January Magazine and The Rap Sheet have both been quite complimentary in the past of novels by Southern California author Don Winslow, including California Fire and Life (1999) and The Power of the Dog (2005). But critic Cameron Hughes opines that Winslow has succeeded in setting his own literary bar higher with The Dawn Patrol. “[T]his new book,” he writes, “is one of the best private eye novels I’ve read in years.”
Boone Daniels used to be a cop. Now he’s a surfer in San Diego, California, obsessively checking how high the waves are and tracking where the epic swells will be on any given day. To support this habit, he does the bare minimum of work necessary, as a P.I. Life seems pretty darn good for Boone Daniels and his surfer buddies on “the Dawn Patrol.” So why is Daniels’ bank account empty? And why does he now spend countless nights trying to find the suspected rapist and killer of a 6-year-old girl--a case that got cold fast when he was on the San Diego Police Department and refused to torture information out of the favored suspect?
Daniels’ latest hiatus from the high curls and his surfing buddies finds him taking on what seems like a straightforward case, but--naturally--turns out to be much more complicated:
A striking female lawyer named Petra Hall, who represents a powerful law firm in San Diego, hires Boone to find a missing stripper, Tamara Roddick, who witnessed her boss engage in some insurance shenanigans of the arson variety. Boone figures he can locate Roddick, get her on the witness stand to testify, and then get back to the beach in time for a big swell promising huge waves that come only every few years. Things begin to get complicated, though, when a woman is found dead by a motel pool with the mislaid Ms. Roddick’s identification in her possession. Was the decedent pushed, or did she fall? And was the stripper Boone is looking for the intended victim?
From that point in the novel, we’re off, with Winslow leading us rapidly through a succession of intriguing episodes that take place on beautiful stretches of sand and in much darker places where evil events occur--events such as the children of illegal aliens being smuggled into Southern California for more than just borderline slavery. People don’t like to talk about such uncomfortable things, but author Winslow knows they go on and is willing to explore them in his fiction. He peels back the layers, revealing the corrupted soul of a city--San Diego--that’s paying the price for paradise.
Hughes’ full review of The Dawn Patrol can be found here.
I like Don Winslow’s idea, but I suspect that blowhard Donald Trump won’t take part in this “duel of the Dons.” From The Guardian:
Crime novelist Don Winslow has issued a challenge to Donald Trump to debate his plans for a border wall on Fox News—a provocation that horror author Stephen King has offered to fund.
Winslow, whose latest book is called The Border, the third novel in his Cartel trilogy, made the offer on Twitter: “Dear @realDonaldTrump. Let’s debate the Trump wall and let the people decide. I’ll even do it on your own network—@FoxNews. Any show. Any anchor. Any time. You debated 18 Republicans during your presidential campaign, I am sure you can handle one writer. Let me know.”
King was quick to react, telling Winslow that he would “pay $10,000 to see that!”. Trump, however, has yet to respond.
Winslow has a history of publicly criticising the president and his border policy. Two years ago, he took out a full-page ad in the New York Times, which said that “rather than make a real effort to address the drug problem at its roots—at a time when more Americans die from opiate overdose than from car accidents—Trump and [then Attorney General Jeff] Sessions hand us fantasies such as the border wall, which will do absolutely nothing to slow the flow of drugs”.
Why would one of the best crime-fiction writers in the world decide to take on the composition of what the finished book’s cover describes as “a novel based on” the work of another author?
That’s what I wondered when I first heard that Don Winslow, the author of such classics as The Death and Life of Bobby Z, The Winter of Frankie Machine, The Power of the Dog, and The Dawn Patrol, had signed to write a prequel to Shibumi, a 1979 thriller by the novelist known as Trevanian, whose most famous book was The Eiger Sanction (1972). Money probably had something to do with it, but Winslow has sold many books. And, to my knowledge, he is the only writer to make the work of an insurance investigator--in California Fire and Life--not only interesting, but fascinating.
Now comes the result of this unlikely collaboration: Satori (Grand Central Publishing). The title itself is a tribute to its source. “The tea room was exquisite, elegant in its simplicity. a perfect expression of shibumi ...,” explains the lead character, Nicholai Hel. “In his role as guest, Nicholai admired the skillful brushwork. which depicted the Japanese symbol for satori. An interesting choice, Nicholai thought. Satori was the Zen Buddhist concept of a sudden awakening, a realization of life as it really is. ... Nicholai had never known satori.”
The more pages I turned, the more I understood why Winslow had taken on this project. He is very kind to Trevanian family members, and makes me believe that he really admires the author. Although I would argue that Winslow has known satori in virtually all of his books, the challenge here must have been irresistible. And he pulls it off with so much energy and imagination that Satori turns out to be a total triumph.
After the young half-Japanese, half-Russian Hel is suddenly released from an American-run prison in 1951 Japan, he quickly learns from his former captors what they have in mind for him. That gang of “spooks”--mostly new renderings of, and much more frightening than, the ones in Shibumi--make Hel an offer he knows he should refuse: they want him to go through painful plastic surgery on his face and carry out a probably suicidal mission to assassinate a Soviet commissioner in China. But he also knows that Solange, the older French woman who is looking after him and teaching him to talk, eat, drink, smoke, and smell like a real Frenchman, will be in grave danger if he refuses. He has come to love this stunning woman with a tragic back-story of her own.
So, having adopted the identity, visage, and aroma of a 26-year-old French arms dealer, Hel enters a very dangerous and beautifully drawn world, which eventually takes him to war-ravaged Vietnam, where his expertise in playing the ancient game of Go (I bought a set after reading about it here) becomes as important as his physical skills.
On the way, Winslow paints a bleak but touching picture of China two years after Mao Zedong seized power--including a 1952 visit to Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Satori is proof that a fine writer can take on any challenge, and make it work for him.
I am putting this post up with some hesitation, as I don’t find any corroborating information on the Web. But Jiro Kimura reports on The Gumshoe Site that Southern California novelist Don Winslow has won the 2011 T. Jefferson Parker Book Award for his novel Savages (Simon & Schuster). I sent an e-mail note to Winslow, hoping for confirmation of this news, but have not yet heard anything back.
Other contenders for this same 2011 prize in the mystery/thrillers category were: The Sentry, by Robert Crais (Putnam); San Diego Noir, edited by Maryelizabeth Hart (Akashic Books); and The Informant, by Thomas Perry (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
Winslow’s win was supposedly announced on October 22, in San Diego, by the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association.
FOLLOW-UP:Here’s confirmation of Winslow’s award pick-up. Thanks to Lance Wright of Omnimystery News for sending along the link.
Critic-blogger Sarah Weinman broke the news in October that one of my favorite writers, Don Winslow, is taking on the mantle of the late and much-admired thriller writer who published as Trevanian, the author of such novels as The Eiger Sanctionand Shibumi. But at that time, Weinman added, “Winslow’s own publishing status in the U.S. is in a bit of limbo, as The Gentlemen’s Hour--the even-better sequel to the amazing The Dawn Patrol--was published in the UK, but there’s no U.S. publication date in sight.”
That situation changed last month. Noted Weinman: “Winslow not only is writing as Trevanian for Grand Central, but his own work will have a new publisher, namely Simon & Schuster. ... According to Publishers Marketplace, The Gentlemen’s Hour won’t be published until July 2011, which is a hell of a long way away--but that’s because the house has elected to publish Winslow’s standalone novel Savages, described as ‘a gritty, humorous, and drug-fueled ransom thriller set amidst the Baja Cartel in Laguna Beach, CA,’ next summer.”
2011 is indeed too long to wait, so I bought (through Amazon UK) a copy of The Gentlemen’s Hour. Weinman is right: It’s even better than the gorgeous The Dawn Patrol. Even if the closest you’ve ever come to a surfboard is watching a Gidget flick, there’s enough action, suspense, sex, love, humor, and wisdom in this sequel to get you down to your nearest point break at top speed.
There’s sadness, too, as surfing San Diego private eye Boone Daniels--broke, as usual--signs onto a case with a top law firm that has been hired to defend a nasty punk kid charged with killing a local surfing hero. Boone knows he’ll be courting outrage from the rest of the Dawn Patrol, a mixed group--a Japanese cop, a giant Samoan, a Lothario lifeguard--who would rather surf than eat, and who have their own strict moral code. But he takes on the assignment anyway. And as his closest friendships begin to fray, he digs deeper into the murkier side of surfing culture. Drug czars, corrupt builders, and self-serving politicians soon rise out of the Pacific like creatures from a very black lagoon.
The book arrived last Friday. I finished it the next day, pausing only to rest my eyes. I think you’ll receive The Gentleman’s Hour with the same enthusiasm--whether you buy an import copy, or steel yourself to wait for the American edition.
Author Don Winslow seems to have been on a roll ever since he published The Dawn Patrol back in 2008, racking up myriad plaudits, if fewer award wins. Now, though, he can add a big prize to his collection: the 2015 T. Jefferson Parker Mystery Award. According to Jiro Kimura’s The Gumshoe Site, Winslow picked up the Parker for The Cartel (Knopf), a thrilling sequel to The Power of the Dog, his 2005 novel about Mexican drug trafficking.
The T. Jefferson Parker Mystery Award is presented annually by the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association (SCIBA). The Cartel was one of three novels shortlisted as contenders this year, the other two being Marry, Kiss, Kill, by Anne Flett-Giordano (Prospect Park), and The Replacements, by David Putnam (Oceanview).
Winslow’s win was announced yesterday during the SCIBA Trade Show, held in North Hollywood, California. This was the third time that Winslow has netted the Parker award; he won it previously for Savages (2010) and The Kings of Cool (2012).
In January Magazine today, contributing editor Anthony Rainone applauds Michael Connelly’s latest Jack McEvoy adventure, The Scarecrow, as “a tense, taut thriller that never exhausts itself of surprises for the reader.” Of the plot, he writes:
Los Angeles Times cop beat reporter Jack McEvoy becomes another victim of downsizing when the paper gives him his Reduction in Force notice--aka “pink slip.” But that doesn’t take the charge out of McEvoy’s instincts for a good story, especially if it means he can go out with a bang and leave some egg on his bosses’ faces. And McEvoy has just the article in mind.
Sixteen-year-old Alonzo Winslow stands accused of a trunk murder--killing 23-year-old stripper Denise Babbit and stuffing her body into the trunk of her car. LAPD detectives claim that Winslow confessed to the killing, and the authorities are set to charge him as an adult. Winslow’s mother, though, calls McEvoy and challenges him to do the right thing--namely, clear her gang-banger son of a murder he didn’t commit. Although McEvoy first envisioned the article as a lengthy exposé on how a young man is turned into a killer, he is subsequently convinced of Winslow’s innocence.
In addition to reviewing this novel, Rainone asks the author himself a few questions about The Scarecrow. You’ll find it all here.
Great news for lovers of the fabulous Don Winslow: In July, Simon & Schuster will publish Winslow’s Savages, which just might be his best novel yet. Savages is about two pals from Laguna Beach, California--an environmentalist named Ben and a born warrior called Chon--who share the same girlfriend, the stunning O (for Ophelia, a family joke), as well as a thriving business growing and distributing the best-quality pot on the planet. When they resist being muscled by a Mexican drug cartel, O is kidnapped and the ransom is every cent they’ve made over the last five years. They agree to pay, but hatch an alternative plan to get her back, get revenge, and then get lost.
I’ve raved about Winslow on this page before--most recently in regard to his second San Diego surfing thriller, The Gentlemen’s Hour, for which I laid out actual cold cash in order to obtain an early, UK edition. It was wonderful stuff, better--believe it or not--than his gorgeous 2008 novel, The Dawn Patrol. Even if the closest you’ve ever come to a surfboard is watching a Gidget flick, there’s enough action, suspense, sex, love, humor, and wisdom in The Gentlemen’s Hour to get you down to your nearest point break at top speed.
Winslow’s other fine books include The Winter of Frankie Machine, The Power of the Dog, and The Death and Life of Bobby Z.
Savages is a darker and bloodier than much of his work, and thus harder to quote from on a family friendly blog. But here’s a taste:
O has diagnosed Chon with PTLOSD. Post-Traumatic Lack Of Stress Disorder. He says he has no nightmares, nerves, flashbacks, hallucinations or guilt. “I wasn’t stressed,” Chon insisted, “and there was no trauma.”
“Must have been the dope,” O opined. Dope is good, Chon agreed ...
Savages features 290 more pages of action, adventure, swearing, shooting, killing, and close shaves. It also contains some rare insights into how and why it is that people go into the drug trade. This is a book not to be missed.
If you haven’t yet entered The Rap Sheet’s “Big Four” contest, please keep in mind that time is running out. Damn fast! The prizes being given away are four free copies of the new Mike Hammer detective novel, The Big Bang, written by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins, plus four free copies of the latest original Hammer radio novel on CD, “The Little Death.” The deadline for entering is midnight tonight, Friday, May 21.
To be in the running for these prizes, you need to do only two things: (1) Make a list of your four favorite private eye novels and (2) send that list, along with your mailing address, to jpwrites@wordcuts.org. Please write “Mike Hammer Contest” in the subject line. The names of eight contest participants will be drawn at random, and those winners’ names announced tomorrow. Each winner will receive either a copy of The Big Bang (signed by co-author Collins) or a copy of “The Little Death.”
So, if you haven’t already entered this contest, do it now!
Over the last couple of days (see here and here), we’ve been posting many of the submissions to this contest. Below, we offer a third batch of those lists.
Guy Mills of San Jose, California:
•When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, by Lawrence Block • Fire Lake, by Jonathan Valin •Toll Call, by Stephen Greenleaf •The Gentlemen’s Hour, by Don Winslow
Naomi Johnson of Columbus, Ohio:
•The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler •The Dramatist, by Ken Bruen •The Forgotten Man, by Robert Crais •Yellow Dog Party, by Earl Emerson
Bill Slankard of Arlington Heights, Illinois:
•The Galton Case, by Ross MacDonald •Shackles, by Bill Pronzini •Some Buried Caesar, by Rex Stout •True Detective, by Max Allan Collins
Paul McMurray of Milton, Wisconsin:
• The Lonely Silver Rain, by John D. MacDonald •Too Many Cooks, by Rex Stout •A Catskill Eagle, by Robert B. Parker •Looking for Rachel Wallace, by Robert B. Parker
Bill Crider of Alvin, Texas:
•The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler •The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett • The Chill, by Ross Macdonald •One Lonely Night, by Mickey Spillane
Steve Parvin of Yucaipa, California:
•I Was Dora Suarez, by Derek Raymond •The Neon Rain, by James Lee Burke •An Easy Thing, by Paco Ignacio Taibo II •Red Harvest, by Dashiell Hammett
David Blount of Jackson, Mississippi:
•When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, by Lawrence Block •Bleeders, by Bill Pronzini •Miami Blues, by Charles Willeford •Book Case, by Stephen Greenleaf •Retribution, by Stuart M. Kaminsky •A Smile on the Face of the Tiger, by Loren D. Estleman
David W. Madara of Mays Landing, New Jersey:
•Red Harvest, by Dashiell Hammett •The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Arthur Conan Doyle •The Million-Dollar Wound, by Max Allan Collins •Stolen Away, by Max Allan Collins
Ward Howarth of Richmond, Virginia:
•The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler •The Dawn Patrol, by Don Winslow •The Last Good Kiss, by James Crumley •Red Harvest, by Dashiell Hammett
Brian O’Malley of Chicago, Illinois:
•I, the Jury, by Mickey Spillane •Kiss Me, Deadly, by Mickey Spillane •Carnal Hours, by Max Allan Collins •Flying Blind, by Max Allan Collins
Karl-Erik Lindkvist of Västerås, Sweden:
•The Goodbye Look, by Ross Macdonald •“F” is for Fugitive, by Sue Grafton •120, rue de la Gare, by Jacques Tardi and Léo Malet (“The best graphic novel interpretation of a hard-boiled detective novel ever! Keep your fingers crossed that Fantagraphics will publish a translated edition.”) •The Murderer Is a Fox, by Ellery Queen (“In Wrightsville, away from his home turf and the NYPD, Mr. Queen has to act as a real private eye to get to the bottom of a 12-year-old murder. Impossible to put down!”)
Gerald So of Old Westbury, New York:
•The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett •Blunt Darts, by Jeremiah Healy •Promised Land, by Robert B. Parker •No Colder Place, by S.J. Rozan
Randy Johnson of Eden, North Carolina:
•Texas Wind, by James Reasoner (“My favorite of his.”) •Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley (“My first Mosley.”) •I, the Jury, by Mickey Spillane (“My first private eye novel.”) •The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler (“My first Chandler.”)
Rafaela Castro of El Cerrito, California:
•Albuquerque, by Rudolfo Anaya • Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley •The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett •The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler
Iasa Duffy of Hurst, Texas:
•The Last Good Kiss, by James Crumley •The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett •Silentium! by Wolf Haas •Fer-de-Lance, by Rex Stout
Andrew Eichner of Chicago, Illinois:
• Redbird, by Jo Nesbø • The Eighth Circle, by Stanley Ellin •A Long Walk Up the Water Slide, by Don Winslow • The Last Good Kiss, by James Crumley
John F. Frost of Brooklyn, New York:
•The Goodbye Look, by Ross Macdonald •The Lime Pit, by Jonathan Valin •Beyond Blame, by Stephan Greenleaf •Prayers for Rain, by Dennis Lehane
“If I had to name a fifth, it would be the first mystery I ever read, which got me hooked: Puzzle for Fools, by Patrick Quentin.”
John Lau of Playa del Rey, California:
•The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett •The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler •The Last Good Kiss, by James Crumley •Lost Light, by Michael Connelly
Dwight Brown of Austin, Texas:
•The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett •Pale Gray for Guilt, by ohn D. MacDonald •When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, by Lawrence Block •California Fire and Life, by Don Winslow
Keith Hart of Citrus Heights, California:
•The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler •The Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammett •Shackles, by Bill Pronzini •The Doorbell Rang, by Rex Stout
Paul Tenpenny of Milwaukee, Wisconsin:
•Don’t Catch Me, by Richard Powell • Kiss Me, Deadly, by Mickey Spillane •Flying Blind, by Max Allan Collins • The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde, by Erle Stanley Gardner
Michael Alatorre of Los Angeles, California:
•L.A. Requiem, by Robert Crais •The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler •Trigger City, by Sean Chercover •Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley
Winifred Waite of Washington, England, United Kingdom:
• The Remorseful Day, by Colin Dexter •A Sudden, Fearful Death, by Anne Perry •The Virgin in the Ice, by Ellis Peters •The Information Officer, by Mark Mills
Jon Butters of Chapel Hill, North Carolina:
•The Dawn Patrol, by Don Winslow •The Last Good Kiss, by James Crumley •Booked to Die, by John Dunning •This Wicked World, by Richard Lange
It seems author Don Winslow and his Hollywood representatives have been very busy lately. This comes from In Reference to Murder:
In a preemptive and very lucrative deal, Sony Pictures and Elizabeth Gabler’s 3000 Pictures have optioned Don Winslow’s upcoming crime trilogy epic, beginning with City on Fire. That first novel, which follows the template of Homer’s Iliad, will be published by William Morrow in September. The follow-up, City of Dreams, will follow a year later, and the third installment, City in Ashes, will be published in September of 2023. The Story Factory’s Shane Salerno will produce the films. The trilogy focuses on two criminal empires—one Irish, the other Italian—that control all of Rhode Island and have led a peaceful lucrative co-existence until a modern-day Helen of Troy tears them apart and starts a brutal war. The protagonist, Danny Ryan, is forced to grow from a street soldier into a ruthlessly efficient leader to protect his friends, his family, and the home he loves. Fighting the Mafia, the local cops, and the feds, Danny will build a dynasty or die trying.
For the second year in a row, author Don Winslow has captured the T. Jefferson Parker Award for Mystery from the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association. That announcement was made on October 20 during the annual Authors Feast & Trade Show, held aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California.
Winslow’s win this time is for The Kings of Cool (Simon & Schuster), the prequel to Savages, which picked up the Parker prize last year. Also nominated for this 2012 commendation were Getaway, by Lisa Brackmann (Soho Press), and Taken, by Robert Crais (Putnam).
Now The Gumshoe Site brings word that Japan’s Maltese Falcon Society has given one of Winslow’s earlier works, The Winter of Frankie Machine (2006), its 2011 Maltese Falcon Award. That commendation is presented to “the best hard-boiled/private eye novel published in the previous year in Japan.”
• Why does it not surprise me to learn that the film rights to Don Winslow’s latest thriller, The Cartel (Knopf), have already been sold to Fox, with Ridley Scott tapped to direct and Leonardo DiCaprio being courted to play DEA agent Art Keller?
• Meanwhile, Winslow seems to have won no end of favorable publicity for this still-new sequel to his 2005
novel, The Power of the Dog. Slate has a podcast interview with The Cartel’s author, while Cinephilia & Beyond has posted this appreciation of Winslow’s storytelling. Reviews of The Cartel appear in Crime Fiction Lover and The
Big Issue, as well as on the Mystery People site and even in High Times, not to mention a gazillion other sources.
• The Girl in the Spider’s Web, David Lagercrantz’s fourth installment in the Millennium thriller series (originally penned by Stieg Larsson)--due out on August 27 in Great Britain, and on September 1 in the States--has been heavily embargoed. However, publisher MacLehose Press has finally released some details about its plot. The Guardianreports:
The novel continues the story of [Lisbeth] Salander and [Mikael] Blomkvist, last seen at the ending of Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, published in Swedish in 2007 and in English in 2009.
Despite the ending of Larsson’s novel, the misfit hacker Salander and the crusading journalist Blomkvist “have not been in touch for some time”, revealed MacLehose Press. The novel opens as “renowned Swedish scientist Professor Balder” contacts Blomkvist, asking him to publish his story.
And “it is a terrifying one,” said the publisher. “Säpo, Sweden’s security police, have offered him protection, but what Balder hopes for is to preserve his life’s work”--he has made “world-leading advances in artificial intelligence”--by going public.
Balder has also been working with Salander, it then emerges. The hacker has been using her old codename of Wasp, and has been attempting to crack the NSA--“a lunacy driven by vengeance, and fraught with every possible
consequence”, said MacLehose.
She is also being targeted by “ruthless cyber gangsters who call themselves the Spiders”, and “the violent unscrupulousness of this criminal conspiracy will very soon bring terror to the snowbound streets of Stockholm,
to the Millennium team--and to Blomkvist and Salander themselves”.
• This is a historical curiosity:an alternative opening to Season 6 of The Avengers, which that year (the series’ last, 1968-1969) replaced Diana Rigg (as Emma Peel) with Linda Thorson (as Tara King).
• Last weekend brought an end to the 2015 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, but the blogger who styles herself “Crime Thriller Girl” has only now concluded her recapping of festival events. See Part I here, Part II here, and Part III here.
• Earlier today, in the Killer Covers blog, I posted the latest entry in my “Friday Finds” series, highlighting book fronts of which I’m especially fond. The star this week is Jonathan Craig’s Frenzy, a 1962 edition of his novel Junkie!
• While you’re on the Killer Covers page, check out this “Two-fer Tuesdays” installment about paperback novels “that feature women in danger, concealed behind the flimsiest of drapes or screens.”
• With just over four months yet to go before the release of Spectre, the 24th James Bond motion picture, we’ve now been given a fairly dramatic, 2.32-minute trailer hinting at what to expect not only from star Daniel Craig, but also from new “Bond Girl” Léa Seydoux and the flick’s villain, played by Christoph Waltz. Watch below.
• The Archive of American Television has recently posted a slew of interviews on its Emmy TV Legends YouTube page with actors, writers, and producers who are familiar to followers of small-screen series. Among the offerings is this multi-part exchange with Barbara Feldon, who played Agent 99 on the 1965-1970 spy satire, Get Smart.
• It seems unclear when, where, and even if, we’ll ever see Cleo Valente’s noirish TV series, The Port of San Pedro (there’s currently a GoFundMe campaign trying to raise money so this project can proceed). Yet a trailer is now circulating; and while its dialogue seems a bit stilted, the clips it offers suggest the program--set in the Los
Angeles community of San Pedro--might offer good entertainment for crime-fiction enthusiasts. Criminal Element has posted the trailer here, along with this précis of the program:
The Port of San Pedro is a clear homage to the glory days of noir, from its black-and-white stylization to the schemings of the duplicitous femme fatale, Luli-May Tang. Throw in Nick de Salvo (Steve Polites), an undercover detective who’s teamed up with his corruptible police captain, Sebastian Montenero (Luke Fattorusso), and you’ve got yourself a classic tale that knows where its roots first grew.
The series’ synopsis informs us that Luli-May Tang (Melodie Shih) is a Chinese woman who’s running an illegal currency forgery operation in Macao and has started to look into new ventures at the port of San Pedro. Luli-May is assisted by Mike Moretti (Mark Mikita), a mute sociopath who serves as her bodyguard. For Nick and Sebastian, their progress is impeded by Augustine “Quint” Quintero (Jesus Guevara), a morally ambiguous man who’s attracted equally to both new opportunities and the deadly femme fatale.
• Speaking of trailers, Jedidiah Ayres has posted a bunch of new ones in his blog, Hardboiled Wonderland, including a teaser for the sophomore season of FX-TV’s Fargo. That comedic crime drama
is scheduled to return this coming October.
• Sometimes I wonder if Americans will ever take action against gun violence--action that isn’t simply the National Rifle Association prescription of arming still more people. Blogger Steve Benen notes that “As of yesterday, there have been 204 days so far this year. There have also been 203 mass shooting events so far this year.”
• The Web site Mental Floss presents “15 Mysterious Facts About The Hardy Boys, the first of which is this remarkable statistic: “Not including graphic novels and planned releases, there have been well over 450 Hardy Boys titles
published since their 1927 debut. This rough sum includes 38 titles from the original series that were entirely rewritten after 1959, releases by Grossett & Dunlap and digests from Simon & Schuster publishers, and the
spin-offs Clues Brothers, Undercover Brothers, Casefiles, Super Mysteries, and Adventures series, among others.”
BBC One is partnering with Lifetime for a miniseries based on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. The UK will premiere the program as a three-episode series later this year to coincide with Agatha Christie’s 125th anniversary, with the U.S. premiere on Lifetime as a two-part miniseries in 2016. The iconic novel follows ten strangers with dubious pasts lured to an isolated island where they're accused of crimes and start to die mysteriously, one by one.
• When asked to list his "Top 10 Books About Spies” for The Guardian, Stephen Grey, author of The New Spymasters: Inside the Modern World of Espionage, included The Riddle of the Sands, by Erskine Childers, and Agents of Innocence, by David Ignatius.
• Poet-novelist Carlos Zanón, whose nihilistic tale, The Barcelona Brothers, was released in an English translation back in 2012, has won Spain’s Premio Dashiell Hammett award for Yo fui Johnny Thunders (2014). The Premio Dashiell Hammett is supposed to showcase the best crime fiction published in
Spanish.
• I, for one, had never heard “Sax Rohmer,” whose real name was Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward,
and who created the extensive Fu-Manchu series, speak--until today. “Among the goodies just uploaded to YouTube by
British Movietone,” explains writer-editor Elizabeth Foxwell, is this undated footage of Rohmer “talking about the levels of U.S. versus British crime.”
• And my Kiwi pal Craig Sisterson, author the newly retitled blog Craig’s Crime Watch (formerly just Crime Watch), has posted the first half of a list of 10 New Zealand fictionists he cheekily suggests “should be locked to their desks until they deliver us another crime novel.” Among his choices so far are Vanda Symon, Alix Bosco (Greg McGee), and Stella Duffy. Part II of his roster is due next week.
• Salma Hayek may never outdo her eye-popping, jaw-dropping snake dance in the otherwise mediocre 1996 film, From Dusk Till Dawn, but Jennifer Proffitt is applauding her performance as a femme fatale-cum-drug lord in the crime-thriller film Savages, based on Don Winslow’s 2010 novel of the same name. “Even in the trailers,” writes Proffitt, “Hayek’s character, Elena, comes through as ruthless, a woman in a man’s world. What makes Hayek even stronger is her male counterpart and enforcer played by Benicio Del Toro--a character who makes you wonder just how crazy he is and how long it will take before he snaps. You gotta love a woman who can muzzle a creature like that and look awesome doing it.”
• In addition to mid-July’sPoisoned Pen Conference, which I reminded you of in my last wrap-up post, don’t forget about the 2012 Write Now! Conference, “Criminal Minds: Investigating Today’s Writing Scene,” which is being sponsored by the Sisters in Crime Desert Sleuths chapter. As Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph notes, that convention will be held in Scottsdale, Arizona, on August 11 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. More information can be found here.
• On top of those events, the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference will take place in Corte Madera, California, from July 19 to 22. Don Winslow (him again?) is to be the keynote speaker.
• Really? The 1983 TV series Casablanca--which featured ex-Starsky & Hutch co-star David Soul in the Humphrey Bogart role, and lasted for a mere five episodes--has been released in DVD format? Hmm. I guess that, with the 70th anniversary of the Bogart film coming up in November, this seemed like a good idea to somebody.
• William Boyd’s quite splendid 2006 spy thriller, Restless, is going to be adapted as a two-part TV miniseries by the Sundance Channel and BBC. “Filming is set to get underway this summer in South Africa and the UK,” reports Omnimystery News. “Restless is expected to air late in the year on BBC One and the Sundance Channel.” Word is that Boyd wrote the screenplay himself.
• R.I.P., Don Grady. “Although best known as Robbie Douglas on My Three Sons, arguably his biggest legacy will be as a composer,” recalls blogger Terence Towles Canote. “He was very good when it came to writing music.” Canote explains that “Following his acting career, Mr. Grady worked as a composer in television and motion pictures. He served as a composer on the films Switch (1991), Passings (2000), and Good Neighbour (2001). He composed the theme song for the Phil Donahue Show and music for the mini-series The Revolutionary War. He adapted music for Blake Edwards’ movie Skin Deep (1989).”
• Finally, this seemingly good news: Author Janet Evanovich “will team up with Lee Goldberg--author of the ‘Mr. Monk’ novels based on the USA Network series Monk--to write a new book series. According to the publicity materials, it will feature FBI agent Kate Winslow and international fugitive Danny Cole and will be ‘a thrilling combination of crime, romance, and adventure.’ The first in the series is scheduled for publication in Fall 2013.” I only hope this writing partnership works better than the one we were all lead to believe Evanovich had established with Stephen J. Cannell a few years back.
San Diego-area author Don Winslow has won this year’s Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the Mystery/Thriller category for his enthusiastically reviewed 17th novel, The Cartel (Knopf). That announcement was made earlier today during a ceremony at Bovard Auditorium on the University of Southern California campus.
The other books vying for that honor were The Long and Faraway Gone, by Lou Berney (Morrow); The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press); Bull Mountain, by Brian Panowich (Putnam); and The Whites, by Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt (Picador).
In addition, mega-best-selling thriller writer James Patterson is the recipient of this year’s Innovator’s Award.
Click here to see the winners and nominees in all 10 categories.
Jiro Kimura of The Gumshoe Site reports that California author Don Winslow has won this year’s Falcon Award for his 2014 novel, Missing: New York (which is available in a German-language edition, but evidently not yet in an English translation). The Falcon, given out by Japan’s Maltese Falcon Society, is meant to honor “the best hard-boiled/private eye novel published in Japan in the previous year.”
This marks Winslow’s fourth Falcon victory. He won the same prize in 1994 for A Cool Breeze on the Underground, in 2010 for The Power of the Dog, and in 2011 for The Winter of Frankie Machine.
A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.
Stealing People, by Robert Wilson (Orion UK), brings the return of London kidnap consultant Charles Boxer (Capital Punishment, You Will Never Find Me), this time challenged by a case involving the children of six billionaires, all abducted within a span of just 32
hours. The well-organized group responsible for these acts demands no ransom, but does want £25 million per hostage to cover “expenses.” As Boxer and his ex, London police detective Mercy Danquah, go at the investigation from different angles, they’re competing with intelligence agencies concerned about the kidnappings because the parents that have been targeted have connections to some very powerful characters. The Cartel, by Don Winslow (Knopf)--a sequel to The Power of the Dog (2005)--transports us back into the company of Art Keller, a now-retired Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent, who re-enters the deadly hubbub of Mexico’s drug-peddling conflicts following news that his old antagonist, Adán Barrera, leader of the Sinaloan cartel El Federación, has broken out of prison and is intent on re-establishing himself as a criminal kingpin. Keith Rawson writes in Lit Reactor that “if this was a just world, The Cartel would be Winslow’s true breakout novel and it would place all of Winslow’s future novels at the top of [the] New York Times bestseller list.”
Click here to see more of this season’s most-wanted books.
Don Winslow, author of last year’s best-selling novel The Cartel, about efforts to bring down a drugs kinpin in Mexico, is not impressed—no, not impressed at all—by U.S. actor Sean Penn’s recent success in scoring an interview with Joaquín Guzmán, the freshly recaptured head of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel. Winslow writes in Deadline Hollywood:
As someone who has researched and written about the Mexican cartels and the futile “war on drugs” for coming on twenty years, I know how tough a subject it is. Mind-bending, soul-warping, heartbreaking, it challenges
your intellect, your beliefs, your faith in humanity and God. No journalist or writer who has ever tackled it has emerged quite the same – and all too many have not survived at all, but been tortured, mutilated and killed on the orders of such as Joaquin Guzman. (I resist the cute sobriquet of “Chapo.“ He is not one of the Seven Dwarfs—not Dopey, or Sneezy or Bashful. He’s a mass murderer.)
When I first heard that Penn had done an interview with Guzman, I was wondering what terms were demanded to grant that interview. Penn has a reputation of not shying away from controversy or hard, unpopular stances. I was hoping that he would ask Guzman questions that would matter.
Mr. Penn tells Charlie Rose that he considers the article a failure because it did not succeed in addressing his real issue—our policies of the “war on drugs.” But in an article of 10,500 words, the phrase “war on drugs” appears three times. It was not the purpose or focus of Penn’s horribly misguided piece.
Penn’s article had nothing to do with the forty year, trillion dollar failure that is the “war on drugs”—it was instead a brutally simplistic and unfortunately sympathetic portrait of a mass murderer. Penn thought he had scored a journalistic coup—instead his interview was the by-product of Guzman’s infatuation with a soap-opera actress (Guzman didn’t even know who Penn was) and told the exact story that Guzman wanted—with line by line editorial approval courtesy of Penn and Rolling Stone.
From a particularly information-packed edition of B.V. Lawson’s “Media Murder for Monday” column—appearing today in her In Reference to Murder blog—comes this item:
FX Networks has landed the rights to adapt Don Winslow’s acclaimed Cartel Trilogy into a TV series that will include Winslow’s 2005 novel The Power of the Dog, the 2015 followup, The Cartel, and the just published conclusion, The Border. The book trilogy spans a 45-year period and follows DEA agent Art Keller through America’s long-running war on drugs as well as his blood feud with Mexican drug kingpin Adán Berrera. The first two books were originally sold to be turned into a feature film by Fox, but the company ultimately decided it was too much material for a two-hour film and better suited for “an edgy Sons of Anarchy-style series” by sister company FX.
By Ali Karim
It was a brave decision by thriller writer Adam Hamdy (Pendulum, Aftershock) and his partner, literary agent and bookseller David Headley, to inaugurate a new annual convention showcasing the crime/thriller genre in the British capital: Capital Crime, which took place from September 26 to 28.
For one thing, there’s already a good deal of competition from more well-established events. Those include CrimeFest (Bristol, England), the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival (Harrogate), and Bloody Scotland (Stirling, Scotland), as well as smaller, regional conferences such as the St. Hilda’s College Crime Fiction Weekend (Oxford), Bute Noir (Rothesay), the Noirwich Crime Writing Festival, the NOIRELAND International Crime Fiction Festival (Belfast, Ireland), Morecambe & Vice, Deal Noir, and Newcastle Noir.
Secondly, mounting a book festival/convention is no task for the timid. I know from my long association with America’s annual Bouchercon (which included my work as programming chair for 2015’s conference in Raleigh, North Carolina) just how much courage, stamina, and resolve it takes to put together such an event. As one U.S. colleague characterized the management of such a diversified affair, “It’s like herding cats.”
(Left) David Headley and Adam Hamdy
Of course, Hamdy and Headley enjoyed several advantages. For one, their event was to be hosted in the nation’s capital, the center for British publishing, so they had an expansive local pool of talent from which to draw. They had also assembled a strong management team, with professional event
organizer Lizzie Curle being backed up by a solid squad of volunteers. Finally, the pair gained good sponsorship agreements, an excellent venue—the Grand Connaught Rooms in London’s West End—and a veritable who’s who of speakers and attendees. Mention should also be made of activity behind the
scenes by London’s Midas PR Agency and Tribe PR, supported by Covent Garden-based Goldsboro Books, which set up a bookstore adjacent to the festival’s signing tables.
The key to success in this venture would be to deliver exciting, informative panel discussions capable of attracting a wide range of crime- and thriller-fiction readers. Well, I am glad to say that the two-day array of such panels exceeded the expectations of even the most battle-hardened genre fans. Those panels ran on two parallel tracks, filling both the Grand Connaught’s Grand Room (which seats approximately 700 people) and the Edinburgh Suite (with space for maybe 400 more). The panel events hit all of the subgenres, from espionage, legal, Nordic/Scandinavian, and forensics to true crime, social commentary, Golden Age, contemporary, weird/fantasy crossovers, and historicals. In addition, the schedule offered sessions on the craft of fiction writing (for both the page and screen), a quiz, and a showing of director Steve McQueen’s 2018 heist film, Widows, based on a 1983 UK TV series of that same name.
There were plenty of big-name authors taking part, among them Ian Rankin, Robert Harris, Martina Cole, David Baldacci, Peter James, Lynda La Plante, Charles Cumming, Don Winslow, Kate Atkinson, last year’s Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Gold Dagger award winner, Steve Cavanagh, and 2019 CWA Diamond Dagger recipient Robert Goddard. Karen Sullivan from Orenda Books, one of this year’s nominees for the CWA Dagger for Best Crime and Mystery Publisher of the Year, hosted a lively and most amusing session called “Chilled to the Bone,” focusing on Scandi Noir, with authors Ragnar Jónasson, Will Dean, Antti Tuomainen, and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir. John Connolly’s career retrospective proved to be as entertaining as it was insightful, while legal professional (and Shotsmag Confidential blogger) Ayo Onatade talked about making the shift from practicing law to crime writing with attorneys Tony Kent, Imran Mahmood, Harriet Tyce, and the aforementioned Steve Cavanagh.
Kate Atkinson with her latest novel, Big Sky.
Keynote events, such as K.J. Howe’s interview with David Baldacci, my own back-and-forth with Martina Cole (during which we considered London’s appeal as a backdrop for crime novels and thrillers), and former Brighton chief superintendent Graham Bartlett’s grilling of Mark Billingham were all well-attended. The deliberate international scope of these proceedings was emphasized by an excellent showcased conversation between Scotsman Ian Rankin and California wordsmith Don Winslow. During a panel talk led by L.C. “Len” Tyler, Sophie Hannah, Ruth Ware, Christopher Fowler, and John Curran discussed the enduring importance of Agatha Christie. And Daily Telegraph books critic Jake Kerridge managed to persuade prominent novelists Robert Harris and Kate Atkinson to deliver short readings from their works as he interviewed them.
Worthy of applause, too, were a session that found Adam Handy and novelist Anthony Horowitz (The Sentence Is Death, Forever and a Day) discussing the genesis of story ideas and how one goes about wrestling them onto blank pages; and a Friday talk on the matter of modern technology’s impact on espionage thrillers, featuring Dame Stella Rimington, Charles Cumming, and Frank Gardner.
To mark its Saturday evening closing, this inaugural Capital Crime convention scheduled the presentation of its 2019 Amazon Publishing Readers’ Awards, in nine categories. The winners are here.
If you weren’t fortunate enough to take part in this three-day London affair, I hope the photographs embedded above and below will provide you with at least some idea of its diversity and delights.
Adam Hamdy welcomes attendees to Capital Crime, while David Headley announces the winner of the inaugural New Voices Award: Ashley Harrison, for her book, The Dysconnect.
It was little surprise that Capital Crime attracted many London journalists and broadcasters, among them Jon Coates of the Sunday Express, shown above chatting with Martina Cole.
British author Peter James almost disappears behind stacked copies of his newest work, The Secret of Cold Hill, the “spine-tingling follow-up” to 2015’s The House on Cold Hill.
British spy-fictionist Charles Cumming (The Moroccan Girl) spends a few minutes with Kimberley “K.J.” Howe, author (Skyjack) and executive director of ThrillerFest.
Goldsboro Books set up a well-stocked bookstore not far from this festival’s signing tables for authors.
Gold Dagger award winner Steve Cavanagh strikes a pose with Ayo Onatade, a contributor to Shots and the head of judicial support to the President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.
On Friday afternoon, BBC reporter Chi Chi Izundu conducted an onstage interview with writing heavyweights Ian Rankin and Don Winslow, covering the subject “The Human Cost of Crime.”
Authors on the Air Radio host Pam Stack (center) interviews UK critic-author Barry Forshaw (Historical Noir, Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide) and The Rap Sheet’s chief British correspondent, Ali Karim. You can listen to their very fun exchange here.
Publisher Pan Macmillan provided complimentary coffee to convention participants throughout the weekend. “This treat should not be underestimated,” enthuses Ali Karim, “as the quality of coffee was excellent, and the flasks were kept re-filled.” He goes on to say, “this beverage … was indeed truly life-affirming,” and a fine lead-in to glasses of gin ordered up as day turned to evening.
Speaking of caffeinated refreshments, here we see UK crime novelist Sarah Hilary (Never Be Broken) sharing a cup of said stuff with Vicki Mellor, the publishing director of Pan Macmillan’s commercial fiction team.
“Top-ranking barrister”-turned-novelist Tony Kent (Killer Intent) manages to spend at least some time on London’s streets with fellow author Alex North (The Whisper Man).
I am pleased to report that the same team behind this year’s conference will be responsible for its second presentation, in 2020. I look forward to heading back to the Big Smoke to see whether that sophomore Capital Crime can surpass this year’s event.
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that Winslow has succeeded in setting his own literary bar higher with The Dawn Patrol. “[T]his new book,” he writes, “is one of the best private eye novels I’ve read in years.”
