Crime Fiction Dossier

Michael Connelly interview on Evil E

Evil E, the monthly blog perpetrated by Elaine Flinn, has a new edition up and it features a terrific interview with Michael Connelly.

Here are my questions from it:

DAVID MONTGOMERY:
You’re probably tired of hearing this question, but I’ll ask it anyway... Do you foresee an end to the Harry Bosch series?  He’s aging in real time, so we know he can’t last forever.  But I’d sure be sad to see him go.  How much more life does he have in him?

MICHAEL CONNELLY:
Well, I certainly see the need to end the forward progression of the series with Harry as a cop. He’s 58 this year and the reality is I have maybe 4 or 5 years before it starts bending reality. But I can always go backwards. There are a lot years in his life I haven’t written about. I could also extend the series with his life after LAPD. So it will all come down to whether or not I continue to be interested in him. If that continues then i think Harry will continue in some way.

DAVID J. MONTGOMERY:
So many of the best crime writers are former journalists... Robert Ferrigno, Laura Lippman, Jon King, Denise Hamilton, etc.  What is it about being a reporter that lends itself to writing great crime fiction?

MICHAEL CONNELLY:
I can only guess at it, and of course there are so many great crime writers who were not journalists. But the one thing I think has helped me is the process of journalism. No matter what the story is, you never get enough space to say what you want to say. So you learn to make every sentence count. You make them short and to the point. You look for the one telling detail rather than 50 details that don’t get to the point of what you are communicating. You try to have every quote carry information the reader needs. So in a perfect news story nothing is wasted. It creates a certain velocity in the story. I have tried to carry that over to my fiction, even though now I don’t have the same constraints in terms of space and length.

Check out the whole interview -- there's some interesting stuff in there.

In other news, Elaine injured herself and is currently laid-up. We all hope she makes a full recovery soon!

Book of the Week: George Pelecanos' "The Turnaround"

George Pelecanos, one of the finest living writers, returns with The Turnaround, yet another outstanding piece of literature from the dark poet of DC. In a broad sense this is a crime novel, but more importantly it's a story that tackles important themes like the relationship between fathers and sons and the question of what it means to be a man. A crime decades past unites a group of men in the present, bonding them together against their will. The Turnaround is not the masterpiece that some of Pelecanos' work is, but it's still a powerful, resonant story, and it makes a fine introduction to his work for those readers who haven't yet had the pleasure.

Caveat emptor

Readers of blogs are consumers of information. There are blogs on virtually every subject known to man -- and plenty that you wouldn't want to know about. A few of them are interesting and/or useful, most of them are filled with nonsense. Included among that nonsense is a lot of bad advice, especially with regards to writing and publishing.

So here's a friendly reminder; a little something to keep in mind when wasting time on the blogosphere:

• If a person offers you advice on how to get published, find out if that person is published. If not, does he offer some other legitimate credentials? (E.g., he's an agent or editor.) If not, you might want to look at his advice with a skeptical eye.
• If a person offers you advice on how to have success in your writing career, try to find out how much success they've had in their writing career. How many books have they published? Who published them? Are they still in print? Have they made any of the bestseller lists? Have they gotten significant reviews? Have they won any awards? If you've never heard of the writer, never heard of their books, perhaps their strategies are not as effective as they reckon.
• If a person offers you advice on how to become a bestselling writer, first determine if that advice has worked for him. If he's not a bestselling writer, perhaps it's because his advice doesn't work.
• If a person offers you advice on how to become a better writer, read some of that person's writing. Is it any good? If not, reconsider how much credence you want to give that advice.
• If a person offers you advice on how to break into Hollywood, find out if that person has broken into Hollywood.
• If a person recommends publisher XYZ or literary agency ABC, do some research. Find out who those companies publish or represent. If you've never heard of any of their books or authors, ask yourself if these are the right people for you to be in business with.
• If a person recommends you pay them or anyone else for publishing, representation, editorial services, a review, reading your manuscript, or anything else, be very, very wary. Chances are better than good that you're being conned.
• Yes, that's right: even those very nice people who promise to make your every dream come true. Them too.

A person does not necessarily have to have done something in order to provide sound, useful information on the subject. However, before you go taking advice from some random person on the internet, it would behoove you to discover if that person has a legitimate basis from which to offer that advice. If they don't, you're probably better off clicking onward and finding something else to occupy your time.

(Note: I'm writing this with masculine pronouns because the first time through I tried using a lot of he/shes, etc. and it just looked clunky. So feel free to substitute feminine pronouns where appropriate.)

Online vs. print reviewing

The subject of online vs. print reviewing has been much debated in recent months, fueled by the devastating erosion of print outlets for book coverage. A piece on the Literary Saloon summarizes some of the recent discussion.

The piece includes a quote that I found interesting: "In certain areas Internet coverage has long superseded newspaper coverage: review-coverage of genre books (mystery, science fiction, romance) is far superior in range and, for the most part, quality than what can be found in newspapers."

I began as an online reviewer before moving into print and I have continued to write in both mediums for over five years now. But I have yet to discover an online outlet that consistently covers the crime genre with the skill that print critics like Patrick Anderson, Oline Cogdill or Janet Maslin (to name just a few) bring to the table.

Granted, there is far, far more coverage of crime novels online than there is in print. But is it better in quality? That's where I am less convinced. There are several sites that do an admirable job of covering the genre as it relates to publishing, trends, gossip, comings-and-goings and assorted matters -- things that seldom get written about in print. But what about reviews?

I think there certainly can be great reviewing done online -- and, hopefully, eventually there will be. But I also think that as long as there isn't a monetary component to online reviewing, it's going to be difficult to have truly fine critics producing top-quality, professional work.