Media Murder for Monday

 

On Morning Edition's "Crime in the City" series, they profiled Joseph Wambaugh (The Onion Field) who is now working with Sony Pictures to turn his Hollywood trilogy into a TV series. He says he plans to continue writing about the cops in Los Angeles, "because I'm an LAPD cop, now and forever."

"Fresh Air" from NPR and WHYY rebroadcast a program from 1997 which featured mystery novelist Janwillem Van de Wetering, who died July 4th of this year at the age of 77. The interview focused on his colorful past (which included stints as a motorcycle gang member in South Africa, an aspiring monk in Kyoto, Japan, and a policeman in Amsterdam) and how that all contributed to a masterful storyteller.

The Independent profiled podcast guru Scott Sigler, who is "changing the way we read." He broadcasts his science fiction novels, most of which have never been published, via a small cubicle containing an Apple Macintosh and some recording equipment, which is all he's needed to become the world's most famous podcast author. His first, Earthcore, notched up 10,000 listeners. Its sequel, Ancestor, managed 30,000. After building an audience via the Internet, this week, he will try to reach the traditional book-buying public with Infected, a physical book. "The only way to get people's attention these days is to give them something for free. If someone walks into a bookstore, why would they pick up a Scott Sigler when there's a Stephen King? They won't. So I give my content away, give readers a chance to try it for free. And if they like my stuff, then guess what: they'll go out and buy the book." We'll have to wait and see how his experiment plays out and what it means for other authors.

Journalist Gary Baumgarten's daily online show, News Talk Online, recently featured Stephen J. Cannell as guest. Cannell discussed his new novel, a thriller, At First Sight, the fact he overcame dyslexia to become a writer, and that he still uses a typewriter to tap out his work ("and probably always will").

And the U.S. Census Bureau, of all things, has an online Radio America series called "Profile America," which recently took a look at two important detective fiction birthdays this month, Erle Stanley Gardner and Raymond Chandler.

To the Library!

 

Yesterday I celebrated my mathematician father's 80th birthday with a look at math in the world of crime fiction. So it's only fair that I post a few words today about librarians in mysteries, seeing as how my mother is a retired librarian, and today is her birthday (not her 80th, I must hasten to add, since my father "robbed the cradle" and she's perpetually 39, anyway). Yes, my parents have back-to-back birthdays. And in two days, the hubster gets to star in his own bday fete, which is why I refer to July as my Month of Continuous Celebrations. Poor little VISA card.

As it turns out, there are SCADS of mysteries and crime fiction works that feature librarians and libraries in some fashion, which surprised me a bit. My mother might be disturbed to note the large number of mysteries in which a librarian is either murder victim or suspect, although it might make for some fun party fodder. As you might imagine, most of these novels fall into the cozy subgenre (fitting since that's Mom's favorite), but occasionally you'll find a librarian who actually finds his/her way into something a little darker. (Library Noir, anyone?)

Some of the most famous series authors on the list include Charlaine Harris, with her protagonist, the former librarian-turned-sleuth Aurora Teagarden; Charlotte MacLeod's Professor Peter Shandy and librarian wife, Helen, and the academic librarian Jacqueline Kirby, created by Elizabeth Peters.

You can find lists of librarian-oriented mysteries here and here, and a very long "BlblioMystery" listing here, which includes crime fiction involving not just libraries and librarians but books of all stripes.

1 + 1 = A Mystery

 

Today just happens to mark the anniversary of the 80th year of my father's birth. Intrepid man that he is, this "officially retired" college math professor is still teaching "part-time" (although 2-3 classes per term doesn't really sound all that part-time, to me). So, in honor of his special day, here's a look at the mysteries of math, i.e., crime fiction works that have used math or mathematicians as a central theme.

It might surprise some to realize how often math and mathematicians have been used throughout the history of the genre. The father of the modern mystery, Edgar Allan Poe, brought the subject into his 1845 short story "The Purloined Letter," in which C. Auguste Dupin solves the case and engages the Prefect of Paris in a discussion of mathematics and the nature of reasoning. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who once told a reporter that Poe’s Dupin "is the best detective in fiction," made Professor Moriarty, the archenemy of Sherlock Holmes, a mathematician.

Other giants of the genre followed suit, with S.S. van Dine’s Philo Vance in 1929’s The Bishop Murder Case, which deals with a series of killings in the house of a senior mathematics professor where most of the victims and suspects are mathematicians. Agatha Christie in The Bird with the Broken Wing 1930), has her protagonist Mr. Satterthwaite deal with "a most brilliant mathematician" who had authored a book "totally incomprehensible to ninety-nine hundredths of humanity." Even Rex Stout’s Nero Wolf crossed paths with a mathematician in two stories, And Be a Villain (1948) and The Zero Clue (1952) where a mathematician uses operations research to solve mysteries and may be usurping Wolfe’s reputation in the process, until he’s promptly murdered.

When it comes to series fiction, there have been fewer takers. A few novelists have taken on the task, the most prolific being John Rhode, one of the pen names of Cecil John Charles Street (1884-1964). His protagonist Dr. Lancelot Priestley, a British mathematician and former professor who was forced to resign after an argument with university authorities, was featured in fifty books, starting with The Paddington Mystery. His writing is fairly representative of the Golden Age of detective fiction, but the writing utilizes an understated sense of humor (two of his books included murder committed respectively with a squash and hedgehog). 

Patricia McElroy (P.M.) Carlson, who taught psychology and statistics at Cornell University before deciding that mystery writing was more fun, has published books with different protagonists, but her first featured a New York professor of statistics, Maggie Ryan. Carlson penned eight works in the series, starting with Audition for Murder in 1985 and ending with Bad Blood in 1991. 

Erik Rosenthal is another intrepid author who created a mathematical hero in Dan Brodsky, who obtained his Ph.D. from the mathematics department at U.C. Berkeley in 1976, teaching part-time and working part-time as a P.I.  Rosenthal’s two books featuring Brodsky, The Calculus of Murder (1986) and Advanced Calculus of Murder (1988) include an inside look at life on the Berkeley campus in the 60s and 70s. They also feature an unlikely pet, the guinea pig Hypatia (named after the female Greek mathematician), and a romantic interest for Brodsky in the form of Eileen St. Cloud, a mathematician on the faculty at Rice University.

Desmond Cory, the pseudonym used by British mystery and thriller writer Shaun Lloyd McCarthy, is best-known for his British secret agent, Johnny Fedora and the TV and movie screenplays.  But his
last-published works are a series of four novels with protagonist John Dobie, Professor of Mathematics in Cardiff, Wales (known as "Columbo with a chair in mathematics"), starting with Strange Attractor in 1991.  Although some mathematicians might take exception with Cory’s claim that mathematicians are terrible cooks the series manages to bring in a blend of chaos and set theories, logic, and probability, especially in The Catalyst. (1991)

There are many other stand-alone mysteries featuring mathematics, although not as many from an academic standpoint. One of the most unusual would have to be After Math (1997) by Miriam Webster, the non de plume of Amy Babich, a Ph.D. in mathematics. Her book features the ghost of math professor Ray Bellwether who tries to solve the mystery of his own murder. Along the way he crosses paths (so to speak) with other curious mathematicians, some living, some dead.

Another contemporary, and unconventional work, is the brainchild of Jeff Adams, a 2005 short story published in "Math Horizons." It’s titled "Cardano and the Case of the Cubic" and is a parody of the stereotypical early 20th century hard-boiled PI, set within the framework of 16th century mathematician Gerolamo Cardano. ("That's what had me worried. Girls with quiet elbows can't be trusted. I deduce these things. I'm a mathematician. My name's Cardano.")

And you don't have to look much farther than your TV to see how mathemathics can be used in criminal detection—the CBS drama Numb3rs, which even tries to make math sexy, is still going strong and was renewed for the Fall 2008 season.

Where Have All the Men Gone?

 

Shelf Awareness recently featured a discussion about the importance of book groups to the publishing world, and one of the questions pondered was, "Why don't more men join book groups?"

"Fact is, like it or not, men just don't share their feelings easily," Mary Alice Gorman, owner of Mystery Lovers Bookshop, Oakmont, Pennsylvania, observed. "Book groups often fall into discussion of how they feel about what they read. Let's face it, the shared experience of growing up to be a woman in this culture bonds these groups in a unique way and is the reason they go on for so long."

Random House New England district sales manager Ann Kingman added, slightly tongue-in-cheek, that people often "join a book group for the social aspect in the beginning. As for men? I have no idea. I hear a rumor that a man is coming to our next book group. I'll let you know how that goes."

There's just no clear answer, says novelist Joshua Henkin: "One thing I've been struck by is that, though some women when I ask them say that they wouldn't want their husbands/men in general in their book groups, others say they'd be happy to but that the men they know aren't interested or don't read fiction, and that seems to me a shame."

Valerie Koehler's Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston has a book group called "Couples & Bob, senior couples and one widower. She says, "I don't know why more men don't join book groups. The men in my life are nonfiction readers by and large and I don't know if the discussion can be as lively as it can be when you are dissecting a completely made up world."

There are a few bright spots. Marie Leahy, Northshire Bookstore's marketing director, notes that "men in book groups have not been in short supply since my time here. When we had a book group evening with Random House in February, about 15% of the 80 or so participants were men."

And the book club that Ami Greko, marketing director for Folio Literary Management, belongs to "has more men than women, and we have yet (thank god) to read a biography of a Civil War general."

(Photo credit goes to The Men's Book Club of Canada—another bright spot.)

 

Morning Edition on NPR recently resumed its Crime in the City series in which crime novelists give listeners a tour of the places they and their characters inhabit. The latest installment features mystery writer Julie Smith who sets her stories in New Orleans, which as she says, "is a great place to write mysteries, not because of the city's crime, but because of its secrets."

Variety reported that John Malkovich's Mr. Mudd company has signed a two-year deal with production and financing outfit Mandate Pictures to produce at least one film a year together. The two companies, which first teamed up on Juno, will collaborate on the noir drama Broken City, a story written by playwright Brian Tucker and centering on a cop-turned-P.I. who finds himself "thrust into the seedy backroom politics of a corrupt mayoral election."

The Glenn Beck show on CNN featured an interview this week with Andrew Klavan about his new political thriller, Empire of Lies (published by Otto Penzler/Harcourt). You can find transcripts here.

CNN offered up an article on "Five murders and the movies they inspired," showing that life can indeed be stranger than art and many police officers are most definitely underpaid.

You Hardly Look a Day Over 200...

 

On July 16th in 1790, Congress authorized President George Washington to choose a permanent site for the capital city, and an area along the Potomac River was selected, although it wasn't until ten years later that the move from Philadelphia occurred. The census of 1800 showed that the new capital had a grand total population of 14,103.

In honor of DC Day, here are some authors with titles and series set in D.C. Some, like George Pelecanos, were not only born in the District, but live there (well, in a suburb), and write plots set almost exclusively in the city. Of course, if your plot involves the U.S. President, Congress, or the Supreme Court and/or is a spy thriller, chances are pretty good you're going to at least touch upon D.C. at some point.

• Adkins, Jan - Deadline for Final Art
• Adler, Warren -- Fiona Fitzgerald series
• Andrews, Robert -- Frank Kearney & Jose Phelps series
• Bowen, Michael -- Richard Michaelson series
• Brophy, Beth - My Ex-Best Friend
• Clancy, Tom  -- Jack Ryan series
• Cohen, William S. -- Murder in the Senate
• Collins, Max Allan -- Nathan Heller Mysteries
• Elkins, Aaron J. - Chris Norgren Mysteries
• Fleming, Barbara -- Hot Stones, Cold Death
• Fox, Barbara -- Sandy Evans & Joey Jason series
• Massey, Sujata -- Rei Shimura Mysteries
• Mickelbury, Penny -- Carole Ann Gibson series
• Osborne, Denise  -- Feng Shui Mysteries
• Patterson, James -- Alex Cross series
• Pelecanos, George -- Various
• Richman, Phyllis  -- Charles Wheatley series
• Roosevelt, Elliot -- Eleanor Roosevelt series
• Russell, Alan - Political Suicide
• Truman, Margaret  -- Capitol Crimes

It's just a partial list -- feel free to add your own entries.

Mystery Melange

 

In advance of her appearance as keynote speaker for the Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference July 17-20 in Seattle, Gayle Lynds was interviewed for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In answer to the question "How did you get started writing thrillers," she replied, "The truth is, I entered through the back door. I began as a literary writer of short stories, then wrote male pulp fiction, publishing in both fields. In the process, I found I had a real love of great writing and great adventure. And, of course, that meant thrillers. Some of the finest writing and most interesting story telling today is occurring in our field."

Time Magazine had a recent article on "Dr. Banville and Mr. Black." Writer Lev Grossman points out that, "It's currently chic for fancy novelists to slum it in the lower genres, the way Marie Antoinette used to dress up as a peasant and milk cows," but adds that "Watching [Banville/Black] try to do what a mystery writer does shows you what's so tough about it. Good genre writers know how to express ideas and emotions through events--plot--rather than dialogue or evocative descriptions."

The unlikely saga of online writer Robert Burton Robinson continues. Two years ago, he set out to write a free serial story online; with no experience and no plot, he began writing three chapters per week, never dreaming the story would lead to a four book series of mystery novels.

The Chicago Trib wrote about criminal defense attorney and part-time mystery writer Bruce Steinberg and how his legal experience fuels his legal thrillers (the latest is River Ghosts, written under the name B.R. Robb). After becoming an assistant Kane County public defender, Steinberg, who is Jewish, has represented clients from sex offenders to murderers and was twice assigned to represent neo-Nazis.

Thriller writer Phillip Margolin (who, like Steinberg, is a practicing attorney), just released his 13th novel, Executive Privilege, in which the U.S. president becomes a murder suspect. He was interviewed for Reuters, and says "The ending is the most important part of a novel. It is what the reader takes away with him and I hate reading books that are great but have a lousy ending. Until I have a good ending I won't even start writing it."

The Globe and Mail reviewed the Bravo documentary about pioneering Canadian crime fiction author Howard Engel who created the "first great Canadian detective" Benny Cooperman, starting with the 1979 novel The Suicide Murders.

In that same article, you can read about a new re-make of the classic TV mystery/spy series The Prisoner. The six-part drama is a co-production between AMC and U.K. broadcasters ITV Productions and Granada International. The remake will star Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ) in the pivotal role of Number Six, a retired secret agent being held captive in a quaint village by the sea. (In the first version, Number Six was played by Patrick McGoohan, who also created, wrote and produced the series.) Film veteran Ian McKellen will assume the role of Number Two, the ominous chairperson who runs the village. Shooting begins in August with the miniseries slated to make its debut in 2009.

Book South Africa's Crime Beat talks about "a general lightening of mood in South African literature, nowhere more evident than in the crime fiction genre."

Australia's The Age notes that "Once frowned upon, crime writing has become a respected genre, and sales are booming."

Vive le mystère français

 

In honor of Bastille Day, a little reminder that France has had its own important contributions to crime fiction. One of the earliest and certainly most colorful figures was Eugène François Vidocq (1775-1857) who started out as a thief and police informer and eventually became the first head of the Sûreté (the French police Force). He also had a rather gigantic ego, as evidenced by his autobiograpy which was titled Vidocq; Personal Memoirs of the First Great Detective.

In reality the first French fictional investigator is probably Monsieur Lecoq who made his first appearance in the book The Widow Lerouge (1864) by Emile Gaboriau, who also wrote several mysteries using Lecoq or another protagonist (Pére Tabaret, formerly a pawnbroker's clerk) who was an amateur detective. Although inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, Gaboriau's lasting influence may have been the fact he in turn inspired Arthur Conan Doyle in creating Sherlock Holmes.

Probably the first French-speaking novelist to portray a cop who is fairly ordinary was Georges Simenon (1903-1989) who is not French by birth, but Belgian, although his famous fictional Inspector Maigret worked the streets of Paris. Possibly the most prolific mystery writer of all time (although that may be a topic for another blog), Simenon published 200 novels, 150 novellas, autobiographical works, articles, and numerous pulp novels written under more than two dozen pseudonyms. A total of 75 novels and 28 short stories featured Maigret.

The 20th century had other French writers in the mystery and crime fiction genres, especially after the suspense novel began to grow in France around the middle part of the century. Authors like Boileau-Narcejac (the pen name of 2 co-writers, actually) had several novels turned into very famous films, such as Vertigo by Hitchcock or Les Diaboliques by Clouzot.

Sébastien Japrisot (1931-2003) was an author, screenwriter and film director, whose crime fiction works include Trap for Cinderella, The Sleeping-Car Murders, One Deadly Summer, and A Very Long Engagement, several of which have been translated into English, in case your French isn't particularly proficient (and, with apologies to my high school French teacher, that would include me).

Jean-Christophe Grangé is even more contemeporary and has a huge following in France, with at least two of his novels available in English: The Flight of the Storks (2001) and The Crimson Rivers (2001).

As with any topic or subgenre in crime fiction, the list of mysteries and crime fiction titled either written by French authors or set in France is fairly extensive, so if you'd like to settle down with a good glass of chablis and some Brie, check out the resource lists on the Tulsa Library List, WhereDunnit and Reader's Advice web sites of books that are mostly set in France (such as Cara Black's Aimee Leduc series). For a brief historical overview of French authors, G.J. Demko's Landscapes of Crime may be helpful, or a book like Detective Fiction by Charles J. Rzepka.

FYI, the term "roman noir" originates in the use of black book covers used early for published mysteries in France, but as Demko points out, the title fits French literary tastes well in that the French are attracted to issues about the dark side of society in their fiction.

Today is July 7th, the date Isaac Newton received an MA from Trinity College, Cambridge, and "God Save the King" was first sung. It's also the birthday of Gustav Mahler, composer and conductor (1860) and
Robert Heinlein, science-fiction writer (1907).

Most importantly of all, it's National Chocolate Day. To celebrate, buy some tickets to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where a performance of the interactive murder mystery play Death by Chocolate will be performed. (Note: the ticket price includes chocolate). If you can't quite make it over to Edinburgh, then you can try a home version on DVD.

Surprisingly, there have been several mystery novels written under the title "Death By Chocolate" or a variant thereof. As you might imagine, many of these tend toward the tongue-in-cheek:

• Death By Chocolate by G.A. McKevett, features zaftig PI Savannah Reid, owner of the Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency in San Carmelito, California.
• Chocolate Dipped Death (A Candy Shop Mystery) by Sammi Carter with protagonist Abby Shaw who is (appropriately) the new owner of the candy shop Divinity and an amateur sleuth who tries her hand at solving a murder at the Annual Confectionary Competition.
• Death by Chocolate by Toby Moore takes place in a world where fattening foods are contraband. Health Enforcement cops arrest "humonsters" for weight violations, whilst the discovery of a corpse clothed only in the finest chocolate leads the bewildered Agent Devlin on a trail of culinary call girls, hidden burger joints and a bishop whose services are sin-burning "prayercise."
• Death By Chocolate: Redux by David Yurkovich. (Are you ready for this plot?) On a visit to a peculiar candy factory in Switzerland, a tourist falls into a vat of liquid chocolate that's infused with an alien life form. Mutated into a being of pure chocolate, with the power to similarly transform objects and even other humans, he goes on a criminal rampage. Captured, he is convinced to use his strange abilities to benefit humanity via the FBI's Food-Crime Division. Newly christened Agent Swete, he and his partner investigate such paranormal cases as the theft of the Eternity Pasta (the key to everlasting life) and the appearance of a talking dog from an alternate universe.
• Death by Chocolate by Nadalia Bagratuni. Candy Matson, San Francisco P.I,. is a former super model turned gum shoe. Although it doesn't have a candy-themed plot per se, the title alone gets it included in the list.
• Dying for Chocolate by Diane Mott Davidson. Goldy Bear, former battered wife, owner of Goldilocks' Catering, and sometime sleuth, is soon embroiled in the investigation of the death of old flame, convinced that his fatal car crash was no accident.
• JoAnna Carl has an entire chocoholic series, including The Chocolate Cat Caper; The Chocolate Bear Burglary; The Chocolate Frog Frame-Up; The Chocolate Puppy Puzzle and The Chocolate Mouse Trap. All the Chocoholic Mysteries feature Lee McKinney, a Texas beauty queen transplanted to a Michigan resort, where she is business manager for TenHuis Chocolade. In addition to a mystery, the books feature a behind-the-scenes look at the business and art of making fine, European-style bonbons, truffles and molded chocolates.
• Chocolate Quake, by Nancy Fairbanks, is part of the Carolyn Blue culinary-travelogue mysteries, this one set in San Francisco.
• Joanne Fluke, Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder. This was the debut outing of series protagonist Hannah Swenson, the independent-minded owner of the Cookie Jar. When a well-liked milkman is murdered in the alley near her shop, Hannah joins forces with the deputy sheriff, who just happens to be her brother-in-law.

Bon appetit!

A Fourth of Murder

 

Want a little Fourth of July murder mystery to go with that hot dog and watermelon? You can't go wrong with the likes of Bill Crider, whose protagonist Sheriff Dan Rhodes has to face personal fireworks around the Fourth Holiday when accused of corruption in the novel Red, White, and Blue Murder. But when the charred body of the county commissioner is found among the ashes of his torched fishing cabin, Rhodes suspects July's fireworks are only getting started.

If you overdose on too much sugary ice cream and pie, you might clear the palate with the noir crime fiction novel King Suckerman by George Pelecanos, which delves into the drug scene in D.C. during the Bicentennial celebration. (Booklist said "this wildly violent crime novel effectively evokes the comic-book heroics of the Superfly era while at the same time sucker punching us with the humanity at its core.")

If cozies are more your thing, Carolyn Hart's Yankee Doodle Dead may be the ticket, as mystery-bookstore owner Annie Darling tries to solve the murder of a retired Brigadier General at the annual Fourth of July festival in the South Carolina resort town Broward's Rock.

Former army nurse Sharon Wildwind's debut mystery novel Some Welcome Home features former Vietnam nurse Captain Elizabeth "Pepper" Pepperhawk who return from her tour in Vietnam to serve as head nurse at an army hospital in Fort Bragg around the Fourth. Before she can report for duty, though, the dead body of a soldier appears in her hotel bed.

And for an oldie but goodie, check out the "Fourth of July Picnic," one of four novellas by Rex Stout featuring Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, bundled into the volume And Four to Go, wherein a murder occurs during a restaurant workers union picnic where Wolfe has agreed to speak.

But wait...there's more! You can find additional titles for the Fourth and summer in general via the following lists from the Wakefield Public Library, Michigan City Public Library, MyShelf and also here and here.

Museumania

If you happen to be in the D.C. over the Fourth of July (or at some point during your vacation this summer), you might check out what is probably the nation's preeminent trio of museums related to spying and crime. The oldest and the most off the beaten path (and the only free museum of the three) is the National Cryptologic Museum, located adjacent to NSA Headquarters, and focusing on the secret world of codemaking and codebreaking.

The International Spy Museum opened its doors in 2002 and has seen close to four million visitors since. In addition to its many exhibits, it also hosts special events such as the upcoming Evening with the Former MI5 Director General, Stella Rimington (July 8th), as Rimington discusses her work and her latest thriller Illegal Action which is hot off the presses.

The youngest of the museums just debuted this summer, the National Museum of Crime & Punishment. It has five galleries, plus a studio for tapings of "America's Most Wanted" (one of the co-founders if John Walsh), and interactive displays such as the area that re-creates a murder investigation from crime scene to autopsy.

Both the Spy Museum and Crime & Punishment Museum will set you back $18 apiece, but if you're looking for some air-conditioned entertainment in D.C. while perhaps getting an idea for a new novel, it's definitely worth the price of admission.

Crais-y About Elvis

Robert Crais has his 11th Detective Elvis Cole novel, Chasing Darkness, debuting this month, and like most authors, he's hot on the book tour trail. Since Crais currently lives in Santa Monica and his protagonist walks the streets of Los Angeles, it's not surprising that many of Crais's publicity appearances will be in California.  The Pasadena Star News published a Q&A recently with Crais, focusing on his Laurel Canyon ties. As to how he got his start writing novels, the former Hollywood writer said, "My last job, I think, was for the Johnny Carson company. I was doing a detective show with a great writer named Jeffrey Lane. When that show ended, my dad died and I didn't want to go back to another studio situation. So my wife and I agreed that I would take a year off. I rented a cabin in Lake Arrowhead, and that's where I wrote the first book." And the rest, as they say, is history.

The Orange County Register also managed to snag an interview with Crais, who is going to appear at Book Carnival in Orange this coming Sunday. "I started at the bottom in this," Craig says of his 1987 debut, The Monkey's Raincoat. "There were no big ads in the New York Times, there were no TV commercials. It was people like Ed and Pat Thomas who discovered me with that book and believed in Elvis Cole and pushed the book on readers," he says of Book Carnival's owners. "They literally hand sold that book, book after book. They're what makes this mystery community special."

Shelf Awareness tagged Crais recently for its ongoing "Book Brahmins" series, in which he was a series of questions, to wit:

On your nightstand now:

The books I'm currently reading are manuscripts for possible blurbs, so I shouldn't name them. But the books I'm looking forward to reading soon are Shadow Bridge by Gregory Frost, At the City's Edge by Marcus Sakey and Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere.

Favorite book when you were a child:

I remember the story, but not the title. Maybe a Shelf Awareness reader can help. It's an adventure story about three children marooned on a desert island, a la Robinson Crusoe, and how they survive. It held amazing, adventurous factoids like "banking the fire." These kids kept a fire going for weeks by "banking the fire" every night. I never understood what "banking the fire" was, but it seemed magical. I read that book again and again, and wish I recalled the title. We're talking the early '60s. If you have any ideas what this book might be, please write to me through my website.

Your top five authors:

Robert Heinlein, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, Harlan Ellison, Mark Twain.

Book you've faked reading:

Pretty much everything assigned by my 10th grade English teacher. I got a "D" for the year. We were supposed to read all manner of ponderous, uninspiring tomes, but I was hiding in back of the class, reading Mailer and Ellison and Truman Capote. I was a terrible student. I chased work that inspired me.

Book you are an evangelist for:

I like helping newer writers, so if I find something special I spread the word. I felt this way about Ace Atkins' book, White Shadow, and The Crime Writer by Gregg Hurwitz, which held some of the best passages about Los Angeles I've read in years. When Joseph Wambaugh returned with Hollywood Station, I couldn't stop talking about it, though Wambaugh hardly needed my help.

Book you've bought for the cover:

That's easy. Paperback covers were once painted by fabulous painters like Frank Frazetta, James Bama and Jim Steranko. I used to collect those guys. I bought anything with a Frazetta cover. Didn't matter what the book was—I bought it for Frazetta's art.

Book that changed your life:

Harlan Ellison's book of essays, The Glass Teat, which chronicles his views about the television industry. Here I was, this totally out-of-the-loop kid in Louisiana, with no real belief or expectation that someone like me could be a writer—"writing" was something larger-than-life people did, like becoming astronauts or actors or president. But The Glass Teat demystified the working world of television, and convinced me that if "they" could be a writer, I could be a writer. So I came out to Hollywood and did it. Every good thing in my life began when I moved to Los Angeles. The Glass Teat, like any meaningful book, opened the door to possibilities.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

The Old Man and the Sea. I've read it several times, and each time it leaves me awed.