Author R&R with Charles Salzberg

Charles Salzberg is a novelist, journalist, and acclaimed writing instructor. He is the author of the Henry Swann detective series, including Swann’s Last Song which was nominated for a Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel and Devil in the Hole, which was named one of the best crime novels of 2013 by Suspense magazine. He has taught writing at Sarah Lawrence College, Hunter College, the Writer’s Voice, and the New York Writers Workshop, where he is a Founding Member. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times, Esquire, New York Magazine, and GQ. He lives in New York City.

In Salzberg's critically-acclaimed literary thriller Devil in the Hole, detective Charlie Floyd was obsessed with catching an abominable murderer. In the sequel, Second Story Man, Floyd is not-so comfortably settled into being recently retired when he's abruptly drawn back into the game by Cuban-born Miami police detective Manny Perez, who is on a mission to catch a notoriously elusive thief. Working together as an unlikely team, Perez and Floyd act on a rumor that Hoyt is about to depart the wealthy homes of Florida to begin a string of robberies in the northeast. Confident they are hot on their prey's trail, the two detectives embark on their quest only to have Hoyt elude their grasp time and time again.

Salzberg stops by In Reference to Murder today to take some Author R&R about researching and writing the book:

 

Unlike most of my novels, Second Story Man began with research as opposed to beginning with a character or plot. In the past, I’ve relied heavily on interviews with experts, which is where my experience as a magazine journalist kicks in. For instance, for Swann Dives In, which takes place in the world of rare books, I interviewed a rare book dealer. But this time around, I found it more useful to rely on the Internet for my research.

Years ago, I read an article in The New Yorker about a burglar named Blane Nordahl. Nordahl was a master at his chosen trade: breaking into the homes of the very wealthy and stealing only their valuable silver. No plated trays for him. Only the good stuff, especially if it had a provenance, like something made by Paul Revere. Nordahl was acknowledged as one of if not the best in the business, and with good reason. He rarely left forensic “footprints,” and in a long career the clever, athletic thief racked up a number of memorable heists, including, as I recall, Ivana Trump’s silver. The article also told the tale of the lawmen who were obsessed with bringing him to justice.

The first step in my research was finding and rereading that article. By the time I finished, an idea for a novel begin to take form.

For some time, I’ve been fascinated (and disturbed) by Americans’ need to be the best and to win, often at all costs. Perhaps, I thought, I can base create a master burglar and use him to examine this obsession with winning.

I knew very little about breaking and entering (this is a good thing, right?) so I began to research the subject, using Google to find newspaper and magazine articles. Along the way, I read about a fellow named Alan Golder, another master burglar, but with a twist. He only hit at dinner time, when he knew his victims would be home (along with all of their valuables) and most likely having dinner downstairs, while their jewelry and other items of value, sat upstairs, unguarded. Like Nordahl, Golder was also a master at what he did, also making him extremely difficult to catch.

As a result of my research, I was able to create Francis Hoyt, a very loose combination of Nordahl and Golder, adding, of course, a healthy dose of imagination (the character’s backstory and actions are completely made up).

I needed someone to pursue Hoyt, someone just as obsessed with “winning.” Here, I cheated a little by “borrowing” two characters from a previous novel, Devil in the Hole, which was based on a true crime: a man named John List who murdered his three children, wife, mother and the family dog and disappeared into thin air. For that novel, most of my research centered around the actual crime, especially how the bodies were found, since several weeks passed before anyone knew they were dead and List was on the lam. This led to going back to my own earlier novel to research the two other characters, Charlie Floyd and Manny Perez. Floyd was a major character, a cocky Connecticut State investigator, while Manny Perez, a Cuban-American Miami police detective, was so minor he only appears briefly in one chapter of the book. These two men, I decided, would team up to bring down Hoyt. I reread Devil, so I could make sure Floyd would be consistent with his earlier self (for the new novel, I had him as recently retired from his job), while with Perez, I had a little more leeway, since very little was known about him.

Once I had my three major characters, I set out to research the art of burglary. Using articles I found on the web, I learned how to bypass alarm systems (if someone checks my browser history they could make a pretty good case tagging me as a burglar in training), as well as other handy burglary tips. I also used a book called, 400 Things Cops Know, paying special attention to the things pertaining to breaking and entering.

The novel takes place primarily in and around Miami, Florida, as well as in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. Obviously, being a native New Yorker, I didn’t need much help there. Ditto with New Jersey and to a lesser extent Connecticut, since I fictionalized Floyd’s hometown of Sedgewick. But still, I needed help with specific places. For instance, the opening scene takes place at the Fountainbleu Hotel, where I’d briefly visited once in my early 20s, but I needed to check it out on the web to get a good picture of what the hotel was like now. And then, on his bus journey from Miami to New York—you’ll have to read the book to find out why a bus rather than a plane, train or car—Hoyt stops in Charleston, S. C., a place I’ve never been. And so, back to the web, where I found maps and descriptions of the city—and even watched a news feature on Charleston, so I could fix in my mind how parts of the city and area looked. I also checked on local bus routes, since Hoyt makes a “special” tour of the city before he continues his trip north.

 

You can find out more about Charles Salzberg and Second Story Man via his website or Down & Out Books, or follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads. Second Story Man is available via all major bookstores in both print and ebook formats.

Author R&R with Sherri Smith

Sherri Smith wrote two historical fiction novels for Simon & Schuster UK before deciding to try her hand at crime fiction. Her debut thriller is Follow Me Down, which she says is the type of book she also enjoys reading, namely, one filled with small town secrets, a troubled main character, guilt, addiction, and the complexities of sibling relationships. Inspired by the long, cold winters of Winnepeg, Canada that nurture her dark side, the book is set in the chilly fictional town of Wayoata, North Dakota.

Follow me Down centers on Mia Haas, who has built a life for herself far from the small town where she grew up, but when she receives word that her twin brother is missing, she’s forced to return home. Once hailed as the golden boy of their small town, Lucas Haas disappeared the same day the body of one of his high school students is pulled from the river. Trying to wrap her head around the rumors of Lucas’s affair with the teen, and unable to reconcile the media’ portrayal of Lucas as a murderer with her own memories, Mia is desperate to find another suspect. All the while, she wonders, "if he’s innocent, why did he run?" As Mia reevaluates their difficult, shared history and launches her own investigation into the grisly murder, she uncovers secrets that could exonerate Lucas—or seal his fate. In a small town where everyone’s history is intertwined, Mia will be forced to confront her own demons, placing her right in the killer’s crosshairs.

Sherri stops by In Reference to Murder today to take some Author R&R on how she went about researching and writing the book:

 

When I started writing Follow Me Down, the last thing I wanted to do was research. I was completely research-fatigued (if that’s a thing?) I had previously written two historical fiction novels for Simon and Schuster UK and both required a grueling amount of investigation into the customs, daily life and politics of the two very different periods they were set in. My methods were the same for each. I read from the era, about the era, I’d make contact with PhD professors who specialized in some aspect of said era. This part was fairly enjoyable because I do love history, specifically those everyday life details, but when I got to the writing part I’d seize up. I became nearly paralyzed at the thought of getting something wrong and undoing the research I’d done. Or ruining the believability of the time period because I’d inadvertently included something that shouldn’t be there (and it happened anyway.) Very quickly, writing in this genre became too stifling and clinical for me.  I was too panicky about all the wrong things.

So for Follow Me Down, I was practically going out of my way to do as little research as possible. But of course I wasn’t off the hook completely. My main character, Mia Haas has a pill addiction and because I am not personally a pill-popper, I had to do some reading.

Straight off, there’s the Internet of course. I looked up everything Mia takes in the novel there first, poring over the fine print (AKA dire warning labels) and this gave me an initial feel for whatever medication Mia tosses back. The sort of side effects she might get, or what meds might not mix well.

That of course wasn’t enough. I wanted to get a better sense of what she was actually experiencing when those pills fizzed away in her stomach and let loose in her blood stream. So from there I turned to forums where people freely discussed their drug use. How it made them feel, what they recommended to one another and what one might want more of and why. I lurked around those forums a lot. Probably way too much.

The Internet is a dangerous place to do your research though, it drags you in and next thing you know, you’ve lost countless hours chasing after some bit of information that didn’t matter anyway. I remember spending way too much time one afternoon reading all about Viagra’s origin story, which didn’t show up in my book at all.

Because my main character is also a pharmacist, I followed a few grumbling blogs by pharmacists. These gave me amazing insight into what these particular people felt like working in a chain pharmacy. What their hours were like, what made them mad, how overworked they felt. How they got along with co-workers in a relatively closed space. It definitely helped me get inside Mia’s head.

I’d also call my local Safeway pharmacy a lot. A LOT. I struck up a great friendship with a certain lovely pharmacist (let’s just call her Phyllis the pharmacist because it sounds suitably fake) who patiently answered all my very sketchy questions. Of course not before establishing I didn’t need an ambulance or poison control. I really can’t extoll the virtues of pharmacists enough. They really pick up serious slack in the health care system.  

And while I can’t say Mia is what you’d call a shining example of the pharmaceutical profession, she definitely epitomizes the smarts it takes to be in that line of work. She’s got meds and she knows how to use them (and yes, I am typing this with the tune of She’s Got Legs going off in my head.) This is where my research actually became fun. It was like being in a druggie’s candy-shop, getting to choose whatever I wanted but without any of the risk. I got to pump my character full of pills that would enhance her best (and sometimes worst) qualities. She gets to stay up longer, numb herself to mounting dread and keep herself sharp on stimulates so she can eventually get to the truth. It was a bit like writing a super-hero, but one who gets hangovers.

Unlike my earlier dealings with research, I now know when to stop and how to better dodge getting too embroiled in it. But still, going forward I will continue to avoid it as much as possible.

 

Follow Me Down was released today and is available from all major booksellers. You can read more about the book and follow Sheri via her website, Twitter, or Facebook.

Author R&R with J.L. Abramo

J. L. ABRAMO is a long-time educator, arts journalist, film and stage actor and theater director. His evolution to writing crime fiction might have been ordained by the fact he was born on Raymond Chandler's fifty-ninth birthday. Abramo's short fiction appeared in various anthologies, but his success as a novelist began when his Catching Water in a Net (the first in his Jake Diamond series) won the St. Martin's Press/Private Eye Writers of America prize for Best First Private Eye Novel. A subsequent Jake Diamond novel, Circling the Runway, won the Shamus Award for Best Original Paperback Novel of 2015 presented by the Private Eye Writers of America.

Abramo also created a new series in 2012 with Gravesend, which introduced Homicide Detectives Samson and Murphy of Brooklyn's 61st Precinct. The detectives return in Coney Island Avenue during the dog days of August in Brooklyn where the men and women of the 61st Precinct are battling to keep all hell from breaking loose. Innocents are being sacrificed in the name of greed, retribution, passion and the lust for power—and the only worthy opponent of this senseless evil is the uncompromising resolve to rise above it, rather than descend to its depths.

Abramo stops by In Reference to Murder today to talk about the book and researching settings and historical periods to make his writing more accurate:

I have always been partial to novels in which location plays an essential role in the narrative.  Dennis Lehane’s Boston, George Pelecanos’ Washington D.C., Loren Estleman’s Detroit—not to mention Dickens’ London and Hugo’s Paris.  I tend, therefore, to take the settings of my novels very seriously—both in terms of significance and accuracy.

In fiction, when a story is set in a real and specific city—be it San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New York—I believe the accuracy of the locale needs to be non-fictional.  Geography is sacred.  Readers are willing to suspend belief to a great extent—but if you have two characters meeting at the corner of Coney Island Avenue and Ocean Parkway, two streets which never intersect, you will lose a large number of Brooklyn readers very quickly.

When writing places I am not very familiar with—Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Oakland, Chicago—the research is both extensive and educational.  I study maps.  With locations I am more familiar with, having lived in those places or visited many times—San Francisco, Brooklyn, Denver—I rely on recollection but always double-check geography.  In writing Gravesend and Coney Island Avenue, it was a journey back to the places where I had grown from infancy to manhood—re-walking the streets of my past—making certain those streets were represented correctly.

I have also had to do a great deal of research with regard to period.  In the first Jake Diamond novel, Catching Water in a Net set in 2000, Jake turns 40 at the end of the book.  By the time the third in the series was released, set in 2003, Jake was 43.  The fourth book in the series, Circling the Runway, came nearly a dozen years later, 2015, however (since I didn’t wish to have my protagonist pushing 55 years old quite yet) I decided to set the narrative back to 2004.  This required re-familiarization with the sports, music, literature, movies, and other historical events and cultural elements of that year.  It required study.  Similarly, for Chasing Charlie Chan, set in 1994 and flashing back to Hollywood and Las Vegas in the late-forties, I needed to do a great deal of reading about those periods and about the characters in the book who were actual historical figures. In cases like these, research for a novel can be enjoyable—the knowledge gained about the highly successful and prolific Charlie Chan film franchise was fascinating.  Non-fiction books such as The Charlie Chan Film Encyclopedia, Las Vegas: An Unconventional History, We Only Kill Each Other—and many newspaper and magazine articles about Werner Oland, Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel, Mickey Cohen, Meyer Lansky—were invaluable and terrifically entertaining.  I was also aided and inspired by the works of James Ellroy—L.A. Confidential and others.

The investigative work of my protagonists—whether private eye Jake Diamond in California or Brooklyn NYPD detectives Samson, Ripley, Senderowitz and Murphy in Gravesend and my latest novel, Coney Island Avenue—tend to be more about intuition, legwork and often luck than about highly scientific forensics.  For that research I tend to go back to reading about true crime investigations from the pre-CSI era.  I also seek out older private and police detectives who recall the good old days of criminal investigation—when being a gumshoe meant hitting the pavement—and who enjoy sharing reminiscence over Scotch.

Although I write predominantly fiction—I am committed to truth and fact when it comes to specific locations, time periods, vernacular and personalities.  Homework is always required—but it is the kind of homework that is challenging, enlightening and, for this writer, a world of fun.  And more fun yet—my next novel will require brushing up on my Italian language skills.

 

Coney Island Justice is available via Down and Out Books and from all major booksellers. You can find more about J.L. Abramo via his website or follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

Giveaway Time! A copy of "I'm Traveling Alone"

SAMUEL BJØRK is the pen name of Norwegian novelist, playwright and singer/songwriter Frode Sander Øien. Øien wrote his first stageplay at the age of twenty-one and then went on to write two highly acclaimed literary novels, Pepsi Love (2001) and Speed for Breakfast (2009). The self-taught artist has also released six albums, written five plays, showed contemporary art pieces in various galleries and translated Shakespeare. His debut crime novel, I'm Traveling Alone (Det Henger En Engel Alene I Skogen) hit #1 on German newspaper Der Spiegel's bestseller list and was nominated for the Norwegian Booksellers’ Award, prompting some to compare him to the likes of both Stieg Larsson and Jo Nesbø. It's the first installment in the Mia and Munch Series.

When a six-year-old girl is found in the countryside, hanging lifeless from a tree and dressed in strange doll’s clothes with a sign around her neck saying "I’m traveling alone," a special homicide unit re-opens with veteran police investigator Holger Munch at the helm. Holger’s first step is to persuade the brilliant but suicidal investigator Mia Kruger, who has been living on an isolated island and overcome by memories of her past, to assist. When Mia views a photograph of the crime scene and spots the number "1" carved into the dead girl’s fingernail, she knows this is only the beginning. Could this killer have something to do with a missing child, abducted six years ago and never found, or with the reclusive religious community hidden in the nearby woods?  Mia returns to duty to track down a revenge-driven and ruthlessly intelligent killer, but when Munch’s own six-year-old granddaughter goes missing, Mia realizes that the killer’s sinister game is personal.

Kirkus Reviews noted that "Bjørk has constructed a labyrinthine plot with plenty of red herrings and rabbit holes, but even with a cast of many, he manages to do justice to the story," and Library Journal gave the title a starred review, adding “A breath of fresh air in the crowded Scandinavian crime genre, this suspenseful novel…will hook readers early and keep them on the edge of their seat until the final pages. Fans of Jo Nesbø are sure to enjoy the flawed yet likable characters.”

Now for the giveaway! One lucky winner will receive a print copy of the book, courtesy of the publisher (U.S. addresses this time). To enter, simply follow this link, and login with your email address. FYI, you'll be prompted to enter your email address a second time, so be sure and don't miss this step. But hurry - the contest ends March 13.