Voting is Murder

 

Are you a political junkie but tired of all the seemingly endless BidenClintonMcCainObamaPalin madness? How about escaping the mystery of real-life politics and instead leaping into a fictional version, if just for a little while.

Considering how high the emotions have been running during this 2008 election cycle, it's hard to believe that more mysteries and crime fiction novels haven't been based around election-themed plots. After all, how many politicians out there have wished their opponent would simply drop dead? (Of natural causes, of course, God rest their souls.)

But a few authors have taken up the voting gauntlet and created stories that would make Machiavelli proud. Here's a listing:

• Larry Beinhart, The Librarian (2004). How on earth did nebbish university librarian David Goldberg end up on Virginia's Ten Most Wanted Criminals list for bestiality? And how did he get ensnared in a vast right-wing conspiracy to steal the presidency?
• Gail Bowen, The Brutal Heart (2008). With a general election just weeks away, Joanne Kilbourn is following the campaign of Ginny Monaghan, a woman who has her eyes set on the leadership of the federal Conservative Party and whose success depends, not so much on the election-day poll, but on the outcome of a custody battle she’s fighting with her ex.
• Mark Coggins, Runoff (2007). How much does it cost to fix an election? That's the question uppermost in PI August Riordan's mind when Leonora Lee, the notorious, near-mythic Dragon Lady of San Francisco's Chinatown, hires Riordan to look into the city's mayoral election after her candidate finishes in single digits. Lee suspects someone has been tampering with newly installed touch-screen voting machines but only has until the runoff election, less than a week away, to find the answers.
• Silvia Foti, Skullduggery (2002). Supernatural reporter Alexandria Vilkas who launches a feature on a Crystal Skull, but is skeptical of its metaphysical powers---until the Chicago mayor dies in her arms. Now the prime suspect in the mayor's murder, Alex needs to clear her name, fast, if she hopes to live until the next election.
• Ed Gorman, Sleeping Dogs (2008). A seasoned politico works on the re-election campaign of a US senator with a reputation for sleeping around. A major televised debate proves to be a disaster for the senator, followed by the murder of a sleazy political op who knows something about the candidate that could completely destroy his career.
• Patricia Hall, Death by Election (2005). That quintessentially British institution, the brief, hotly contested by-election, forms the background for Hall's drama, in which an explosive combination of electoral and sexual politics engenders blackmail, suicide, and murder.
• Betsy Hartmann, Deadly Election (2008). A mysterious suicide in a military prison; a president whose thirst for alcohol may overwhelm his thirst for power; a White House advisor who takes matters into his own hands--With the country's future in the balance, a Supreme Court justice, a young congressional aide and a grieving mother are swept into a fight for their ideals-and their lives.
• Henry Kisor, Cache of Corpses (2007). Deputy Steve Martinez--Lakota Indian by birth, Porcupine City, Michigan, native by association--has investigated many crimes, but none more surprising than the case before him now. When clues at the first crime scene lead to a second headless corpse, Steve realizes this is someone's twisted idea of a game. And these events couldn't come at a worse time: the election for county sheriff is fast approaching and the sudden rash of bodies is just the sort of ammunition Steve's opponent is all too eager to use against him.
• Rob Loughran, High Steaks (2003). Davis O'Kane thought his fall from grace had reached its lowest point, with an impending divorce and a custody battle for his twin daughters, but then he finds a dead body in his restaurant in Nightingale, Nevada.  High Steaks propels the reader into the realm of crooked horse racing, cheating the roulette wheel, and murder as hot as a Nevada summer, set against a backdrop of the town's first contested mayoral race in decades.
• Brian McGrory, The Incumbent (2000). As he lies in the hospital, the day after being caught in the crossfire of a presidential assassination attempt, journalist Jack Flynn has some serious questions. With just eleven days until the election, it's becoming clear that he has stumbled into the middle of a far-reaching conspiracy.
• Barbara Michaels, Smoke and Mirrors (1989). The enthusiasm and idealism of Erin Hartsock, a young campaign worker, dissolves into terror when the campaign takes a malevolent turn. Someone has begun threatening Erin and her colleagues first with strange fires, then a seemingly accidental death.
• Ridley Pearson, Killer Weekend (2007). New York State attorney general Elizabeth Shaler, a political lightning rod, is expected to announce her candidacy for president at a conference in Sun Valley. Authorities learn of a confirmed threat on her life, and the Secret Service, the FBI, and local forces begin jockeying for jurisdiction.
• Gary Phillips, editor, Politics Noir (2008) Thirteen crime stories with political themes including "Collateral Damage" by Robert Greer. 
• Dana Stabenow, The Singing of the Dead (2001). When a Native American candidate for Alaska state senator starts receiving anonymous threats, PI Kate Shugak allows herself to be talked into a temporary bodyguard stint. The first body to turn up is the candidate’s fundraiser and future son-in-law.
• Jerome Teel, The Election (2005). Ed Burke has waited a lifetime to become president of the United States. He's not about to let his nemesis, Mac Foster, stop him now...especially when he's sold his soul for the Oval Office.
• Marilyn Wallace, Primary Target (1988) A female presidential candidate is threatened by a radical political group called The Brotherhood of Men. 
• Jeff Walter, Citizen Vince (2005). Vince has landed in eastern Washington via the witness-protection plan, and he is starting to like the simple pleasures, including receiving his first voter-registration card. So even when a hit man, a local cop, and Mob-boss-in-waiting John Gotti get Vince in their crosshairs, he keeps trying to figure out if he should pull the lever for Reagan or Carter.
• Charlene Weir, Up in Smoke (2003). Police Chief Susan Wren is a relative newcomer to Hampstead, Kansas. When the governor decides to kick off his campaign for the presidential nomination with a homecoming rally in town, he finds his efforts complicated by a local murder in which he and a campaign worker are implicated.
• Valerie Wolzien, Elected for Death (1996). Hancock, Connecticut--a historic enclave of wealth and conservatism--is in the final heat of a three-way mayoral election when long-shot candidate Ivan Deakin takes a sip of cyanide-laced water and is retired to the morgue. His murder exacerbates an already fierce controversy over proposed changes in rules governing the landmark status of local real estate--changes that would drastically alter property values.

Carnival, Carnival!

 

It's both the Day of the Dead and the day after Halloween, a perfect time to pay your four bits (adjusted for inflation) and Fall into the latest Carnival of the Criminal Minds, on the heels of its last stop at Crime Scene NI. I must say gorging on Halloween candy washed down with a little Jack Daniels until you barf would be an easier task than narrowing down the crime fiction site notables. It's a little like a teenage boy at Mardi Gras looking for mischief—oh the possibilities! Yet such was Barbara Fister's mandate in creating the roving Carnival, so narrow down I must, interspersed with some other Halloween goodies from the candy bag.

Have you ever lain awake at night unable to sleep, wondering if there were any mysteries actually set around Halloween? I'm pretty sure I have—although it might also have been something I ate (see note about Halloween candy above). I'll save you some insomnia because there are several such mysteries to choose from. Don's Stuff listed 25 to get you started, and if that isn't enough, the Springfield Library, Holiday Murders, and Cozy Mystery sites have gobs more, with titles from the likes of Ed McBain, Agatha Christie, Tony Hillerman, and Ellis Peters. Tums are extra.

2009 in the world of crime fiction will be the Year of Poe. The Baltimore Sun's Read Street blog is jumping the gun with some tidbits about the priciest Poe books, a  Poe tribute in January by actor John Astin (of The Addams Family fame), Christopher Walken reciting "The Raven" and other spooky morsels. Meanwhile, The Library Journal blog asks for help in solving a 166-year-old literary mystery related to Poe.

HALLOWEEN GOODY #1:  Halloween began as Samhain (Summer’s End), an ancient Celtic festival, although it wasn't until much later that many of the icons associated with the celebration came into being, such as the black cat. Although in the UK, black cats were believed to bring good luck, the opposite was true in the American colonies, where cats were thought to be either reincarnated or shapeshifting witches. Wonder what those early anal Pilgrims would have to say about black cat cookies?

Horror and dark suspense are certainly as appropros for both Halloween and the Day of the Dead as crime fiction, and The Dark Phantom Review featured interviews with horror authors, publishers, ezine editors, and booksellers throughout the month of October.

Speaking of horror, Indie Crime had a great Halloweenish cover; the Women in Crime chose their favorite horror movies, and the Women of Mystery scared up some horrible women, er Women of Horror.

HALLOWEEN GOODY #2: Check out Bruce Zalkin's collection of some of the worst Halloween costumes of all time, many of which may bring back some fond memories for those of us who are older than dirt. For more memories of favorite Halloween costumes of yore, check out this posting on the Murder She Writes blog, and from Cute Overload, Why Pets Hate Costumes.

One of the Women of Mystery took a trip to Salem and the Witch Museum, which tells the tale of the the 20 women condemned to either hang or be pressed to death, whose fates were intertwined with a servant from Barbados named Tituba.

For a witch of truly galactic proportions, check out this magical APOD.

What better way to celebrate the season than with ghost stories? The Material Witness blog showcases the Everyman Library's book of Ghost Stories, and guest blogger D.S. Dollman at the Stiletto Gang channels the ghost of Elizabeth I.


HALLOWEEN GOODY #3: For the more fashion-concious, skip the retro Halloween costume and just go with one of these scary handbags (and no, I don't mean Prada or Hermès, although those are pretty scary, all right—$37,000 for a Hermès Birkin bag adorned with orange crocodile skin and trimmed with palladium hardware? Yep, scary.).

Kevin Guilfoile of The Outfit: Collective wrote about "Much of Madness, and More of Sin," commenting on how for the last three years, the final week in October has given Chicago its own version of Day of the Dead, with crime victims Stacy Peterson, Dr. David Cornbleet, and most recently, the Hudson family slayings. And since Chicago this year holds the dubious distinction of the nation's highest murder rate, it just goes to show that true evil never takes a holiday.

Of course crime and fear of things that go bump in the night aren't new inventions. The folks at Murderous Musings provide some historical background to help establish the plot and setting.


HALLOWEEN GOODY #4: Extreme pumpkins! Tired of dull, inspired Jack-o-Lanterns? Try one of these on for size (the Death Star is way cool), or one of these, or these. And if you're just plain tired of anything having to do with pumpkins, check out these contest entries for Whatever-o-Lanterns.

The world of writing and publishing may quite possibly be a scarier business than undertaking (mortuarying? medical examining?), as J.A. Konrath points out the scariest thing that can happen to writers, and agent Jennifer Jackson strikes further fear into the hearts of writers everywhere with her list of query statistics.

This is frenzy season for murder-mystery dinner parties and related fetes. "A Murder Mystery in Old Allegheny" near Pittsburgh actually takes place tonight and features a progressive murder of sorts taking place in three of the neighborhood's old Victorians. What makes it particularly interesting and relevant to the Carnival is that one of the mansions is where famed mystery writer Mary Roberts Rinehart penned her first novel, The Circular Staircase, published in 1908.

Sarah Weinman offered up some Halloween bonbons with links to articles about the appeal of vampires, a literary Halloween tour and Bruce Springsteen's holiday offering for fans. The Rap Sheet has even more links for Halloween reads and Peter Rozovsky's latest Noir at the Bar.

HALLOWEEN GOODY #5: It might be too late for this year's Halloween party, but it's never too early to start planning for next year, especially since we now have essentially one long year-round holiday, NewPresiTinePatrEasterIndieColumboWeenThanksMas. So start lining up your fog machines, coffins, doors of doom, and grilled rat treats before they're all gone.

J.D. Rhoades of Murderati took a look at conspiracy theories and how we can't live without them. J.D. was on a panel at Thrillerfest moderated by Barry Eisler that focused on the subject, and decided to cast a little downer on the proceedings—How dare he? The nerve!—by concluding that instead of conspiracies, "I believe in stupidity, randomness and chaos. That's what causes most of the misery in the world."

And finally, Detectives Beyond Borders takes a look at The Ghosts of Ireland, the debut novel from Stuart Neville. As blogger Peter Rozovsky adds, "The chapters make chilling and evocative use of both parts of the novel's title, which makes Neville the second Northern Ireland crime writer I've read recently to explore the dramatic possibilities of ghosts."

So, Boo! (In the best possible sense) And save a little of that Jack Daniels for me. I think I OD'ed on Reese Cups again.

Up next for the Carnival—Karen at Austcrime.

Media Murder

 

RADIO/PODCASTS

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Agency, The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul, recently returned to the Beeb and will be broadcast during this month. Fortunately for latecomers, they also have the latest episode archived on the web site.

Investigation Discovery's David Lohr was a recent guest on True Crimes, a radio show hosted by Edgar Award winning true crime writer Burl Barer.  The archives can be found via on that same link.

TV

Author Henning Mankell provides insights into his creation Inspector Wallander, who will soon come to life on the TV screen as played by Kenneth Branagh. Although Branagh doesn't necessarily fit the image one would expect of Wallander, who is "astonishingly miserable, fairly ugly and so monumentally unhealthy, he should have his own dedicated obesity czar," the show's executive producer, Andy Harries, hopes the show could become a new Prime Suspect — “Maybe three every two years,” he says.

Gawker Online takes a guilty pleasure in enjoying the new TV series The Mentalist, saying rather grandiosly that it has "helped revive the mystery genre."  (And here I was thinking the mystery genre was doing rather well—on TV or otherwise).

NBC is reshuffling its schedule to create a Wednesday lineup into "wall-to-wall satisfying mysteries," with Knight Rider at 8pm, followed by Life at 9pm—the new series featuring Detective Charlie Crews, who returns to the force after serving time in prison for a crime he didn't commit—and Law and Order at 10. (I guess NBC has taken a tip from the Mentalist and already knows you'll find these shows "satisfying." Satisfying—Isn't that damning with faint praise? But I digress...)

THEATER

Broadway recently saw the premiere of Anthony Horowitz's acclaimed thriller, Mindgame, starring Keith Carradine and directed by Ken Russell. The plot involves a writer of pulp crime novels who gets an interview with a notorious serial killer, believing he has snared the coup of his career, only to discover while at the asylum that nothing can be trusted.

Mystery Melange

 

Marcus Sakey offered his Top 5 Favorite Movies on the Chicago Collective Blog, reprinted in the Chicago Trib.

Michael Connelly is fresh off his appearance as part of the Thurber House "Evenings With Authors" series. He paused long enough for a Q&A with the Columbus Dispatch, saying "I don't have a complaint about how the crime novel is viewed. It's largely responsible for keeping book publishing in business. I think it garners professional respect from the business angle. I think more and more, . . . it's harder and harder to write a story or a book about American society that doesn't have crime in it."

Another Chicago paper, the Sun-Times, profiled Lori Andrews, a law professor who has authored 13 books, most of them non-fiction works about biotechnology and genetics. But she's also written three mysteries, all of which feature her high-tech sleuth, geneticist Alexandra Blake. she said, "When it comes to [biotechnology] policy, people's eyes glaze over. They don't think they are entitled to an opinion," said Andrews, who also is director of the Institute for Science, Law and Technology at the Illinois Institute of Technology. "When they can see the technology set in a mystery novel and see how greed and policy and emotion play out, people really get enraged."

Here are a couple of crime writing news tidbits from East Tennessee, since I hail from them thar parts. Criminal Brief wrote about Louis Willis, who retired after 42 years of government service and then earned his master’s degree in English literature from the University of Tennessee. A voracious reader and fan of various genres, including crime fiction, he’s writing a nonfiction book which will be a critical analysis of black mystery writers "before shuffling off to the Great Library" in the Sky. And the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame just inducted four new writers, including David Hunter, nominated for an Edgar for his first mystery novel, The Jigsaw Man.

In 2009, the U.S. Postal Service will mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of poet and mystery writer Edgar Allan Poe and will unveil a new Poe stamp January 16 in Richmond, Vorginia. Look for a large spate of other Poe celebrations coming up next year.

The Independent included a pair of reviews recently of Japanese noir writer Natsuo Kirino, one reviewing her book Grotesque and the other Real World (both books in translation), adding that "Western stereotypes of Japanese femininity take a battering in the fiction of Natsuo Kirino – a crime writer who has placed some decidedly non-submissive female protagonists at the heart of her noirish thrillers."

How many crime fiction authors do you hear who schedule a prison as a stop on their book tour? Surprisingly few (prisoners tend not to have a lot of money to buy books, after all). But thriller writer and former SAS sergeant Chris Ryan is doing just that at Risley prison in the UK as part of the 2008 National Year of Reading.

Some Sad Notes and a Few Hopeful Ones, Too

 

By now, most folks probably know about the passing of author Tony Hillerman. You can find some nice tributes and links via Rap Sheet and Sarah Weinman. Unfortunately, the author didn't live to see the latest Tony Hillerman Writer's Conference coming up in two weeks, but another Hillerman legacy associated with that conference lives on. In 2005, author Michael McGarrity suggested a creative writing scholarship be established in Tony's name to honor him for his service to students, writers, and the people of New Mexico. It was decided to establish the scholarship at the College of Santa Fe, where both Hillerman and McGarrity once taught. Hillerman suggested that the scholarship should be in McGarrity’s name as well, so it is officially the Hillerman-McGarrity Creative Writing Scholarship. You can send contributions to that fund via the address listed on the conference site link here.

(One late addendum to this original blog posting -- news came today that mystery writer Elaine Flinn has just died after a bout with cancer.  Flinn was known for her Molly Doyle mysteries, and her 2003 debut novel was nominated for the Agatha, Gumshoe, Barry, and Anthony awards.)

I've also mentioned recently about crime fiction zines that have folded up this year—Demolition, Mouth Full of Bullets, Hard Luck Stories, and Murdaland. You can also add to that Muzzle Flash Fiction, as Gerald So reports that DZ Allen last night announced he was closing that publication, as well.

Still, hope springs eternal, and a couple of new short mystery/crime fiction sites have been added recently.  Five-Minute Mysteries features daily mysteries in brief that subscribers can access. They're soliciting submissions from writers, so if you're interested, check out their site link. And the Eastern Standard Crime blog announced a new venture called Crooked, devoted to crime fiction short stories "that would make Hammett, Chandler and Macdonald proud." It will be available PDF format, and although a non-paying market, authors will be able to promote themselves when published there. Geoff Eighinger hopes to have the first issued up by January 1st, with others to follow monthly. I sincerely wish both these organizations the best of luck.

You Say Po-TAY-to, I say Po-TAH-to

 

Crime Beat from South Africa is devoting several weeks of columns to a discussion of the "crime fiction" vs. "thriller" debate when it comes to labeling the genre. In the first installment, it's pointed out that the term "crime fiction" may be less appealing to readers as crime becomes a more intrusive and very real element in society. Therefore, it's thought, just rebrand the books as thrillers and folks who are turned off by the word "crime" will beat a path to the bookseller door.

That might be something that doesn't necessarily translate globally and may be more localized, as in this case, to areas like southern Africa where crime fiction sales have been on the decline (even as true crime statistics have been on the rise). In the second article, however, it's noted that in the UK, crime and thriller fiction has seen a 70% increase since 2001 and new startups like Black Star Crime obviously have no compunction whatsoever about using the term "crime." But even as one executive with publisher Umuzi (an imprint of Random House South Africa) feels there is growing unease about the term "crime fiction" (oooh, that word), Umuzi publisher Annari van der Merwe is more cautious. "Thriller frightens me off more than crime novel," she says. "Maybe it is the result of my association of the word with movies that frighten me to the point where I can’t bear watching them."

"Noir" usually seems to have less schizophrenia in its labeling (even if schizophrenia itself would be welcome as a plotline), although some may have difficulties separating "noir" from the "mere hard-boiled." Fordham University professor Leonard Cassuto's new book, Hard-Boiled Sentimentality, probably helps muddy the waters there, as despite its title, it purports to be an intellectual history of noir fiction and goes so far as to make a case for a connection between crime fiction and 19th century sentimental novels.

Po-TAY-TAH-To, anyone?

Speaking of noir, who knew that Chief Justice John G. Roberts was a writer of the genre? The DC Dictra recently pointed out that the start of a dissent written by Chief Justice Roberts could be read quite nicely, thank you, as the start of a noir story, to wit:

North Philly, May 4, 2001. Officer Sean Devlin, Narcotics Strike Force, was working the morning shift. Undercover surveillance. The neighborhood? Tough as a three-dollar steak. Devlin knew. Five years on the beat, nine months with the Strike Force. He’d made fifteen, maybe twenty drug busts in the neighborhood.

Devlin spotted him: a lone man in the corner. Another approached. Quick exchange of words. Cash handed over; small objects handed back. Each man then quickly on his own way. Devlin knew the guy wasn’t buying bus tokens. He radioed a description and Officer Stein picked up the buyer. Sure enough: Three bags of crack in the guy’s pocket. Head downtown and book him. Just another day at the office.

Coming soon to the NYT Bestseller list? It's not entirely without precedent -- Herbert Brown, elected to the New York Supreme Court in 1986, has published a couple of novels and plays.

The Long and the Short of It

 

Two new collections/anthologies of crime fiction short stories were released back-to-back this month, one on October 7th and the other on October 8th, which seems fitting somehow. The first is Hardly Knew Her: Stories by Laura Lippman, and the second is The Best American Mystery Stories 2008, edited by George Pelecanos.

Bookgasm has a review of Lippman's collection, and true to the blog's title, gives it a glowing review, "This collection of 16 short stories and one original novella is among the finest you’re likely to read this year."  It's divided into four sections, "Girls Gone Wild"; a Baltimore-themed section; stories based in other cities, mostly taken from stories the author has written for the Akashic Noir series, and the novella "Scratch a Woman."

Although the reviewer, Alan Cranis, makes the statement that "Short-story collections from established novelists are not usually good introductions to their work. But here again, Lippman is an exception to the rule," I'm not sure I agree. For one thing, we don't have enough novelists producing short-story collections to make a large-scale comparison, and those that have produced anthologies (either themselves or in edited versions) often offer a good introduction to the author's protagonists, style, and body of work. Here are a few representative examples:

• John Dickson Carr (The Men Who Explained Miracles)
• Agatha Christie (Poirot Investigates) 
• Erle Stanley Gardner (The Casebook of Sidney Zoom) ed. by Bill Pronzini
• Patricia Highsmith (Mermaids on the Golf Course)
• Stuart Kaminsky (Hidden and Other Stories)
• Peter Lovesey (Butchers)
• Dennis Lynds writing as Michael Collins (Slot-Machine Kelly)
• John D. MacDonald (End of the Tiger and Other Stories)
• Sara Paretsky (Windy City Blues)
• Ellis Peters (The Trinity Cat and Other Mysteries, ed. Martin Edwards & Sue Feder)
• Ellery Queen(Dannay/Lee) (The Adventures of Ellery Queen)
• Ian Rankin (Rebus - The Early Years)
• Ruth Rendell (The Fallen Curtain)
• Dorothy L. Sayers (Lord Peter Views the Body)
• Rex Stout (Justice Ends at Home, and Other Stories, ed. John McAleer)

The other new anthology, The Best American Mystery Stories 2008, was reviewed by Jon L. Breen of Mystery Scene who has a few complaints--namely, like last year's edition, there is a general lack of variety and a dearth of real detective stories, and that literary magazines are a more frequent source of stories than genre publications (he goes so far as to suggest that a better title might be "Best Mainstream Short Stories that Happen to Concern a Crime"). But Breen also has praise, noting that while the mood of the stories is "almost unrelentingly grim and downbeat, the variety of background and approaches is considerable," and is complimentary of such stories as Kyle Minor’s structural experiment "A Day Meant to Do Less," which he calls " extraordinarily affecting and, in a unique way, terrifying."

Regardless, praise must be given to Lippman and editor Pelecanos (and Otto Penzler as publisher) for helping to continue and promote short crime fiction in an era when the examples of and venues for the genre seem to be shinking every day -- sadly, this year alone, Demolition, Mouth Full of Bullets, and Hard Luck Stories have all called it quits.

Media Murder

 

Plum Pictures is developing an adaptation of Harlan Coben's 2005 thriller The Innocent.

The Jim Henson Company's Henson Alternative label for "adult" content is developing Happytime Murders, a puppet comedy in the film noir detective genre. The plot takes place in a world where human and puppet characters co-exist and includes a disgraced puppet LAPD detective turned private eye with a drinking problem. (Hmm...a comedic noir puppet/human drama? Could be interesting.)

NBC has given a series commitment to a new legal drama from David E. Kelley (LA Law, Boston Legal, The Practice, Ally McBeal, Boston Public). With Boston Legal ending this season, Kelley certainly isn't letting any grass grow under his feet.

CBS is going to include free complete episodes of classic TV shows on You Tube, but also includes the season premiere of Dexter, for those who don't get Showtime.

A new ABC "crime dramedy" titled Castle will debut sometime later this season, featuring a crime writer named Castle who is bored with his work until a real-life murderer starts ripping off his plots for crimes. Castle is pulled into service by the NYPD and teamed with a detective named Kate Beckett.

Speaking of crime dramas, the genre still dominates the TV ratings, with 9 shows in the Top 20 this past week (which included a presidential debate, throwing off the ratings somewhat). Two freshmen shows, Life on Mars and The Eleventh Hour made it onto the list. Other crime dramas like the Mentalist and Numb3rs are also doing well.

And a new Elizabethan murder mystery about playwright Christopher Marlowe, written by British playwright Peter Whelan and titled The School of Night, will begin its run October 30th and last until December 17th at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.

A Little Q & A

 

Irish author Declan Burke (who you can catch tonight at Noir at the Bar in Philadelphia) was quizzed by the Philadelphia City Paper about his new book The Big O. He talked about everything from how he got the idea for the story (from his then-girlfriend, now wife), why he's been calling the book "The Little Engine That Could," and his thoughts on dialogue: "I like listening to the rhythms of the conversation — the give and take and the back and forth — and how some people start halfway through a sentence and the other person will finish it for them. Clunky dialogue can really put you off a book. I think if you can get the dialogue right, it can really cover up a lot of sins elsewhere in the book. What they say is one thing, but the way they say it will tell you absolutely volumes about the character."

Alifair Burke (no relation to Declan), a former deputy district attorney and professor of criminal law, is lucky to have the kind of background she can draw on for her series of legal novels about Portland prosecutor Samantha Kincaid. In an interview with Reuters, she said "I was always a big reader of crime fiction but then I got to the point where I was surrounded by this great dialogue and these cases in the DA's office and it started to dawn on me that I had the material for a really good book." She was also asked if it helped having a father (James Lee Burke) and cousins who are writers. She replied,"Obviously you don't inherit prose but I think it makes some sense that there are several writers in one family as you see that it is possible to finish a book which can seem undoable otherwise. Also you can't write a book if you don't read books and writing families tend to read a lot."

Doug Johnstone interviewed Icelandic crime writer Arnaldur Indridason for the Times Online. "We didn't have any tradition in crime writing," the author admitted. "It wasn't looked upon as any form of literature at all. It was seen as dirt, considered cheap, a very stupid thing." Like Burke, above, he had a famous writer (Indridi G. Thorsteinsson) for a father. But he was more influenced by film than any familial ties, as well as the most famous Icelandic literature of all: "I am heavily influenced by the Icelandic sagas," he admits. "The sagas are huge stories of families and events, murder and mayhem, and they were written on rare cowskin so they had to be very concise. They don't use two words when one will do, and I take my cue from that. If you describe things, keep it simple, say what you need to say and go on with the story, never stop the story."

The Seattle Times pinned down Alexander McCall Smith during a whirlwind book tour (he's touching down in every state but Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas this year). Asked why he inserted philosophy into the characters and subjects of his book, he replied, "Im very interested in applied ethics and philosophy generally. I wanted something that would let me go off on little tangents about that. So many interesting philosophical issues crop up in everyday life. For example, friendship. How far can friendship extend? Another example would be how we decide what we do for others, for charities. How far do you carry helping the less fortunate?"

James Ellroy was interviewed recently while he was in Santa Barbara to accept the 2008 Ross Macdonald Award for "a California writer whose work raises the standard of literary excellence" from the Santa Barbara Books Council. In addition to indulging in some election-year snark, he said "The idea is the traditional formula in crime fiction is an individual in conflict with authority, but I’m writing about bad men doing bad things for authority, on behalf of authority. I’m not trying to do anything to the other tradition. I am just writing about what interests me. It’s what I prefer."

Author, Author

 

As part of a Bouchercon and Baltimore Book Festival preview of sorts, The Baltimore Sun profiled Walter Mosely, who ended the exploits of Los Angeles-based PI Easy Rawlins in the novel Blond Faith last year. "I think I've done enough," he said. "My writing career is not about Easy Rawlins. It's about Walter Mosley." Although he's not abandoning crime fiction, he's branching out a bit more, including one project involving a series of five science-fiction novellas.

Otto Penzler profiled Stuart Kaminsky, back with his 15h Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov novel, People Who Walk in Darkness. Penzler writes that Kaminsky has maintained a consistently high level of professional crime fiction throughout a career that has spanned more than three decades, but feels there is little introspection or internal conflict on the part of Mr. Kaminsky's characters, a key element (in Penzler's opinion) that prevents them from being in the first rank of literary creations. Apparently, this is just fine with the author; Kaminsky made it clear in an autobiographical essay once that his goal is to be "a storyteller who transports his reader into the tale." He added, "if there is Meaning in my tales ... then let it be absorbed rather than academized."

An LA Times article on British mystery writer Michael Dibdin (who unfortunately died last year, a few days after his 60th birthday) points out that, although Dibdin's novels featuring Italian police detective Aurelio Zen have been dismissed by detractors as "tourist noir," Zen experiences Italy in almost the opposite way that Anglo vacationers encounter bella Italia. Dibdin had numerous fans, including writers Ruth Rendell and Ian Rankin, and also reviewer Tom Nolan who said "He tried to make every book different...There's one modeled on a Mozart opera. That's the kind of thing really inventive people do when they write a series. His books were in no way ordinary."

Elmore Leonard is the subject of a Times Online profile who called him no less than the "Dickens of Detroit" and America's greatest living crime novelist. In an interview that also included son Peter (with his own recently-published crime fiction novel Quiver), Leonard Sr. says "If you've got characters that you like, and you can make them talk, then it's in their hands. They'll say something that surprises you."

According to an article by Entertainment Weekly, Dennis Lehane is done with mysteries, or at least whodunits. "I'd say it's highly unlikely that I'll ever write another one," He said, even though he's the author of five Patrick Kenzie detective mysteries (including Gone Baby Gone, made into a movie by Ben Affleck). "I was never comfortable with them anyway. I'd be writing these friggin' whodunits and I could care less. I wanna tell everybody on page 2, he killed so-and-so, he done it! If you look at my books in that regard -- and I'll be 100 percent honest about my flaws -- you can see how I was whipping out the kitchen sink just to obscure s---, like the identity of the serial killer or whatever, and that's why the books got so labyrinthian in the last 100 pages."

Mystery Melange Lite

 

October is Mystery Month in Rancho Cucamonga. Not only is the community participating in the Big Read program, having selected The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, but they have other events scheduled to celebrate. Anne Perry is featured this Friday, October 3 in a kickoff event, and one week later on Friday, October 10 there will be a special author panel moderated by Denise Hamilton, author of the Eve Diamond crime novels.

Mark Tavani, a Senior Editor with Ballantine Books, was interviewed on Crime Fiction Dossier recently. He wasn't terribly encouraging, noting the difficulties of midlist author to survive and the Hollywood-style mentality in the publishing industry, but there are gems of wisdom, too. He says, "I guess the most important thing an author can do is, in the beginning of the process, to have a few very frank conversations with your agent and your editor. From those conversations, amass all of the realistic information you can, read between the lines, develop accurate expectations, ask for what you think you can get, let the rest go, and move forward full speed ahead."

Author Clyde Ford is embracing technology is a new fashion to promote his latest murder mystery set in the San Juan Islands and Inside Passage. The former IBM systems engineer built a Web-based application centered on the programs OnScene, Microsoft Virtual Earth and Google Earth, allowing readers to virtually visit the places in the story. Readers "virtually" fly to locations such as Lummi Island near Bellingham, and Eagle Harbor, and can explore further with background on local history and geography, live webcam views and readings by the author and other people.

In a move that could one day affect e-book publishing, record labels, music publishers, songwriters and online music services reached an agreement on how to compensate music creators for online distribution of their content. The agreement is designed to settle how the industry calculates royalty rates for limited downloads and music that is streamed online, including when it is provided by subscription and advertising-supported services. Fans using on-demand music streaming can select the songs they want to hear but do not keep a permanent copy, and providers of such services will pay a royalty of 10.5 percent of revenue after other royalties are calculated.

There are scads of murder-mystery dinner parties, theaters and fundraisers all around the globe each year, but here's a "novel" take: members of the Members of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Harley Owners Group are holding their second annual Ride-to-Read Murder Mystery Ride to benefit the One Book, One Community reading program. The exact route is kept a mystery and riders receive clues to help them guess the identity of the make-believe murderer at the first stop and continuing at designated stops thereafter.

Nintendo just released a new interactive game that falls on the heels of other popular crime-oriented game titles. In "Unsolved Crimes," set in a stylized 1970s New York, the user plays the role of a young rookie detective in the Homicide division who, along with a partner, must solve the mysterious kidnapping of aspiring model Betsy Blake.

Good Book, Bad Book

 

This is Banned Books Week, sponsored by the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Association of American Publishers, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the National Association of College Stores. Is there really a need for such an event? The American Library Association thinks so. According to their records, more than 400 books were challenged in 2007, if not outright banned.

In this era when we seem to have little pieces of Constitutional Rights, including the First Amendment, nibbled away every day, campaigns such as Banned Book Week will hopefully remind us of why we can never become complacent. I'm reminded of founding father Stephen Hopkins and what he said during the Second Continental Congress--He’d never seen nor smelled any issue so dangerous it couldn't be talked about [or read about, for that matter].

The web official web site link above has suggestions on how to add your voice to the choir. But if you're just too worn out right now with the election and the financial meltdown in this country, then here's a lighter touch:  join the Haphazard Gourmet for her "Civilization is Cooked Without Books" slate, which pairs censored literature with recipes, for the BBW.

And now for some good (bookstore) news: Sherlock's Tomes of, Bridgeton, N.J., is moving into a 500-sq.-ft. space in a former dining room of the Beatles-themed restaurant S.R. Riley's Musical Cafe. Co-owner Linda Durkin Richardson, said, "We're hoping this will be the kick that's needed for S.R. Riley's and for Sherlock's. And we won't have to walk so far for lunch." Richardson and fellow owner Jim Chiappardi had been looking for a new site for the store since the building in which it operates was sold in June, and they'd also wanted more space to host more book clubs and perhaps a writers' group.

Alas, where there is good news, there is usually bad news. Olsson's Books & Records has closed its remaining five stores in Washington, D.C. and northern Virginia because of "stagnant sales, low cash reserves, and an inability to renegotiate current leases, along with a continuing weak retail economy and plummeting music sales," the company announced. The independent chain was founded in 1972 and grew to nine stores in the Washington metropolitan area at one point. Founder and principal owner John Olsson said: "Although it is certainly a sad day for us, I can rejoice in all the great memories of my life in retail in Washington...It was exhilarating. Through it all, our best and brightest served Washington's best and brightest with love and distinction. I'm very proud of what we accomplished. My love and gratitude to all my employees, and special thanks to all those thousands of loyal customers."

Since I was one of the customers, I can add my voice to the rest and say that Olsson's will most certainly be missed.

News From the World of Crime

 

More and more, law officers are turning to GPS technology as an aid to helping combat crime, although they can be a bit cagey about how they use it: "We don't really want to give any info on how we use it as an investigative tool to help the bad guys," said Officer Shelley Broderick, a Fairfax, Virginia, police spokeswoman. As a recent Washington Post article pointed out,

Privacy advocates said tracking suspects electronically constitutes illegal search and seizure, violating Fourth Amendment rights of protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and is another step toward George Orwell's Big Brother society. Law enforcement officials, when they discuss the issue at all, said GPS is essentially the same as having an officer trail someone, just cheaper and more accurate. Most of the time, as was done in the Foltz case [in which a GPS unit was placed on a suspect's Jaguar], judges have sided with police.

A new tool in forensic science is a breakthrough by scientists in Texas that can provide gunshot residue analysis on a single gunpowder particle. As Garrett Lee Burleson explained at a national meeting of the American Chemical Society,

"Gunshot residue tests are done in almost every case where a shooting has taken place. The main focus of our research is to develop a method that will help credibility of gunshot residue evidence in court. You can get results with this test in 30 to 40 minutes with the new test. In addition you only need small amounts of evidence to run the test."

Burleson added that a recent trend toward lead-free ammunition has decreased reliability of gun shot residue analysis and created the need for smarter tests to identify more diverse components of residue in gunpowder.

Speaking of guns, tiny tags, just 30 microns in diameter and invisible to the naked eye, have been designed to be coated onto gun cartridges. They then attach themselves to the hands or gloves of anyone handling the cartridge and are very difficult to wash off completely. Some of these "nanotags" also remain on the cartridge even after it has been fired. This should make it possible to establish a "robust forensic link" between a cartridge fired during a crime and whoever handled it. The technology could be available for use within as little as 12 months.

A very real crime may have been the inspiration for the original Superman. The UK's Daily Mail Online wrote that the brutal killing of immigrant Mitchell Siegel at the hands of a gang who robbed his clothes shop in Cleveland, Ohio, is what was spurred his son, Jerry Siegel (along with Joe Schuster)  to create the famous comic book icon. As the article pointes out, faced with the brutal death of his father at the hands of a bunch of thugs, the young man's sadness and anger inspired him to create a superhuman crimefighter who was impervious to bullets and who had himself lost his father. "Think about it," says thriller writer Brad Meltzer. "Your father dies in a robbery, and you invent a bulletproof man who becomes the world's greatest hero."

Now for a little bit of "woo woo": police in New Zealand interviewed two TV psychics earlier this month in hopes of obtaining a lead in the disappearance of a woman back in 2005. Prominent defence lawyer John Billington said he doubted that a psychic's evidence would be admissible in court.

Media Murder

 

Sean Bean (Lord of the Rings) has been added to the cast in a new series of TV crime thrillers to be shown on Channel 4 in the UK. The three-part series is an adaptation of David Peace's trilogy of novels set in Yorkshire.

HBO is going to adapt two thrillers by author James Ellroy (American Tabloid and its sequel American Death Trap) into a television mini-series by the same team that created the recent multiple-Emmy winner John Adams.

CBS Paramount Network TV has optioned Hounding the Pavement, first in a series of mystery novels by Judi McCoy (it's the first volume in a three-book deal, although McCoy says she has a dozen planned).

NPR's Maureen Corrigan reviewed The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo By Stieg Larsson, calling it "a super-smart amalgam of the corporate corruption tale, legal thriller and dysfunctional-family psychological suspense story." You can read more and listen here.

Dennis Lehane was interviewed on NBC's Today Show about his latest novel The Given Day.

Going on right now through September 28 is the TCM Crime Scene Festival in the UK, with showings of thrillers, peeks at TV crime dramas, and a celebration of John Creasey, among other offerings.

CBS rolled to victory on Wednesday’s opening of the season thanks to its returning crime dramas, Criminal Minds and CSI: New York, even as its newer shows didn't fare so well.

Helen Mirren (best known to mystery fans as Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect) has been hired to play a Mossad agent in John Madden's The Debt, an English-language remake of an Israeli thriller about three Israeli Mossad agents tracking down a Nazi war criminal over 30 years.

And Simon & Schuster is following the path of HarperCollins by creating an in-house digital production studio to create multimedia content about their authors and books. They expect to produce and post more than 600 pieces of multimedia content annually.

Dame of the Decades

 

It is often true that as an entertainer, writer, or other celebrity figure reaches senior birthday landmarks, the attention, accolades, and retrospectives start pouring out of the woodwork. Sometimes it's more a matter of sentimentality and a nod toward the individual's sheer staying power in an ever-changing cultural landscape, but often it's deserved.

Such is the case with writer PD James, who celebrated her 88th birthday in August, has a new Adam Dalgliesh novel out, The Private Patient, and has been the subject of several interviews and articles lately, including the Times Online, BBC Radio, the Vancouver Sun, and the CBC News. In them it's said "The detective novels of P.D. James are a window on our times," and "In the eyes of many admirers [she's] the world's finest living crime novelist," and there are probably truths in both statements.

She didn't begin writing until she was in her 40s and now she has 40 years of Dalgliesh behind her. And it's those 40 years of writing that led the Times Online to make the statement about James's novels being a mirror of changes through those decades,

"In negotiating his way through the pathways of human destructiveness, Dalgliesh is also a guide to our times. Lady James is a perceptive chronicler of the changing landscape of London; the flux of urban development and the housing market; the corrosive culture of sink estates; the ruthless politics of the professions; and even the use of the internet for hedonistic purposes."

When asked what it's been like to have Adam Dalgliesh in her life for so long, she replied,

"When I began, I didn’t know he’d be a serial character, and of course there’s the challenge of having readers suspend their disbelief. He hasn’t aged that much over 40 years and each novel is set in the time of its writing. But I did try to create a character that was someone I’d really like. I gave Dalgliesh the qualities I admire in both men and women: he’s good-looking, highly intelligent, compassionate but not sentimental, and reserved. It was important too that he was a character who could develop. I never wanted to know him too well. I think Agatha Christie got rather fed up with Hercule Poirot at the end, because she had made him both too old and just too bizarre."

As to what the future holds? She's working on a history of crime fiction in conjunction with Oxford's Bodleian Library, for one. But will there be another Dalgliesh novel?

"I really don't know. There's something almost valedictory about this one, isn't there? So it depends on an idea coming that is so strong I feel compelled to write another one. But I think this new one has set a rather high standard. I won't want to go on if I can't maintain that standard."

We're Off to See the Biz

 

Although not related specifically to crime fiction, New York Magazine has a detailed and thoughtful look at the state of book publishing. Included are anecdotes about the new HarperStudio with its goal of changing the process of book returns by asking authors to forgo advances in return for half of their books’ eventual profit, as well as looks at topics like the desperate race to evolve into e-book producers, the dire state of Borders, the feeling that outrageous money is being wasted on mediocre books, and Amazon, which many publishers see as a power-hungry monster. The article makes the case that "publishing ends up looking like a mini-Hollywood, but even more dependent on sleeper hits and semi-reliable franchises." 

In a somewhat related article, the New York Times wrote about a new service, called Constellation, which will allow independent publishers the ability to use electronic readers, digital book search, print-on-demand and other digital formats at rates negotiated by Perseus Books Group. David Steinberger, the president and chief executive of Perseus, said, "We kept asking ourselves, ‘What does the independent publisher need to grow and succeed in the future?’ And this is what kept coming up."

Also from the book publishing technology department comes this note about Rock & Roll Homicide, a mystery novel which was initially promoted through the social networking site MySpace. When the first 200 buyers were analyzed, it was discovered that almost half were from a group of 18 to 35 year-olds that indicated they were not book readers. As author RJ McDonnell added, "Most of the buyers who fell into this category expressed a strong interest in rock music in their MySpace profiles." Although the jury is still out on using MySpace as a book marketing tool, especially for crime fiction, McDonnell's results are interesting.

The New York Times also had an article on book blurbing. Eric Simonoff, a literary agent at Janklow & Nesbit Associates, said, "I wish, and I think most editors would agree, that we should impose a moratorium on blurb-hunting."

NPR took a look at book trailers. Although some critics dismiss them as being ineffective, Lisa Gallagher, a senior vice president and publisher at William Morrow, says that trailers are vital, both for authors with well-established fan bases and for those still looking for a following.

Literary agent Nathan Bransford blogged about exclusives and literary agents.

And book publicist Rick Frishman tells you "Ten Things That Agents and Editors Hate."

Mystery Melange

 

Declan Burke confessed to Ireland's Sunday Tribune about the book that changed his life.

Marcus Sakey says he initially decided to write in the crime fiction genre because "I wanted to tell the stories that a lot of people read and crime fiction is the most popular genre out there. But once I started working in it and reading in it, I fell head-over-heels for it. I think it's such a strong medium for exploring social and philosophical ideas, at the same time telling a story that makes people stay up too late and miss their train stops."

Patrick Anderson at the Washington Post is delighted that John Harvey has resurrected, so to speak, Nottingham Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick with Harvey's latest novel Cold in Hand, and goes so far to say that "Micahel Connelly and Ian Rankin, whose rumpled, stubborn, romantically challenged Harry Bosch and John Rebus were surely influenced by Resnick."

Orion has acquired two new books from crime writer Elmore Leonard, Comfort to the Enemy, a three-part novel centered on Leonard's protagonist Carl Webster, and Road Dogs, which will unite three characters from past Leonard novels: bank robber Jack Foley, Cuban conman Cundo Ray, and beautiful psychic Dawn Navarro.

Commentator Tony Smith makes the case that whereas during the 1990s, Australia’s best crime fiction originated in Sydney with authors Peter Corris, Marele Day, Jean Bedford, Susan Geason and Gabrielle Lord, in the early 21st century Melbourne leads the way in crime fiction.

An English professor at Fordham College at Lincoln Center and a lifelong lover of crime fiction has written a cultural history of crime fiction titled Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories. Author Leonard Cassuto is also the author of a book on serial killers, Already he had examined the subject of monsters in his 1997 book, The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American in American Literature and Culture.

The Delaware Book Festival, which takes place on November 1st, will include a panel featuring successful fiction writers who have pulled expertise from former careers to craft their stories, including physician/medical thriller author Tess Gerritsen, prosecutor/mystery writer Alafair Burke, and TV news producer/media thriller author Mary Jane Clark, as well as a mystery panel featuring Linda Barnes, author of two criminal thriller series, and Chuck Logan, author of seven novels including Hunter’s Moon, Absolute Zero and After the Rain.

And from News of the Weird, coming to a movie theater near you, no doubt, comes the story of a crime-fighting bear.

 

Crime Casting News

 Hollywood is apparently taking note of the continuing popularity of thrillers and crime fiction, as evidenced by a lineup of movies on those themes currently in the pipeline. Some casting and title news of note:

According to Variety, Tom Cruise and United Artists have acquired rights to serial-killer thriller The Monster of Florence, with Cruise attached to produce and possibly to star, according to Douglas Preston, author of the bestseller.

Variety is also reporting that New Line has hired Mark Pellington to direct the mystery thriller Solace, about a doctor with psychic powers who is enlisted by the police to track a serial killer. The screenplay will be written by Sean Bailey and Ted Griffin (with revisions by Jamie Vanderbilt).

British TV director Jon Amiel (The Singing Detective) is on board for the film Creation, with husband-and-wife team Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly portraying Charles and Emma Darwin. The picture is described as "part ghost story, part psychological thriller and part love story."

Robert De Niro has pulled out of the project Edge of Darkness which began shooting in Massachusetts on August 18th. De Niro had signed to play an operative sent to clean up the evidence in the murder of a young woman. Mel Gibson stars as the victim's father, a homicide detective for the Boston Police Department who uncovers her secret life, a corporate cover-up, and government collusion.

Paul Walker and Hayden Christensen have joined the Screen Gems crime thriller Bone Deep, being directed by John Luessenhop. The film revolves around a group of criminals who find their $20 million plan interrupted by a hard-boiled detective (the previously cast Matt Dillon). Walker stars as the leader of the bank robbers, with Christensen as a newbie detective.

And a bit of film publishing news:  Fox Home Entertainment revived its Fox Film Noir series September 2 with three separate titles: Archie Mayo's Moontide (1942) with Jean Gabin and Ida Lupino; Elia Kazan's Boomerang! (1947) with Dana Andrews and Jane Wyatt; and Jean Negulesco's Road House (1948) with Cornel Wilde, Richard Widmark and Lupino. The studio also released Fox Horror Classics: Vol. 2 on September 9th, with a release date of September 16th for Charlie Chan: Volume 5 (starring Sidney Toler who replaced the original Chan, Warner Oland after the actor's death in 1938).

In Remembrance

 

I was reminded today while at the public library for book research, that for Arlington, like New York City, the events of seven years ago are still very much a local story, with the library broadcasting a live TV feed of the Pentagon 9/11 memorial dedication ceremony this morning. I'm also reminded of the local angle every time I hear stories of that day told by people via various points of connection—such as an acquaintance of my husband's who was driving by the Pentagon right as the fateful plane flew over the man's car and slammed into the Pentagon, yet who still had the presence of mind to collect his camera and take snapshots which the FBI later used in its investigation.

The memorial includes one bench for each victim, laid out in a pattern according to the year each victim was born, from 1930 to 1998, and then aligned according to the plane's flight path into the building—if the nameplate of the victim on the bench can be read with the Pentagon in the background, the person died in the building, and if the sky is in the background, the person died on American Airlines Flight 77. One hundred eighty-four people lost their lives, from the youngest, 3-year-old Dana Falkenberg, to one of the oldest, Max Beilke, 69, the last U.S. combat soldier to leave Vietnam.

The stories of those victims are told on a Washington Post tribute titled "Sacred Ground: Remembering the Victims," with an interactive layout of the placement of each victim's memorial bench on a separate link, found here. Stories such as Capt. Robert Edward Dolan Jr. of Alexandria, Virginia, who "could quote Shakespeare and Monty Python in the same sentence" and "was equally comfortable commanding a billion-dollar ship and chatting at the church picnic"; Paul W. Ambrose, a family doctor in Arlington who was engaged to be married, with a wedding to take place the following September in Madrid; Amelia V. Fields, of Dumfries, Virginia, who had turned 36 that morning and whose husband had baked a chocolate cake for when she would have arrived home that night; and James Daniel Debeuneure of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, whose college junior son Jalin said, "What hurts so bad is that when [R&B singer] Aaliyah got in that plane crash, I was telling my dad and everyone that I was going to live my life differently because you never know when it's going to be your last day. He agreed with that. Now, two weeks later, he dies in the same way—in a plane crash."

Remembering tragic events can be extraordinarily painful, but forgetting can be much, much worse.

Good Tippers

 

In these days of rising costs and financial funk, writers are having to take a harder look at the bottom line, which often means cutting out trips to conferences, especially far-flung ones like the Maui Writers Conference earlier this month. In case you did miss it, Lee Pletzers has kindly listed the "10 Basic Ingredients of a Successful Thriller," which author Gary Braver (Flashback, Gray Matter) discussed at the conference. A lot of these are similar to what other writers in other crime fiction genres will tell you, but they're important enough to reiterate, especially #1, which really is number one, "You need to have a good story."

Another thriller writer at the same conference, Steve Berry (The Venetian Betrayal, The Templar Legacy), had a different take on the craft with his "8 Rules of Writing." The first is the both the most frustrating and the most liberating, "There are no rules. You can do anything you want as long as it works." The problem, of course, is learning how to write "what works," and realizing that the definition of that concept can vary from one reader, one agent, one editor, and one publisher to another.

A third thriller writer, Patrick Lennon (Steel Witches, Corn Dolls), was one of the many authors appearing at the first ever Reading (UK) Festival of Crime Writing last week. You can both listen to and read some of his writing tips on the BBC's web site.

Writer's Digest is also helping out with its Writers Sessions On Demand. They've collected instructional sessions, workshops, panel discussions and interviews from ThrillerFest and the Maui Writers Conference (coming soon). They're not free, as you have to purchase the streaming videos individually or in a bundle, but it's still much less expensive than what it would cost to attend the conference (especially factoring in airfare, hotel, food, etc.).

Ultimately, nothing can replace the face-to-face contacts a writer makes at a conference, but it's nice to know there are a few options to help out while you're waiting for that winning lottery ticke

Let's Hear It For the Boys

 

Yesterday I posted links to some recent profiles of female crime fiction authors appearing in the press, and today's it's time for the men to get their just due.

The Australian interviewed stand-up comedian and author Mark Billingham, creator of seven Detective Inspector Tom Thorne novels and his most recent offering, the standalone thriller In the Dark. "People ask me where I get my twisted ideas from and I always say that it's the exact same place that everyone gets them from. Who hasn't been cut off in traffic and wanted to exact some horrible revenge? I just get it out on the page, which is better than running around McDonald's with a machine gun."

The Chicago Times profiled author Michael A. Black, a 6-1, 255-pound black belt in tae kwon do who also wears the hat of Sgt. Michael Black of the Matteson Police Department, by day. "Being a police officer as long as I have [29 years], it's really fascinating the kind of people I meet on the job," he says. "I've always been a student of human nature."

The UK Times featured the venerable Dick Francis, the octagenarian author of dozens of horse-racing-themed mysteries. Last year Francis had a triple heart bypass and a foot amputated, yet as the interviewer noted, "he’s still the most commanding person in the room" and signs his postcards "Legless Dick."

Paul Johnston is another crime fiction author who has cheated death, suffering two bouts of cancer within five years, although like Dick Francis, he maintains a sense of humor: "A tennis ball," he snorts, "the tumour they found in my bowel was the size of a tennis ball. Quite what Roger Federer was doing hitting an ace up there, I have no idea." Best known for his Quint Dalrymple series set in a futuristic independent state of Edinburgh, he had the idea for a new series with hacked-off crime writer Matt Wells, the result of which was The Death List, a book he hammered out in just over a month, in a massive outpouring of 5000 words a day, driven by his battered emotional state.

Barry Forshaw of The Times Online wrote a tribute to Steig Larsson who died in Stockholm of a massive heart attack in 2004. Controversial life aside, Larsson will be best remembered by most (especially outside of his native Sweden) for his crime fiction trilogy, not yet published at his death, although they were under contract at the time. The first, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, was released in 2005 in Swedish and will hit the U.S. in its English translation this month. His publisher talks of his overriding feeling for the writer being one of loss—the loss of a man who was both a crusader for honourable causes and a writer of exuberant skill.

Dennis Lehane was the subject of a Wall Street Journal account, taking a look at his latest novel which is a historical work titled The Given Day, centered on the Boston police riots of 1919. When asked if his career as a writer of crime fiction gave him skills to help move a story along, especially in a long literary like this one, he replied, "I think the first law of all writing is to keep things moving. It doesn't mean it has to move like a bullet train, it can be Dostoyevsky, but things keep moving. That's what the death of interesting fiction is: people sitting in rooms talking about their mothers."

A Dallas Morning News article titled "Cuban writer Leonardo Padura uses crime fiction to write about political realities" discusses how well the author's characters deal with constant hardships of life in modern Cuba, including shortages of food, limited opportunities and a heavy-handed government bureaucracy. As to why Padura chose crime stories as his backdrop, he said "I decided a long time ago to write them because from the time I was a simple reader I really liked police novels. I decided to utilize the police novel because it seemed to me that it was a good vehicle to show the Cuban social reality."

Daniel Silva, author of ten bestsellers, is known for using real-world scenarios as a backdrop and for incorporating serious research into the plotting of his stories. "The research is a joy. I love researching and spending time developing characters. For the year a book is running around in my head, I am probably reading 100 books, soaking their information into my head. No one else can do that for me."

The South Florida Sun Sentinel featured debut writer Rich Wicklifee (Tropical Windfall) who manages a team of insurance investigators, which provides good fodder for his writing. "There is no shortage of crazy stories. I walk around with fresh ideas every day. I started writing two years ago, but it is not easy when you have a family and a job. It took me a year and a half to finish the novel. My contacts in law enforcement, DEA, Border Patrol and legal experts helped me keep things as accurate as possible."

Here's Lookin' At You, Kid

 

Some interesting profiles of crime fiction authors pop up in the press from time to time. There have been several to come across my desk recently, enough to split them into two sections, with today's posting including the femmes and tomorrow's, the fellas. If you're an novelist lucky enough to draw the attention of the press, it can certainly be good PR, and if you're a mystery fan, it's often an entertaining introduction to a new or favorite author (if the journalist does his/her homework, that is, and unfortunately, some don't).

Megan Abbott (of Edgar-winner Queenpin fame) has been called the "new queen of noir" by Ken Bruen and "poised to ascend to the top rung of crime writing and quite possibly something beyond," by James Ellroy. Lofty praise, indeed. She acquired her talent by nature, with both parents being authors, but also via nurture, as mother Patricia Abbott recalls, "Whereas other kids would watch Disney or Spielberg, Megan would always choose Jean Harlow, Jeanne Crain or Barbara Stanwyck movies." A good reason why, as the reviewer points out, her stories have a cinematic quality.

Wisconsin cozy author Deb Baker uses her doll collector background as a canvas for her series with amateur sleuth Gretchen Birch, such as Dolly Departed, released this summer. Barker is fortunate to have two series simultaneously, and the other (with Murder Talks Turkey, also released this summer), features 66-year-old widow Gertie Johnson and her Trouble Buster Investigative Company, set in Barker's native area of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. For more on her profile, read here.

Although Rita Mae Brown may be best known to some for her lesbian classic, Rubyfruit Jungle, to mystery fans, she's the author of the feline Sneaky Pie Brown mystery series. The latest installment, titled Hounded to Death, is due out September 30. As to why she turned from literary fiction to mysteries, she says "I was in Hollywood making money hand over fist, which is what you do in Hollywood--you starve or you hit it big. The Writers Guild went on strike, and it lasted a year. The bills came in, and the money ran out. Sneaky Pie, my cat, who’s incredibly intelligent, said, 'Why don’t you write a mystery?' I tried it, and thank God I did because it has taught me so much. All genre fiction is a sonnet."

Native Coloradan Margaret Coel is the author of a mystery series set among the Arapahos on Wyoming's Wind River Reservation, with Jesuit priest Father John O'Malley and Arapaho attorney Vicky Holden. Inspired by Tony Hillerman's books, she gained access to the Arapaho while researching Chief Left Hand after being introduced by a native writer who took Coel under her wing. Her latest, Blood Memory is a standalone novel deals with the Sand Creek Massacre of the Cheyenne and the Arapaho people and was inspired by what happened in 2004 when those tribes tried to get some land out by DIA to build a casino. You can read the full article here.

Michelle Gagnon has one of the more varied backgrounds for a writer as a former modern dancer, bartender, dog walker, model, personal trainer, and Russian supper club performer. Her first manuscript was rejected by more then 50 literary agents, "even some of the shady ones." Gagnon's persistence paid off, with her first novel featuring FBI Agent Kelly Jones, The Tunnels, an IMBA best-seller, and a follow-up, Bone Yard, published just last month. Gagnon also writes on blogs such as the Kill Zone about life's quirks in general and insights on being a writer and surviving the publishing industry.

Ruth Rendell is a Labour peer who sits in the House of Lords three times a week and still has time to write books--more than 50 in 45 years. Just two years shy of 80, she works out every day and walks everywhere. As she told a Scotland Sunday journalist, she believes the world is "a terrible place, in many ways a vale of tears," and her characters can be found in the darker places of  the fictional market town of Kingsmarkham in her Inspector Wexford detective series, or the London of her Barbara Vine thrillers. When people ask what she wants to be remembered for, she replies, "I don't really care. But if it's for anything, it would be the idea that people can go to my work--if it lasts--and find out exactly what it was like in 2008. I hope for that."

New Zealand author Vanda Symon isn't deterred by the fact that in real life, murder is a rare occurrence in Dunedin, her current home and the setting for her novels. "It's actually a really safe town but it's got that wonderful gothic feel to it. People can imagine things like that happening here...And crime is always on the front page of the newspaper - every city in New Zealand has its seedy underbelly." Her rookie detective girl sleuth, Sam Shepherd, will appear in two more books contracted out by Penguin, giving Symon plenty more opportunities to weave Kiwi vernacular into her stories. The interview with The New Zealand Herald can be found here.