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.