The Rap Sheet

Solving Crimes in the Shadow of War

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Wed, 30 May 2012 21:59:00 +0000

Author Janes in his neighbors’ yard. (Photo by Charles Bellamy)

It was Philip Kerr who drove me into the literary embrace of his fellow author, J. Robert Janes. I’d begun reading Kerr’s wonderful series about World War II-era Berlin detective Bernie Gunther not long after he introduced the character in March Violets (1989), and had been appreciating where that series was headed. But then, suddenly ... well, the Scottish wordsmith stopped producing new Gunther tales, following the publication of A German Requiem (1991).

Hungry for more crime fiction of a similarly sinister, complex sort, I soon stumbled across Janes’ Salamander (1994), the story of a disastrously successful arsonist at large in Lyon, France, in late 1942. This turned out to be the fourth of Janes’ historical thrillers to feature a most improbable pair of middle-aged investigators operating throughout German-occupied France during the early 1940s: a widowed, pipe-smoking chief inspector of the French Sûreté, Jean-Louis St-Cyr, and his Bavarian partner, Detektiv Inspektor Hermann Kohler of the Nazi Gestapo (described early on as “a giant of a man with the heart and mind of a small-time hustler”). Amazingly, those onetime enemies had not only been getting along since their first adventure in Mayhem (aka Mirage), published in 1992, but had become a rather crack team of crime solvers--often to the disgruntlement of their Gestapo superiors in Paris, who see them as far too independent. While war storms across the face of Europe, it’s up to St-Cyr and Kohler to solve the more everyday but nonetheless disturbing crimes--the assaults, the thefts, the occasional cross-bow killings. Misdeeds outside the scope of state-sanctioned battle.

Like Kerr’s work, Janes’ fiction benefited from critical approval. The Wall Street Journal called the St-Cyr/Kohler series “engrossing.” Publishers Weekly said it “convincingly documents the wartime background of Nazi-occupied France.” The New York Times’ Marilyn Stasio applauded Kaleidoscope (1993) for being “thick with dramatic incident, and the stark scenes of a country trying to survive a hard winter under siege have a palpable horror.” And in 2002, Janes’ 12th book in the series, Flykiller, received a nomination for the Dashiell Hammett Award, a prize given out annually by the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers.

But then, just as Kerr’s Bernie Gunther had vanished in 1991 (only to reappear 15 years later in The One from the Other), so St-Cyr and Kohler abruptly dropped off the publishing stage in 2002. I feared Janes had finally given up writing.

In March of this year, however, I came across a new note on his Web site reading:

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 ... They will also publish a new mystery, the 13th in the series, Bellringer, so please watch for these.

I posted a mention of that deal in The Rap Sheet, and soon afterward received an e-note from the author himself, thanking me. In reply, I told Janes how pleased I was to learn that his two savvy wartime sleuths would be staging a comeback. I also suggested that I interview him about Bellringer and his future plans for the series.

Since then, I have had the opportunity to ask the novelist a great deal more about his background. He was born Joseph Robert Janes in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on May 23, 1935, and grew up with his two brothers on Keewatin Avenue, the home of “middle- to lower-class [residents] and some really very poor folks.” He’s been married for 54 years to the former Gracia Lind, part of whose family, he says, “goes way back in Newfoundland history.” Together they have four children--two girls, two boys--and six grandchildren, scattered as far west as Saskatchewan. Janes and his wife currently live in the southern Ontario town of Niagara-on-the-Lake.

I’ve also been lucky enough to read Bellringer, which is set to be officially released by Otto Penzler’s Mysterious Press early next week (both in a print edition and as an e-book). The novel transports readers into the dark, fearful, sometimes paranoid confinement of two former luxury hotels in Vittel, a town in northeastern France. Those resorts have been jointly converted into a bleak internment camp, now housing 678 British women who didn’t escape the country before Adolf Hitler’s military occupied it in 1940, as well as 991 American women “who failed to leave when the Führer thought to declare war on America on 11 December, 1941.” (In addition, there are some Senegalese men being held at the camp, who will become a focus of suspicion as this story marches along.) As Bellringer commences, St-Cyr and Kohler have been summoned by the camp’s kommandant to probe the death of an American woman, found stabbed through the heart with a U.S. Army pitchfork, her pockets filled with hard-to-find goodies that might have been used to bribe guards. This leads to a broader investigation involving the alleged elevator-shaft suicide of another woman, the filching of goods from among inmates’ meager possessions, missing capsules of a potentially dangerous herb, a suspicious monk, broken and duplicitous love affairs, séances, spies, and the 23-year-old mystery surrounding a husband’s passing.

As is common of Janes’ yarns, Bellringer is thick with three-dimensional characters and loose ends enough to prevent readers from solving the mystery too soon. The camp’s oppressive, desperate atmosphere suffuses every chapter. Describing the women in one of the hotels, the author writes:

Out in the foyer, some carried handbags that had never left them since they’d been taken into custody in December 1940; others had sewn purses and tied these around their waists as in the Middle Ages. Most wore the signs of underfeeding, the lack of minerals and vitamins, the skin dried and cracked, the joints sore. All were cold and often yawning or coughing up their lungs, and halitosis, with or without their fags, depending entirely on fortune.

One eventually becomes consumed by this story, so captivated by the sadness and scheming of its players, it’s easy to forget that the action here takes place over just a couple of days, rather than a week or more. The author’s style of presenting and examining evidence in the course of dialogue, rather than through simpler narration, might test the patience of some readers, but the results are certainly rewarding. Bellringer is a banquet of plots and counterplots, deceptions and unexpected motivations. If you’re looking for a quick snack of a tale, look elsewhere.

(Left) My introduction to Janes’ historical thrillers: 1994’s Salamander.

Not long after turning the last page on Bellringer, I sent the now 77-year-old author a series of questions about his personal and professional history, which he was kind enough to answer. Some of those responses were included in my latest column for Kirkus Reviews, but the greater number are featured below.

J. Kingston Pierce: Could you tell us something about your parents?

J. Robert Janes: To describe in a nutshell my parents, is to attempt the impossible. Both were exceedingly complex. My father, a former reporter for The Northern Miner and the Toronto Star, was Canada’s first public relations man. His Public Relations Services Ltd., at 33 Scott Street behind the King Edward Hotel, commanded a great deal of his time. He also employed one of his brothers, my uncle George, and kept my grandparents and Geordie in the upper half of a duplex across the street from our house that he rented for them. What that did, of course, was bring me close to my grandmother, who was a lovely, lovely person, and many’s the time I, alone, would slip over there to have afternoon tea with her. My grandfather loved my mother’s bread and would sit on our front steps and eat the better part of a loaf, straight from the oven.

Mother was a very fine artist who knew all of Canada’s Group of Seven and many other artists. [She was] a remarkable cook. Friends often came to supper, [with] my brothers and I helping in the kitchen and always being seated around the dining room table too, and I’d give a fortune if I could re-create just one of those dinner parties. Good artists, and I mean really, really good ones, don’t just argue--they fight for what they believe in. Hence the talk would ebb and flow and sometimes erupt like a rocket, sending one or more off in a huff or tears with weeks of silence to follow; yet all would be forgiven and peace restored. Of course, there was gossip and lots of laughter. Some of them were painters, or worked in chalks, others were sculptresses or weavers, one was a potter of note, and we lived in the midst of it all, for Mother used that dining room as her studio--except for when she had one in the old Summerhill cottage where A.Y. Jackson had his studio. I still have a watercolor sketch of myself at age 3 that Arthur Lismer did at mother’s urging (unsigned unfortunately!).

Among my earliest memories is one of being bundled up at the age of 2 or 3 and shoved out the side door to play by myself in the back garden. Mother was busy “painting.” The snow was granular and I knelt at what would’ve been the edge of one of our flowerbeds under the big apple tree, and I used my imagination. That snow became mountains in which were hidden heaps of silver and gold, and I found within myself both the friend we all need and the driving force of my later writing.

JKP: Was your family a bookish one?

JRJ: My father was the only one of his family to go to university and he added a master’s degree in economics to his B.A. Mother, because her father insisted, obtained her B.A. first before attending the Ontario College of Art and then heading off to Paris. Had she been cut loose from family responsibilities, I’m certain she would have made a significant mark at a time when women artists were patently being ignored. Certainly, there were books in our house, lots and lots of them, and my parents read, as did my two brothers and myself. Mother, of course, was a huge fan of mysteries, and when I began to write them I lived in absolute trepidation, for I knew she could find fault in any author’s work if she felt the need, but would also praise them. I still have a novel upstairs that she handed to me. Inside it, she had written, “Bob, one of the most entertaining and humourous books I have ever read.” The title is The Monte Cristo Cover-Up, by Mario Simmel, translated from the German by James Cleugh. I enjoyed it immensely ...

(Right) Janes’ mother used books such as this one to interest him in mysteries.

I knew how to read at a very early age and loved the books of Thornton W. Burgess and others. By the age of 4 or 5, I was writing and illustrating my own animal adventures and would sit patiently at my little desk in front of one of the windows in the bedroom I shared with my older brother, myself totally absorbed in the story I was setting down. Later, by age 6 or 7, I would head out at 5:00 a.m. and go for a walk in the park, for our yard backed onto Sherwood Park. Fields, hills, forest, ravine, and river were all there and the dawn coming up. It’s by far the best of times to see birds and foxes and other things, and never was there ever any concern about my safety. Never. My imagination just took off and was constantly strengthened.

JKP: I’ve read that you were originally a petroleum engineer and field geologist. Where did you earn your academic degrees?

JRJ: I have a B.A.Sc in Mining Engineering from the University of Toronto, 1958; an Ontario College of Education high-school teacher’s certificate; an M.Eng. in Geology, U of T, 1967; and the first year of a doctorate in Pleistocene Geology on a Queen’s University, Brock University program that was set up uniquely for myself. My undergraduate thesis won an award from the Petroleum and Natural Gas Division of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. In my third summer at U of T, I worked for Mobil Oil in Alberta, and went back there when I graduated. Hence the petroleum engineer, but prior to this I had worked as a geologist and also had taken a year out to work at the Ontario Research Foundation as a lab technician for Lyman Chapman, who mapped Ontario’s Pleistocene deposits among other things and was a remarkable scientist. Basically, I was easy in the field as a geologist on my own or working, as with Mobil Oil and the Research Foundation. I “dug” what I was doing.

JKP: When did you start teaching high-school geology, geography, and mathematics? And where did you teach?

JRJ: Gracia was very unhappy in the west, in Alberta, so we and our [oldest daughter] Anne packed it in and came back to Toronto, me to the Ontario Research Foundation as a research engineer, minerals beneficiation. I guess I’ve worked on practically every will-o’-the-wisp ore prospect possible, and when I finally left, my boss, as had the one at Mobil Oil, begged me to stay. But I thought I’d try high-school teaching, and when I took the summer course, who should be there but a few of my classmates in geology and mining. From 1964 to 1966 I taught for the North York Board of Education, at William Lyon Mackenzie High School, grade 11 geology and geography, grade 12 and 9 math. I loved teaching and the kids and can honestly say it’s the toughest, hardest job ever. I never sat down, was always on the move, for the way to teach and keep kids interested is to keep them guessing, and you do this by constantly bringing in new ways of doing things and by always moving about the room amongst them.

JKP: And at what point did you begin teaching geology at Ontario’s Brock University, and for how long did you engage in that?

JRJ: When I went back to U of T to do my master’s degree under Dr. Tuzo Wilson of Plate Tectonics fame, I taught one summer at Brock University (1966-1967) and then came back for full-time. My students were adults bettering their degrees or getting them, and also technical people from industry. I taught first-year Physical Geology, third-year Glacial and Pleistocene Geology, and fourth-year Geology of Canada. In 1969 I developed and conducted the first and only cross-country university course in the Geology of Canada, taking a group from St. Catharines, Ontario, west to Long Beach on Vancouver Island. Two of the students and myself brought along our families, so that at the end of each day in the field, there would be baseball, a swim, or a campfire gathering. It was a unique way of teaching and an adventure for all of us, but also one tough, tough job, since I had to plan out everything ahead and be ready with all the details at each outcrop of note, right the way up through the geological time scale.

(Left) University of Toronto

JKP: When did you realize that you wanted to be a writer?

JRJ: Consciously, I never planned to become a full-time writer. When I did my undergraduate thesis there weren’t any courses in petroleum geology and related areas at U of T, and I would go up to the Imperial Oil Library on St. Clair Avenue in Toronto. There I had everything I needed and spent many, many hours digging for material, selecting what I’d need, and all the rest of what one calls “research” for a thesis on the treatment of water for use in the secondary recovery of oil--for fracking the formations. It has to be far, far purer than even our tap water, so there’s a definite science to it.

The librarians could not have been kinder. In contrast, the head of the Mining Department bordered on rage at my selecting a non-mining topic and something they patently knew absolutely nothing about. As a result, he gave me a miserable C, which should have taught me something, I guess, but maybe I became a writer because of what I went through at that library. I just really, really liked what I was doing and still remember it fondly.

In any case, a writer is like my garden, or like any novel, for that matter: she/he is a work in progress. If she/he isn’t, then they’d better get with it.

JKP: On your Web site, you say that you “turned to full-time writing in June 1970.” How worried were you about succeeding as a writer?

JRJ: My turning to full-time writing in 1970 was, in retrospect, a huge leap of faith and of course it’s the reason I have such a small “pension.” I’d written a few travel articles and other things, and the travel editor of [Manitoba’s] Winnipeg Free Press had been immensely kind. I also had a contract for some film strips and a couple of textbooks, so I simply closed the door on the paychecks and began to “work” for myself. My father, bless him, must have been alarmed but he never said anything, nor did my mother. They knew, I think, that I was “different.” Gracia and I had four young children and when we moved from Toronto to St. Catharines (to work at Brock University) we bought an old farmhouse, half an acre and one heck of an old barn. My “work” room was tiny and located downstairs next to the living room and the kids when they came home from school.

Did I have financial worries? Yes! Did I ever worry about succeeding? Not really. After all, I did have contracts to start off with. But what one doesn’t do, and should, is to worry about the publishers not doing as they have agreed, and their going bankrupt at the worst of times--just when a new book has come out!

I grew up in the Great Depression, and Mother sure taught us a lot. At that old farmhouse, Gracia and I had a 22-cubic-foot freezer, and I grew a lot of our own food and packed that freezer every fall. I always felt I had saved at least $1,800, maybe $2,000 a year on that alone. I also canned peaches, plums, pears, you name it, and had 100 feet of red currants, so jams and jellies, wine even, were a part of it all.

JKP: And you started out writing non-fiction?

JRJ: Basically, I began by writing textbooks, film strips, slide sets, and such in geology because they were desperately needed at the time and there was nothing available in the schools. I also took virtually all the photos that were used to illustrate my textbooks.

Rocks, Minerals and Fossils, for grades 7 and 8, was a hands-on text which gave the kids the nitty-gritty but did so in a unique and very rich way by using photos and experiments I designed and conducted first before writing them down. Earth Science, for grades 9 and 10, continued the study, again in the same hands-on way with further experiments and such. Geology and the New Global Tectonics was a senior-level text for grades 12 and 13, but was also used in first-year university courses.

JKP: So what first made you interested in writing fiction?

JRJ: When that last text came out, I got a call from Canada’s finest airphoto expert, Dr. Jack Mollard, P.Eng., of Regina. Jack wanted me to help him with Airphoto Interpretation and the Canadian Landscape and I did, and we became good friends. I’d also written and done the photographs for The Great Canadian Outback, a [book about the] geology and scenery of Canada.

But when I was done co-authoring the airphoto book, I decided that I would not write any more non-fiction. I began a novel, and realized six months later, that I had lost a lot of time and would have to catch up, so have stuck to fiction ever since. But I still have one non-fiction book I want to do, and that is on past climate, the Ice Ages, and current climatic change. There is so much the general public simply don’t have a handle on and should, and I’m someone who could write such a complex thing but make it easily readable for the average person. Few others have written texts and such for each level and also taught at least several of those levels, and I still love the study of the Pleistocene Epoch for it offers so many answers to why we’re here and how we came to be the way we are. That book, however, is at least a two- or three-year project.

JKP: As I understand it, your first novels were mysteries for children. I believe The Odd-Lot Boys and the Tree-Fort War came out in 1976 and was followed by four more such stories for the younger set. Why did you start out penning children’s fiction?

JRJ: I started writing for the preteen-to-13 age group. Having children of my own, it seemed natural, but there were other influences, primarily the need to protect the unique farmlands of the Niagara Peninsula, something Gracia has worked at ever since. The Odd-Lot Boys and the Tree-Fort War came about by my seeing the need for wild places in the standard subdivision, places where kids could be themselves and do the things they need to, like building and having a tree fort. I’d seen a real-estate sign on a vacant lot and beyond it the remains of a tree fort. The title came to me, and I wrote it.

JKP: What did you find most gratifying about composing those children’s mysteries? And did they have a common thread?

JRJ: Theft of Gold [1980], my second for kids, came about via two things. First, Toronto’s subway and the boots and shoes people wore. How distinctive they all were. Then, too, when I’d been an undergraduate at U of T there had been a robbery--samples of gold ore [had gone missing]: dust, flakes, and nuggets from the Klondike and Cariboo, among other samples. Me, I knew all about such things and was certain I knew who had done it--ease of access, etc. So I had that background and wrote it.

These were followed by Danger on the River [1982], which preceded the environmental stories long before they came into vogue, but dealt with such a topic. I had walked the riverbank I used [as a setting], my kids had played there, and we’d all seen what was happening, so I wrote it with that message in the hope that readers would do the same as my protagonists, Rolly and the gang, did. Spies for Dinner [1985] followed. We had had a cottage on Gloucester Pool and the Severn River, and I knew that area like the back of my hand. Murder in the Market [1985] is largely set in Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market, which I loved as a kid and still visit every time I go to the city.

Those [last] three books were a series, so Rolly, Jim, Katie, and Alice carry on through them. But after [publisher] Clarke Irwin went bankrupt, and Collins of Canada ceased publishing children’s books, I set the series aside. Which doesn’t mean I’ve stopped writing for kids and young adults. Good heavens, no. I still do.

JKP: Your first adult novel, I believe, was The Toy Shop, published in 1981. It’s been identified as the earliest of four “Richard Hagen novels.” I have to confess, I’ve never read any of those so-called Hagen books. Could you tell us something about them?

JRJ: The Toy Shop. Picture this: no money, Christmastime, four kids, and a contest--the Seal Book $50,000 prize. Late in November, Gracia and I went to Niagara-on-the-Lake to try and find something for the kids, and when we got to the Toy Shop (it no longer exists as such) it was dusk and the streetlights had come on. I told her to let me go on ahead, and as I did so, that story came at me like a ton of bricks. In 35 days and nights, including five hours on that Christmas Day, I wrote that psychological thriller. It didn’t win the prize, but I was one of only three who were called in by the editor. Stupidly, I used the call-in to get my first agent, and the editor who had called me in, promptly tossed me out.

The Toy Shop is a standalone, as are The Watcher (in the Dunes) [1982], The Hiding Place [1984], and The Third Story [1983]. All are set in the Niagara area. Each of these mystery-thrillers has a female protagonist. ...

The “Hagen books” are a misnomer; somebody took it upon themselves to label them that way, but Richard Hagen doesn’t appear in any of these. He’s the protagonist in [1991’s] The Alice Factor ... a thriller about diamonds in World War II. It’s set in the Third Reich, 1937, to begin, and in Belgium, Britain, and elsewhere, for Hagen was a salesman of diamonds. Published in hardcover, it was the last novel its publisher did, so my Alice never got any push but my own. As a geologist I had worked with diamonds and knew people in the business, so that helped a lot. The novel was a standalone, though it could, I guess, have been made into a trilogy ...

JKP: In 1992, your first St.-Cyr and Kohler novel, Mayhem, appeared. Please tell us about your inspiration for that book. Had you been thinking for a long while about writing Mayhem? And did you see it as the opening installment of a series?

JRJ: My editor with Alice felt it was too long and would cost the publisher he was with too much. He advised that I cut [out a large] French section, and I did only because I had to (but I then used that section to write the thriller I’ve been currently working on). In it there’s a really bad Sûreté, and when I got to the end of that manuscript I can still recall setting my pencil aside and asking myself, “Hey, what about a good Sûreté in all of this mess? He would need a German overseer, since everything else did in those days, but I’d make Jean-Louis a chief inspector, and Hermann Kohler, not an Oberdetektiv but simply a detective inspector. Hence Kohler sometimes refers to Louis as “chief.”

I grew up hating the Germans, and when I came to write Mayhem, the first in that series, I honestly didn’t know how I could possibly do it. But Hermann, bless him, ran away with the story right away and I’ve had to cut him back ever since. As a result, it was a huge lesson for me, and I no longer hate Germans. Indeed, why would I?

I didn’t envisage a series at first, but when I’d finished Mayhem I knew, as a writer will, that I really had something, and immediately started in on Carousel [1992]. By the time Constable took them on, I’d written those two. Kaleidoscope [1993] then went straight from myself to the typesetter.

JKP: Were you already quite familiar with France at the time? Have you visited there many times over the years, as you’ve put these novels together?

JRJ: I knew I had to drive myself to get that series established, and fortunately in Miles Huddleston at Constable I had the perfect editor. I’d send Miles a manuscript and would get back a note perhaps saying, “Bob, what do you think about ...” Usually it was length [that was the problem], and I’d go at it and in about three weeks he’d have it back and I’d be working on the next one. I never bothered to send any of those later books to my agent. Miles and I simply handled everything, but I did leave the agent to take care of the contracts.

I was, since The Alice Factor, and have become extremely more familiar with German-occupied France, but must state that many of the places I write about no longer exist. Whole areas have been flattened and built over. Even some of the street names have changed!

I’ve always viewed this series as like the trajectory of an artillery shell. Both Kohler and Jean-Louis were in World War I, and enemies, so the analogy is apt. What I’ve done so far, and it has probably taken more titles than it should, is to do the crest of that trajectory which sits around the time of the [Nazi] defeat at Stalingrad on February 3, 1943. What I intend to do now, is to write the flank-stories on either side, ending up, of course, with my two honest cops--for they are honest--up against the post: St-Cyr for working with the enemy (against common crime in an age of officially sanctioned crime on a horrendous scale) and Kohler for being of that enemy (having, with Louis, crossed so many criminals).

JKP: It’s interesting that you imagined St-Cyr and Kohler as both good men, in their respective ways. Some readers have objected to that characterization, have they not?

JRJ: Aside from having a German overseer, one has to keep in mind that if you were a detective in Germany in 1933-1934, you were automatically in the Gestapo. Hence Kohler is one of those, and we have the situation of a good Frenchman having to work with--you guessed it--a good Gestapo.

Some have been upset with me over this. One young woman used to nail me at every Bouchercon she attended, and she certainly wouldn’t listen, but had never read any of the books to find out what the heck I was really up to.

This also applies to French people who think I must be pointing out the worst, but again haven’t read any of the books. As for Kohler and for St-Cyr, no one need be offended by either, and as for the Holocaust and all ... why, I’ve written hugely about it, so they surely should be able to see what side I’m on and Kohler too, and Jean-Louis as well.

JKP: Between them, St-Cyr and Kohler have pissed off so many German authorities, I’m surprised they’re allowed to continue their investigations. How do they avoid being chastised and pulled from the field for insubordination? Are they simply too good at their jobs?

JRJ: They are on the run always ... It’s a part of their uniqueness and I wouldn’t want to give it up for anything. It brings them closer and closer, welding them into a single unit that cares not only about the outcome, but increasingly about each other. Remember, too, that they are outcasts, lonely in their fight against common crime.

Sometimes, as in Bellringer, the answers to their very survival come from others, but this in itself comes in part from the very way the two men have treated those others.

JKP: Which of your sleuths do you think is changing more as a result of their working relationship, St-Cyr or Kohler?

JRJ: These are two very different men who have been thrown together by time and circumstance. As a result, both derive things from the other. Kohler tends to be a womanizer and to use his Gestapo clout when needed but, please, this last is far, far different from the accepted usual. Jean-Louis sees the background better--he’s French--but encourages the “clout” when needed and uses Sûreté muscle if required.

But primarily what the two do is to allow me to switch action from one to the other to build pace and story, bringing them together every now and then to go over things and illustrate their different ways of drawing conclusions. Both are, however, very “with it,” in a crime sense, with lots of past experience that comes up every now and then. But Kohler has one failing St-Cyr worries about: Because of what he’s been through, Hermann can’t stand the sight of corpses any more. The younger the victim, the worse his reaction, so Jean-Louis has to protect him and hide that fact from the Gestapo, the SS, the Wehrmacht higher ups, and the Gestapistes français--even the big shots of the black market. It’s a constant worry. And, please, there’s lots and lots of humor in their association. There has to be.

JKP: After Flykiller saw print in 2002, you lost your publisher and seemed to disappear. I understand that your agent had also been sick for a long time, so probably wasn’t working as ably as you would’ve hoped. What’s finally made it possible for you to return to the St-Cyr/Kohler series with Bellringer?

JRJ: Yes, after a good 22 years with that one agency, I found myself on my own again. But remember, please, that this was the way I started out and that I’d done a lot of books without ever having an agent.

What did I do? I grabbed the phone early last December and called The Mysterious Press. They knew of my books and we agreed on doing e-books of the first 12 St-Cyr and Kohlers, and a print-on-demand and e-book of the new one, the 13th, Bellringer. As a result--and let me just set this down here--Gracia and I had a lovely Christmas. My two guys were back in business!

JKP: Bellringer takes place during the winter of 1943, in a couple of French hotels that now serve as an internment camp for women. What sorts of research did you have to do to compose this book?

JRJ: Gradually I have come to a process with each new mystery in the series. I begin with about three or four months of “digging,” and in Bellringer’s case, some of it was not very nice at all. When I came to the writing, I decided, since I’d covered enough of such things in the previous two manuscripts, I would set those things aside and concentrate primarily on the two hotels and their internees, and am glad I did. There were others in the camp, and other hotels nearby, and these are touched on a little and form a part of the novel, but the focus is on those two groups of women.

I also, having been at Madison, Wisconsin’s Bouchercon [in 2006], did some of the “research” there, which I enjoyed immensely, and was able to use with one of the characters, but it also gave me lines of thought on the others. In addition, as a geologist, I’d been to the granite quarries at Barre, Vermont, and could use those as background [for another of my characters].

JKP: What do you think would’ve been the hardest thing about being one of those women, trapped in an internment camp in France?

JRJ: The injustice, the suspension of normally useful lives, loss of loved ones, loneliness even in such a crowd, the never knowing how long it would last or what, really, was happening elsewhere, ... the utter boredom, lack of food, heat, warmth, privacy--all a huge amount of what we normally take for granted. Dealing with the Occupation, as I do, it continually amazes me how much we have and how little attention we pay to those everyday things until they’re taken from us.

One of two hotels where the action takes place in Bellringer.

JKP: By the way, were there similar facilities for men at the time?

JRJ: There were internment camps for British nationals, separate ones for lots of others, but these were not close to Vittel. As to their exact locations, I have those, of course, but they are buried in the heaps and heaps of reference notes that face me every day and also surround me ... so please don’t ask me to start digging!

JKP: Part of Bellringer’s plot has to do with mediums or fortune tellers, people who say they can contact one’s dead relatives or discern the future from shaking baskets of trinkets. What’s your own experience with such spiritualism and fortune telling, if any?

JRJ: When folks die, I say they have stepped off the planet. When someone close does, I go out into my garden and touch the living for them. Regarding mediums and such, I have only the experience of what is in Bellringer. Granted, I had to learn it all and tried my best to do so. But it was fun and I loved working with it, and it was as natural to the story and the times as was everything else.

JKP: You were born in 1935, so were still pretty young during World War II. What do you remember of it? And did something happen back then that made you want to return to the era in fiction?

JRJ: I was 4 years old when World War II started, but our street became totally involved in it and not just in scrap metal and newspaper drives. The two boys across the street were in the army, one up the street in the navy, others in the air force. Leonard Allman--with whom I sat on his back porch while he, on leave, had a beer his mother didn’t know of, and I had a Coke--died when his Lancaster bomber was shot down over Germany. I still recall how he made me swear never to tell his mom about that beer.

I also grew up with the Belgian refugee to whom The Alice Factor was dedicated. Willi Wunsch and his sister, Arlette, lay on the backseat floor of their old car and were machine-gunned as their father drove it onto the ship [bound for North America]. Willi couldn’t speak any English, and myself little French, but we became fast friends until the war ended and they went back to Belgium. We did meet later on when he came back for a visit, but by then I had four children and he was employed with the U.N., I think, so our lives had become vastly different. I’d love to see him again, though, and still have the pastel portrait my mother drew of him.

JKP: During the decade-long hiatus between the release of Flykiller and the appearance now of Bellringer, you wrote two additional, still-unpublished St-Cyr/Kohler books, Carnival and Tapestry. But didn’t you also work on other projects?

JRJ: It was after those [two World War II thrillers] that I went back to my historical fiction for young adults and worked on a novel that is set in 1611 and deals with the man who was perhaps the greatest pirate of all time. It’s set in England, on the North Atlantic, in the New-Found-Land, and the Azores, and I would like, as always, to get right back to it. I also wrote a historical mystery for young people, which I call The House By the Water. It has wonderful character studies and I love it--I have to. Then, too, I wrote another mystery for children, one that can be read to the very young, while those a little older can cut their teeth on it. This one I call Borgford, the Housemouse Detective and the Case of the Missing Things. Borgford’s a Norwegian who jumped his ship when it passed through [Ontario’s] Welland Canal.

I worked on some other things too, and am still at them. Lots. Hey, that’s what I do, isn’t it?

JKP: Most of your World War II novels are now out of print. Mysterious Press (via Open Road Media) is bringing them all back as e-books, but are there plans to reissue them as printed works as well?

JRJ: At present, I don’t think so, but I would certainly wish it.

JKP: Do you have a favorite book in the St-Cyr/Kohler series?

JRJ: I can’t have favorites beyond the one I’m writing, but if I were to be judged, Tapestry would rank highly, as would Beekeeper [2001] and Stonekiller [1995], and certainly I still maintain that Flykiller is a major work. It took a huge amount of time, nearly two years. There was just a colossal amount to deal with. [The French town of] Vichy, at the time of the Occupation, was never easy, and I could go back there and write another [book] and another, and still not cover everything.

JKP: Finally, how would you most like be remembered?

JRJ: My archive is at the Mills Memorial Library of McMaster University [in Hamilton, Ontario], who have done an outstanding job of looking after things. But as for myself, let me state the following: Simply that my books will speak for me. Basically, I’m unassuming, quite quiet, love my garden, my daily routine, my walks up the river, my coffee, my making notes for the day’s section to come, all such things. I’m not a cymbal-banger. Rather, rightly or wrongly, I tend to leave it up to the books and wish all others nothing but the very best.

READ MORE: “J. Robert Janes and His Paris,” by Alex
Waterhouse-Hayward; “France on Berlin Time,” by J. Robert Janes (Mystery Readers Journal).

Good News from the Home Front

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:40:00 +0000

The New York Times’ Arts Beat blog reports that Undershaw, “a Victorian house where [Sherlock Holmes’] creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, lived in the late 1800s and early 1900s and wrote 13 Holmes adventures including The Hound of the Baskervilles, has been saved from redevelopment and will not be turned into multiple dwellings ... A High Court judge ruled that although Undershaw’s current owners had made plans for its preservation they had not properly consulted with English Heritage, the organization that oversees historic buildings.”

Previous reports on the threats to Undershaw are here.

Vying for Prizes

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Wed, 30 May 2012 13:55:00 +0000

Following this last weekend’s excursion to Vancouver, B.C. (during which I witnessed the closing of one of that city’s famous kitty-corner Starbucks stores on Robson Street), I almost missed Pop Culture Nerd’s notice of its 2012 Stalker Award nominees. There are nine categories, including “Lead Character You Most Want as Your Friend,” “Most Scene-stealing Supporting Character,” “Catchiest Title,” and “Favorite Author on Social Media.” Click here to make your preferences known. The voting cutoff will be midnight on Tuesday, June 5.

In other commendations news: Late last week, the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers announced the nominees for its 2012 Scribe Awards, “honoring excellence in media tie-in writing.” Among the contenders: Max Allan Collins, Christa Faust, Tod Goldberg, D.P. Lyle, and Joan D. Vinge. Author Kevin J. Anderson was named as “this year’s Grandmaster for his lifetime achievement in the field.” The Scribes will be handed out in July during the Comic-Con convention in San Diego. ... UK author Anne Zouroudi has won the East Midlands Book Award 2011 for her novel The Whispers of Nemesis. ... Finally, Andrew Scott, who played a captivatingly insane James Moriarty on the second season of BBC-TV’s Sherlock, has won the 2012 BAFTA Television Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Dicks and Janes and Free Books

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 29 May 2012 18:45:00 +0000

My Kirkus Reviews column today is given over to Part I of an interview I conducted recently with Toronto novelist J. Robert Janes, author of a long-running, World War II-set mystery series featuring Chief Inspector Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the French Sûreté and Detektiv Inspektor Hermann Kohler of the Nazi Gestapo. Mayhem, Janes’ first St-Cyr/Kohler novel, was published back in 1992. His 13th, brought into print after the series’ decade-long hiatus, is titled Bellringer and is due for publication by The Mysterious Press early next week. (Mysterious Press will also release Janes’ backlist in e-book format.)

You can find my Kirkus interview here.

Part II of my exchange with Janes should be posted later today in The Rap Sheet. Or as soon as I can finish editing it ...

* * *

By the way, The Mysterious Press has kindly made available to Rap Sheet supporters four free advance reader copies of Bellringer.

To pick up one of those ARCs, all you have to do is e-mail your name and snail-mail address to jpwrites@wordcuts.org. And please be sure to write “J. Robert Janes Contest” in the subject line. Entries will be accepted between now and midnight next Monday, June 4. Winners will be chosen at random, and their names will be listed on this page the following day. Sorry, but this drawing is open only to residents of the United States and Canada.

I expect lots of participants in this contest, so don’t dally too much in entering. And best of luck to everyone who takes part!

Best in Show

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 29 May 2012 03:12:00 +0000

I spent the Memorial Day weekend far away from my office, in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia. Returning to Seattle late this afternoon, I discovered that I had missed word of the 2012 CrimeFest award winners. The names of those recipients were announced on Saturday night during the annual CrimeFest convention in Bristol, England. Here are the award winners and other nominees.

The Goldsboro Last Laugh Award (for the best humorous crime novel): Absolute Zero Cool, by Declan Burke (Liberties Press)

Also nominated: Killed at the Whim of a Hat, by Colin Cotterill (Quercus); The Good Thief’s Guide to Venice, by Chris Ewan (Simon & Schuster); Bryant & May and The Memory of Blood, by Christopher Fowler (Doubleday); Star Island, by Carl Hiaasen (Sphere); Smokeheads, by Doug Johnstone (Faber and Faber); Djibouti, by Elmore Leonard (Weidenfeld & Nicolson); and Herring on the Nile, by L.C. Tyler (Macmillan)

Sounds of Crime — Best Abridged Crime Audiobook: The Affair, by Lee Child; read by Kerry Shale (Random House Audiobooks)

Also nominated: First Frost, by James Henry; read by David Jason (Random House Audiobooks); The Payback, by Simon Kernick; read by Daniel Weyman (Random House Audiobooks); Drawing Conclusions, by Donna Leon; read by Andrew Sachs (Random House Audiobooks); and The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party, by Alexander McCall Smith; read by Adjoa Andoh (Hachette Digital)

Sounds of Crime — Best Unabridged Crime Audiobook: Before I Go to Sleep, by S.J. Watson; read by Susannah Harker (Random House Audio with AudioGO)

Also nominated: Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovitch; read by Kobna (Orion Audio/Holdbrook-Smith); The Fifth Witness, by Michael Connelly; read by Peter Giles (Orion Audio); The Fallen Angel, by David Hewson; read by Saul Reichlin (Whole Story Audio Books); and The House of Silk, by Anthony Horowitz; read by Derek Jacobi (Orion Audio)

The eDunnit Award (for the best crime-fiction e-book first published in both hardcopy and in electronic format: The End of the Wasp Season, by Denise Mina (Orion)

Also nominated: The Accident, by Linwood Barclay (Orion); Burned, by Thomas Enger (Faber and Faber); Moonlight Mile, by Dennis Lehane (Little, Brown); Death on the Rive Nord, by Adrian Magson (Allison & Busby); Black Flowers, by Steve Mosby (Orion); and The Cut, by George Pelecanos (Orion)

(Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)

READ MORE: “On Winning the Goldsboro ‘Last Laugh’ Award, and Failing Better,” by Declan Burke (Crime Always Pays).

Pierce’s Picks: “The Yard”

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 28 May 2012 15:32:00 +0000

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

The Yard, by Alex Grecian (Putnam):
London’s Metropolitan Police Force has already had to weather severe public criticism for its failure to capture or even identify “Jack the Ripper,” who brutally murdered at least five women in the city’s Whitechapel district in 1888. Now, a year later, the force is facing another set of killings, only the targets this time are members of Scotland Yard’s own Murder Squad. Newlywed former country cop Walter Day has just become the 12th member of that company, yet he’s asked to head up the investigation. Fortunately, he can turn for assistance to Dr. Bernard Kingsley, a forward-thinking pathologist who employs such “radical” methods as fingerprinting to advance the investigation. Meanwhile, young Constable Nevil Hammersmith delves into the case of a boy abandoned in the chimney of a private residence--a case that will lead the constable to be stripped and drugged by the home’s attractive mistress, and make him a target for the same slayer Day and Kingsley are intent on bringing down. Author Alex Grecian has penned the long-running graphic novel series Proof, but this is his first historical thriller. And it’s a winner, filled with Victorian arcana and eccentric characters and more humor than one expects from such a work. Not every subplot works perfectly, but enough do that you should be glad to hear this is the first entry in a new series.

* * *

Also worth looking for this week is Venice Noir (Akashic Books), edited by Maxim Jakubowski and corralling short stories from such familiar talents as Peter James, Emily St. John Mandel, Barbara Baraldi, Matteo Righetto, Isabella Santacroce, and Rap Sheet contributor Michael Gregorio. Together they appear determined to prove that, no matter how beautiful and magical old Venice is, it boils with the same varieties of violence and malignancy you’d find in any other of the world’s metropolises. Darn them!

Daggers in Search of Targets

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Fri, 25 May 2012 19:11:00 +0000

During an event held this evening at CrimeFest, the British Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) announced its nominees for six different 2012 Dagger Awards. They are as follows:

CWA International Dagger:
• The Potter’s Field, by Andrea Camilleri, translated by Stephen Sartarelli (Mantle)
• I Will Have Vengeance, by Maurizio de Giovanni, translated by Anne Milano Appel (Hersilia Press)
• Until Thy Wrath Be Past, by Åsa Larsson, translated by Laurie Thompson (Quercus/MacLehose)
• Trackers, by Deon Meyer, translated by T.K.L Seegers (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Phantom, by Jo Nesbø, translated by Don Bartlett (Harvill Secker)
• The Dark Valley, by Valerio Varesi, translated by Joseph Farrell (Quercus/MacLehose)

CWA Non-fiction Dagger:
• To Live Outside the Law, by Leaf Fielding (Serpent’s Tail)
• Dark Market, by Misha Glenny (Vintage)
• Hood Rat, by Gavin Knight (Pan Macmillan)
• The Negotiator, by Ben Lopez (Little, Brown)
• Witness, by David Smith with Carol Ann Lee (Mainstream)
• The Eleventh Day, by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan (Transworld/Doubleday)

CWA Short Story Dagger:
• “The Golden Hour,” by Bernie Crossthwaite (from Guilty Consciences, edited by Martin Edwards; Severn House
• “Hixton,” by William Kent Krueger (from Crimes by Moonlight, edited by Charlaine Harris; Gollancz)
• “The Message,” by Margaret Murphy (from Murder Squad: Best Eaten Cold and Other Stories, edited by Martin Edwards; The Mystery Press)
• “He Did Not Always See Her,” by Claire Seeber (from Guilty Consciences)
• “A Long Time Dead,” by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins (from The Best American Mystery Stories 2011, edited by Harlan Coben and Otto Penzler; Corvus)
• “Laptop,” by Cath Staincliffe (from Murder Squad: Best Eaten Cold and Other Stories)

CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger:
• The Crown, by Nancy Bilyeau (Orion)
• I Will Have Vengeance, by Maurizio de Giovanni (Hersilia Press)
• Bitter Water, by Gordon Ferris (Corvus)
• Prague Fatale, by Philip Kerr (Quercus)
• Icelight, by Aly Monroe (John Murray)
• Sacrilege, by S.J. Parris (HarperCollins)
• A Willing Victim, by Laura Wilson (Quercus)

CWA Dagger in the Library:
• Belinda Bauer
• S.J. Bolton
• Susan Hill
• Peter May
• Steve Mosby
• Imogen Robertson

CWA Debut Dagger:
• Death by Glasgow, by Jon Breakfield
• Easy to Die, by Sean Carpenter
• The Watchers, by Karen Catalona
• One Man Army, by Bram E. Gieben
• Beached, by Sandy Gingras
• Trick, by Sean Hancock
• Broken-Winged Bird, by Renata Hill
• Death Knell, by Rob Lowe
• Chasing Shadows, by Lesley McLaren
• The Wrong Domino, by Simon Miller
• Message from Panama, by Britt Vasarhelyi
• Port of Spain, by Elizabeth Wells

More information is available at the CWA Web site. Winners of these commendations will be named during a black-tie dinner on July 5.

Covering a Landmark

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Fri, 25 May 2012 18:47:00 +0000

This coming Sunday, May 27, will mark the 75th anniversary of the opening of San Francisco’s magnificent Golden Gate Bridge. To commemorate this occasion, The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley has put together a guided Web tour of that heavily traveled span as displayed on the covers of mystery, crime, and detective novels. There are book jackets dating back to 1940, though most of them are of much more recent vintage.

Bancroft librarian Randal S. Brandt (who also manages the Web sites Golden Gate Mysteries and A David Dodge Companion) offers a short intro to the exhibit in Mystery Fanfare. Or click here to go directly to the tour, which is titled “Shrouded in Mysteries.”

Being a longtime supporter of and frequent visitor to San Francisco, I wish I could say that I’ve read all of the books Brandt has collected for this Web tour. I haven’t ... but that only means I have a pleasant challenge ahead of me before the 80th anniversary ...

Hot on the Bristol Beat

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Fri, 25 May 2012 14:25:00 +0000

As much as I might like to, I can’t attend every crime-fiction convention, and this year’s CrimeFest (May 24-27) in Bristol, England, is another such event I am having to miss. Fortunately, though, Shots’ Ayo Onatade is on the scene and has begun filing reports. Her two posts thus far can be found here and here. For more, check back with Shotsmag Confidential over the weekend.

Unleashing the Bulldog Underdog

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Thu, 24 May 2012 21:19:00 +0000

Back in January, I wrote a post here about the 1968-1969 NBC-TV series The Outsider, which starred Darren McGavin as David Ross, an ex-con turned Los Angeles private investigator. I’d just happened across two short video clips on from an episode of that show called “Periwinkle Blue,” and wanted to share them with readers of The Rap Sheet. The Outsider is a show I’ve heard a great deal about (it was, after all, created by Roy Huggins and is considered a precursor to his much-better-known 1970s series, The Rockford Files) but have never actually seen. Since it isn’t yet available in DVD format, I have been on the lookout for affordable bootleg versions of The Outsider, and in the meantime have kept my eyes open for more Web clips.

Finally, this last Monday, author-screenwriter Lee Goldberg posted the show’s main title sequence, which I have taken the liberty of also embedding above. Backed up by composer Pete Rugolo’s jazzy theme music, that opening does a decent job of portraying Ross as a manifestly low-rent gumshoe in a city and society where he feels very much a stranger. But it doesn’t tell a great deal about the show. Better is this write-up from Richard Meyers’ eminently useful, 1981 book, TV Detectives, which reminds readers that McGavin had previously starred in Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (1958-1960):

[The Outsider] proved to be the flip side of Mike Hammer. Hammer was an outcast from society because he was a hard man who stood for what he believed in. David Ross was an “outsider” because he was a pathetic little schmuck who got trampled on by life. Darren McGavin played both roles on television with equal ability.

Hammer just got angrier as time went on. Ross got bitter and resigned. Orphaned as a kid, a high school dropout, and framed for a crime he had not committed, Ross happily withdrew into his own haphazard world of poverty and depression. He was an interesting creation, but hardly the stuff of hit shows. NBC hoped the public would root for his bulldog underdog and wrote their press releases to point out his individuality.

“He’s a go-it-alone private eye who knows the underworld from the inside,” they said. “Rejected by society--and rejecting society--he lives in an off-beat world: often dangerous .. always fascinating.” It was fascinating, all right, and raised some interesting questions like, how does an ex-con get a private investigator’s license? And why does he keep his phone in the refrigerator of his run-down, ramshackle office-cum-apartment?

When he was not trying to evoke pity in the audience, he would go out on cases that were structured to beat out what little life was left in him. If he was not losing his girlfriend in a fatal accident, he was getting beaten up by hoods, suspects, and sometimes even clients. One thing can be said for The Outsider: he could really take a punch--lots of them. What could not be said about The Outsider was that he lasted more than a season.

Clearly, by the time producer Huggins got around to creating The Rockford Files, he recognized that any new ex-con P.I. couldn’t be as dour and cynical as Dave Ross.

Despite critic Meyers’ hesitations about The Outsider, I still look forward to seeing more of that series someday soon. If you remember McGavin’s show, and have any opinions about it to share, please do so in the Comments section of this post.

* * *

For others like me, who are curious about The Outsider, check out Michael Shonk’s review of the show’s 1967 pilot, as well as his plot synopses of its 26 episodes.

Look Who’s Stalking

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Wed, 23 May 2012 22:22:00 +0000

Tomorrow will be the last day you can nominate crime, mystery, and thriller novels for the 2012 Stalker Awards, sponsored by the blog Pop Culture Nerd. Categories include “Novel You Shoved Most Often in People’s Faces,” “Lead Character You Most Want as Your Friend,” “Catchiest Title,” and “Most Criminally Underrated Author.”

All books contending for these prizes must have been published during calendar year 2011. You can propose up to three selections in each category, and you’re not required to fill out all the categories. Nominations must be registered by 9 p.m. PST.

So click here now to suggest your preferred contenders. A list of Stalker finalists is supposed to be posted in Pop Culture Nerd “on or around Tuesday, May 29,” at which point readers will be asked to vote for their favorites. Winners are scheduled to be announced during the first week (I assume that means the first full week) of June.

No Mystery to These Words

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Wed, 23 May 2012 21:06:00 +0000

The blog Wordnik (yeah, I didn’t know there was such a thing either until earlier today) has put together a short but interesting backgrounder on some terms that are very familiar to crime-fiction readers. Included among the bunch is this example:

Gumshoe originated around 1906, and comes from “the rubber-soled shoes [detectives] wore,” perhaps because they allow the wearer “to move about stealthily.” Dick meaning detective “is recorded from 1908, perhaps as a shortened variant of detective.” Shamus, slang for a police officer or private investigator, may come from the Hebrew shamash, “servant,” referring to the “sexton of a synagogue,” and influenced by the Irish name Seamus, or James, “a typical name for an Irish cop.”

You can dig up the whole Wordnik post here.

Watch Them Now

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Wed, 23 May 2012 19:45:00 +0000

I happened across a couple of cool, full-length old crime movies on YouTube this morning, which you might wish to view for yourself: The Case of the Lucky Legs (1935), starring Warren William as Erle Stanley Gardner’s series attorney, Perry Mason; and The Mandarin Mystery (1936), based “loosely” on the 1934 Ellery Queen novel, The Chinese Orange Mystery, and starring Eddie Quillan as Queen.

Check them out before the YouTube overlords decide these flicks shouldn’t be available for non-commercial viewing, after all.

Six Education

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Wed, 23 May 2012 04:05:00 +0000

Today The Rap Sheet turns six years old. That’s right, I embarked on this blogging adventure way back in May 2006, spinning The Rap Sheet off from January Magazine. At the time, I envisioned perhaps writing a post once or twice a week--just enough to establish The Rap Sheet’s presence and usefulness without letting the effort overtake everything else I had to do. Well, as anyone who reads this page on a regular basis knows, my blogging mates and I have been producing many more than one post every seven days. In fact, last Friday we clocked in our 5,000th post. That means ... 833 posts every 12 months, or an average of 16 posts per week (though the frequency has picked up some over the last couple of years).

There’s no way I could have accomplished all of this by myself. The Rap Sheet boasts a star cast of contributors (you will find their names under “The Usual Suspects” in the right-hand column). Although some of those people write more than others, I am indebted to all of them for helping to build this blog’s backlog and reputation.

Even after half a dozen years at this task, there continue to be many things I wish to accomplish with The Rap Sheet. I haven’t yet finished compiling my rundown of the 25 best crime drama openers, for instance. My 40th anniversary tribute to The NBC Mystery Movie continues to roll out--if ever so slowly (sorry about that, folks). And there are dozens more copycat book covers yet to be ridiculed ... er, examined. Beyond all of that, I hope to put together a couple of episode-by-episode recaps of older TV crime and mystery shows, revive The Rap Sheet’s “Books You Have to Read” series, add to our already rich inventory of author interviews, and give away lots more new books. The fact that I still haven’t tired of this blog speaks not only to my own editorial energies, but also to the encouragement so many readers and novelists have given me ever since ’06.

So on this sixth anniversary--which happens, as well, to be Arthur Conan Doyle’s birthday (he’d have turned 153 today)--let me thank everyone who has noticed, enjoyed, and contributed their talents to this little corner of the blogosphere. We hope The Rap Sheet will continue to inform and delight for many years to come.

Underdressed and Kicking Ass

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 22 May 2012 23:59:00 +0000

It’s hard to believe I have never heard of this 1974 film filled with sex and violence and, er, topless kung-fu fighting:

Do you like Shaw Brothers swordplay movies? Do you like German nudie movies from the early 1970s? Have you ever wondered what type of film you’d get if you crossed those two styles of film? Well wonder no more, because The Bod Squad is just such a picture.

Permission to Kill offers up an explanation of this movie’s “wafer-thin” plot, plus its incredibly cheesy trailer here.

Theeeeere Goes Johnny!

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 22 May 2012 14:22:00 +0000

It was 20 years ago tonight that comedian Johnny Carson, then 66 years old, left NBC-TV’s The Tonight Show after 30 years as its congenial host. Can it really have been that long?

A Little Here, a Little There

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 22 May 2012 01:20:00 +0000

• House, the Hugh Laurie medical drama that won a healthy following among crime-fiction fans, will end its eight-and-a-half-year run on FOX-TV tonight. The occasion has spawned more than a few fond looks back at this quirky show. “Dr. Gregory House,” writes the Los Angeles Times’ Mary McNamara, “is arguably the best and certainly the most influential character to appear on network television in the last decade. As played by Laurie, he answered the question many of us ask ourselves daily: What would life be like if you honest to God didn’t care what anyone thought of you? Loosely based on Sherlock Holmes, House was brilliant and clearly broken (both physically and emotionally). He saved lives by solving cases, but his satisfaction came from the solution, not the salvation. ‘Everybody lies’ was his mantra, proving it his life's work--the truth would out, no matter what the cost to him, to his patients, to those around him.” Meanwhile, in TV Guide, “the cast and producers retrace the series’ highs and lows.” Tonight’s episode of House, “Everybody Dies,” will begin at 9 p.m. ET/PT. FOLLOW-UP: The L.A. Times talks with Hugh Laurie about his departure from House.

• The trailer for Skyfall, the long-awaited 23rd James Bond motion picture, doesn’t give away much of the plot, but it definitely whets my appetite for more. Watch it here. And learn more about the film in the May 2012 issue of MI6 Confidential.

• How do you spot a crime-fiction addict, asks Rhian Davies, then answers that question by pointing out a few common traits, including: “They will have a pet or pets and they will be named after a crime fiction author or character”; “They will know what 4MA is”; and “They will have an Amazon account older than their e-mail address.”

• The second season of ABC-TV’s The Rookies (1972-1976), including the original series pilot, will be released in DVD format on August 7.

• And with Memorial Day Weekend coming right up, destined to send many a husband outside with hamburger and steak fixings in hand, editor-blogger Janet Rudolph has put together a list of barbecue-related mysteries.

Pierce’s Picks: “Dark Magic”

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 21 May 2012 15:14:00 +0000

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

Dark Magic, by James Swain (Tor):
Prior to writing more than half a dozen books about casino security expert Tony Valentine (Grift Sense, Loaded Dice, etc.), James Swain put together a 122-page non-fiction work called Don’t Blink: The Magic of James Swain (1992). And according to his Web site, the author’s been “an avid magician for most of his life.” It’s hardly surprising, then, that his interest in legerdemain should become a source for his fiction. In Dark Magic, he presents a magician, Peter Warlock, who’s known for his astounding performances at a theater in New York City. But it’s what Peter does in his off-hours that’s most remarkable: he’s part of a shadowy contingent of psychics who can see into the future, and who regularly warn police or other authorities--anonymously, of course--when big trouble is in the offing. After one of his séances suggests that a deadly attack on Times Square is due just four days away, though, Peter and his cohorts decide they must take a more active role in heading off the violence. What they don’t expect is to encounter another group of more nefarious psychics, who want to make Peter and his colleagues disappear forever. Swain boils up a brew here that combines the occult with crime solving in most intriguing fashion.

Final Problem, Final Episode

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 21 May 2012 01:37:00 +0000

If it seems that the second season of the British drama Sherlock just started its run on PBS-TV, well, that’s because it just did--at the beginning of May. And tonight brings the concluding episode, “The Reichenbach Fall,” which finds Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Dr. John Watson (Martin Freeman) confronting the insane criminal mastermind, Jim Moriarty (Andrew Scott). Together with “A Scandal in Belgravia,” this season’s opening show, I rank “Reichenbach” as one of my two favorite Sherlock installments thus far. Lyndsay Faye, author of the recent historical mystery The Gods of Gotham, as well as the concoctor of that 2009 Holmes adventure, Dust and Shadow, offers her thoughts on “The Reichenbach Fall” in Criminal Intent.

Ninety minutes in length, “The Reichenbach Fall” begins tonight at 9 p.m. ET/PT on PBS’ Masterpiece Mystery!

By the way, if you haven’t been keeping up with Ms. Faye’s excellent commentary on Sherlock--both this season’s episodes and last year’s--you can still find her posts here.

Can That Be? 5,000?

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sun, 20 May 2012 22:28:00 +0000

I’ve been paying close attention lately to The Rap Sheet’s stats, wondering if this blog’s sixth anniversary would coincide perfectly with the appearance of its 5,000th post. Well, it’s rare that things work out so neatly, and this did not. In fact, our 5,000th post went up on Friday morning--unheralded in print, though the occasion generated an abundance of high-fives around the Rap Sheet offices.

Meanwhile, the blog won’t turn six until this coming Tuesday.

With Age Comes New Respect

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Fri, 18 May 2012 14:40:00 +0000

Among the many crime novels being highlighted in this week’s collection of “forgotten books” posts is J.B. O’Sullivan’s 1953 work, I Die Possessed, about which I wrote earlier this week in Kirkus Reviews. Other books mentioned: Some of Your Blood, by Theodore Sturgeon; The Sins of the Fathers, by Lawrence Block; The Tough Die Hard, by Robert Martin; Corpus Delectable, by Talmage Powell; Love Lies Bleeding, by Edmund Crispin; Mermaids, by Margaret Millar; Whom Gods Destroy, by Clifton Adams; May You Die in Ireland, by Michael Kenyon; The Case of Mr. Cassidy, by William Targ; Remember to Kill Me, by Hugh Pentecost; A Killing in Comics, by Max Allan Collins; The Death of Colonel Mann, by Cynthia Peale; The House in November, by Keith Laumer; Little Odessa, by Joseph Koenig; and The Cry of the Owl, by Patricia Highsmith.

You’ll find the full list of posts in Todd Mason’s Sweet Freedom.

Peculier, Indeed

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Thu, 17 May 2012 23:59:00 +0000

Eighteen books are featured in the longlist of nominees for Britain’s 2012 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. The titles of those works were announced earlier this afternoon:

• Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovitch (Gollancz)
• Darkside, by Belinda Bauer (Corgi)
• Now You See Me, by S.J. Bolton (Corgi)
• Where the Bodies Are Buried, by Chris Brookmyre (Abacus)
• The Burning Soul, by John Connolly (Hodder Paperback)
• The Calling, by Neil Cross (Simon & Schuster)
• The Hanging Shed, by Gordon Ferris (Corvus)
• Bryant and May and the Memory of Blood, by Christopher
Fowler (Bantam)
• Blue Monday, by Nicci French (Michael Joseph)
• The Fear Index, by Robert Harris (Arrow)
• The Retribution, by Val McDermid (Sphere)
• The End of the Wasp Season, by Denise Mina (Orion)
• Black Flowers, by Steve Mosby (Orion)
• Collusion, by Stuart Neville (Vintage)
• The Impossible Dead, by Ian Rankin (Orion)
• Mice, by Gordon Reece (Pan Books)
• Agent 6, by Tom Rob Smith (Simon & Schuster)
• Before I Go to Sleep, by S.J. Watson (Black Swan)

By July 5, this longlist should finally be trimmed down to a roster of just half a dozen finalists.

On July 17, members of the public will be asked to vote for their favorite novels from that shortlist, and the winner will be announced on Thursday, July 19, during the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England.

Bullet Points: Quiet Thursday Edition

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Thu, 17 May 2012 23:08:00 +0000

• Submissions to this year’s big Watery Grave Invitational Short Story Contest are due “no later than 9 p.m. EST” tonight. E-mail your entries to editor Naomi Johnson at beauvallet@aol.com.

• In Reference to Murder also reminds us that time is “running out to submit your novella of 15,000 to 20,000 words in length for the sixth annual Black Orchid Novella Award. The sponsors are seeking original works of fiction in the tradition of ... Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, which (1) emphasize the deductive skills of the sleuth; (2) contain no overt sex or violence; (3) don't include characters from the original series. First prize: $1,000 plus publication in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.” Entries must be postmarked by May 31.

• If you’re planning to attend next month’s BookExpo America (BEA) conference in New York City, be sure to check out Andrew Shaffer’s “Ultimate BEA Party Guide,” which hopes to list “all the parties planned for the week.” (Hat tip to GalleyCat.)

• Really? Megan Abbott has penned an issue of The Punisher?

• UK critic Mike Ripley, a monthly columnist for Shots and an occasional contributor to The Rap Sheet, has spent the last three years helming Ostara Publishing’s Top Notch Thrillers imprint, bringing “unjustly forgotten British thrillers” back into print. Now he’s taking on further responsibilities for Ostara as series editor for its new Ostara Crime imprint. To quote from a press release:

Said Ripley: “When it comes to mysteries and thrillers, publishing these days is looking for the quick fix and far too many good books go out of print far too quickly. With Ostara Crime we’re trying to keep quality crime writing in front of a new generation of readers both through print and electronically.”

The first authors signed to Ostara Crime, all female, will each have three of their series mysteries republished this year and will appear as Kindle e-books for the first time. The first three “Kate Kinsella Medical Mysteries” by Christine Green--Deadly Errand, Deadly Admirer and Deadly Practice--are out now and will be followed by three “Georgina Powers Investigations” by Denise Danks and three “‘Rain Morgan” detective novels by Lesley Grant-Adamson.

“I am delighted with our first three signings,” enthuses Mike Ripley. “Christine Green did a marvellous job updating the traditional cosy village murder story to small-town England in the 1990s and mixing in a medical background and some saucy seaside-postcard humour. Lesley Grant-Adamson, a distinguished journalist, gained rave reviews for her psychological thrillers written as superbly crafted detective novels in the classic English form. Denise Danks, one of the ‘Fresh Blood’ generation of writers from the late 1980s, wrote her crime fiction on the cutting edge of technology as technology was undergoing radical change. Her computer-savvy heroine, Georgina Powers, was tough, stubborn and unruly, often drunk and made terrible choices when it came to men.”

• Speaking of Shots, its editor, Mike Stotter, has recently helped launch a venture called Piccadilly Publishing, which hopes to “bring back into ‘e-print’ some of the most popular and best-loved Western and action-adventure series fiction of the last forty years.” The enterprise’s new blog explains that “The first Piccadilly Publishing e-book--Trackdown, by Neil Hunter--is now available for download from Amazon’s platforms in the UK, U.S., Spain, France, Germany and Italy, and more titles are set to follow over the next several months.”

• Here’s some news to send shivers up the backs of America’s (unfortunately numerous) right-wing racists: “After years of speculation, estimates and projections,” The New York Times reports, “the Census Bureau has made it official: White births are no longer a majority in the United States.” Of course, most of us will probably think, Who cares? The quality of a person doesn’t lie in his or her color, after all, but in his or her character.

• With the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises--Christopher Nolan’s third Batman movie--coming up in mid-July, and set to star Anne Hathaway as feline fatale Catwoman, New York’s Daily News provides a handy infographic that looks back at the film and TV history of the Cape Crusader’s most fetching foe.

• Good-bye, Donna Summer.

• Omnimystery News brings word that “Nikolaj Arcel--who adapted The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for the Swedish-language version of the film--and Mikkel Nørgaard will write the screenplay” for a big-screen version of Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen’s first Department Q novel, The Keeper of Lost Causes.

• Deserved props for the 1998 flick Twilight.

• A behind-the-scenes preview of CBS-TV’s upcoming series Elementary, which stars Jonny Lee Miller as a modern-day Sherlock Holmes operating in New York City, with Lucy Liu as his sidekick, Joan (not John) Watson, can be seen here.

• Sad news, but not unexpected: NBC has cancelled the David E. Kelley legal drama Harry’s Law, starring Kathy Bates. Why? “The show ranked very low among viewers ages 18 to 49, the demographic most advertisers care about.”

• Hey, I remember this series! (NBC network promo here.)

• Even if the story wasn’t interesting, the headline of this blog post in Existential Ennui would get draw me in: “Is Ian Fleming’s James Bond Really a Sexist, Misogynist Bastard?”

• Hmm. The Day the Sea Rolled Back is not the first book that comes to mind when I think of Mickey Spillane.

• And Ayo Onatade reports that FX-TV “has put in development a drama series adaptation of Chelsea Cain’s best-selling book series ... [Her] thriller novels, Heartsick, Sweetheart and Evil at Heart, center on beautiful therapist-turned-series killer Gretchen Lowell and her relationship with damaged Portland detective Archie Sheridan.”

New Meaning to the Term “Ghost Writer”

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:01:00 +0000

Employing the murder victim as the narrator of a detective story? In 1953, when J.B. O’Sullivan’s I Die Possessed was published by Pocket Books, that was a rather striking divergence from the norm. O’Sullivan’s novel is still pretty distinctive, as I note in my column this week for Kirkus Reviews. You will find that piece here.

Meanwhile, for my Killer Covers blog, I have put together a broad selection of book illustrations from Verne Tossey, the same Detroit-born artist who gave I Die Possessed its appropriately haunting cover. Click here to read the Tossey post.

Made in the Shades

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:09:00 +0000

While pondering CBS-TV’s decision to cancel CSI: Miami after 10 seasons on the air, the blog Criminal Element asks, “if Archie Bunker’s chair belongs in the Smithsonian, don’t Horatio Caine’s shades?” We wholeheartedly second that proposition.