The Rap Sheet

The Story Behind the Story: “The Girl Next Door,” by Brad Parks

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 20:14:00 +0000

(Editor’s note: This latest entry in The Rap Sheet’s “Story Behind the Story” series marks a repeat appearance by Nero and Shamus award-winning author Brad Parks. In February 2011, he wrote about Eyes of the Innocent, his second novel featuring New Jersey investigative reporter Carter Ross. Below, he explains the background of its sequel, The Girl Next Door, which has just been released by St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books.)

I will long remember the day that inspired my latest novel, The Girl Next Door.

It was July 30, 2008, and all the employees of the newspaper where I was working at that time, the Newark, New Jersey, Star-Ledger, had been summoned to the first floor for a special meeting with the publisher.

We all knew this was likely grim news--it wasn’t exactly a secret that our paper, like every large daily across America, had been hit with a tsunami of bad financial circumstances. But even under those soggy circumstances, the message our publisher delivered that morning was shocking: our newspaper, then the 11th largest in the country, was on life support, and it would be shut down by the end of the year unless several conditions were met.

Among them were that three of our unions, including the Teamsters, needed to renegotiate their contracts; and that 150 newsroom employees had to take voluntary buyouts.

I remember this day clearly not only because it was the start of this book, but also because it was the end of my career in newspapers. I gave my notice later that morning. Under the terms of the buyout I eventually worked out, I would continue working until Thanksgiving. Then I was gone.

I was 34 years old. Newspapering was all I had ever done.

And it was more than just my job. It was really my identity, this thing--my vocation, my avocation, my passion--that had come to define who I was and how I thought about the world.

My first newspaper gig had come when I was 14 years old and I conned my hometown weekly into letting me cover the local girls’ basketball team. I kept writing sports all through high school.

Then I went to Dartmouth College and did the same. I’d file stories on the same college football game for three newspapers (they all had different deadlines). When I got frustrated by how the student paper covered sports, I started my own, running it out of my dorm room. I was the publisher, editor-in-chief, ad salesman, writer, designer, layout artist, paste-up guy, even paperboy--after getting it printed on Monday mornings, I would dash back to school and spread copies all around campus before running off to class.

My summers? I spent them writing for newspapers. I won internships with The Boston Globe and The Washington Post.

My first real job? That was when I got hired by the Post full-time. Two years later I jumped to The Star-Ledger. I basically grew up in the newsroom, this wonderful place full of irascible, irreverent, fascinating, passionate people, most of whom were unapologetically ink-stained. And I soon became ink-stained, too. I loved working for newspapers. The thought of leaving the industry terrified me.

But it was clearly time. The Star-Ledger wasn’t the only newspaper on life support. They pretty much all were. Even if I tried jumping to a different paper--not that any of them were hiring at the salary I was making--I’d just be hopping from the last flight of the Hindenburg to the first voyage of the Titanic. I knew I had to leave, or I would just be the guy still hanging around 10 years later when they finally turned off the lights. As much as I loved newspapers, I didn’t want to be that guy.

Besides, I wasn’t exactly making the leap without a back-up plan.

I had long thought that writing mysteries would make a great semi-retirement career, something I’d do in my late 50s and 60s, when the kids were finally out of college, when the mortgage was paid off, and when the grind of working for a daily newspaper finally became too much for me. So I had started dabbling with writing fiction in my mid-20s.

I completed my first manuscript when I was 30 (no, you’ll never see it). By that point, I was in the groove of writing during evenings and weekends. So I started another novel.

My career had taken me over to the news side at The Star-Ledger by that point and I was really diving into the urban world of Newark, writing about all the issues and events that shaped the city. I was covering crime. I was understanding poverty in ways I never had before. I was becoming immersed in Newark’s attempts to reinvent itself and in all the barriers that kept getting in the way.

So it seemed natural to write about an investigative reporter who was doing the same thing. (Besides, being as I had a very demanding job, I didn’t have time to do extensive research. “Write what you know” was sort of a necessity for me.) I named my protagonist Carter Ross, because it was the whitest, WASPiest-sounding name I could think of. And I sent him plunging into Newark’s neighborhoods and let him bumble his way through them, just like I was doing.

The first Carter Ross manuscript--which you now know as Faces of the Gone--sold to St. Martin’s Press on July 8, 2008. And 22 days later, there I was, listening to the Star-Ledger’s publisher utter his dire message about our future, realizing full well where it was going to lead me.

(Left) The front page of today’s Newark Star-Ledger.

Under the contract I had just signed with St. Martin’s, the second Carter Ross book--you now know it as Eyes of the Innocent--was due in January. So I had to jam it out pretty quickly, while I was still working full-time.

By the time I started work on book number three, The Girl Next Door, a lot in my life had changed. My family and I had moved to Virginia, where my wife had gotten a job. I was no longer making daily trips into the newsroom. I no longer identified myself as a journalist when I met people. I was now a full-time novelist.

But my brain was still stuck on July 30, 2008, that day when everything started to become so different. And I think maybe I was still trying to process all that had changed--to the point where maybe I couldn’t have written anything else but a book in which one of the central characters was a newspaper in trouble.

So I started with the idea of a contentious negotiation between that newspaper and one of its labor unions. (I invented the union in question, calling it the IFIW--International Federation of Information Workers--because I was afraid that if I used the Teamsters and they didn’t like what I wrote, there could be repercussions. Jimmy Hoffa has been dead a long, long time, but if living in New Jersey for 10 years taught me nothing else, it’s that you still don’t want to mess with the Teamsters).

Then I asked myself: who might get caught in the middle of such a negotiation? Someone who was involved but, basically, an innocent? Someone whose death might catch Carter Ross’ interest?

I came up with the idea of a paper deliverer, figuring Carter would likely have a soft spot for someone like that; and, because you can’t support yourself delivering newspapers alone, I made her a waitress, too. She was hard-working, conscientious, devoted to her family and her church. She was pretty, but not too pretty.

She was basically the girl next door.

The story takes on a life of its own at that point. And, no, Carter doesn’t end up taking a buyout at the end. He’s still got a long career ahead of him, writing all the stories I never quite got around to doing myself. I could never let him leave the newsroom we’ve created together.

I’d miss it too much.

* * *

For more from Brad Parks, sign up for his newsletter here, like him on Facebook here, or follow @Brad_Parks on Twitter.

READ MORE: “Dumb Answers to Stupid Questions: Brad Parks Edition,” by Gar Anthony Haywood (Murderati).

Thursday Briefing

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 19:01:00 +0000

• The second season of Sherlock, BBC One’s spirited version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes adventures, won’t debut on PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery! series in the States until May 6. But Omnimystery News already has a preview video of what we can expect from the three new episodes to be offered.

• Needle Magazine’s first new issue of 2012 is now available. Included in its contents are works by Matthew C. Funk, Jen Conley, Loren Eaton, B.V. Lawson, Robert Swartwood, and Chris La Tray.

• I find it heartbreaking to read that Encyclopaedia Britannica has decided to cease print publication after 244 years, and become an online resource instead. Growing up, my brother and I had the World Book encyclopedia at home, but our grandparents had a set of the Britannica available at their house. We were never lacking in access to knowledge. It was a constant inspiration, to see all of those books lined up, ready to teach us about life and the world. I’d frequently just pull down a volume at random and read through it, seeing what I might learn in the process. It’s not the same, looking for information--usually not fact-checked and often filled with mere opinions--on the Web. Tomorrow’s children are certain to miss something valuable with the disappearance of the printed Britannica.

• For Criminal Element, Rachel Hyland has composed a pleasant tribute to Enid Blyton’s various mystery-fiction series for children. “I always liked the Adventurous Four, didn’t mind the Secret Seven, had a mild crush on Fatty from the Five Find-Outers and wished fervently to be either circus folk like Barney or in hiding like the Secret kids,” she writes. “But above all of these--most of which deserve to be discussed at greater length in these pages, and doubtless will be at some future date--I was eternally, hopelessly devoted to Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timothy the Dog; aka, The Famous Five.” You can enjoy the entirety of Hyland’s piece here.

• And being a mustache-wearer myself, I found this post on the subject in Yvette Banek’s blog altogether entertaining.

Faye Calls in the Cops

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 02:13:00 +0000

On behalf of Kirkus Reviews, I had the good fortune not long ago to interview Lyndsay Faye, author of the propulsive new historical mystery, The Gods of Gotham (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam).

If you haven’t yet heard about it, this novel is set in New York City in 1845 and follows the escapades of Timothy Wilde, a young bartender who--following a devastating downtown fire that causes his disfigurement--signs on with the city’s embryonic police force, a company of “copper stars” (as those early patrolmen were known) who are still trying to figure out the best means to curb Manhattan’s escalating crime rate. After literally running into a 10-year-old girl covered with blood, Wilde sets out--with his elder brother’s help (and sometimes his hindrance)--to determine where she’s come from, what horrors she’s witnessed, and whether her story about a field of corpses secreted in a woodland north of 23rd Street can possibly be true.

In addition to discussing that book’s plot, I talked with Faye (the pen name used by New York resident Lyndsay Farber Lehner) about her first novel, a Sherlock Holmes tale called Dust and Shadow (2009), as well as anti-Irish violence of the 1840s, Wilde’s complicated personal relationships, and her use in Gotham of “flash talk,” or the arcane lexicon spoken by thieves and other street toughs.

You’ll find my Kirkus interview here.

* * *

Not being somebody who finds it easy to stop asking questions of authors, I came away from my interview with Faye having many more words available than I could squeeze into the Kirkus piece. Therefore, I am posting the remainder of our conversation below.

J. Kingston Pierce: You were trained as a stage actress. How do you think that training has helped you as an author?

Lyndsay Faye: I’ve found that stage training helps immensely, particularly with the sort of books I want to write. Actors are taught to closely observe other people, they’re taught how to mimic them, and in addition I’ve done productions using everything from a Northern Irish accent to rapid-fire Nashville to tony Brit.

I don’t always get dialect right, but it infuriates me when I get it wrong, and I think that’s good for the overall product. Language and personalized vocabularies are enormously important to me, so I’m lucky to have been taught how to capture them.

JKP: It’s often noted that you are “a true New Yorker,” in the sense that you were born elsewhere. So where were you born? And did you move to Manhattan simply to advance your acting career?

LF: I was born in San Jose, California, grew up in southwest Washington state, and then moved back to the Bay Area. One day my husband and I (he’s a painter) looked at each other and realized that we had extremely tolerable routines, with wonderful friends and idyllic weather, and microbrews and fried artichokes on the coast every weekend, and that we could spend the rest of our lives that way, or we could challenge ourselves. We’re both quite affected by the pace of where we live, and we thought, How much more could we accomplish if we moved to New York? We wanted to dare ourselves to do better.

JKP: Have you pretty much put your acting career on hold now, in favor of composing more books?

LF: I’m often asked this question, and always say I’d prefer to be good at one thing than bad at two things. Acting careers require total dedication--writing, for me, is the same. If there were two of me, I’d still be singing Sondheim and touring Shakespeare. It breaks my heart a little that there aren’t. But I’m still in the union [Actor’s Equity]. I can’t bear to think of giving that up, since I worked so hard for it.

JKP: What sort of things did you learn by writing Dust and Shadow that you applied when putting this second novel together?

LF: I learned that I am capable of completing an entire novel, a lesson that sounds obvious but isn’t to be underestimated. Research--into the history, the language, the culture--is essential but also a real joy. If you’re wondering whether that sentence is necessary, cut it at once. Do the most terrible things to your protagonists you can think of, then do worse things.

JKP: I hadn’t realized, until after I finished reading The Gods of Gotham, that the downtown fire you describe actually happened. How did it affect New York at the time, and did it convince the city to change its fire-prevention or -suppression tactics?

LF: The fire of 1845 caused around $6 million in property damage, according to the Herald, and destroyed 300 buildings. A huge swath of downtown was decimated. But I’ve seen nothing to indicate that the blaze changed the system of volunteer firefighting. The fire was a series of unfortunate coincidences--a whale-oil storehouse being so near to a brandy and gunpowder supplier, for example. The firemen did their best, but they were working against an extraordinary combination of poor circumstances.

JKP: Manhattan was a vastly different place in 1845, still very undeveloped, still rampant with wild pigs and thick with forests if you went far enough north. Living there now, is it hard to imagine the city as it was during James K. Polk’s presidency? And I seem to remember reading somewhere that you are a big fan of the mammoth non-fiction book Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace. How helpful was that work, and others, in transporting you back through time?

LF: I didn’t find imagining Manhattan with woodlands intact and chickens roaming the streets difficult per se--it was exhilarating. Countless diaries and newspaper accounts from the period have survived, so locating original sources about what life was like in mid-century was shockingly easy. In addition, New York had just decided that it was the center of the American universe, and that lurid travelogues should be widely published about it. Gaslight-and-shadow-themed accounts of the “real” city, the poverty-blighted and vice-infested underbelly, were very popular; I studied those voraciously.

I read Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 from page one right up until it hit the 1850s; it was hugely helpful, and I’m in Wallace and Burrow’s debt. Five Points, by Tyler Anbinder, was also a fantastic source of information, as was City of Eros, by Timothy Gilfoyle.

JKP: Could you imagine yourself living in New York in 1845? How would your life have been different?

LF: If I lived in 1845, I’d suffer from an extreme paucity of career options. Actresses were not necessarily the cream of society, though they were often celebrated, and while a few women were successful published authors, they were much more restricted as to style and content. I’d like to think that I’d have been one of the adventuresses, but possibly that’s wishful thinking and I would be running a boardinghouse or married to a businessman who’d no further expectations of me. One of the aspects of my research that shocked me was how very close to the edge women lived, economically speaking--one disaster could easily ruin your life.

JKP: Do you read other novels set in old New York? Can you recommend some titles to readers interested in such works?

LF: I’ve been a Caleb Carr fan for quite some time, and Stephanie Pintoff and Jed Rubenfeld also write great crime novels about old New York. Doubtless there are countless others, but my reading taste is quite omnivorous.

JKP: The Gods of Gotham has much to do with the creation of the New York City Police Department. What circumstances finally led to that force’s founding, and what had the city done previously to keep down or solve its many crimes?

LF: The ruling political parties had been arguing about the formation of a police force for years, because the system in place simply did not work. A city of 400,000 people requires more than a night watch and a semi-professional group of constables. When crime reached the point that the watchmen (who were laborers expected to stay alert through the night for an extra pittance) were more of a joke than a law-keeping force, a Democratic majority in the Common Council finally managed to form an official police department. No single incident caused the NYPD to be founded, but the city was by that time in dire need of better law enforcement.

JKP: In your novel, you describe widespread distrust of the NYPD at its inception. Why, if the force was designed to quash crime, were even respectable city dwellers suspicious of its value? At what point in the past did the NYPD finally find favor with the general populace?

LF: Well, the NYPD’s detractors were entirely correct, after all--they feared that the police force would be inextricably tied to politics, and supposed that having no officers would be better than having corrupt ones. I don’t mean to suggest that good men didn’t populate the copper star force from day one, but appointments were always made based on cronyism and political affiliation. It’s important to recall that the police were in Tammany pockets for decades, which was one of the things its opponents had been so concerned about--and they were right. The other people loudly declaiming against a “standing army” when the star police formed were the criminals. If you were making a tidy profit by illicit means, it was a good idea to couch your anti-police arguments in the terminology of freedom and patriotism.

As to when the NYPD found favor with the general populace, that still depends on who you’re talking to. One hundred percent of my personal interactions with the NYPD have been positive--they’re brave, intelligent, resourceful people who deeply care about the community. But if you ask someone who lived in the Bronx in the 1970s, or even an Occupy Wall Street protestor, you might get a different answer.

JKP: If I’m not mistaken, only one real-life personage figures large in this new novel: George Washington Matsell. Who was he, and how did The Gods of Gotham benefit from your including him in its plot line?

LF: Justice Matsell was the first chief of police, and he was a remarkably modern figure--he studied gang violence, family planning, tenement life, very unsavory topics at the time. The dictionary he wrote in order to teach his copper stars criminal argot is a remarkable cultural record, and one that enormously influenced the writing of Gotham. I don’t care to solve the problem of anachronism in historical fiction by using safe, bland words--thanks to Matsell, I didn’t have to.

The only other historical figure in the novel is young Bill Poole, to whom Timothy takes considerable objection. He would grow up to be better known as Bill the Butcher.

JKP: Your books so far have been notable for their rich atmospherics. How do you get the balance right between larding on period details and moving the story forward at a captivating clip?

LF: It’s important as an author of historical fiction to include only--and I mean only in a ruthless, hardline sense--those period details that your narrator actually cares about. Too often you come across fictional scenes in which protagonists are hurtling across bridges in hot pursuit and then pausing to tell you the history of the architecture.

This is another aspect of storytelling in which actor training in incredibly helpful--if it isn’t in character for my narrator to notice something, I don’t note it. Atmospherics are all well and good, but they have to mean something. There is nothing more irritating than reading a factoid the author included simply so that you’d be aware he or she conducted extensive research. If you can confine the details to those your protagonists care about, issues of pacing won’t plague you nearly as much. Timothy is a close observer who takes considerable ironic pleasure from noting what’s screwed up about his city, like many New Yorkers, so with him I’m able to incorporate a wealth of detail because he’s quite civic-minded.

JKP: Finally, I understand that you’re a serious fan of microbrew beers. You and your husband, Gabriel Lehner, even write a blog--Beer Meets Food--about cuisine and drink combinations. How did this interest come about, and how big a part does it play in your life? Do you have any favorite beers that you think the rest of us should sample?

LF: Yes, by all means, let’s talk about beer! You can’t grow up in the Pacific Northwest and not develop a serious crush on that beverage--my husband’s family even brew their own. It’s the geekiest beer culture outside of Belgium.

Everything from Lagunitas Brewing Company is delicious, but one of my favorites is their New Dogtown Pale; it’s based on a recipe they did for a Frank Zappa-themed series of 22-ouncers that was called Kill Ugly Radio, and they ended up turning it into their standard 12-ounce pale ale. Fantastic. If you’ve never had Pliny the Elder, which is an imperial IPA from Russian River Brewing Company, I’m deeply sorry. And if you’re into stouts, you desperately need The Abyss, an imperial from Deschutes Brewery. It’s out of this world.

Cameron Captures an Owl

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 21:41:00 +0000

Portland, Oregon, author Bill Cameron has won the 2012 Spotted Owl Award for his novel County Line (Tyrus Books). The Spotted Owl is given out annually by the Portland-based fan organization Friends of Mystery to what its members believe was the foremost Pacific Northwest crime novel published during the previous year.

Also nominated for this year’s prize were Heather Sharfeddin (Damaged Goods), Urban Waite (The Terror of Living), Chelsea Cain (The Night Season), Robert Dugoni (Murder One), Dana Stabenow (Though Not Dead), Aaron Elkins (The Worst Thing), Mike Lawson (House Divided), Kate Wilhelm (Heaven Is High), and Gary McKinney (Darkness Bids the Dead Goodbye).

Cameron should certainly be happy today. But there’s good news as well for his fellow Portlander, Johnny Shaw. The Friends of Mystery will give Shaw a special Stan Johnson Outstanding Debut Mystery Award for his 2011 novel, Dove Season. (Stan Johnson [1920-2011] was one of the founding members of the Friends organization.)

Congratulations to both authors.

Selleck and the Spooks

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:32:00 +0000

Double O Section brings the rather surprising news that Henstooth Video, “an obscure company that specializes in obscure movies,” will finally release a DVD edition of the 1984 adventure-espionage movie Lassiter, which starred Tom Selleck as a gentleman jewel thief. As Wikipedia notes, the film was “made to cash in on Selleck’s popularity as the character Thomas Magnum in the show Magnum, P.I. but failed to ignite the box-office on its release.”

Double O’s Tanner offers a bit of the film’s story line:

In Lassiter, Selleck plays the suave titular cat burglar, operating in 1930s London. When British and American Intelligence get wind of a major diamond shipment moving through the German embassy, the spooks force Lassiter to pull another job--for them, It Takes a Thief-style. As he plots the heist, he finds himself between two beautiful women: his sweet, long-suffering girlfriend, played by former Bond Girl Jane Seymour, and sexy femme fatale Lauren Hutton. Persuaders! composer Ken Thorne provides the jazz-heavy, period-appropriate soundtrack. ... It’s a really fun movie, and for my money Selleck’s best theatrical effort.

Although audiences didn’t line up around the block to watch Lassiter, I went to the see it. Twice in one day, in fact.

I’d just moved to Detroit, Michigan, in 1984 to take a magazine job that turned out to be an extremely bad idea. I was, for all intends and purposes, living at a hotel in downtown’s Renaissance Center. That commercial complex included pretty much everything one could want: restaurants, clothing stores, sundry shops, and even a movie theater. With nothing else to do one weekend, I took the elevator down to sample the big-screen fare. Lassiter had recently opened, so I bought a ticket. How bad could it be, I figured.

Well, I enjoyed the picture so much, I decided to stay in my theater seat for a second showing. I wasn’t a huge Magnum fan, but Lassiter’s plot was playful and involved enough to hold my attention, and I loved the period setting. I also fell in love with Jane Seymour, who was only 33 years old when Lassiter was filmed. She had the role of a hard-working but mischievous dancer, fond of Selleck’s Nick Lassiter despite his unpredictable ways.

You can watch a trailer for the movie here.

I don’t think I’ve seen Lassiter once since departing Detroit. Could I be overdue for another viewing? The DVD release is set for April 24.

Prizes in Your Future

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 18:25:00 +0000

Now that it has finished its contest to choose the best crime-fiction e-book of 2011 (Ray Banks triumphed over Patti Abbott in the concluding round), Spinetingler Magazine has turned its attention back to its larger selection of annual commendations.

Non-fiction editor Brian Lindenmuth reported earlier today that nominees for the 2012 Spinetingler Awards will be announced on Friday, March 30. Readers will then be invited to vote for their favorite contenders in each category throughout April, with the winners of that polling to be declared on Tuesday, May 1.

Meanwhile, it looks as if the page on which you can register additional candidates for nine Spinetingler Awards remains open.

Pierce’s Picks: “An American Spy”

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 00:45:00 +0000

A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.

An American Spy, by Olen Steinhauer (Minotaur):
Steinhauer’s third Milo Weaver novel (after The Tourist and The Nearest Exit) finds the reluctant espionage operative recovering from nearly mortal wounds and the eradication of the clandestine company for which he worked--the CIA’s fictional, and top secret, Department of Tourism. Weaver wants nothing more than to return to civilian life and reconnect with his wife and daughter. But then his boss, Tourism director Alan Drummond, disappears and the surmise is made that he’s gone in search of revenge against Xin Zhu, the Chinese spymaster behind the department’s destruction. Milo is recruited to find Drummond and stop him from perpetrating any international disasters. The trick is, Xin Zhu also has a plan for Milo: to turn his loyalties. Caught between adversaries, and meanwhile negotiating the dangers of dealing with a secretive UN agency run by his father, Milo puts not just his own life, but the lives of his family, at risk. Steinhauer’s plot is slow at times; yet his story is brilliantly twisted and filled with captivating personalities, and it makes clear that the spy-fiction genre doesn’t lack for intrigue, even two decades after the Cold War ended.

* * *

This is going to be a busy week as far as book releases go. In addition to An American Spy, the following crime/thriller works will debut:

• Death at the Jesus Hospital, by David Dickinson (Soho Constable)
• The Girl Next Door, by Brad Parks (Minotaur)
• The Gods of Gotham, by Lyndsay Faye (Amy Einhorn/Putnam)
• Helsinki White, by James Thompson (Putnam)
• Phantom, by Jo Nesbø (Harvill Secker)
• Rizzo’s Daughter, by Lou Manfredo (Minotaur)
• Sail of Stone, by Åke Edwardson (Simon & Schuster)
• The Voice of the Spirits, by Xavier-Marie Bonnot (MacLehose Press)

Who’s the Wicked One Now?

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 21:41:00 +0000

Kansas farm girl Dorothy Gale never looked so bad-ass!

It’s All Pretty Black and White

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:53:00 +0000

Round 1 of blogger Jen Forbus’ “Heroes and Villains” bracketed tourney has finally kicked off, with 32 nominees in each category. (The full, original list of contenders is here). Simply click here to participate. You’ll be asked to vote on heroes first. Then, after pressing the “Next” button at the bottom of that entry form, you will move on to the villains selection.

“Voting will be open through Friday,” says Forbus. “The first week’s winners will be announced on Saturday, March 17th.”

Just a Couple of Programming Notes

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 00:21:00 +0000

Fairly Legal, the spirited USA Network show starring Sarah Shahi as San Francisco lawyer-turned-mediator Kate Reed, will begin its second season this coming Friday night, March 16, at 9 p.m. ET/PT. And it appears the original cast will be joined by Australian actor Ryan Johnson playing a bottom line-driven attorney, Ben Grogan, who’s hired into the Reed family firm and looks destined to create sparks with the captivating Ms. Shahi’s protagonist--sparks that USA hopes will provoke a ratings boost for this series.

The video clip above previews Fairly Legal’s new season.

And then following Fairly Legal, at 10 p.m. and also on USA, will be the fifth--and evidently the final--season premiere of In Plain Sight, starring Mary McCormack as a deputy United States Marshal attached to the Federal Witness Protection Program.

It might be worth sticking around home again on Friday nights.

The Pulpy Saga of Dan J. Marlowe

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 23:46:00 +0000

Author and Los Angeles Review of Books contributor Charles Kelly offers a quite fascinating look back at the career of frequently overlooked author Dan J. Marlowe. Just the opening paragraphs should convince you to devour Kelly’s piece:

Hollywood is for the young and tough, a place where you must be beautiful simply to survive, let alone prosper. God help you if you’re homely, aging, and physically beaten. Double that if you’ve lost the creative skills you’ve counted on, and forgotten much of your life and all the people you’ve known. Double that again if you’re a writer. Let’s say it’s 1978 and you are Dan J. Marlowe, once one of the hottest suspense novelists of your day, author of such hard-boiled Fawcett Gold Medal paperbacks as The Name of the Game is Death, The Vengeance Man, Never Live Twice, and the Operation books, featuring a bank robber turned international agent. It’s 1978, yes, and the market for that kind of book has evaporated. You’re 64 years old, suffering from amnesia, glaucoma, and the consequences of a stroke. It’s painful for you even to lift your hands high enough to type.

Though you’re chubby and unathletic and wear dark, horn-rimmed glasses, in the past you’ve been hell with the ladies. Now those ladies are ghosts to you. You’ve spent more than 15 years living in Harbor Beach, Michigan, a picturesque, isolated town on the shore of Lake Huron. You made a good living, served on the city council, partied with the Rotary Club. And you found time to indulge in your own secret sexual quirkiness. Now you’re broke and short of options. So you’re moving to the City of Fallen Angels to share an apartment with a former bank robber. To try to put your writing life back together, maybe even get movies made from your books.

You’re a Hollywood Untouchable because you’re a lousy money-maker, and you’ll stay that way. People hear your name and confuse you with Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s iconic detective, or with your mystery-writing contemporary, Stephen Marlowe. You’re the wrong Marlowe, in the wrong time, the wrong place. So what are the chances you’ll be remembered with fondness? What are the odds that nearly four decades later, megastar horror writer Stephen King will honor your talent by dedicating a novel to you? Well, you’ve always been a gambler--a professional one for seven years. You’ve played long shots and won. Maybe you’ll do it again.

Convinced? Then go off to read the whole article here.

Gone Too Soon

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 03:06:00 +0000

In case you aren’t yet aware of it, the Web is in the midst of a two-day blogathon celebrating actors, singers, and other performers who departed the limelight--or life itself--before age 50.

This entertaining venture has been organized by Jessica Pickens of the blog Comet Over Hollywood. Among the celebs being honored are Billie Holiday, Conrad Veidt, Carmen Miranda, Fattie Arbuckle, Alan Ladd, Carole Lombard, and Montgomery Clift.

Click here for a list of participating bloggers and their subjects.

Diagnosis: Marriage

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 02:41:00 +0000

Congratulations to actor Dick Van Dyke, newly wed at age 86.

Listening to James Ellroy

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 17:24:00 +0000

(Editor’s note: Steven Powell is a British scholar and the co-editor of The Venetian Vase, a crime-fiction blog. I became acquainted with him when he invited me to contribute to an encyclopedic work called 100 American Crime Writers [due out from Palgrave this coming summer]. Powell later added to The Rap Sheet’s “Books You Have to Read” series with a piece about Theodora Keogh’s 1962 novel, The Other Girl. And when, earlier this year, the University Press of Mississippi published Powell’s non-fiction work Conversations with James Ellroy, I asked that he compose a post for this page about the challenges and rewards involved in producing that interview-focused volume. His article appears below.)

My first conversation with James Ellroy was in June 2008. I’d written to him, through his publisher, explaining that I had recently begun studying for a Ph.D. on his life and work at the University of Liverpool. I wanted to ask him a few specific questions about The Big Nowhere (1988), an outstanding novel which rivals his more well-known masterpiece, The Black Dahlia (1987), as his greatest work.

I did not expect a prompt response for two reasons: I thought Ellroy must be flooded with correspondence from fans (and one or two lunatics), and he has such a prodigious output that I was sure he was too busy to spend much time with such requests.

To my surprise, in a short interval I received an e-mail reply from Ellroy, through his assistant, answering my questions and also giving me his phone number and suggesting that I call him if I had anything further to ask. This led to three telephone interviews in which Ellroy proved to be at turns generous, courteous, combative, outrageously funny, and thrillingly insightful on a whole range of subjects--everything from his life and career to his crime-fiction influences and his views on politics and religion, delivered sometimes with the canine-like howling which has become a trademark of his “Demon Dog of American crime fiction” persona.

Beyond their being invaluable to my research, I wanted those interviews to be shared, because I found them both interesting on a personal level and academically engaging. After discussing the matter with my thesis supervisor, professor David Seed, we both agreed that the best way for the interviews to be published would be as part of the University Press of Mississippi’s Literary Conversations Series. That series offers interviews with the most prominent figures in 20th- and 21st-century literature, each volume focusing on a single author and comprising conversations conducted over the full breadth of his or her life and career. More than 100 volumes have been produced so far on figures including Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Anaïs Nin, Elizabeth Bishop, Joyce Carol Oates, Graham Greene, and Walter Mosley. I felt it would be a privilege to edit Conversations with James Ellroy as part of that series.

After making a pilgrimage to the James Ellroy archive at the Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina, and interviewing Ellroy in person at his Los Angeles apartment, I decided it was time to pitch the book. I contacted the series editor, Peggy Whitman Prenshaw, and through her Walter Biggins at UMiss Press, and after some helpful discussion, we agreed to go ahead and make Conversations with James Ellroy the best book it could possibly be. UMiss Press armed me with a modest budget for buying copyrights, and I was ready to roll.

As editor of this volume, I had two main tasks: to secure the copyrights of the interviews to be included, and secondly, to write a chronology of the key events of Ellroy’s life. Writing that chronology entailed carefully reading through primary and secondary sources on the author, a task made more difficult by the sources’ conflicting dates of events. However, the arduous process unearthed some research gems. I only discovered that Ellroy’s preferred title for his first novel, Brown’s Requiem (1981), was Concerto for Orchestra after I visited the Ellroy archive in South Carolina. Nor was I aware that Ellroy had planned to make Frederick Underhill, the lead protagonist of his second novel, Clandestine (1982), a character in 1992’s White Jazz (presumably filling the role that went instead to Dave “The Enforcer” Klein) until I listened to Ellroy’s 1987 radio interview with Book Beat host Don Swaim, which appears in print for the first time in Conversations with James Ellroy.

The author recalls the circumstances of his mother’s death, in 1958, for the documentary James Ellroy: American Dog.

As for the task of selecting the interviews to include in this book, I had already begun creating an inventory of the hundreds of interviews Ellroy has given when I started work on my thesis. My challenge was to whittle that list down to the most important examples I could fit into a book of roughly 80,000 to 85,000 words. Included would be exchanges that brought out the key themes of Ellroy’s life--the unsolved murder of his mother, his fascination with the 1947 Black Dahlia case, his Demon Dog persona, his addictions and criminal life, his steady rise to prominence as a writer, and his revisionist take on Los Angeles and American history. There are some interviews which Ellroy fans and researchers would recognize as indispensable to a study of his life or work, such as his 1984 conversation with Duane Tucker for Armchair Detective (which begins the volume), his 1995 interview with Paul Duncan titled “James Ellroy: Barking,” and his two interviews with Craig McDonald: “The Tremor of Intent” and “To Live and Die in L.A.”

Naturally, there were several excellent interviews which couldn’t be included due to space constraints, and it was a tough call having to choose some at the expense of others. However, as the interviews are arranged chronologically, my general aim was for each of them to tell a part of Ellroy’s life story. The unsolved, 1958 murder of his mother, which has haunted him throughout his life, is explored in some detail in the volume, but there are other less well-known incidents which the author discusses, in some cases as they were happening. Ellroy had a nervous breakdown during the grueling publicity for The Cold Six Thousand (2001). In reading Ellroy’s interview with Craig McDonald conducted around that time, it is apparent the author is struggling with his own image and success. As Ellroy tells McDonald, “I’m tired of myself, if you want to know the truth.” Ellroy’s sometimes-turbulent personal life, as the interviews attest, informs the narratives of his novels and even changes his writing plans.

I had a nervous breakdown. I was on a book tour. My marriage went to shit. I fell in love with a woman in San Francisco. A left-wing woman named Joan. Red Goddess Joan. It went bad. Big time. Fucking bad. I got the fuck out of L.A. Then I met a married, pregnant woman …

The breakdown of his second marriage and his affair with the enigmatic “Red Goddess Joan” caused him to radically revise his latest novel, Blood’s a Rover (2009), which forms the subject of his interview with fellow crime writer David Peace that closes the anthology. However, with the news that Ellroy is planning to write a second “L.A. Quartet,” and the recent release of the Ellroy-scripted movie Rampart, there are still more chapters to come in the life and story of one of the most remarkable figures in American crime fiction. For James Ellroy, the conversation continues.

READ MORE: “James Ellroy on Writing About His Mother’s Murder and Why His Novels Will Always Shock,” by Rob Waugh (The Daily Mail).

Bullet Points: Abundance of Riches Edition

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 22:22:00 +0000

• Until today, I’d forgotten about the news--reported last October--that Warner Bros. and producer Joel Silver had bought the film rights to The Galton Case, Ross Macdonald’s 1959 turning-point novel starring Los Angeles private eye Lew Archer. But now comes word that controversial journalist-turned-screenwriter Peter Landesman has been hired to adapt Macdonald’s story for the big screen. (Hat tip to Craig Pittman.)

• Yesterday marked 25 years since the theatrical opening of Angel Heart, director Alan Parker’s film adaptation of the 1978 horror-detective novel Falling Angel, by William Hjortsberg. Critic Edward Copeland has an excellent anniversary tribute here.

• How did I miss this news? Steve Hamilton (Die a Stranger) has been chosen as the new president of the Private Eye Writers of America, while O’Neil De Noux (New Orleans Confidential) is the organization’s latest vice president. Congratulations to both men!

• I also didn’t mention that the Winter 2012 edition of Plots with Guns is currently available online. Contributors this time include Eric J. Bandel, Taylor Brown, Nick Ripatrazone, and Craig Renfroe.

• I’ve been wondering what became of author J. Robert Janes, who wrote a dozen World War II-era mysteries featuring Sûreté detective Jean-Louis St-Cyr and his unlikely partner, Gestapo Oberdetektiv Hermann Kohler. His last installment of that series was Flykiller, which I wrote about in the old Rap Sheet newsletter back in 2002. But just today I stumbled across a new note on his Web site that reads:

In December 2011, I signed two contracts with The Mysterious Press in New York. They will publish the complete St-Cyr and Kohler series, all 12 of them, in e-book form and print-on-demand, releasing one a month throughout 2012. They will also publish a new mystery, the 13th in the series, Bellringer, so please watch for these.

So far, there’s no mention of Janes’ work on the Mysterious Press Web site, but I’m looking forward especially to reading Bellringer. St-Cyr and Kohler have been out of the limelight for too long.

• When you get a chance, check out Christopher Lyons’ long and thoughtful piece on the Violent World of Parker site. Titled “The Man Who Doesn’t Wink,” it’s apparently the first installment of a two-part essay about the complex emotional and moral qualities of Donald E. Westlake’s professional-thief series protagonist.

• Blogger Rob Mallows is one lucky son of a gun.

• You knew this was coming sometime: “an entire crime book composed of 140-character tweets.” It’s called Executive Severance and was written (tweeted?) by Robert K. Blechman. Crime Fiction Lover has an excerpt. A short one, of course.

• Efforts continue to save Undershaw, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s onetime home in Surrey. D.E. Meredith provides an update.

• Say good-bye to Denver’s Book Fair.

• I’ve never read The Notting Hill Mystery, by Charles Felix (aka Charles Warren Adams). But judging from J.F. “John” Norris’ comments in Pretty Sinister Books, I should spare no speed in tracking down a copy of that 1863 work. He describes it as “an excellent Victorian sensation novel of crime and the supernatural that has been called by genre historian and crime writer Julian Symons ‘the first detective novel.’” The British Library offers a new reprint edition, which Norris says “includes the original illustrations.”

• Oh, well, back to the idea mill. “Scarcely a month after CBS ordered a pilot for a crime drama titled Quean, Warner Bros. has shut down production,” reports Omnimystery News. “The series premise was described as a tattooed female computer hacker, who helps the Oakland (Calif.) police solve crimes. If the character sounds familiar, it should: it is a clone of Lisbeth Salander in ‘The Millennium Trilogy’ by Stieg Larsson. Apparently Sony Pictures, which holds the U.S. rights to the adaptations of Larsson’s books, took exception to the description and threatened to take legal action.”

• Not surprisingly, the tattooed Ms. Salander appears on Flavorwire’s list of “10 of the Most Powerful Female Characters in Literature.”

• Matthew Pearl submits his new historical mystery, The Technologists, to Marshal Zeringue’s Page 69 Test. Results are here.

• Good news for Robert Wilson fans: Sky Atlantic HD has begun production, in Seville, Spain, on the first TV film based on Wilson’s four Javier Falcón novels (which include The Blind Man of Seville, one of January Magazine’s favorite books of 2003). Meanwhile, CrimeFicReader (aka Rhian Davies) has posted info about Wilson’s next novel, Capital Punishment, due out in January 2013.

• This new book about actor Henry Darrow might be just the thing for fans of the 1974-1976 ABC-TV series Harry O. Darrow co-starred as San Diego Police Lieutenant Manny Quinlan, the first police contact for gumshoe Harry Orwell (played by David Janssen).

• Who will perform the title song for the 23rd James Bond motion picture, Skyfall, due out in October? Can we really expect a collaboration between Queen and Lady Gaga?

• Eighty-three-year-old actor James Hong, who--in his long career on the big and small screens--played a cook on Switch, an eye manufacturer in Blade Runner, a low-rent private eye in Black Widow, and was often seen on the 1970s TV series Kung Fu, will be celebrated during an April 9-14 blogathon spearheaded by the Lost Video Archive. A schedule of posts is available here.

• Elmore Leonard has his 10 rules of writing. But it seems George Orwell had six rules of his own to share with active and hopeful wordsmiths. Neither, of course, is perfect.

• The publication date of The Kings of Cool, Don Winslow’s prequel to his 2010 novel, Savages, has been moved up to June 26.

• NPR gives The Singing Detective some anniversary love.

• And far be it from me to suggest that BBC America’s forthcoming paranormal drama, The Dead Beat--about “two cops, one dead and one alive, [who] become a reluctant team, working from leads in the world of the dead to track down killers in the world of the living”--isn’t exactly a new idea. But doesn’t that description make it sound an awful lot like the 1969-1970 British series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)? Hey, I’m just saying ...

Up for the Challenge?

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 19:03:00 +0000

Time is running out for you to take a role in nominating contenders for the 2012 Spinetingler Awards. Spinetingler Magazine’s Brian Lindenmuth promised early on that he’d let this survey run until “mid-March,” and then announce the final list of nominees on Saturday, March 31. Beginning on April 1, readers will be invited to cast votes online for their favorite nominees.

Click here to register your choices in nine categories:

• Best New Voice (authors with 1-3 books published)
• Best Rising Star (authors with 4-8 books published)
• Best Legends Books (from authors with 9+ books published)
• Best Single-Author Short Story Collection
• Best Multi-Author Short Story Anthology
• Best Crime Comics or Graphic Novels
• Best Opening Line
• Best Short Story
• Best Book Cover

Meanwhile, I see that Spinetingler is about halfway through a bracketed challenge to determine the best crime-fiction e-book of 2011. The tourney is now do to eight choices, with two more rounds of public voting to go. Visit this page to participate.

Critical Judgment

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:56:00 +0000

As has been noted elsewhere, The Strand Magazine today announced its nominees for the 2011 Strand Magazine Critics Awards. They are:

Best First Novel:
• The Hypnotist, by Lars Kepler (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Sister, by Rosamund Lupton (Crown)
• Before I Go to Sleep, by S.J. Watson (Harper)
• The Boy in the Suitcase, by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis (Soho)
• The Poison Tree, by Erin Kelly (Pamela Dorman Books)

Best Novel
• The Affair, by Lee Child (Delacorte Press)
• The Drop, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown and Company)
• Buried Secrets, by Joseph Finder (St. Martin’s Press)
• Death Comes to Pemberley, by P.D. James (Knopf)
• The Cut, by George Pelecanos (Reagan Arthur Books)

In addition, reads a press release, “Joseph Wambaugh and John Sandford will be given The Strand’s Lifetime Achievement award for excellence in crime and thriller writing. Wambaugh has achieved worldwide fame for bestselling novels such as The New Centurions (1971) [and The] Blue Knight (1972), and is credited with transforming the police-drama genre into serious literature. John Sandford, with scores of novels in the space of nearly a quarter of a century, ... stands out as one of the most successful thriller writers in the world. His novels have been translated into more than thirty languages and consistently hit the bestseller’s lists.”

All of the winners will be declared, and their commendations presented, during an invitation-only cocktail party to be hosted by The Strand on July 11, 2012, in New York City.

“Storytelling Was Meant to Be My Life”

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 20:17:00 +0000

In case you haven’t spotted it yet, my column today on the Kirkus Reviews Web site is devoted to an interview with Brad Parks, whose three novels featuring New Jersey investigative reporter Carter Ross--including his new The Girl Next Door--have brought him some prestigious commendations. Not to mention the loyalty of readers who appreciate his storytelling mix of homicide and humor.

Over the course of our exchange, the 30-something Parks talks about his interest in writing The Girl Next Door, protagonist Ross’ value as a story narrator, and his own journalism background. Especially entertaining, I think, is Parks’ explanation of how he started out working for newspapers:

I always say I got into newspapers for the money and the sex. It’s actually true: I was 14 years old and saw an ad in my hometown weekly, The Ridgefield (Conn.) Press, saying “sportswriters needed.” The job paid 50 cents a column inch, which is more than I could make babysitting. That was the money. The sex? The assignment involved covering the Ridgefield High School girls’ basketball team. I was, at the time, short and fat and awkward. They were all tall and blond and gorgeous. But I figured if I was the guy who could get their names in the paper, they’d at least have to talk to me. Alas, the sex part never worked out. But, slowly, I came to realize that storytelling was meant to be my life.

You will find that complete interview here.

* * *

As has frequently been the case with author conversations I’ve conducted on Kirkus’ behalf, I wound up with quite a bit more material than I could fit into my twice-monthly column. So I am offering the remainder of my Parks interview below.

J. Kingston Pierce: So tell me, what were the best and worst experiences you had with newspapers?

Brad Parks: I started writing for a newspaper when I was 14. I quit when I was 34. Over those 20 years, I packed in a full career of memorable stories. If I had to pick a favorite, I’d say it was a four-part series I did about the [1967] Newark riots a few years ago. What it taught me was that if a reporter works hard enough--tossing away all his preconceived notions and as much of his cultural baggage as is possible--he can really figure out the truth about something, even a hotly contested historical event like the riots. Not merely a balanced account. But the truth. And finding the truth is the best of what journalism ought to be.

As for the worst? Well, there was this flag football game I covered at a nudist colony this one time ... (Shudder.)

JKP: There’s much said nowadays about the death of American newspapers. But where do you see the industry headed? What will be the future role of newspapers?

BP: There are two questions. Let me answer them in order: 1) Who knows?; and 2) I just hope there is one. I think it’s pretty clear the industry’s business model is badly broken and that it will slowly--or, perhaps, not so slowly--fade into oblivion if it doesn’t figure out how to better monetize its digital content.

Now that the economy has stabilized, the industry’s freefall has halted, at least for the moment. But unless something changes dramatically, we’re probably about a decade away from a major wave of extinction that will eliminate daily newspapers from many large American cities. The irony is that many newspapers now have more readership than ever before, if you combine their print and online numbers. So it’s clear the functions they serve--government watchdog, voice to the voiceless, town crier, and so on--are still highly valued. It’s just not supported by the free market in the same way it once was.

In the end, your local newspaper may end up having a business model more like that of National Public Radio, where its advertising revenue is heavily supplemented by grants from the nonprofit sector.

JKP: Is there anything you miss about writing for newspapers?

BP: Oh, lots. But I miss the newsroom most of all. Or at least I miss what the newsroom used to be. Once upon a time, your typical American newsroom was a place full of smart, funny, irreverent, malcontented people--of all ages, ideological persuasions, and backgrounds--who somehow managed to perform the daily miracle that is putting out a newspaper without strangling each other. Within its walls were literally thousands of years of institutional knowledge and wisdom on hundreds of different subjects. And if you knew who to ask, you could learn just about anything.

JKP: How many years before you actually left the reporting field were you hoping to transition into writing novels?

BP: I first started writing a novel in 2000 (you will likely never read this novel, for good reason). So when I left journalism in 2008, it wasn’t exactly a whim. I had been laying the foundation for a while.

JKP: Lots of people who write for newspapers, magazines, or Web sites think they can move on to novel-writing. But few actually do. What convinced you that you had the capacity to create book-length fiction?

BP: As I said, my first job in newspapers paid me by the column inch. It encouraged a certain volubility that I never lost. By the time I was in my mid-20s, I was a sports features guy, which meant I often was writing three- or four-thousand-word pieces--and having to cut furiously to make them fit. Then I became a news features guy who hated cutting his pieces even more. All those lost words! All those great turns of phrase lopped!

So writing a novel, for me, meant seldom having to cut the good stuff. Reaching 90,000 words was never a problem.

JKP: Over the decades, many reporters (or reporters turned private investigators) have served as the protagonists in mysteries. Why do newsies make such great detectives?

BP: It’s not a coincidence that reporters are often written by ... ex-reporters. And, of course, newspaper reporters make their living finding and telling interesting stories. So there’s obviously something to that skill set that translates rather nicely into novel-writing. Beyond that, I think a reporter often assembles his narrative piece by piece, with each interview hopefully adding more to his understanding of an event, issue, or circumstance. That steady, relentless unraveling of the facts tends to make for a well-paced novel.

JKP: You now live with your wife and two children in Virginia. But before that, you were a resident of New Jersey, just like your star newshound, Carter Ross. How long did you live in the Garden State? And why do you still find it such fertile and interesting ground in which to nurture a crime-fiction series?

BP: I was actually born in New Jersey, moved out when I was 3, then returned for 10 good years while I worked for the Newark Star-Ledger. I always say New Jersey really loads a writer’s toolbox with possibilities. It’s one of the richest states in the Union by per-capita income, but it also has two of the poorest cities, in Newark and Camden. It’s one of the most diverse states, with just about every ethnicity represented (and therefore every ethnic mob). Yet it’s also got the highest population density, which means all those very different types of people--from all different economic strata--can’t help but bump into each other. Those intersections are often where you find great stories.

JKP: We covered a number of points about your new novel, The Girl Next Door, in Kirkus Reviews. But let me ask you a couple more things here. First, despite Ross’ customary self-acknowledgement that he isn’t a “lady killer,” he manages in this book to enjoy some pulse-quickening encounters with his editor, the slightly older but still “easy to look at” Tina Thompson. Do you see their relationship evolving, or will it remain more teasing than tempestuous?

BP: Egads, the last thing I want for Tina and Carter is to have one of those will-they-or-won’t-they relationships that stretches endlessly into the future with no growth or resolution. Having already written books four and five in the series, I can guarantee that things are definitely going to evolve. As to how? Well, I guess that’s an area where the author has to become a bit of a tease.

JKP: I have to admit, I knew “whodunit” about halfway through The Girl Next Door. Maybe that’s because I have spent so many years reading books in this genre, or maybe it’s because you tried a wee bit too hard to point the finger at anybody other than the real murderer. How difficult is it to conceal the identities of the malefactors in your books, to keep readers in the dark till the last minute?

BP: I think as a reader, I have always been god-awful at figuring out the whodunit part--to the point where I didn’t even try. So I think through the first three books, I made it a little too easy. Having now heard that criticism several times, I’ve made it a lot harder in books four and five. (I guess you’ll have to read them in 2013 and 2014 to see if I succeed!)

JKP: What’s something readers don’t yet know about Carter Ross, but that would change their perceptions of him if they did?

BP: He actually owns a pair of flat-front pants. He hasn’t ever worn them. But, who knows, maybe one of these days ...

JKP: You often come across in interviews as supremely self-confident. But what’s something you’re not yet very good at as a novelist?

BP: Stumping readers, apparently. I think plotting, in general, is the thing I’ve had to work the hardest at improving. My first couple of books have been a little too straightforward. I’m learning to put more kinks into the plots as I go--hopefully, without making them too convoluted. You have to remember, newspaper readers value clarity. I was never trained to mislead people. Yet that’s what mystery readers expect, to a certain extent. It’s given me some things to unlearn as a writer. And that’s taken some time.

JKP: How much did it help your writing career (or your self-esteem) to win both the Nero Award and the Shamus Award for your first novel, Faces of the Gone?

BP: There’s no question it’s been a tremendous boon. The book-publishing world is a crowded place and the mystery genre is certainly no exception. Winning those two awards has helped me stand out and given me instant credibility within the business, whether it’s with librarians or bookstore owners or even within my own publishing house. I think it also makes readers feel justified in liking your work. Because if they reach the end and they’re satisfied, they’re like, “Well, of course I’m supposed to like it. It’s won two awards!”

JKP: Finally, which crime/mystery/thriller novel that doesn’t already have your name on it would you most like to have written?

BP: That’s easy: And Then There Were None by our dear patron saint, Agatha Christie. In addition to being a great book, it is estimated to have sold 100 million copies. Just once I’d like to see a royalty statement like that.

READ MORE: “Brad Parks on the Couch,” by Brad Parks
(Poe’s Deadly Daughters).

Sweet Centennial

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 19:39:00 +0000

Happy birthday, Oreo! The company that makes this popular cookie sandwich was founded on March 6, 1912.

As part of the celeration, Buzzfeed has posted what it says are “25 Sexy Photos of Oreos in Honor of Its 100th Birthday.”

Tilting at Windmills, Tackling Moriarty

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:39:00 +0000

Here’s a coincidence for you. I have probably not thought of the theatrical film They Might Be Giants for a decade or longer. Yet not one, but two crime-fiction bloggers today are celebrating that 1971 picture starring George C. Scott and Joanne Woodward.

Bill Crider summarizes the plot in his new “Overlooked Movies” post:

George C. Scott plays [retired judge Justin Playfair] a man who, because of an incomprehensible loss, develops a new way of dealing with the world. He thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes, and he collects newspaper clippings that lead him to the conclusion that there is indeed a malevolent force in the world, and that force is Moriarty. Naturally everyone thinks he’s nuts, but his analyst, Dr. Watson (Joanne Woodward) is gradually drawn into his world.

Yvette Banek picks up that thread in her own post:

Watson is bemused by Holmes (as well as professionally intrigued) as he leads her into more and more hair-brained encounters, skulking about the city looking for “clues.” She comes to admire the judge’s--aka Holmes--philosophy of good and evil. She calls the judge a Don Quixote aiming at windmills, but he, in a key scene, explains to her the difference between himself and Cervantes’ creation. He makes eminent sense.

This unlikely pair grow closer as their adventures around the city [of New York] lead them into several encounters with the odd and eccentric, including a sweet elderly couple who haven’t set foot outside their old apartment in over 40 years. They devote themselves entirely to their topiary garden on the roof. This is one of my favorite parts in the film.

Eventually Holmes and Watson are joined in their quest by all the misfits they’ve encountered along the way in a kind of march of the “irregulars.”

I’ve only ever watched They Might Be Giants--with its beautiful John Barry theme--one time through. But with so much attention being lavished today upon this unconventional production (Banek calls it “one of those near-perfect films that just missed the mark but still is good enough to enchant”), I am provoked to see it again. It appears that YouTube offers the whole movie, in nine parts, beginning here.

What-Might-Have-Been Wonders

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:11:00 +0000

Derek Pell, a visual artist, photographer, and author living in Northern California’s Bay Area, recently alerted me to a new project he’s rolling out in the online magazine Zoom Street, for which he serves as editor in chief. It seems Pell has created a pictorial series of 100 “missing mysteries.” These he touts as “rare books you never knew existed”--and indeed they don’t exist, except in his irreverent imagination. Pell has created both bogus book covers and the story descriptions to match.

A good example is entry No. 1: Eat Me Deadly, supposedly by Mickey Spillane. “When shrunken fetish-heads start popping up on the blue-plate special at [Mike] Hammer’s favorite dives,” Pell’s blurb begins, “it’s not just another case of indigestion ... but a case of cold-blood murder.”

This Zoom Street series began yesterday, and is set to continue with Monday installments until Pell’s “pictorial history of nonexistent mysteries (1840-2013)” finishes its run in early 2014.

Follow the series here.

“It’s Everything and Nothing At All”

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:35:00 +0000

This week’s new story in Beat to a Pulp is “Dyer,” by Chicago author and Master’s of Fine Arts candidate Richard Thomas.

Pierce’s Picks: “Nine for the Devil”

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 16:12:00 +0000

A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.

Nine for the Devil, by Mary Reed and Eric Mayer (Poisoned Pen Press):
From the earliest installments of their numbered historical mystery series (One for Sorrow, Two for Joy, etc.) starring John, the perspicacious eunuch Lord Chamberlain to Roman Emperor Justinian I, married authors Reed and Mayer have demonstrated a keen understanding of the court politics and other intrigues rampant in sixth-century Constantinople. But the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire seems like a particularly dodgy snake pit in this latest book, which finds John tasked by Justinian with solving the alleged murder of his oft-conniving spouse, Empress Theodora. John isn’t convinced that the well-protected Theodora was in fact poisoned; however, he’s afraid of what might befall his own wife and daughter (and his daughter’s unborn child) should his investigation fail to satisfy the unpredictable Justinian. A story so packed with treachery, superstition, and exotic ambiance is hard to resist.

Prologue’s Pages from the Past

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 02:24:00 +0000

I can understand why authors such as James Reasoner and Ed Gorman are so overjoyed by this news, and I’m sure I would be jumping up and down with glee, too--if I owned an e-book reader of any sort. Omnimystery News offers the bottom line:

F+W Media officially announced this past week the acquisition of more than 250 out-of-print crime novels, originally published between 1940 and 1970, to be reissued as e-books under its Prologue Books imprint. Formats supported include Kindle, Nook, Apple iBook, Sony, and Kobo.

Ben Leroy, the talented publisher of Tyrus Books (purchased by F+W Media last year), who has been put in charge of the new Prologue imprint, is quoted as saying: “I envision Prologue Books [as] not simply an e-book publisher for out-of-print titles, but as a living record of the crime, science fiction, and fantasy genres. There’s a great opportunity to shine the spotlight on authors who may have been significantly influential on the current state of publishing, but who have never really received their due for one reason or another. With the help of luminaries in the genres--authors, readers, reviewers--we are excited to find and share those stories.”

Classic crime novelists whose work is already available from Prologue include William Campbell Gault, Frank Kane, Talmage Powell, Ed Lacy, Kin Platt, Wade Miller, Vin Packer, Peter Rabe, and Robert Colby. Click here to glance through the imprint’s current catalogue.

I don’t see the information anywhere on the Prologue Books Web site about how much each of these resurrected volumes costs, but a quick check on Amazon.com suggests they’ll run you just over $3 apiece. That’s a bargain, considering how much more you might pay for the original paperback versions of those books.

On the other hand, it’s unfortunate that Prologue doesn’t seem to be reproducing the often beautiful artwork that formerly fronted these works (Gault’s Sweet Wild Wench and Powell’s Start Screaming Murder being two of the more prominent examples). And of course, these e-books won’t come with the fragrance of vintage pages or the lovingly preserved heft that used paperback copies offer.

Still, it’s good to see some of these authors introduced to new generations of crime-fiction enthusiasts.

READ MORE: “A New E-book Publisher: Prologue Books,” by Steve Lewis (Mystery*File).

In Tune with Crime

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 01:58:00 +0000

YouTube poster “Mokwella” offers watchers a quick trip back to the 1970s, using the opening themes from 20 of that decade’s best-remembered TV cop and detective shows.