Author R&R with Jake Needham

 

Hong Kong Magazine called Jake Needham "probably the best known American writer almost nobody in America has ever heard of." They might well be right. The four Asian crime novels he has published up until now (The Ambassador's Wife, Killing Plato, Laundry Man and The Big Mango) have sold nearly 150,000 copies in Asia, Europe and the UK, but not a single copy has ever appeared on any bookstore shelf in the US or Canada. His fifth novel, A World of Trouble, was published this week, but it won't be sold in the U.S. either.

Fortunately for readers who enjoy international crime novels, Jake's publisher has recently released all of his novels worldwide for Kindle, Nook, and iBooks. And, for the first time, Americans are beginning to discover Jake Needham, too. You can learn more about Jake and read excerpts from his books at his website.

Jake stopped by In Reference to Murder to take part in the ongoing feature "Author R&R" (Reference and Research), offering up these fascinating insights:

 

I write international crime novels set in contemporary Asia. They're filled with a collection of colorful rogues who range from the merely raffish to the downright scary: criminals on the lam, politicians on the take, intelligence agents on the grift, and hustlers on the scam.

Yeah, I know. You probably didn't realize there were any crime novels set in contemporary Asia, did you? You've read American crime novels, British crime novels, Italian crime novels, Scandinavian crime novels, and Russian crime novels, but…uh, Asian crime novels? I have to tell you, the few of us out there publishing Asian crime novels these days pretty much think of ourselves as the Rodney Dangerfield's of popular fiction.

Authenticity is important to me and I work hard at maintaining it in my books. Of all the reviews I've had over the years, both in the press and from individual readers, I am proudest of those that talk about the feel of my books and how real they make contemporary Asia seem for readers. "Needham certainly knows where some bodies are buried," Asia Inc Magazine said about my books. Darn right. I helped bury some of them.

I've lived in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Bangkok for nearly twenty-five years now so my research these days consists primarily of a lot of pretty energetic hanging out. Let me give you an example.

I've been thinking a lot about doing a novel set in Macau so a few weeks ago I flew to Hong Kong, took a hydrofoil across the Pearl River estuary, and checked into the Grand Lisboa on the edge of the old city in Macau. I've been going to Macau for nearly thirty years, but the place has changed so much – and continues to change every year with such terrifying speed – that I wanted to walk the streets again and renew my feel for it.

Now I know quite a few people in Macau, and they know a lot more people in Macau. Generally, I find people like to talk to novelists, particularly if we come recommended as reliable by people they trust. We're not journalists. We're not trying to dig some dirt and turn it into a front-page story that might make our career even if it ends somebody else's. What we care about is how things might be, not how they really are. After all, we write fiction. We make this stuff up, don't we?

So here are some of things I did in Macau…

A retired MI6 intelligence officer who is now involved with casino security operations bought me dinner at the Wynn Macau and told me stories about the Triads involvement in the gambling industry there. As we were finishing our steaks, a major figure in one of Macau's largest triads dropped by the table and had coffee with us.

I drank San Miguel with a retired CIA officer in a little bar down in the old waterfront district, although in this case I have my doubts about the 'retired' part. He told me quite a lot about the life of Kim Jong-Nam, the eldest son of Kim Jong-Il now living quietly in Macau. Early the next morning, we climbed a narrow dirt path along the bluffs in Coloane and looked down into the house where Kim Jong-Nam lives.

I walked the narrow streets of the old city from the Chinese border to the outer harbor with an Australian who is an old Asia hand if there ever was one. He knows more about what is going on under the surface in Macau than I have a hope in hell of ever using in any book.

I ate Portuguese food in a tiny restaurant near the ferry terminal with a Chinese lawyer who represents a lot of people I have absolutely no intention of mentioning. He told me the real story of the North Korean bank that had for a decade been laundering counterfeit American currency into the international banking system through Macau.

And one night I sat all by myself in a half-empty bar at the top of the Old Lisboa casino, shooing away Russian hookers and remembering when I had shaken hands with King Sihanouk of Cambodia in that very room some thirty-five years before, back in a time when the Khmer Rouge had taken over Cambodia and Sihanouk was running for his life.

That's what I mean by 'hanging out' and calling it research. Hey, do I have the best job in the world, or what?

My new novel, A World of Trouble, is about Thailand on the brink of a civil war, its wealthy former prime minister now living in splendid exile in Dubai, and his American lawyer caught between two worlds. It's now available worldwide for Kindle and Nook, and through Smashwords. It will soon be available for iBooks, too.

Please visit my web site and read my Letters from Asia for more about my books and my life along the fault lines of modern Asia.

Author R&R with Jane Cleland

 

This week's "Author R&R" (Reference and Research) guest is Jane K. Cleland, who received an MFA in Playwriting and currently teaches in the writing programs at several colleges, as well as conducting writing workshops. Jane is also the author of the Josie Prescott Antiques Mystery series (set in Rocky Point, a small town on the rugged coast of New Hampshire) that has been called "an Antiques Roadshow for mystery fans." 

The latest installment in the series, Dolled Up for Murder, was just released last week, and centers on a doll collection that someone finds valuable enough to resort to kidnapping and murder. Jane offered up the following tidbits on how she went about researching the book:

To research dolls for the seventh Josie Prescott Antiques Mystery, DOLLED UP FOR MURDER, I consulted websites, doll collectors, antiques dealers, and vendors at doll shows. I tried to learn why some dolls are appealing while others aren’t. What I learned is that the definition of beauty is individual, subjective, and idiosyncratic. No doubt you know that old saying… that one man’s meat is another man’s poison. Well, it’s the same with dolls. One girl’s favorite is another girl’s, ummm, not so much. That said, here’s what I learned and what I concluded.

Dolls are a reflection of the makers’ views of people, of how they look to them, or of how they want them to look. Dolls reflect someone’s image of reality or idealized beauty.

The concept of idealized beauty is on the minds of many people at the college where I teach—LIM College in New York City. The school’s tag line is “Where business meets fashion.” My students are pursuing careers in the business side of the fashion industry.

In my classes, we’ve considered how the concept of idealized beauty has changed from da Vinci’s time, when the definition of beauty was based on proportion and symmetry, to now where it’s based on size and shape. We’ve talked about the power of the media in determining what people perceive as beautiful, and how governments, for instance, Spain, now regulate it. And we’ve talked about dolls, and how little girls determine what they should look like based on the dolls they play with. For instance, we’ve seen how Barbie is constructed in an anatomically impossible way. How if her proportions were transferred to a real person, she’d meet the medical definition of anorexic. Barbie was introduced in 1959, but this issue has been around for as long as dolls have been around. To look at dolls is to witness society’s definition of beauty at any moment in time.

There is a category of dolls known as Queen Anne dolls. It is extraordinarily unusual to see a doll that dates from earlier than1850, so even though Queen Anne’s reign ended in 1714, dolls that meet two parameters are known as “Queen Anne” dolls. First, they’re crafted of wood dating from before 1850; second, they look like adults. Most early dolls were—and most dolls still are—crafted to look like children. Dolls from the 17^th and 18^th century that look like adults are among the rarest of finds, and thus the most valuable. In excellent condition, they’re nearly priceless. I learned all this from talking to sellers of dolls. It’s interesting, but what really captivated my imagination was trying to understand how and why these dolls came to be.

Think of the 18^th century doll maker. He’s a cabinetmaker, probably, not just a carpenter. In other words, he’s a specialist… you’ll note, by the way, that it’s safe for me to say he’s a man because at that time essentially all carpenters and cabinetmakers were men… when I say he’s a specialist, that means he’s adept at using his tools. He didn’t just nail boards together; he crafted ornate finials and ornamental door pulls, work that required skill and finesse and dedication. It was these men who fabricated the dolls we refer to as Queen Anne dolls. He crafted them out of hard wood, carving faces so realistic you can’t believe the images aren’t real, adding paint to highlight her lips and eyes and suggest the color and curl of her hair. As a writer researching these dolls, I want to know more. I want to know which women these Queen Anne dolls are based on. Is she modeled on the maker’s wife? The girl who got away? The girl of his dreams? The woman he hopes his daughter becomes?

I can’t ever know, of course, but I can gather additional clues by considering what she’s wearing. So I began analyzing doll’s clothing. Is her clothing constructed out of silk? Or scraps of cotton? Is she wearing a traditional, festive costume, part of a celebration, perhaps? Or is she dressed for work, in peasant garb? As Mark Twain once wrote, “Clothes make the man. Naked people have no influence on society.” Fair enough. But is it a man, the maker, who dressed those girls and women? We can’t know. We do know that starting in the mid-19^th century, European doll makers used porcelain and leather to craft dolls that integrated modern technology. Some of these dolls could play music and eat or drink. Amazing! We also know that sometimes these dolls were drafted into occupations their makers never intended—smuggling.

Given that I write murder mysteries, you can imagine how my ears perked up at that. I knew that I wanted the pivotal antique to be dolls, but until I studied the world of smuggling dolls, I didn’t have a plot.

Here’s an example of what I learned. There’s a Civil War-era doll named Nina who, it seems, came to America from Europe with her papier mâché head filled with morphine or quinine, an effort orchestrated by Southern sympathizers to get medical supplies past the Union blockade and into the hands of sick Confederate soldiers. Nina lives in the Museum of the Confederacy, in Richmond, Virginia, which holds the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Confederacy. Nina hid medical supplies. Knowing that got me thinking about what else could be hidden in dolls’ heads or in their hollowed out legs, or under their clothing, strapped to their little bodies. Jewels, perhaps, or illegal drugs, or military secrets… or who knows what else.

Dolls of all kinds have been used for smuggling for as long as dolls have existed, and smuggling itself has been going on for even longer than that. I am a realist, so I get it. If you have something to smuggle, you want to find something that’s not likely to attract attention. I may understand the smuggler’s motivation, but to my mind, there’s something especially distasteful about using dolls for illicit purposes. Dolls represent innocence, or should. When a drug dealer or a spy or a thief use dolls to stash contraband, it isn’t merely breaking the law. It’s a betrayal of innocence.

And that’s the genesis of the plot of DOLLED UP FOR MURDER.

Thanks to Jane for participating and offering up insights and a behind-the-scenes look at her novel. To read an excerpt from this seventh installment of what Library Journal calls a "winning cozy series," just follow this link.

The 'Zine Scene

 

The April issue of Suspense Magazine is out, with a list of the 3rd annual short story contest winners. Harlan Coben also has an exclusive interview, along with Marilyn Levinson. There are excerpts of the latest books from D.P. Lyle and Brett Battles, and much more. FYI to authors: the 'zine is opening up their online radio station and will play audio clips of your books, gratis. Email editor@suspensemagazine.com for the details.

The spring edition of Pulp Metal Magazine online is also live, with Paul D. Brazill's column on Detective Sergeant George Bulman (based on the books by Kenneth Royce) and his appearances in various British TV series; writer interviews including Jodi MacArthur talking to Yelena Sabel, Jason Michel chatting with Mr Glamour, and Richard Godwin and Katy O’Dowd speaking to Jason Michel; plus short stories and more.

Issue #45 of Crimespree Magazine has a cover story with Hilary Davidson, interviewed by Ruth Jordan and Jen Forbus. Gary Shulze also talks about the annual Write of Spring event at Once Upon A Crime in Minneapolis; Joe Finder is interviewed by Judy Bobalik; and there are stories, columns, and fun galore. Check out the index here.

You can still order a copy of Mystery Readers Journal and its Winter/Spring issue dedicated to"Shrinks and Other Mental Health Professionals in Mysteries."

As I mentioned earlier, the latest (and first in one case) issues of Needle and Grift are also available for your reading pleasure.

I'm a tad late, but the Winter/Spring Plots with Guns issue is available (with stories by Eric Bandel, Taylor Brown, Terry Butler, Andy Henion, Erik Lundy, Dan Ray, Craig Renfroe, Nick Ripatrazone, and Tim L. Williams), as is the latest Mysterical-E issue, packed with its usual story goodness.

And don't forget to vote for the 2012 Spinetinger Magazine awards.

Poetry is Criminal

 To celebrate National Poetry Month, Gerald So, editor of The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly website and The Lineup poetry chapbooks, invited me to participate in a blog tour. The challenge: to choose a favorite poem from the 5-2 website.

That proved to be a bit of a problem, because poems are like soul candy to me—jelly bellies, if you will—one day your favorite may be key lime pie and the next, sour apple or black licorice. However, I ultimately chose Jackie Sheeler's "Lt. Machine" to feature today, as it is a timely poem, tied to the still-ongoing (if sputtering) Occupy Wall Street movement.

You may recall the recent pepper-spraying incident where Police Lieutenant John Pike, dressed in riot gear, nonchalantly aimed his spray can at a group of college student protesters who were sitting down peacefully. The lieutenant and that video soon went viral and spawned a cultural phenomenom all its own, an international frenzy with dozens of websites and parodies.

What Jackie Sheeler does in her poetic take on that whole spectacle is to create a sardonic account that at the same time peers into the mind—and seeming mindlessness—of the officer's actions, "He neither smiles nor frowns / flourishes the canister / arms-length, like a cardsharp shooting his cuffs / before the deal. Winning is inevitable." And yet, there are hints of what Sheeler imagines really lies beneath the lieutenant's unprompted behavior, "If he screamed / I got your education right here you little pricks!"

I'm a sucker for "humor noir," if that can be labeled a true subgenre. In this poem, despite the underlying tinges of anger and injustice, there are also hints of humor, as in these lines, "He makes a second pass across the line / just in case. Filling in the blanks, you might say." You can argue all day about whether Lt. Pike and other police actions against the Occupy protesters are justified or not (or both, depending upon the circumstances), but I like how Sheeler's poem takes a step back, viewing this incident in words as a photographer would with a lens.

I also loved Jackie's note about the poem, "It was the memes. Yes, definitely, the memes. He pepper-sprayed the Last Supper! And the holy bush of Marilyn Monroe, her white skirt airlifted by a passing subway. Entrapment. I had no choice. Guilty as charged."

Jackie's latest collection of poems, Earthquake Came to Harlem, was a finalist for the 2011 Paterson Poetry Prize. One reviewer called it "nuanced yet aggressive, Earthquake Came to Harlem is a tour-de-force of NYC poetry." I rather like that. I think "nuanced, yet aggressive" is an apt description of "Lt. Machine."

By the way, The 5-2 is looking for more submissions to showcase each week. If you think you have a crime poem in you, you can submit up to two poems per month that are "honest, powerful reactions to what you see as crime." Any form or style is fine, and the only rule is that each poem must be 60 lines or fewer.

Here's the schedule for the rest of the 5-2 Blog Tour. But you don't have to wait — you can go and read the poems yourself, any time.