for a medical conference and interviews in New York City, where she suspects he will be accompanied by an old flame.

Edward’s novel is called Nocturnal Animals and we are invited to read it right alongside Susan. It takes her three evenings/sittings to finish, and as we follow the book’s plot together, we are offered her initial impressions and critiques, and the memories of her life before and with Edward begin flooding back to the surface, even though the novel doesn’t appear to have any autobiographical elements at all. But then, why did Edward send her the manuscript?

The novel we read, as Susan does, is about a professor of mathematics at a Cincinnati university, Tony Hastings. He is happily married to Laura, a painter, and they have a teenage daughter, Helen. As they do every summer, they embark on the long drive up to their summer house in Maine. At night, in the middle of nowhere, their car is rudely jostled by another driver and Tony reacts with sudden pique, as a result of which the occupants of the other vehicle react strongly, and soon Tony and his family are being held hostage by three unknown men. Then begins a long descent into horror and terrifying violence to body and soul, a calvary for the meekish man that Tony is. As the tale develops, Tony will descend to the very depths of bedazzlement, pain, and eventually stark revenge.

As Susan reads this book, it begins to put her life and beliefs into a new context, and a dialogue between writer and reader evolves, which questions the very fundamentals of fiction writing and human relationships. Lest this might sound like another meta-novel in which the author’s intent is paramount, let me reassure you this is not the fact. Tony and Susan (or more precisely, Nocturnal Animals) reads like a relentless, oppressive, and gripping thriller whose characters you take to heart and who keep on living in your imagination long after they have migrated from the page--not just Tony and Susan, but also the striking “baddies,” ambiguous policemen, and other bystanders, whether innocent or not. Unlike the often wonderful variations on meta-fiction by the likes of Paul Auster, Tony and Susan is first and foremost a book about people who are made of flesh and blood beyond the ruminations of their intellect.

It’s also a rather unique book, insofar as it doesn’t fit anywhere within the classical canon of thrillers or, say, the Everyman-in-peril subgenre that someone like Harlan Coben has recently made his own. Also, regrettably, it is a novel that’s been ignored and doesn’t appear to have inspired others. On one hand, it’s a stark meditation on violence and the way it affects us; on the other, it’s a truly remarkable book about reading, about how we read and how it can matter to us. Tony and Susan is a double whammy of a lost classic. As a bonus, the writing and style are seductive in the extreme. It’s witty in the way the author’s voice (Austin Wright? Edward? Susan even?) punctuates the colloquial dialogue with echoes of the seeming inarticulacy of the characters’ words and thoughts. And the descriptions of roads and forests at night, the way light falls onto the terrain and the sheer heaviness of the silence in which Tony struggles most of the time, are inspired. Wright writes like an angel.

And if you think my critical appreciation is prone to exaggeration, let me end with some other more recent comments about the book on the occasion of its recent reissue in the UK (it is still out of print in the USA):

“Absorbing, terrifying, beautiful and appalling. I loved it and became intensely involved in it. Parts of it shocked me and I am not easily shocked. It is easy to say that something one has read is unforgettable but this novel I know I shall never forget.”--Ruth Rendell

“A fucking masterpiece. I wish that Wright was still alive so I could tell him so, and so he could enjoy the revival of his book. It’s going to become a living, breathing, knock-out classic. In fact, I can’t believe how good this book is ... Tony and Susan is a masterpiece. Unequivocal. Unbelievable!”--Australian author M.J. Hyland

“Creepy, illuminating, quite wonderful.”--Donna Leon

“With its trapdoor narrative and its psychological sleight-of-hand, this is a novel of immense guile and unsettling velocity. Why Wright isn’t better known is a mystery to me. He’s brilliant.”--Rupert Thomson

Forshaw Tackles the Larsson Phenomenon

During a recent party at the Swedish Embassy in London, held to celebrate the life and literary endeavors of Scandinavian journalist-novelist Stieg Larsson, I dropped a not-so-subtle hint to prominent books critic Barry Forshaw (right) that I would appreciate receiving a review copy of his brand-new work, The Man Who Left Too Soon: The Biography of Stieg Larsson (John Blake Publishing). Last week, that volume landed on my desk. Being obsessed with the late Larsson’s fiction, I read Forshaw’s book straightaway, and soon thereafter thanked the author for his kind printed acknowledgments of The Rap Sheet, as he had excepted material we’ve featured on this page before, including interviews with Larsson’s father, Erland, and his British publisher, Christopher MacLehose.

Forshaw also agreed to be interview. Over the course of that exchange, we talked about conspiracy theories related to Larsson’s death at age 50, Forshaw’s thoughts on the film versions of Larsson’s three novels, and how he wound up writing the first English-language biography of Sweden’s now best-known author.

Ali Karim: So, tell us a little about how you got involved in writing your biography of Stieg Larsson, The Man Who Left Too Soon.

Barry Forshaw: This was more by accident than design. I became an expert on Stieg Larsson in precisely the way I became an expert on British crime fiction, American crime fiction, Italian, and so forth--just by being commissioned to write so much over the years for various papers (The Times, the Independent, the Express) and various magazines. Slowly but surely, you acquire a considerable breadth of knowledge. Of course, this breadth of knowledge is actually a byproduct of enthusiasm--it’s not a question of settling down to study and absorb information about all these aspects of the crime field; if you’re an enthusiast, and have the kind of blotting-paper personality that I do in such areas, you’ll find yourself unconsciously hoovering up everything there is to know.

AK: And then editor Maxim Jakubowski commissioned the book from you?

BF: Maxim Jakubowski is a man with whom I’ve shared a few careers--writer, bookseller, publisher (but I’m practically a beginner in terms of what he’s done over the years). Maxim had kept a weather eye on my writings about Larsson; he’d noticed (as who hasn't?) the phenomenal sales of the books, and commissioned me to write it for the publisher John Blake. I actually worked with the Blake editor, John Wordsworth, which was a real pleasure.

Back to Maxim: I was in Nottingham recently for the ScreenLit Festival, with the British Film Institute’s Adrian Wooton. Introducing the new film of Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me, Adrian reminded the audience how many of us first encountered the original book through Maxim's groundbreaking pulp imprint, Zomba Black Box Books. As did I! Over the years, Maxim has done a great service to the genre by nourishing the careers of new writers--as well as bringing classics of the genre back into print. I’ve been lucky enough to persuade him to let me have material for Crime Time--and it wasn’t easy! He’s quite pleased by the fact that the only complaint I had about the magazine concerned his “shocking” material--“How can you publish such things?” (from “Disgusted” of Tunbridge Wells). Recently, John Blake gave him the chance to do a new title list (as opposed to his previous Black Box and Blue Murder imprints). And MaxCrime is managing to be both commercial and present all the strands of modern crime fiction within the list. He had two striking female writers in the first tranche: Tara Moss, and the talented Italian Barbara Baraldi with The Girl with Crystal Eyes.

AK: When did you first think that Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo would become such a big deal?

BF: I have to say that the team at Quercus, Nicci Praça, Lucy Ramsey, and (of course) Larsson’s inestimable publisher, Christopher MacLehose, alerted me very early on that this was a writer to whom attention must be paid. In fact, the literary editors I wrote for were onto Larsson’s importance very quickly--I had my first commission to write things soon after the publication of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. But who had the slightest idea the Larsson phenomenon was going to achieve the heights it has? Barely a week passes without some new sales record being broken.

AK: I hear there are now several biographers on the Stieg Larsson trail, but your book is the first English-language work. How long did it take to research and prepare the manuscript?

BF: Even the British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia I did for [publisher] Greenwood--which was a backbreaking endeavor--didn’t begin to compare with the intensive work I had to do on The Man Who Left Too Soon. The amount of writing I’d already done on Larsson wasn’t really much help--I was asked to deliver 70,000 words on the man, his remarkable life, the books and the subsequent dispute over the estate, which meant a great deal of burning of the midnight oil and many lengthy conversations (while a tape recorder consumed a small army of batteries). The hardest thing was to get all the names right--it may seem a small detail, but the Scandinavian names defeated several proofreaders.

AK: Did you find that your work on British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia and your previous book, The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction, were at least helpful in setting a context for the Larsson bio?

BF: Not really. British Crime Writing was tremendously stimulating to put together, but possibly the most demanding thing about that assignment was getting my heavyweight (but sometimes recalcitrant) team of fellow contributors to come up with the goods--and then to correlate the largest amount of text I’ve ever worked with in my life. By contrast, The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction--all my own work--was a mere bagatelle. None of this was really any kind of launching pad for The Man Who Left Too Soon; most useful here were the many Scandinavian authors I’d interviewed or reviewed over the years--many of whom were a useful resource when it came to writing a book about Larsson.

AK: As with your encyclopedia, you obtained contributions from many contemporary crime writers, both Scandinavian and British. Were there any who really hated the Larsson books?

BF: You bet! When I asked several authors to talk about their views of Larsson, they pulled faces and said, “You really don’t want to hear what I think of Larsson!” And when I told them I wasn’t planning to write a hagiography, several people then agreed to speak to me. Ironically, I think some of the most insightful material in the book comes from people who are deeply ambivalent about Larsson’s work--although having said that, I think the single most useful interview I obtained was from [Scottish crime writer] Val McDermid. She is enthusiastic about Larsson (though with reservations)--and she is, of course, all over the “Millennium Trilogy”; she was a favorite writer of Larsson’s, and he even has [fictional editor] Mikael Blomkvist reading a McDermid book.

AK: How helpful were Larsson’s Swedish, English, and U.S. publishers in providing a context for the author’s life and work?

BF: No complaints. I think the section on publishing Larsson is an interesting one--principally because the actual act of publishing an author who has died before the real body of his success kicks in is an unusual one. And the process of publishing Larsson in different countries has been radically different--the one common denominator, of course, is the astonishing success.

AK: When putting together this book, you talked with many people who knew Larsson, asking them about the affects of his lifestyle on his health. However, Eva Gabrielsson, his longtime partner, seems to downplay that aspect. What’s your take on his early demise?

BF: It seems to me to be unarguable--even though there are those who do not agree with this--that it was Larsson’s punishing lifestyle (notably the heavy smoking) that ended his life at such a young age. I must admit I quite liked Yrsa Sigurðardóttir’s liking for the conspiracy theories (rather than his lifestyle) in his demise--mainly because she admits to being a chain smoker herself! Minette Walters was another writer who refused to take a disapproving view of his nicotine habit.

AK: What’s been the reaction to your book from Larsson’s father and brother, or from Gabrielsson?

BF: Frankly, I haven’t enquired too closely! I tried to be as evenhanded as I could about the bitter dispute over his estate, and allowed the views of both Larsson’s father and brother, and of Eva Gabrielsson to stand without too much authorial comment. Let’s face it, people make up their minds about such things very quickly (as they have in Sweden)--and I wouldn’t be surprised if my attempt at evenhandedness is interpreted as leaning to one side or the other. You really can’t win in this area.

AK: Larsson did a lot to expose right-wing extremists during his journalism career, and as a result, conspiracy theories have revolved around his demise, as you suggested earlier. In the course of your research, did you discover any actual evidence of a conspiracy?

BF: There were unquestionably threats to Stieg Larsson’s life--and he was well aware that journalists who took on extreme organizations, as he did, were obliged to take precautions. There was the occasion he saw a group of skinheads waiting in the street outside the offices of his magazine Expo, but escaped their attentions by leaving via another entrance. However, the conspiracy theories--à propos though they would appear to be for a writer who wrote the kind of menacing thrillers he did--appear to have no foundation in fact.

AK: In the middle section of The Man Who Left Too Soon, you focus on the narrative trail of his Millennium Trilogy. You had to reread all three of his novels in order to write this biography. Did you find them as captivating the second time around?

BF: I had a strange dual response to reading the books again for this middle section. Having to create so much analysis was stimulating, but hard work. Having said that, writing about books and films has been giving me pleasure since I was 12 years old, and it remains my dream job. And such is Larsson’s skill as a storyteller that I found myself enjoying once again this master of narrative--even though surprises have long gone for me. I was, I have to say, concerned that people would not read the analysis section before reading the books themselves--inevitably, there are spoilers, so I repeated on a few occasions that the sections were designed to be looked at after reading the entire Millennium Trilogy.

AK: Opinions vary as to whether the trilogy is as “feminist” as reported originally, due to the graphic sexual violence deployed as the stories unravel. What’s your take on Larsson’s feminist credentials?

BF: Of all the questions I asked various writers and fellow journalists, the issue of Stieg’s feminism--and attitude to sexual violence--was by far the most contentious. One area that deeply divided authors was Larsson’s treatment of violent sexual abuse--some felt that he was impeccably feminist, others were uneasy about what they considered to be gloating treatments of rape. I hope I allowed readers to make up their own minds.

My own view? It’s a really divided one. There is no question that he was genuinely a feminist who celebrated strong, capable women. But it has to be said that his strong, capable female protagonist [Lisbeth Salander] is also a disturbed sociopath who is psychologically damaged. What do we read into this? Is it simply a novelistic imperative to render his heroine more vulnerable? My own personal jury is still out on the graphic descriptions of sexual abuse in the novels. I can’t see an argument for Larsson describing such things in a discreet, mealy-mouthed fashion--and I would have thought it would be difficult (except for certain individuals) to find these passages erotically exciting. Basically, Larsson provides us with a remarkably high number of male scumbags to function as antagonists for his vengeful heroine. And I think--in the final analysis--he does it in a (largely) responsible fashion. But it’s a difficult call ... Sorry if that sounds like fence-sitting.

AK: Have you been asked to promote your new book?

BF: Of all the books I’ve done, The Man Who Left Too Soon is the one that seems to have generated the largest number of requests for events, interviews, signings, etc. (including from various Swedish and British newspapers, CNN, BBC TV and radio). Of course, I’m sure that this level of interest is all to do with my literary skills, rather than the popularity of Stieg Larsson, novelist.

AK: And what has the initial reaction been to your Larsson biography?

BF: Ironically, the first review was a showcase one in The Times, who made it their Book of the Week! But just to show that writing for a particular paper doesn’t buy you any special favors, it was a lackluster review! I gritted my teeth--the only thing that rankled was the suggestion I hadn’t spoken directly to people involved, which wasn’t the case. But, as [President Harry] Truman said: “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.”

AK: Can you tell us your thoughts about the Yellow Bird Swedish film version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as well as the coming American remake?

BF: The Swedish film was a creditable stab, about which I had reservations. And [filmmaker] David Fincher for the remake? Well, as long as it’s Fincher in Se7en mode and not The Curious Case of Benjamin Button mode ...

AK: By the way, I hear you’ve become even more involved with the British The Crime Writers’ Association (CWA). Tell us a little about your role.

BF: The clock is ticking--these are, in fact, my last days as vice chair of the Crime Writers’ Association, working with a particularly capable chair, Margaret Murphy; the new chair and vice chair, who begin in May, are Tom Harper and Michael Ridpath. Frankly, I really enjoyed my time doing this--the CWA seem to feel that I have a host of publishing contacts. Well, I suppose I have been invited to a lot of author meals, as my waistline is beginning to show ...

AK: So what’s life like being a freelance writer in these days of technological changes throughout the print media?

BF: It’s challenging! The key phrase you use there is “technological changes”: I struggle to keep up with such things, but I’m fully aware that it would be suicidal--as a freelance journalist--to take a Luddite approach. But in a way it’s no different from trying to keep up with all the developments in the crime-fiction genre--you can’t really afford to say, “I know all there is to know.” That way lies hardening of the arteries.

AK: And what other projects do you have in the pipeline?

BF: Again for the ubiquitous Maxim Jakubowski, I worked on a LitCrit travel book called Following the Detectives for the publishers New Holland--my sections will include Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh, Donna Leon’s Venice, Peter James’ Brighton, [and] Georges Simenon’s Paris. It was immense fun doing this, though I really think Maxim should have paid for me to spend at least a week--at his expense--in all these locations ... Other projects include a Directory of World Cinema: Italy, which is another specialist area of mine.

AK: Finally, can you tell us what books you’ve enjoyed reviewing lately?

BF: You know, whenever I’m asked this question, my mind goes blank. I write a review of at least a book a week--and there really is some impressive writing about these days. The last crime novel I really enjoyed? Well, I’ve just read The Galton Case, by Ross Macdonald. I’m cheating, I know!

* * *

In the video below, Barry Forshaw talks about Stieg Larsson’s journalism career, the phenomenon of his Millennium Trilogy, and his own process of putting together The Man Who Left Too Soon:



Read an excerpt from Forshaw’s book here.

READ MORE: “In Stieg Larsson’s Footsteps,” by Barry Forshaw
(Mystery Fanfare).

Maxim Exposure

My wife and I were in London a couple of weeks ago for the paperback launch of our latest novel, A Visible Darkness, the fourth of our historical mysteries featuring Prussia magistrate Hanno Stiffeniis. While there, we took the opportunity to have lunch with British editor and former bookstore proprietor Maxim Jakubowski (shown at right) and his wife, Dolores. The Jakubowskis had been our guests in Italy for the Trevi Noir festival in November 2008, and it was very good to have an excuse to visit with them once more.

Maxim Jakubowski doesn’t really need an introduction. His name must be one of the most internationally renowned in the field of crime-fiction publishing. Born in England but reared in Paris, and now 65 years of age, he has edited fiction in a variety of genres, including mystery, science fiction, and erotica. He pens book reviews as well as novels of his own, serves as the literary director of London’s Crime Scene Film Festival, and is regularly seen answering questions about crime fiction on British TV screens. We introduced him in Trevi as “Mister Noir.” The fact that amazes everyone who meets Jakubowski is his capacity for work!

While in London, we talked with Jakubowski about his current publishing projects, the expectations for his new literary imprint, one of his humorous book-selling memories, and some of his recommendations of near-future films and crime novels.

Michael Gregorio: Maxim, you are a prolific “producer” of books in many different genres. You’ve written, compiled, edited, and anthologized in a number of fields, including crime, thriller, mystery, erotica, science fiction ... the list goes on and on!

Maxim Jakubowski: I’m not really a “producer,” just a writer and an editor. Because of Murder One, a lot of people forget that I spent two decades in publishing as an editor before I began selling books. Doing so many anthologies and projects is my way of keeping in touch. I enjoy discovering and promoting new and other writers in whatever category they fall.

MG: What are your publishing projects for this year?

MJ: Somewhat indecently, I have nine books out in 2010 (and five more under contract and at various stages for publication in 2011). I’ll do two annuals, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, which has now reached 15 volumes, and The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime/Mystery Stories, now in its eighth year. In addition, there are four Sex in the City collections of city-based erotica stories, strongly inspired by the Akashic Noir series, covering London, Paris, New York, and Dublin. Crime writers in these anthologies include Ken Bruen, Stella Duffy, Colin Bateman, Gerard Brennan, and many others. My third Mammoth Book of Erotic Photography has just been delivered. So has Following the Detectives, a literary travel book of sorts, with a chapter by Rap Sheet editor J. Kingston Pierce.

Last but not least, there’s my first novel in four years.

Too many books, I know. Next year will appear quieter as two of those already signed for will be pseudonymous! I reckon I’m somewhere over 125 books so far, but I’ve never bothered to count. (There have been some pen names, which I’m not eager to reveal, mostly in non-fiction areas, and long ago in science-fiction books; crime and erotica are always under my name ...)

MG: And yet you found the time to write a novel?

MJ: It’s called I Was Waiting for You, an erotic thriller that Accent Press will publish in November. It features the return of Cornelia, the beautiful, amoral hit woman who appeared in Because She Thought She Loved Me [1997], On Tenderness Express [2000], and Confessions of a Romantic Pornographer [2004].

MG: So, what can readers expect from this new novel of yours?

MJ: Well, it’s my usual blend of crime tropes: lust, sadness, a writer down on his luck who is asked to find the missing daughter of an Italian surgeon, and embarks on an adventure partly inspired by Antonioni’s film, L’Avventura, and Louis Malle’s Le Feu Follet. Everyone seeks the missing girl, but in doing so their paths cross, relationships begin and flounder, and bad things happen to good people, to the extent that midway through the book the search for Giulia is almost abandoned! The body count continues, though, thanks to Cornelia. Not your typical crime book, I fear.

MG: Murder One is now a “closed case,” so to speak. We’re sorry to have lost a regular port of call in London. We could open old wounds and talk about the decision to end the adventure of a specialty crime bookshop, the uncertain future of independent bookstores, the impact of Amazon, possible regrets, and so on. Instead, we’d like to hear about something odd or amusing that you particularly remember in connection with that Charing Cross Road bookshop.

MJ: Lots of great memories and good times. Including the years when we used to supply a convent in West London. Two small nuns would come in every six weeks or so with a list of books to be bought for other sisters and also for “father.” Needless to say, they were all very cozy choices, Golden Age of Detection stuff. The shop and the staff would invariably be blessed on the way out. Sadly, the nuns were terribly elderly and eventually stopped coming to us for their book supplies of Dorothy L. Sayers, Michael Innes, [Freeman Wills] Crofts, R. Austin Freeman, and others. I reckon we lost our blessings and were damned from that moment on!

MG: The nuns stopped coming, the shop had to close, but you moved off in an exciting new direction. Congratulations on your publishing imprint, MaxCrime, from John Blake Ltd. How did it come about? What sort of fiction should we expect from Max Crime? And how do you see the imprint developing?

MJ: Well, in a way, it was full circle back to what I used to do before. It wasn’t something I had planned, and the initial approach was from John Blake, who had been very successful in non-fiction areas, including true crime. Naturally, there was no way I could turn down such a generous offer, even though I had planned to partly retire and just devote my time to writing again. Because of the nature of Blake’s publishing, we agreed at an early stage on the list’s profile--i.e., it would be a mass-market, commercially orientated imprint, which is what the book trade would expect of his company, with books that could be sold in chains and supermarkets where he has strong ties. My intention was (and is) to develop a strong and varied list, so from the onset we have female P.I.s, historical thrillers, caper comedies, noir, hard-­boiled, gangster novels, Everyman-in-peril tales, and so on. As we progress we may narrow it down, but for now I want to publish in all crime areas. John wanted my name to be openly associated with the list so we came up with the name “Maximum Crime,” but once the book covers began to be designed, we realized that the logo was too large/long for the book’s spines, so we renamed it “MaxCrime” instead!

MG: Which crime writers will you be publishing this year?

MJ: We’ve just launched the imprint with two books in March. The first is Hit, by Tara Moss. Tara is a best-selling crime writer in Australia, but somehow she’d never been published in the UK (a few titles appeared in the USA some years back; Leisure gave her the worst possible covers). It is slick, fast-moving female P.I. action with a great heroine [Sydney-based Makedde Vanderwall]. We have bought all five books in the series so far, and will be publishing them six months apart. Tara is an incredible personality and highly promotable, which the Blake marketing machine will be exploiting to the full, needless to say. Also part of the launch is the first novel by friend and film director Mike Hodges, who was responsible for Croupier, Get Carter, and many other classics. Mike had written his first novel at the age of 73, Watching the Wheels Come Off, a dark comedy about a failed con man. I swooped on the book before anyone else could get to it. The novel has already appeared in France to great acclaim, thanks to his film connections.

MG: Sounds exciting. What else can we look forward to?

MJ: In April, we have Donna Moore’s Old Dogs, a caper novel with a witty difference. I believe that Donna has the potential to become a Scottish Janet Evanovich. I’d been a great fan of her work in small presses, so I was very glad to sign her up. Accompanying her is Mark Timlin’s Guns of Brixton, a heavily revised version of his powerful south London gangster novel, Answers from the Grave [2005], which had only been confidentially published by the Do Not Press some years back, before they went under, and was never promoted or issued in paperback.

Then, from May, we move to our cruising speed of a book a month. We also have the first novel by Kate Kray, the widow of one of the notorious ’60s gangsters. She had written a fair bit of non-fiction already and her novel is about the London mob scene, of course, but with a strong ring of truth. Also, there is our first translation, The Girl with the Crystal Eyes, by Barbara Baraldi, translated from the Italian by Barry Forshaw’s wife, Judith. It is a gothic “giallo” [yellow is the Italian term for thriller; Mondadori thriller covers were all bright yellow] with echoes of Hitchcock and Dario Argento and strong female characters on both sides of the good and evil divide. It could the first in a series. The sequel has just been published in Italy this month, so there’ll be more if we do well enough with the first one. Other upcoming titles include Kris Rusch’s Hitler’s Angel. [After being] highlighted on publication by The New York Times with a full-page review, her U.S. publisher, St. Martin’s Press, just dumped [the book] and never released it in paperback. It’s a thriller focusing on the notorious “suicide” of Hitler’s niece [Geli Raubal] ...

MG: We both read Ronald Hayman’s Hitler & Geli (1997). A particularly odd story.

MJ: In [Hitler’s Angel], a young American journalist sets out to get to the bottom of the case. Kris Rusch is also known as “Kris Nelscott,” and she has won lots of awards for science fiction as Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

Later on, in the autumn, we have Blonde on a Stick, a terrific hard-boiled tale about a Liverpool serial killer moving to London, by noted horror writer Conrad Williams. He moves into the crime arena with impeccable style. The Women’s Club, by Canadian authors Michael Crawley and Laurie Clayton, is a thriller in the James Patterson mold. Michael and Laurie are major authors in the erotica field, where they write as “Felix Baron and Madeline Moore.” I strongly believe in encouraging writers from other genres to move into crime.

In both cases, the results are splendid. Lots of other things are planned for next year, but time will tell.

MG: How do you select foreign authors for the imprint, and what sort of an impact do you think they will have on the UK market? We are thinking particularly of Barbara Baraldi, a young Italian writer whom we’ve met, and whose books we have enjoyed in Italian.

MJ: Because of translation costs, I can’t develop too much of a foreign-language list, so the initial one is a bit of a gamble. Barbara’s book is very exciting, but also short. She is very attractive and distinctive, too, so hopefully those factors will help in publicizing the book. Naturally, if it does well enough, I’d be encouraged to try some further books in translation. Having been brought up in Europe, and still being involved in the scene in France and Italy, I read in both languages and feel there is a wealth of great talents which deserves to be translated: Romain Slocombe, Dominique Sylvain, Marc Villard, Simone Sarasso, Tommaso Pincio, Andrea Pinketts. So, again fingers are crossed. ... It would be nice to prove that non-Scandinavian [European] crime authors can establish themselves.

MG: As many Rap Sheet readers may know, you are highly respected in the film world. By way of a conclusion, would you care to recommend some upcoming crime films and crime novels that we ought to take the time to see or read in 2010?

MJ: Many of this year’s big guns won’t be unveiled until the Cannes Film Festival in May, but right now my best hopes for the coming months are Michael Winterbottom’s new version of Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me (which created a stir at the Sundance Festival) and Luc Besson’s live version of Adèle Blanc-Sec, a wonderful French comic strip series by Jacques Tardi; the trailer looks very appetizing. I’d also highlight a small British indie crime film which was shown at the London Film Festival, The Disappearance of Alice Creed, by J. Blakeson, featuring Eddie Marsan and Gemma Arterton; really small budget and harrowing, but it should make a splash when it comes out early in the summer.

On the book front, I have just read Toby Litt’s new novel, King Death. It is very different from his earlier Corpsing, a sort of modern Agatha Christie “Tommy and Tuppence” tale involving a witty duo of involuntary sleuths set loose on a curious case, which acts out around London’s Borough Market and Guy’s Hospital. Toby skips continuously between genres, often stepping inside the crime and mystery perimeter with great success. Also coming out in May is Scott Turow’s 20 years-in-the-coming sequel to Presumed Innocent. It is called just Innocent, and it will blow your socks off.

Consider Me a Co-conspirator

Last June, I was contacted by British editor and former bookstore proprietor Maxim Jakubowski. He said he’d been approached by a London publishing house, asking if he would put together “a travel/reference book” that looked at 20 cities or places around the world through the eyes of the detective novelists most closely associated with them. Jakuboswki was recruiting writers to take on the 20 essays, and he asked me to participate in the project. I was certainly honored by the invitation, and quickly accepted.

Nine months later, Jakubowski reports that “the book is now being copy-edited and designed and is on course for early autumn publication” from New Holland Publishers. He adds, “For those of you who might be visiting the London Book Fair next month, there will be a dummy and sample pages on view at the New Holland stand.”

I didn’t want to go spreading information too early about this book, which is titled Following the Detectives. But with Jakubowski’s permission, I can now at least list the 21 cities/regions covered and the essayists involved in the project:

• Boston: Michael Carlson
• Brighton: Barry Forshaw
• Chicago: Dick Adler and Maxim Jakubowski
• Dublin: Declan Burke
• Edinburgh: Barry Forshaw
• Florida: Oline Cogdill
• Iceland: Peter Rozovsky
• London: David Stuart Davies
• Los Angeles: Maxim Jakubowski
• New Orleans: Maxim Jakubowski
• New York City: Sarah Weinman
• Nottingham: John Harvey
• Oxford: Martin Edwards
• Paris: Barry Forshaw
• San Francisco: J. Kingston Pierce
• Shropshire: Martin Edwards
• Sicily: Peter Rozovsky
• Southern California: Michael Carlson
• Sweden: Barry Forshaw
• Venice: Barry Forshaw
• Washington, D.C.: Sarah Weinman

As you can see, I am in extremely good company here. I look forward to seeing the design of the book and, eventually, receiving copies. And I have to thank Maxim Jakubowski for asking me to take part in the creation of Following the Detectives. I’ve seen seven of my non-fiction books published in the past, and have contributed chapters or essays to many other works. But this is the first time my prose has been included in a volume specifically about crime fiction.

It won’t be the last, I guarantee it.

What Maxim Did Next

Maxim Jakubowski awaits the closing of Murder One.

Since the Murder One bookstore in London’s Charing Cross Road was due to close forever on Saturday, I felt I had to make a final trip to buy some books from that almost 21-year-old store, which has so long been a favorite haunt of mine. I also wished to thank owner Maxim Jakubowski and his crack staff for providing me with such excellent reading material over the years, as well as pass on my very best wishes for their future endeavors.

Murder One holds special memories for me. Perhaps most significantly, it was the site in 1999 of the launch of Hannibal, by Thomas Harris. The shop opened at midnight on June 7 of that year, its staffers greeting readers who queued up to buy their first copies of Harris’ latest novel with glasses of Chianti and bowls of fava beans. In line with me that evening was Mark Billingham (In the Dark). I remember vividly the world’s media descending upon Murder One to cover the event, and my own enthusiasm. As I was first in the queue (waiting six hours until the shop reopened), I was interviewed by the press--much to the embarrassment of my family, who saw my face in the newspapers and on television the next morning.

As I made my way through London to Murder One one last time, the weather was typically awful for this time of year, with rain pelting across the Charing Cross Road. So I was particularly grateful to reach the bookstore. The first thing I noticed there was that much of the stock had been marked down for quick sale, and there were many gaps on the shelves. I felt sad to witness this unexpected demise of the British capital’s foremost magnet for crime and thriller fans. Once Jakubowski closed his doors, I knew, the only London bookstore specializing in crime fiction would be Goldsboro Books on Cecil Court.

After grabbing up several books for my own collection, I wandered over to speak with Jakubowski. Despite the deluge of stories written about his shop’s fate, I found him to be in remarkably good form--jolly, in fact. Jakubowski explained that he had been really taken aback, and moved, by the generous comments people from all over the world had made following the announcement of Murder One’s closure. He told me that Orion Publishing, one of the UK’s foremost purveyors of new crime fiction, had couriered over a case of fine champagne. He’d also received letters, cards, e-mail messages, and flowers from customers, editors, publishers, bloggers, literary agents, and writers scattered across the four corners of the globe--and beyond, as Murder One carried a large science-fiction section (as well as a romance fiction department).

Jakubowski spoke with The Times of London in early January, explaining why he’d decided--reluctantly--that the time had come for him to close Murder One:

Mr. Jakubowski, anxious to retire, was negotiating to sell Murder One in September, but Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and the offers dried up. Five months later, he decided to place the store into voluntary liquidation.

“Over the last few years our sales have deteriorated,” Mr. Jakubowski said. “I was planning to retire this year, but this is earlier than expected. I would rather close the shop now and go out voluntarily with my head held high and no debts. Once the Internet came along, it was a slow and consistent decline for us. After the credit crunch I took a decision--one can’t be sentimental about it. It’s just a business.”

The city’s other quality newspapers have covered this store’s shuttering with equal respect and a due somberness of tone. From The Guardian’s Stuart Evers:

Inclusive and without snobbery, Murder One amply demonstrated that the best bookshops are places not just of commerce, but of community; places that make you feel you belong. It’s the kind of store that bibliophiles dream about: well-stocked, well-staffed and shabby enough to lose days browsing within. It’s just unfortunate that such shops don’t have enough paying customers to keep them afloat, or that these customers visit all too infrequently--something of which I’m certainly guilty.

These kinds of shops are facing a long, bloody battle--and one which, without significant reinforcements, they are likely to lose. As we hear of the travesty of another brilliant independent going down, we’ll mourn the loss, wring our hands and damn Amazon and the supermarkets and Waterstone’s. Yet perhaps the most important detail we’ll probably keep under wraps: the last time we actually spent any money there.

And from The Telegraph:

Charing Cross Road is renowned for its specialist and second-hand bookshops. Murder One--which is the only British bookshop where The Firm author John Grisham has carried out a book signing--is the second specialist bookshop to close or announce its closure on the street within a week.

On New Year’s Eve, specialist art bookseller Shipleys shut its doors for the last time.

The spate of closures will put the street’s position as a world-renowned book-buying destination under threat. Charing Cross Road’s status as one of London’s cultural centres has already been dealt a heavy blow by the imminent closure of the London Astoria, the concert theatre.

Mr. Jakubowski said that he was planning to retire at the end of 2009 but that the current economic climate meant that he could no longer run the store.

Maxim Jakubowski spoke with The Bookseller about this closure:

“It’s tough for a specialist bookshop now: you are fighting the Internet and the chains, discounting almost at a loss sometimes. Publishers are not particularly sympathetic at improving their discounts or making authors available. We’ve had loyalty from authors, but it’s been an uphill struggle.”

Jakubowski said that there had been earlier interest in buying the shop but that the credit crunch had made it “the worst possible climate” for a sale.

Being familiar with this store owner’s energy, business connections, publishing assignments, and writing talent, I was reassured that he would not soon be heading off to a retirement home in Brighton. And he explained to me that the legal agreements for a transfer of ownership to the Murder One Web site would be taking place shortly (two of the operation’s senior staffers are taking it over), so at least Murder One will continue in the guise of an Internet bookseller. That made me feel at least a bit better.

I asked Jakubowski what plans he has for the near future. He explained that he intends to take off for the United States as soon as possible, and spend a few weeks there promoting Rome Noir, a collection of crime-fiction yarns that he co-edited with Chiara Stangalino for Akashic Books (and which pairs nicely with Paris Noir, which he edited for Serpent’s Tail two years ago). For readers who haven’t yet acquired a copy of Rome Noir, here’s part of the publisher’s briefing on the book:

Rome Noir looks beyond the tourist facade of Italy’s capital. This is the real city of Fellini, Pasolini, and countless other major artists who devoted their lives to depicting the grandeur and decadence of this ever fascinating metropolis.

Both a modern city suffocated by traffic fumes and cars and a repository of knowledge and Classical monuments, Rome (with its hills and ruins) is a perfect conduit for an excursion into the many facets of modern noir. Here, Rome takes a place of honor amongst Akashic’s growing collection of anthologies devoted to the dark streets of cities. Assembled by award-winning British editor and writer Maxim Jakubowski, who has enjoyed a long relationship with Italy, and Italian conference organizer and filmmaker Chiara Stangalino, Rome Noir collects some of the biggest talents of the Italian crime and literary scene: Carlo Lucarelli, Gianrico Carofiglio, Diego De Silva, Francesca Mazzucato, Antonio Scurati, Tommaso Pincio, Boosta, and many others.

From Stazione Termini, immortalized by Roberto Rossellini’s films, to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s desolate beach of Ostia, and encompassing famous landmarks and streets, this is the sinister side of the Dolce Vita come to life, a stunning gallery of dark characters, grotesques, and lost souls seeking revenge or redemption in the shadow of the Colosseum, the Spanish Steps, the Vatican, Trastevere, the quiet waters of the Tiber, and Piazza Navona. Rome will never be the same.

While on the other side of the Atlantic, Jakubowski intends, too, to promote one of his most interesting books, Confessions of a Romantic Pornographer. (Don’t let that title put you off; I read this novel several years ago and found it quite remarkable. Here’s an extract.) And after he returns home to the UK, he has more fiction to write and work to accomplish as the editor of anthologies. He’s also pretty busy with British publisher Constable and Robinson, working on several projects, and he is organizing this year’s Crimescene Festival in conjunction with the British Film Institute and Turner Classic Movies. Not surprisingly, Jakubowski is looking forward to some free time in between all of these ventures, when he can start to whittle down his looming pile of reviewable books.

After bidding Jakubowski good-bye, I took my weighty armload of books up to the sales counter and surveyed Murder One one final time. I realized that this would be the last occasion on which I’d leave Charing Cross Road with one of the shop’s familiar red, white, and black carrier bags marked with the Murder One logo. It was truly the end of an era for this crime-fiction enthusiast.

It was still raining--surprise, surprise--when I stepped outside again, heading off toward London’s Soho district and my second obligation of that day: lunch with American thriller writer Richard Montanari. I hoped our meeting would help fill some of the emptiness I carried away in my heart from Charing Cross Road.

(The second part of Ali Karim’s report can be found here.)