Crime Fiction Dossier

A recommended review

Patrick Anderson reviewed Martin Cruz Smith's new Arkady Renko novel, Stalin's Ghost, in yesterday's Washington Post. It's an interesting review, and the book sounds interesting as well, although I don't feel motivated to pick it up and read it.

The only part of the review I found curious was the last graf:

All ends more or less well, but not before Smith, as well as entertaining us, has raised interesting questions. Renko can be seen as a father to Michael Connelly's equally honest and stubborn Harry Bosch, but Connelly's Los Angeles is never the madhouse that Smith's Russia has become. Thus the question: Is today's America all that less mad than Russia? Or is madness simply funnier when it's half a world away?

To answer Anderson's question: Yes, today's America is far less mad than Russia.

Still, a nice review.

Book of the Week: Brent Ghelfi's "Volk's Game"

This entertaining debut from Ghelfi will remind many readers of the work of Lee Child and Barry Eisler. It's a tense, violent book with an interesting, amoral protagonist, a suspenseful plot and action a-plenty. Volk's Game is likely to be the first book in a long-running and popular series.

New Feature: Book of the Week

I'm starting a new feature here on Crime Fiction Dossier. I'm going to select one Book of the Week that I recommend to readers. These won't be full reviews; rather they're books that I enjoyed and thought you might as well.

Some of the books might be ones that I'm reviewing elsewhere, but others will be recommendations for books that I'm not able to review. Some of them will be by popular writers, and some will be by unknowns. All of them will be good. I promise!

Some stats on book buying

Content Connections, a consulting firm specializing in audience research, conducted a "non-scientific survey" earlier this spring to determined who is buying books.

Their results: The biggest book buyers are largely married, middle-age career women who make an average of $88,000 a year and have at least a bachelor's degree.

The average female book buyer was 45 years old and bought 28 books, spending $280 on nonfiction titles and $147 on fiction titles. She typically lives in a large city and purchases a third of her books online but prefers to visit the local bookstore where she spends 40 minutes browsing.

A stat I found particularly interesting: 43 percent said they had intentions to write their own book someday!

(You can download the complete study here. You may need to register.)

Congrats, Mr. Eisler

Congratulations to Barry Eisler, whose latest John Rain thriller, Requiem for an Assassin, debuts at #19 on the New York Times bestseller list. This is the first time that one of Eisler's books has cracked the extended list, so kudos are in order.

It's nice to see that someone can still build a career the old fashioned way, with talent, hard work and persistence. Way to go, Barry!

(My review of the book will be running soon.)

Sources for short crime fiction

I received an email this morning from a reader looking for places to read short crime fiction. I suggested a few likely candidates, then thought that other people might like to see the list as well.

Short fiction isn't really my area of expertise, but here are some of the publications I've either read, or had recommended to me:

Print:
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
Murdaland

Online:
Demolition Magazine (this year's Gumshoe Award winner)
Hardluck Stories
ThugLit
Thrilling Detective Website
Shots Mag

There are other fine publications, I'm sure. (I'm just not remembering them at the moment.) But those are all good places to start.

10 Things An Author Shouldn't Do

Over on M.J. Rose's blog, I offer up my list of 10 Things An Author Shouldn't Do.

(As it turns out, there are only 8 of them... Must be part of the New Austerity.)

ThrillerFest 2007

ThrillerFest 2007 is coming up next month in New York City. There will be a fine line-up of guests attending, including moi.

They've just posted the full schedule online. Here's my panel:

Sunday, July 15 @ 10:00am:
The Snare of the Hunter: How writers and publishers work to get you to buy their books

Jason Pinter, Author/Editor at St. Martin's Press
Tess Gerritsen, Author
M.J. Rose, Author/Marketing guru
David Montgomery, Critic
Matthew Baldacci, Director of Marketing at St. Martin's Press
Neil Nyren (Panel Master), Publisher and Editor in Chief of Putnam

Not a great time slot, but it should be an interesting panel. Looking over the schedule, this appears to be the main panel discussing the business end of the industry.

I hope some of you will be able to attend.

New York Magazine's The Best Novels You've Never Read

New York magazine put out a call for critics to submit their favorite novels and authors that they believed had been unfairly overlooked. I responded with George Pelecanos.

I don't remember exactly what I wrote (had I known it would make the magazine, I probably would have worked harder on it), but here's my annotation they used:

"Few authors can write about race and the urban landscape with his nuance and insight—and nobody else can do it while telling such a damn good story."

Pelecanos is hardly an unknown writer, but given how good he is, he should be a much bigger name.