Author Snapshot: Kelli Stanley

Noir is in the eye of the beholder. While some people feel that fiction called “noir” must take place in a narrow band of geography or time, others understand that noir is a condition of light and spirit rather than time or place.

At first blush, it would seem that Kelli Stanley understands all of these things better than most, having set her debut novel, Nox Dormienda (Five Star), in 1st century Rome for a style that Stanley and those who have read her are calling Roman Noir.

On her Web site, Stanley explains that Roman Noir is based “on my classically-trained and educated interpretation of Roman culture.” It is “lightning-paced” and “rooted in the ‘30s hard-boiled style, especially Chandler.”

A classics scholar, Stanley lives in San Francisco but writes and lectures internationally and secretly still does “a killer Mae West” impression.


A Snapshot of… Kelli Stanley
Most recent book: Nox Dormienda (A Long Night for Sleeping)
Born: Tacoma, Washington
Resides: San Francisco, California
Birthday: June 11, 1964
Web site: kellistanley.com


What’s your favorite city?
San Francisco, of course. Followed by Rome, London, Chicago, Paris and New York.

You only have six hours to spend there. What do you do?
First, I head over to Sam Woh’s in Chinatown for some yang chow fried rice. Then hop on a vintage F-car on Market Street to the Hyde Street Pier, and visit the historic ships. Walk back up to Buena Vista Café and order an Irish Coffee (they invented it there). Take a drive through the Presidio to Ft. Point, located under the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge, and find the spot where Jimmy Stewart dove in the Bay to save Kim Novak in Vertigo.

By then, it’s time to head back home … but fortunately, I live here.

What food do you love?
Baked potatoes. Organic russets, with sour cream, garlic salt, chives, and plenty of pepper. And dark, dark chocolate for dessert.

What food have you vowed never to touch again?
Fast food. I haven’t eaten any in about five years … no McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, In and Out Burger, et. al.

What’s on your nightstand?
An antique lamp, two harmonicas, three meditation balls from Chinatown (the kind you roll in your hand), a notepad, a magic box of metal crickets (also from Chinatown), two pens, and a lot of books.

What inspires you?
People. What I call the unexpected delights in life -- a sudden smile, a small act of kindness. Misery is something I expect, I suppose, it seems to be around us all the time. So I look for signs of hope. Nature constantly inspires me as well -- a raven on a garbage can, a hawk on a street lamp, a eucalyptus tree. Or, when I’m not in the city, Redwood trees, space, animal sounds. When I’m in the city, that magical mix of gracefully aging architecture and diverse populations and energy and urban decay. And neon signs.

What are you working on now?
I’m finishing up a very dark novel set in 1940 San Francisco, featuring a female private investigator. I love writing about this era; it was a period of great beauty in every day life (the architecture, fashion, film, music) that coexisted with much ugliness.

Tell us about your process.
I write in the afternoons, generally, because that’s when I’m home from work. If I can write in the morning, I prefer it. I’ve written at all times of the day or into the evening, particularly if I’m finishing a segment or chapter. I take notes with pencil and paper, sketch my plots and chapter/scene events out the old-fashioned way -- more of an outline, since characters will often do something completely unexpected when I’m actually writing them.

Lift your head and look around. What do you see?
A mess! Lots of to-do lists, vitamins, green tea, and a large, black and white Springer Spaniel that needs a bath.

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Writing is something I’ve always done. Because of that, I think, as a child I never had the goal of becoming a writer. Writing was always there, and I suppose I sort of took it for granted. I planned to become an actress when I graduated from high school, and I wanted to direct films. But by the time I was an adult, I realized that I actually needed to write (and in a more disciplined way than scratching out poetry or essays). So I started with screenplays initially, and turned to novels when I was back in college, finishing up my Master’s Degree. Nox Dormienda was my first attempt at writing one. And now, of course, I wouldn’t trade being a writer for anything.

If you couldn’t write books, what would you be doing?
Making films. My parents always urged me to go into law, and my friends tell me I’d make a great psychiatrist! What that says about me and my friends, I don’t know...

To date, what moment in your career has made you happiest?
January 17, 2007. The day I received news about my publication. I graduated just six months earlier, hadn’t joined any organizations, didn’t know anything about the publishing business. But the fact that a company -- even a small company -- was willing to give me money -- even a small amount of money -- for thoughts in my head that I’d shaped into a novel was, well, miraculous. I could invest in myself at that point, since others were willing to. And I’ve found that the writing community is full of wondrous and wonderful people, amazingly generous and supportive. So I’ve stayed happy ever since.

For you, what is the easiest thing about being writer?
Wanting to write. I’m always composing, thinking, mulling, storing something away, some act or person or moment I’ve observed. I constantly write, even when I’m not near a keyboard.

What’s the most difficult?
Reviews. Setting your book free and relinquishing all control of what reviewers may do to it. But that’s part of the business reality of writing. Publishing is a privilege. It’s a tough business, as all creative enterprises are. So another challenge is figuring out the right decisions for yourself. I’m lucky. I have a very smart, supportive family, and recently signed with the best agent in the universe, Kimberley Cameron.

What question do you get asked about your writing most often?
I’m usually asked to explain what Roman noir is, which I happily do. And I’m also asked what everyone is asked, namely “Where do you get your ideas?”

What’s the question you’d like to be asked? Probably what I’m trying to achieve with my book. Themes, literary motifs, messages, intentions.

What question would you like never to be asked again?
There’s no question about writing or my books that I mind answering, no matter how many times I’ve been asked it. It’s when people stop asking that I worry!

Please tell us about Nox Dormienda.
It’s a historical mystery-thriller, written for people who don’t like historical fiction without (hopefully) displeasing those who do! It’s been described by Ken Bruen as “Ellis Peters rewritten by Elmore Leonard” and by other reviewers as a fantasy collaboration of Lindsey Davis and Raymond Chandler. The style and pace are classic hardboiled, 1930s-style vintage noir, while the setting and background are authentic first century AD Roman Londinium.

Tell us something about yourself that no one knows.
As a freshman in college, I won a part as a courtesan (in The Comedy of Errors) by auditioning with a Mae West impression. I can still do a killer Mae West!

Review: Slip of the Knife by Denise Mina

Today in January Magazine’s crime fiction section, M. Wayne Cunningham reviews Slip of the Knife by Denise Mina. Says Cunningham:

Denise Mina, the Glasgow-based author of Slip of the Knife (or The Last Breath, as it was published last year in the UK), has seen herself at times as “a bit of a cheeky cow.” Her Glaswegian and Tartan Noir colleagues, Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, have stated their views of her too. Rankin once described Mina as “one of the most exciting writers to have emerged in Britain for years,” and McDermid has referred to her as Scotland’s “Crown Princess of Crime.” Heady accolades, indeed, from two of Scotland’s crime-writing best, but well substantiated from a reading of this third volume in Mina’s planned five-book series about Patricia “Paddy” Meehan, her Glaswegian Irish-Catholic journalist turned sleuth.

The full review is here.

Author Snapshot: John McFetridge

Though The Toronto Star recently described John McFetridge as Canada’s answer to Elmore Leonard, in some ways that doesn’t even begin to cover it. If anything, McFetridge’s voice is colder, starker than Leonard’s, something likely due the fact that this Made-in-Canada author wears his nationality like a Hudson’s Bay blanket. McFetridge is one of a new breed of Canadian crime fictionists, building neo noir that seems touched by both the humor and self-consciousness of life north of the 48th.

Publisher’s Weekly called McFetridge’s most recent book, Everybody Knows this is Nowhere, a “noir love song to Toronto,” while in an early review for Quill & Quire, Sarah Weinman also chose the Leonard comparison, saying that “both writers seamlessly mix the police procedural with perp procedural to underscore the parallel lives of members of the opposing teams. But where Leonard tends to favour Hollywood-homicide banter, McFetridge keep the quips to a minimum, preferring punch to panache. As a result, the only time his prose gets purple is when fists are flying.”

Clearly, and like a growing number of his readers, one gets the idea that Weinman understands that this is an author everyone knows is going somewhere.



A Snapshot of John McFetridge
Born: Greenfield Park, Quebec
Resides: Toronto
Birthday: November, 16 1959
Web site: johnmcfetridge.ca


Please tell us about Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.
The blurb is: an urban grow operator under house arrest must decide whether to trust a too-sexy stranger when a murder investigation threatens her business.

Which I guess sums it up, but it does start with an, “Arab-looking” guy falling 20 floors off the top of the apartment building she runs her grow op in, her 21-year-old daughter is in the mix, bikers are moving into town and going to war with the mob and the cops are in the middle of a huge corruption investigation, so there are some other complications.

What’s on your nightstand?
The Big O by Declan Burke, What Burns Within by Sandra Ruttan and the non-fiction McMafia: a Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld by Misha Glenny.

What inspires you?
Character, it’s all about the people. I spent a long time avoiding writing about people I knew, about their stories and situations, but the older I got the more I wondered, why? No one else seemed to be telling their stories, certainly not very many trying to do it in their voices (which is also my voice). So, I’m inspired by the people I’ve met, my friends.

What are you working on now?
More of the same, I guess. Another book with many of the same characters -- new main characters, though, that’s the series style I’m aiming for. Many of the same cops and the same crime figures involved in the lives of new people. I like the continuity of it, the way life goes on and the people keep doing what they’re doing, but I like new faces. In this book, Go Round, an ex-US Army guy and an ex-Canadian Army guy who met in Afghanistan are back home and bringing drugs and guns with them. The Canadian guy is JT, a biker we meet in Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.

Tell us about your process.
It’s changing. When I started writing novels my kids were very small. Jimmy was just over a year and Doug was two and a half. I was (and still am) a stay at home Dad. So, the boys and I would often go to the park in the morning and while pushing them on the swings or watching them in the sandbox, I’d work out stuff in my head and maybe make notes if I could find 30 seconds with a pen and piece of paper. Then, in the afternoon while they napped, I’d type up what I had on an old laptop at the kitchen table.

As the boys have gotten older, I’ve gotten more time. Now Doug is in grade four and Jimmy’s in grade two so I drop them off at school in the morning and work till lunch. Then, I am the mack daddy of grilled cheese and pizza pops. In the afternoon I do research, poke around on line, get lost on blogs and webzines like this one and stuff till 3:30 and it’s time to pick up my boys at school. I’m looking forward to when they’re in high school and no longer come home for lunch (well, looking forward and not, at the same time).

As for the writing, I don’t work out plots or outline or plan too far ahead. My books aren’t mysteries with a crime being solved, they’re about ongoing crimes. I work from character and theme. Very basic themes. Dirty Sweet is about opportunity – how is it that some people see opportunity everywhere and some people never see it? Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere is all about how did I end up here? I get characters I’m interested in and then I put them in situations I think are interesting and I see what they do. Then I see what they do next and around about page 250 I start to wonder, wow, how are they going to get out of this (or not get out of it)?

Francis Ford Coppola said that the idea is the question and making the movie is how you try and find the answer. Then he added, “Just try telling that to the money guy.” It’s a funny line when you’re talking about movie money, but I find it actually works with books. The idea is the question and writing the book is finding out some of the answers. I don’t know what the answers will be ahead of time, I have to write the book to find out.

Lift your head and look around. What do you see?
One one side is my kitchen and living room, my dog is sleeping on the couch (hey, get off the couch!) and on the other side is the window to my front yard and the street. I really like to feel plugged into my neighbourhood, to my city. I don’t work well in solitude (well, I say that having lived in cities my whole life so I don’t really know, but I strongly suspect...). I’m a couple blocks from the library and the grocery store and the park so I walk everywhere. It’s a nice neighbourhood, very homey and like a small town in the middle of a big city. I know many of my neighbours and I like running into people when I’m out.

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
When I read Elmore Leonard’s Swag? I don’t know. I wasn’t much of a reader when I was a kid, but I loved the movies. I moved around a lot in high school (I went to four of them) and at the last one I met a guy I’m still friends with named Randy McIlwaine (he’s now a cartoonist, very funny stuff). We went to lots of movies and decided to try and write one. We called it Opening Night at the Bijoux (we were in Montreal, see, and bijoux means jewelry in French, and we thought we were so clever, we imagined it as the sign outside an adult movie theatre, the Bijou X) and we still feel we pretty much invented the high school sex comedy. It pre-dated Animal House and Meatballs and Porkys.

Anyway, we showed it to some producers in Montreal and a couple were interested and it was fun (and extremely frustrating), but it never went anywhere. Anyway, I thought I could make movies. For twenty years I tried -- not always full-time, head on trying, but on and off.

After a while I realized all the movies I really liked were either made by John Sayles or based on a book. I was intimidated by the idea of trying to write a novel -- every novelist I ever heard talk was well-educated, well traveled, confident. Then another buddy of mine from my high school years, Michel Basilieres, convinced me most novelists were just faking it, so I gave it a try. Michel is also a writer, his novel Black Bird won the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada Best First Novel Award a few years ago.

If you couldn’t write books, what would you be doing?
I don’t know. Not much. Maybe I’d be a dog walker. I drifted aimlessly through a lot of my life. Dropped out of high school, moved out west, worked on construction sites and in warehouses, went back east, enrolled in university as a “mature” student and changed majors a few times before landing in English lit and history, dropped out and got kicked out a couple times before graduating at age 31. I thought I might be a teacher but after a dozen teacher’s colleges turned me down I got the hint. I didn’t have good enough marks to get into a master’s program. And like I said, my 20 year attempt at filmmaking was a complete bust.

My brother just retired after 39 years as an RCMP officer and sometimes I think I should have done that.

To date, what moment in your career has made you happiest?
It’s all been pretty good. I co-wrote a book of short stories, Below the Line, with my friend Scott Albert and getting that published was great. Then, when Jack David at ECW accepted Dirty Sweet and asked me if I could write some more books, that was pretty good. Working with Jack and Michael Holmes and everybody at ECW has been terrific. Being able to dedicate books to my wife after all she’s put up with is pretty sweet, too, and makes me very happy. I was very surprised when Dirty Sweet and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere got picked up by Harcourt in the US, and pretty happy about it.

For you, what is the easiest thing about being writer?
Because I write crime fiction maybe the easiest is that the world keeps giving me material. Every time I open the paper some criminal has done some wacky, dumb thing and I just try and imagine what could have possibly led up to that and I have a scene.

Writing crime fiction is also a good way to deal with the huge amounts of hypocrisy I see every day. I write a scene in which a bunch of bikers talk about how they’d be out of business if marijuana was legalized and I feel like I’ve done some social commentary and maybe been a little entertaining at the same time.

What’s the most difficult?
Working alone all the time. One of the things that kept me trying to make movies all those years was the social aspect of it, the hanging out on set with a bunch of funny people doing something they liked (I always felt almost all that on set bitching was fake). I know writers are supposed to love the solitude, the quiet contemplation and all that, but it drives me crazy.

What question do you get asked about your writing most often?
Oh, the usual, where do the ideas come from. That way I know the person asking isn’t from Toronto or they’d recognize almost every crime in my books from stories in the newspaper.

What’s the question you’d like to be asked?
Not this one, that’s for sure ;) I don’t know, I’m pretty open about trying to answer whatever people ask.

What question would like never to be asked again?
I was confronted after a reading once by a very angry guy demanding to know why I would put young black men committing crimes in my book. I don’t actually mind the question, I think it’s good to start the dialogue and I think we avoid difficult questions too much in Canada, but he was a pretty scary guy and he kept shoving me and saying it was, “at your peril” (he had an odd accent and the phrase seemed to fit him). We talked for a while. I don’t think he ever agreed with me that we need to get this stuff -- racism, crime, sexism, inequality -- out in the open, we need to talk about it even if it makes us uncomfortable (or because it makes us uncomfortable) if we’re going to see the end of it, but at least we didn’t come to blows.

Tell us something about yourself that no one knows.
For most of my life I wanted to play goalie for the Montreal Canadiens. When I was a kid I was such a bad hockey player I was too embarrassed to tell my friends. Now I want to play soccer for Toronto FC.

A Honey of an Opening

The story that goes with that amazing bit of video is at The Rap Sheet today. J. Kingston Pierce continues his series of the best of television crime drama openers with an intimate look at a classic heroine of the page and the small screen, Forrest and Gloria Fickling’s deliciously dangerous Honey West.

Replete with humor and plenty of risqué innuendos, the novels made Honey out as “the nerviest, curviest P.I. in Los Angeles -- or anywhere else for that matter,” to repeat one description. She was also an important precursor to some of today’s best-known distaff dicks, including V.I. Warshawski and Kinsey Millhone. “Of course, these days nobody would dare call her a feminist icon,” wrote Kevin Burton Smith in a 2004 profile of Gloria Fickling for Mystery Scene magazine, “but in her time she was a rarity -- an independent woman calling her own shots. She may have been prone to frequent ‘wardrobe malfunctions,’ but she was out there knocking on doors, taking down names, and answering to nobody but herself.”

Pierce’s story on Honey West is here.

Review: Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks

Today in January Magazine’s crime fiction section, contributing editor Tony Buchsbaum reviews Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks. Says Buchsbaum:

Devil May Care is a terrific resurrection. Ignoring the last, oh, 43 years, the novel picks up, more or less, a short while after the action of Fleming’s final 007 novel, The Man with the Golden Gun (1965). Not only do the movies not exist, but neither do the couple of dozen novels written by Kingsley Amis (using the name Robert Markham), John Gardner and Raymond Benson, each of which pitted Bond against villains large and threatening, in time zones both in the near and far distance. Here, Faulks doesn’t bother with any of that because it’s simply not in this universe. Instead, he provides any number of nods, both subtle and blatant, to Fleming’s works, mentioning names and places and brands that the average Bond aficionado will recognize with love. I’m tempted to say this is Faulks’ way of placing this Bond -- his Bond -- in proper context with Fleming’s. But then I go back to that dust jacket conceit: “writing as Ian Fleming.” This isn’t Faulks’ Bond, we’re meant to think, but Fleming’s.

The full review is here.

Review: Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey

Today in January Magazine’s fiction section, editor Linda L. Richards reviews Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey. Says Richards:

Considering how he got here, it was inconceivable that James Frey’s first work of actual fiction not be brought to Earth on a wave of controversy. I myself came to Bright Shiny Morning fully prepared to loathe it. How could it be otherwise? Frey had gotten his shot with a couple of well-published and well-promoted biographies. He’d gotten his shot and blown it in a grand and noisy style. Shouldn’t Frey, in the tradition of historical wannabes everywhere, just go off with his tail between his legs and leave us alone on our various paths to finding books that matter?

But he did not. Instead, he took himself quietly off and emerged with a stout and ambitious book. Inevitably, fire was drawn.

Like many others, and with an admittedly jaundiced eye, I started to read. And was astonished. Bright Shiny Morning is not perfect. There are weirdly wide flaws. But it is utterly, completely original. More: the book’s flakey, broken narrative and bumper-to-bumper pace captures the feeling that is Los Angeles while its sharp little vignettes grab some of the context.

The full review is here.

Review: The Dawn Patrol by Don Winslow

Today in January Magazine’s crime fiction section, Cameron Hughes reviews The Dawn Patrol by Don Winslow. Says Hughes:

I’m hoping The Dawn Patrol changes things for Don Winslow, that this is a huge success, and that he is hereafter mentioned in the same breath as modern giants such as Michael Connelly and George Pelecanos, because this new book is one of the best private eye novels I’ve read in years.

Boone Daniels used to be a cop. Now he’s a surfer in San Diego, California, obsessively checking how high the waves are and tracking where the epic swells will be on any given day. To support this habit, he does the bare minimum of work necessary, as a P.I. Life seems pretty darn good for Boone Daniels and his surfer buddies on “the Dawn Patrol.” So why is Daniels’ bank account empty? And why does he now spend countless nights trying to find the suspected rapist and killer of a 6-year-old girl -- a case that got cold fast when he was on the San Diego Police Department and refused to torture information out of the favored suspect?

This is a novel chock-a-block with hidden secrets and depths, and Winslow lets you know that right off the bat when he introduces the members of his Patrol by their nicknames only. Other than Daniels, we have Hang Twelve, Dave the Love God, Sunny Day, High Tide and an occasional comrade known as Red Eddie. Don’t you dare let anyone spoil the fun by telling you ahead of time what these names mean. Even their group’s appellation -- and this book’s title -- has a second, darker meaning.

The full review is here.

Pol Positions

Today is Independence Day in the United States (cue the fireworks, barbecues and patriotic speechifying!) -- a perfect occasion on which to catch up with Los Angeles author Gary Phillips’ developing political thriller, Citizen Kang.

In case you haven’t been keeping track, Phillips -- who’s best known for writing the Ivan Monk private-eye series (Violent Spring, Only the Wicked), but also edited the recently published anthology Politics Noir -- has been penning Citizen Kang for The Nation magazine’s Web site for the last six months, ever since mid-January. (New installments appear each Monday.) The story follows Cynthia Kang, “a left-wing, bisexual, 40-something Chinese-American congresswoman from California,” who is struggling in her bid for re-election. Making her task particularly onerous have been the suicide of her mentor, Kang’s discovery that “a mysterious billionaire is pulling strings to affect this year’s presidential election,” and the disappearance (kidnapping?) of her chief of staff.

Writing in our sister publication, The Rap Sheet, Phillips lays out some of his own challenges, as he tries to keep this weekly serial hopping and -- in the next few months -- bring it to a bang-up, 40th-episode conclusion. One of the chief hurdles, he writes, has been smoothly incorporating real-world political developments into his evolving tale:

[I]n Citizen Kang I reference topical and newsy issues now and then, such as the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent landmark ruling on gun ownership, John McCain’s gaffes and flip-flops, and so on. Those events may occur out of their real-time sequence, for I’m having to collapse my storyline in order to give this serial novel a feeling of immediacy. Two days in Congresswoman Kang’s world might, as a result, contain a week’s worth of real-world occurrences. But that’s just the way these things work.

This business of syncing up my fiction with real-world developments is something I can smooth out later on, when I get around to re-editing Citizen Kang for publication in book form. Real-deal politics also messed with me early on, when I was conceptualizing this work. As I’ve mentioned before in The Rap Sheet, Cynthia Kang was originally supposed to run as an independent candidate for the Oval Office, á la the satirical Tanner ’88 that showed on HBO (created by Robert Altman and Doonesbury’s Garry Trudeau). Although former Michigan Congressman Jack Tanner was actually running for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, in both Tanner ’88 and Citizen Kang, real, developing political stories were meant to influence the fiction’s progression. The trouble was, as states started moving up their primary election dates, and as Barack Obama began raking in money like it was free lunch, who in their right mind would have jumped into such a race?

I mean, besides windmill tilters -- or is that would-be spoilers? -- like Bob Barr and Ralph Nader.

You’ll find Phillips’ full post here. And to catch up -- and then keep up -- with Citizen Kang in The Nation, simply click here.

Review: The Triumph of Caesar by Steven Saylor

Today in January Magazine’s crime fiction section, Caroline Cummins reviews The Triumph of Caesar by Steven Saylor. Says Cummins:

The tenth novel in Steven Saylor’s Roma Sub Rosa series, The Triumph of Caesar, feels a bit like a valedictory lap. The ambiguous ending of Saylor’s previous series outing, The Judgment of Caesar (2004), seemed to kill off both Saylor’s grizzled detective, Gordianus the Finder, and his wife, Bethesda. Yet here they are again, back in their house on ancient Rome’s Palatine Hill, Bethesda’s illness mysteriously cured and Gordianus none the worse for his apparent drowning in the Nile. Gordianus has officially retired, but, as always, for the right reasons he can be coaxed into a little light investigation.

The full review is here.

Review: Easy Innocence by Libby Fischer Hellmann

Today in January Magazine’s crime fiction section, Jim Winter reviews Easy Innocence by Libby Fischer Hellmann. Says Winter:

Cam Jordan doesn’t see a high-school hazing when her fellow female students dump a bucket of fish guts over Sara Long’s head. He sees a princess. Then he sees the princess killed. By the time it’s all over, Jordan finds himself holding a bloody baseball bat, wondering if he was the one who did her in.

The police don’t wonder. To them, Jordan -- an autistic man with a dubious sex-offender status -- is the perfect suspect in Sara Long’s murder. In fact, the Illinois State’s Attorney is hell-bent on convicting him, and thereby getting this case off the books. Yet something is clearly wrong when former Chicago police detective Georgia Davis is brought in to investigate all these doings.

The full review is here.

100 Years of Ian Fleming

The blogosphere is abuzz with it today and, of course, J. Kingston Pierce has got our back on the topic at The Rap Sheet.

In case you have no idea what I’m talking about, James Bond creator Ian Fleming would have been 100 today. (Of course, there was no chance that was going to happen: all that booze. All those smokes. He was a lot younger than 100 when he died of a heart attack on August 12, 1964.

Not coincidentally, today also marks the publication date of Devil May Care (Doubleday), a new Bond novel by “Sebastian Faulks, writing as Ian Fleming.” Obviously, The Rap Sheet has that covered as well.

Review: Unknown Means by Elizabeth Becka

Today in January Magazine’s crime fiction section, Jim Winter reviews Unknown Means by Elizabeth Becka. Says Winter:

Over the years, many writers have set their stories in my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. Les Roberts is perhaps the best known among them, with his private eye Milan Jacovich series. More recently, Michael Koryta (Sorrow’s Anthem, A Welcome Grave) has taken over with his increasingly strong Lincoln Perry novels. Then of course some hack from Cincinnati put out a small-press novel in 2005 called … Northcoast … um… Oh, never mind.

Lately, however, the North Coast has been getting the CSI treatment. Elizabeth Becka, a former forensics expert for Cuyahoga County, brings her old job front-and-center through the fictional character of Evelyn James. James, a trace evidence specialist and single mom, debuted in Becka’s well-received first novel, Trace Evidence (2005). She returns in Unknown Means.

The full review is here.

Review: Another Thing to Fall by Laura Lippman

Today in January Magazine’s crime fiction section, M. Wayne Cunningham reviews Another Thing to Fall by Laura Lippman. Says Cunningham:

Like the nine previous novels in her private eye Tess Monaghan series, Laura Lippman’s newest installment, Another Thing to Fall, is set in her hometown of Baltimore. And like the others, it’s a sure-fire read for its plot, characterization, dialogue and authentic Charm City settings. But this time we find Baltimore, “in its full autumnal glory,” as the focal point for feature films, past and present.

In fact, hardly a page of this novel goes by without some mention of a movie title or actor, or at least a cluster of movie set jargon. Characters chat about The Diner, Tin Men, The Wire and ... And Justice for All. They refer to Henry Fonda, Sergio Leone, Francis Ford Coppola and Baltimorean John Waters. They spout off about call sheets, honey wagons, bangers, eps and sides. And in between the cinema-related stuff there are reminders of this Maryland city’s former glory…

The full review is here.

Review: The Prince of Bagram Prison by Alex Carr

Today in January Magazine’s crime fiction section, contributing editor David Thayer reviews The Prince of Bagram Prison by Alex Carr. Says Thayer:

Atmosphere is one of the hallmarks of the classic thriller, an aspect of suspense that is all too often sacrificed from the recipe for modern-day thrillers. Alex Carr -- a pseudonym used by Virginia novelist Jenny Siler (Flashback, Shot) -- wants to remind her readers that mystery can be found in the most ordinary places, where her characters suddenly find themselves prisoners of circumstance.

In the opening scene of The Prince of Bagram Prison, a Moroccan woman named Manar gives birth. The baby is removed and Manar is sent to a camp in the desert, having been judged guilty of joining an anti-government demonstration. Manar is a victim of the Years of Lead, a 1960s-1980s pogrom under Morocco’s King Hassan II that targeted democracy activists.

Now flash ahead to the present. A young Moroccan boy known as Jamal is working for American Intelligence in Madrid, Spain. Jamal is an orphan from Casablanca, who wants his handlers to believe he has information vital to American interests. In most ways, Jamal is an ordinary teenage boy, eager for a better life. However, he was formerly held at the U.S.-operated Bagram internment facility outside of Kabul, Afghanistan, and released only when he mentioned the name of a wanted terrorist. The boy puts himself in play until his American contact retires. A scandal is about to envelope Jamal in a deadly effort to cover up the torture of prisoners interred at Bagram.

The full review is here.

Author Snapshot: Barbara Fister

Anyone who knows Barbara Fister even slightly is not in the least surprised to discover that her novels are smart, sophisticated and deeply concerned with the larger world. In many ways, all of those words -- smart, sophisticated, concerned -- describe the Madison-born and Minnesota-based author perfectly.

An academic librarian at a liberal arts college, on her own Web site, Fister says her “research interests are wide, not to say idiosyncratic, but they all have to do, one way or another, with how various media shape our understanding of the world.”

These interests -- and even passions – inform Fister’s work. “I’m particularly interested [in] the role of anxiety in the formation of social issues,” says Fister, “in life and in fiction.”

In her second novel, Fister says she is exploring “how anxiety becomes a device for the suppression of dissent in In the Wind.” The book draws parallels between the contemporary insouciance regarding civil liberties and the counterintelligence practices of the era around the Vietnam War. Fister herself tells us that she would “like to think I’m contributing my small part toward carrying on the feminist contribution to the PI genre.” And, sure: there’s that. But there’s so much more here, as well.


A Snapshot of Barbara Fister...

Born: Madison, Wisconsin
Resides: Rural Minnesota, US
Birthday: I’m 53. I’m not big on birthdays.
Web site: barbarafister.com


Please tell us about In the Wind.
The book draws on the resonance between the present state of our civil liberties and the excesses of law enforcement during the Vietnam War era.

A woman who has been working quietly in a church on Chicago’s West Side goes on the lam, accused of having killed an FBI agent in 1972, when she was a member of a radical offshoot of the American Indian Movement. The narrator of the story, Anni Koskinen, has recently resigned from the Chicago PD after getting on the wrong side of her fellow cops, and is not quite sure what to do with herself; her only job so far as newly licensed PI has been tracking down a teenage girl with bipolar disorder. By happenstance, Anni helps the fugitive escape, then gets involved in her defense -- which is tricky because her closest friend is not only an FBI agent himself, but the son of the murdered man. But even he is unhappy with the way the FBI is handling the case, and is troubled by the direction the bureau has been heading. Her investigation leads down some mean streets, up to the White Earth Reservation, into the past -- and, of course, into a whole lot of trouble. Which, when all’s said and done, is her business.

I had to reach for the smelling salts when Kris Nelscott, whose Smokey Dalton series is one I’ve long admired, read the book and said I was “Sara Paretsky’s heir apparent.” I’m sure Paretsky is too busy writing to think about heirs, but I like to think I’m contributing my small part toward carrying on the feminist contribution to the PI genre.

What’s on your nightstand?
A lovely big pile of books, including Minette Walter’s The Chameleon’s Shadow and Andrew Pyper’s Wildfire Season.

What inspires you?
I get my dander up about a lot of things, and writing is a good outlet. In the Wind was a therapeutic way to deal with my negative feelings about George Bush. It was strange, as I did research for the story, to read about counterintelligence practices exposed after Watergate; they’re identical to what’s going on today. When Chris Dodd read from the 1976 Church Committee hearings this past December on the floor of the Senate as he filibustered a bill sanctioning warrantless wiretapping, it sent chills up my spine. We’re in a weird time warp; the only thing missing is the outrage and the tear gas. That said, though my book has political themes, I try to play fair with the issues. Anything less would belittle the very real issues at stake, and straw men don’t make for very compelling characters in fiction.

What are you working on now?
My next book deals with the immigration debate and the aftermath of an exoneration. A black man who has spent 20 years in prison, convicted in a highly-publicized rape case, is released after his conviction is overturned. The woman who is raped wants to know who was really responsible -- especially once she discovers that several women have been attacked since in similar circumstances. Anni Koskinen starts to investigate just as another highly-charged crime is stirring passions in Chicago, when an undocumented alien is arrested for the murder of a young woman who had been missing for months. As with In the Wind, what really interests me is the way in which general social anxiety shapes the way people respond to crime, and how that anxiety is manipulated for various ends. While it sounds as if I’m on a soapbox, I’m not: I just think this stuff makes for compelling stories.

Tell us about your process.
I’m what someone at Crimespace evocatively called a “fog walker.” I can’t map out a story in advance, I have to discover it as I go groping along. I’m sure it would be more efficient to work from an outline, but I just can’t do it. If I can see two or three scenes ahead, I’m doing well. Thank god for word processors.

Lift your head and look around. What do you see?
There’s a cat trying to climb into my lap. He’s jealous of all the time my laptop spends there.

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
When I was in fifth grade I wrote a story about a horse that was a whole eight pages long. I was very impressed with myself.

If you couldn’t write books, what would you be doing?
I would be reading them. (Which I do, anyway.) I have a job I like quite a bit -- as an academic librarian and college teacher. I enjoy writing fiction, but I fit it in when I can. I feel a little guilty saying this, because I know how many people’s fondest desires are caught up in the identity “writer.” For me, it’s something I love to do, but it’s not who I am.

To date, what moment in your career has made you happiest?
That’s a very interesting question, actually. You’d think it would be when my agent closed the deal on my first book, in a preempt the day after he put it on the market. But that was both unreal and fraught with anxiety. I hate having my hands shake every time the phone rings. It may sound corny, but my happiest moments are when I write a scene that really works. There’s no anxiety involved, no regrets, no ambition to be someone other than who I am; just pure satisfaction.

For you, what is the easiest thing about being a writer?
Hmm, I’m beginning to visualize Gabriel Byrne sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the room asking me these questions as he tents his hands in front of him. “Being a writer” is a phrase that makes me oddly nervous. I guess I’m only comfortable with it as a verb: to write, not as a descriptive noun: a writer. I write. That’s easy.

What’s the most difficult? Avoiding the hype and hysteria about how to market yourself. I see so much unhappiness among people who act like stage mothers to their inner child. That’s no way to treat a kid.

What question do you get asked about your writing most often?
I don’t get many questions about it; not that many people know I write mysteries.

What’s the question you’d like to be asked?
Read any good books lately?

What question would you like never to be asked again?
What do you think of my book trailer? (Or any other marketing topic.) Look, Doc, I’ll level with you: I think capitalism, which celebrates greed as a virtue and separates us all into winners and losers, like some cosmic American Idol show, appeals to our worst nature and fosters intolerance and inequality. Too much bad energy is generated around books as product and authors as brands, and none of it actually benefits readers. It’s gotten so bad that writers go on discussion lists to chide people for checking books out of libraries. It would be much more beneficial to think about developing a healthy book culture than to focus so much on selling ourselves. I think my inner librarian is coming out.

Tell us something about yourself that no one knows.
Well, quite a few people know this, since I wrote about it in an article that got picked up at Slashdot (“News for Nerds”), but I’m a self-disclosed anarchist librarian -- which is not an oxymoron. In reality, libraries are a model of anarchist philosophy. They are full of ideas that coexist side by side, even though they disagree with one another. You may think we’re creating order, but actually we put all those books together so they can have a good brawl. No single authority gets to decide which answers are the right ones. Anyone who comes in the door gets to make up his or her own mind. When it comes to crime fiction, two of Ranganathan’s laws of library science, first laid out in 1931, provide a model of tolerance: every reader his book, every book, its reader. Forget the bestseller lists and the hype -- just be open-minded, look for the unusual voices that speak to you, find the right match, and all will be well.

Is our time up already? I must say, I feel much better. This therapy seems to be working.

Author Snapshot: Sandra Ruttan

Titian hair. A deceptively sweet smile. Arms akimbo. Mystery writer and journalist Sandra Ruttan manages these disparate things easily, seemingly without contradiction.

I say this about Sandra Ruttan the author, but it could all be easily translated to what works about her fiction: Sandra Ruttan looks at things from a connected distance. She assesses dispassionately, beautifully, and with a frighteningly delicate care. And then she brings us along.

With her second novel, What Burns Within (Dorchester), just a few days from publication, the editor of Spinetingler magazine and the heft behind At Central Booking contemplates the path that led her to this place... just remember, please, not to call her Susan.

Crimespree Magazine said this author is “talented in the way that a natural musician is talented, making all the notes seem effortless.” We agree, and hold our breath to see what’s next.


A Snapshot of Sandra Ruttan...

Please tell us about your new novel, What Burns Within.
When I was a baby, my mother was walking in Toronto, with my two-year-old sister by the hand and me in her arms. She lost her grip on my sister, and they got separated. A stranger picked my sister up and took her to a police station. Things like that make you realize it’s down to luck. Anyone could have found my sister, but the person who did was a responsible citizen.

The opening scene for What Burns Within came from there. The book was inspired by a real moment in my life, when I realized that anyone could know I was home alone, but saying more would be a bit of a spoiler. That feeling of vulnerability was the seed, and I started to think about how so many people are at risk, every day, without even realizing it, just like that situation with my sister.

When I worked in education it was my responsibility to anticipate danger and protect the children when we did field trips, and once you start writing crime fiction it isn’t hard to imagine the many ways a person can harm another. It made me think about what could have happened all those years ago.

My ex-husband is also a firefighter, so the three main crimes in What Burns Within -- rape, child abductions and arson -- all came out of personal experience. In the book, three RCMP officers who have a history end up working together when their investigations collide and their personal history may get in the way, with devastating consequences.

What’s on your nightstand?
I’m in the midst of moving and packing, so I don't have a nightstand at the moment. But the books I’m keeping in my suitcase are Paying For It by Tony Black and Russell D. McLean’s The Good son.

What inspires you?
News stories, bits of conversation, personal experiences... everything, in other words.

I was on a plane recently, flying from Dallas to Baltimore, and I ended up sitting beside a woman who does national educational testing in the US. By the end of the flight I had her contact information, a resource Web site link and a new book idea. I do keep an ideas file, but it’s more about technical research and contact information, because I find news stories are sometimes taken down or blocked after a certain period of time. I don’t usually look at anything in the file, unless I need to do research, or get in touch with someone. I just wait to see if the idea takes root and starts growing.

What are you working on now?
A stand-alone book I don't want to say too much about, but it isn’t a police procedural. Although a criminal investigation is a part of the book, the focus is on relationships and the things that happen to a person that shape their life and their choices, and how it leaves their life in ruins.

I am also working on the third book in the Nolan, Hart and Tain series... and in that book readers will finally get the full scoop on the investigation the three were working when they met. It’s a story with intersecting timelines when the past finally catches up with the present.

Tell us about your process.
I usually write in the morning, and in the afternoon, and evening. When I’m working on a book I work seven days a week. I don’t pre-plot, so I keep paper and a pen beside my bed and often write illegible notes in the middle of the night, in the dark. I’m obsessive. That said, I do most of my work on the computer, and it’s almost always entirely freeform, minimal pre-plotting. With What Burns Within, the only thing I knew for sure was the last scene of the book.

Lift your head and look around. What do you see?
Right this moment, an air hockey table, a plastic child-sized chair, a Hogwarts-designed playroom, my nephew Athaniel talking on the phone to his friend, my two-year-old nephew Dashiell grooving to Tom Waits...

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
As a child, from the time I read The Call of the Wild and The Chronicles of Narnia... I guess around the age of seven.

If you couldn’t write books, what would you be doing?
Working with children with speech delays, or other special needs.

To date, what moment in your career has made you happiest?
There are three moments tied for this spot. One was when I got my Publishers Weekly review and they said, “The child abduction and sex crime aspects of the story are handled without exploitation or kid gloves.” Although I’m dealing with heavy subjects, I don’t just do that to manipulate the reader, and I was pleased the reviewer sensed that I wasn’t trying to exploit the crimes in the book for shock value.

The second moment was when Sean Chercover phoned me after reading The Frailty of the Flesh, the second Nolan, Hart and Tain book [coming November 2008 from Dorchester]. Sean told me he had tears running down his face. I knew then that the book had the strong emotional impact for others that it had for me.

The third was when my boyfriend made a remark about Craig Nolan. It was an off-hand thing, but Brian completely understood the character and sensed where I was ultimately going with him. Since we’d never discussed the character or my long-range plans, it was a great moment. It’s very rewarding when someone gets what you’re trying to do with your work, though it probably speaks to what a close reader Brian is more than anything.

For you, what is the easiest thing about being writer?
The evolution of ideas. I have so many ideas it would take me ten years to write them all if I started on them right now, and I’d be scared to think of how many new ideas I’d develop before I finished the current list.

What’s the most difficult?
The politics, all the expectations people start putting on you, what you can and can’t blog about, can and can’t say in an interview, review, etc. Some seem to think you should stop being a person and just be a product. If I wanted that, wouldn’t I have set my sights on Hollywood? The pay is better. It seems the best way to survive is to be nothing but a smile, have no strong opinion about anything, never take a stand. And that runs counter to my nature. I don’t do wishy-washy.

What question do you get asked about your writing most often?
Where my ideas come from, I guess, but I don’t mind. Usually something interesting sparked them, and that’s why I wrote the story.

What’s the question you’d like to be asked?
What’s the worst piece of writing advice you ever received.

What question would you like never to be asked again?
I appreciate any interest in my work and will answer pretty much any question, but I guess if there’s one question that drives me mental it’s one I get asked in life regularly, not in interviews. For the record I am not related to Susan Ruttan. I don’t know her, I was not on L.A. Law and I don’t find it funny when people call me Susan.

Tell us something about yourself that no one knows.
I’m sure a few people know that as a child, I had recurring nightmares about Hamburglar.

Review: Hidden in Havana by José Latour

Today in January Magazine’s crime fiction section, David Thayer looks at Hidden in Havana by José Latour. Says Thayer:

A blind expatriate named Carlos Consuegra dispatches two people, Marina Leucci and Sean Abercorn, to Havana. Marina is Argentine, while Sean is American, a Vietnam vet with a Special Ops background. Their mission is to meet a brother and sister who’ve lived their entire lives in the same apartment in the Cuban capital. Posing as a married couple, they win the confidence of Elena Miranda and her brother, Pablo. Elena is a teacher, her brother a low-life. To further complicate this family’s strange dynamic, Elena and Pablo are the children of a legendary Cuban general who’s serving time for murder in their country’s special prison for fallen heroes.

The full review is here.

Review: Moonlight Downs by Adrian Hyland and The Fourth Man by K.O. Dahl

Today in January Magazine’s crime fiction section, Stephen Miller looks at Moonlight Downs by Adrian Hyland and The Fourth Man by K.O. Dahl. Says Miller:

In the international world of crime fiction, it seems that Australia and Norway have been chronically underrepresented. Debut author Adrian Hyland seeks to correct the Australian oversight with his new tale, Moonlight Downs.

Hyland’s heroine is Emily Tempest, a half-Aboriginal roustabout, who has returned home to Moonlight Downs, her tribal homeland in the Outback after years of wandering the globe and racking up what she believes to be adventures.

Later in the same piece, Miller says:

From the opposite end of the world comes veteran author K.O. Dahl and The Fourth Man, his series debut featuring Oslo Detective Inspector Frank Frolich, a sad sack of a man with little going for him other than work. While participating in a raid on a local store, Frolich literally falls upon an attractive young woman, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Elizabeth Faremo becomes the object of his obsession, nearly causing an eclipse in every other aspect of Frolich’s life. To call their eventual association an “affair” is to almost grant it a dignity that it doesn’t quite deserve; it’s more like a series of one-night stands.

Read the complete review here.

Author Snapshot: Diane Wei Liang

One wonders how fiction will ever compete with fact. Just reading her bio induces a sense of wonder.

Diane Wei Liang was born in Beijing in a time of turbulence and spent a portion of her childhood in a remote Chinese labor camp. She was one of the students who took part in that protest in Tiananmen Square in 1989. She has a Ph.D. in business from Carnegie Mellon and was a professor of business in the United States and the United Kingdom for a decade.

Now living in London with her husband and two children, Diane Wei Liang has reinvented herself once more, this time as a mystery novelist. Though it’s early days yet, reviewers have been falling in line. With her debut novel, The Eye of Jade (Simon & Schuster), out in 23 countries just last month, The BBC’s Mark Coles promptly compared her to Alexander McCall Smith. “Now it’s China’s turn,” Coles said.

We are fairly confident about one important thing: it would be ill-advised to stand between this author and whatever she desires.

A Snapshot of Diane Wei Liang...

Born: Beijing
Resides: London
Web site: dianeweiliang.com


January Magazine: Please tell us about The Eye of Jade.
Diane Wei Liang: The Eye of Jade is the first book in the Mei Wang mystery series. It features Mei Wang, a female detective in Beijing. In her first case, Mei is asked by a family friend to track down an ancient jade that had been lost in the Cultural Revolution. Her search leads her into the underbelly of Beijing and into the dark past of China’s recent history. Meanwhile, Mei’s mother has a stroke. Her illness intensifies the conflict between Mei and her younger sister Lu, a celebrity. When Mei’s former lover returns from America, it complicates her life further. The Eye of Jade is a mystery and also a portrait of Beijing and its inhabitants.

What’s on your nightstand?
Henry James’ The Ambassadors, V.S. Naipaul’s A Bend in a River, e.e. cummings’ Selected Poems, Shakespeare’s Sonnets.

What inspires you?
Music, books, Beijing and solitude

What are you working on now?
The third installment in the Mei Wang Mysteries.

Tell us about your process.
I write on a computer when my children are in school and at night after they’re in bed. I’m someone who does not need much sleep so I normally work until midnight.

I start each book with a theme. For example, The Eye of Jade is about betrayal and forgiveness, and the next book, Paper Butterfly, is about revenge. Then I work intensely for weeks on the characters, sketching them out as much as I can. They are the cornerstone of my books. After that I work on the plot, which would have by now been shaped during the first two processes. I don’t wait until I’ve worked out every detail before putting words down. Inevitably the characters and the plot will take over and dictate how the story will move.

Lift your head and look around. What do you see?
A desk lamp, a bookshelf, a telephone, a bottle of water, a vase of red roses, a picture of my children, a scented candle.

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
I had wanted to be a writer when I was about 14 or 15. However my mother, who was a professor of Chinese literature, discouraged me because, at that time, writing was a dangerous profession in China. Writers had been among the first to be purged in the political movements of Mao. So I put the idea to the back of mind and went on to study psychology and then business in the United States. I only went back to visit that idea again when my second child was born six years ago.

If you couldn’t write books, what would you be doing?
I’d probably still be teaching business. I remain interested in economic matters and read The Financial Times to relax. I’d also like to be a psychotherapist -- something of a dream of mine that was never fulfilled.

To date, what moment in your career has made you happiest?
Finishing my last book.

For you, what is the easiest thing about being writer?
The flexible lifestyle. It’s perfect for a mother.

What’s the most difficult?
The self-reflective nature of the profession – writing is ultimately a creative process that feeds on one’s own emotions and thoughts. It’s very draining. It alters you.

What question do you get asked about your writing most often?
How do you come up with the idea?

What’s the question you’d like to be asked?
I don’t know, since no one has yet asked it.

What question would you like never to be asked again?
How old are you?

Tell us something about yourself that no one knows
I’m sorry, I’d like to keep it an eternal secret.

Review: Sins of the Assassin by Robert Ferrigno

Today, in January Magazine’s crime fiction section, contributing editor Anthony Rainone reviews Sins of the Assassin by Robert Ferrigno. Says Rainone:

Three years have now passed in the Islamic States of America, since it was first introduced to readers in Prayers for the Assassin 2006), Book One of Robert Ferrigno’s Assassin Trilogy. In the sequel, Sins of the Assassin, things are looking decidedly gloomy. For starters, former Fedayeen shadow warrior Rakkim Epps, the single most important agent carrying out covert operations on behalf of President Damon Kingsley, doesn’t feel like his old self. Raising no less concern, Rakkim has spotted the Black Robe strangler Tariq-al Faisal in Seattle’s Zone (“officially called the Christian Quarter, a thirty-or-forty-block section of the city where nightclubs and coffeehouses flourished, where cybergame parlors and movie theatres operated largely free of censorship”), and he is displaying suspicious activity that can only mean ill-doings aimed at the Islamic Republic. And most critically, recent activity in the Bible Belt (the old Southern Confederacy) indicates imminent danger from the likes of Colonel Zachary Smitts, a Catholic enemy. With this blockbuster beginning, Ferrigno’s readers should buckle in for an exhilarating ride of thriller proportions, with high stakes: the continuation or demise of the American Muslim nation.

The full review is here.

Author Snapshot: Cornelia Read

It does not at this point seem possible that Cornelia Read’s debut novel was published just two years ago. Field of Darkness from 2006 was enthusiastically reviewed, widely praised and would come to be nominated for just about everything for which it was eligible, including the Edgar Award, the RT Book Club Critics Choice, the Gumshoe, the Audie, the Macavity and the Barry awards for best debut novel.

Read’s latest book, The Crazy School (Grand Central) was published in January. It returns us to the late 1980s world of Madeline Dare who this time out has signed on as a teacher at a boarding school for disturbed teenagers. Reviews have been just as wonderful as they were for Read’s debut. “Madeline’s deadpan voice, acid wit and psychological depth are the perfect counterpoint to the novel’s positively Gothic plot,” raved Kirkus. “In her shadowed complexity and stubborn -- but fragile -- integrity, Madeline resembles many of the genre’s most enduring protagonists. She’s a great character, and her creator is a great storyteller. Caustic, gripping and distinctive -- intelligent entertainment.”

The ex-debutante-turned-author has the quadruple-barreled name of Cornelia Ludlam Fabyan Read. “Seriously,” jokes the author when asked. She was born in New York City but now makes her home in Berkeley, California where she lives with her husband and twin daughters and I think it’s entirely possible that she did not shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die.

A snapshot of Cornelia Read...

Born: New York, NY
Resides: Berkeley, California
Birthday: March 8th, 1963
Web site: corneliaread.com


January Magazine: Please tell us about The Crazy School.

Cornelia Read: It’s a dark and twisty tale about a teacher at a boarding school for disturbed kids, based on a real school at which I was a teacher in the fall of 1989. In a recent San Francisco Chronicle review, Eddie Muller called it “Up the Down Staircase as Grand Guignol.” Best summary ever, in my opinion.

What’s on your nightstand?

Jess Walter’s The Zero; The Hell of a Woman short story anthology edited by Megan Abbott; Martin Limon’s The Wandering Ghost; Brent Ghelfi’s Volk’s Game; Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone; Marvin Lachman’s The Heirs of Anthony Boucher: A History of Mystery Fandom; Lee Child’s Without Fail; Jane Austen’s Emma; William Manchester’s The Last Lion: William Spencer Churchill (volume I, 1874-1932); Carolyn Keene’s Mystery of the Glowing Eye (Nancy Drew); Jack Finney’s Time and Again; Christopher Hitchens’ Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man; William Gibson’s Spook Country; David Simon’s Homicide, and a Library of America collection of American noir novels of the 1930s and ‘40s in one volume (The Postman Always Rings Twice, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They; Thieves Like Us; The Big Clock; Nightmare Alley; I Married a Dead Man). Also an advance copy of Robert Fate’s genius third novel -- Baby Shark’s High Plains Redemption -- which knocked my socks off.

This isn’t exactly a [to be read] pile -- I read all of them over the last month (some for the second or even third time), I’m just really lazy about clearing off my nightstand. Especially when I love the books so much. I like to just eye the piles and gloat about having such literary bounty close at hand.

What inspires you?

Ritalin.

What are you working on now?

My third Madeline Dare novel, working title: Invisible Boy. It’s set in Manhattan and Jamaica, Queens, in th