Crime Fiction Dossier

Dennis Lehane on literary fiction

From Dennis Lehane's appreciation of Richard Price (on the National Book Critics Circle blog):

I was in graduate school when Clockers came out. It was right at this point that I was growing disillusioned with where a lot of (though, by no means all) American literature seemed to be heading. It felt as if so many of the alleged "literary" works being produced at that time were excessively insular, navel-gazing affairs, more often than not centered upon some disaffected, overly verbose young asshole or his/her late-middle-aged counterpart, an academic of some sort having an affair with a student. The third type of book that predominated was the "homage," which involved grafting the plot of a Shakespeare play or some similarly pantheonic work over a contemporary setting, thereby proving the writer had read his/her classics and was therefore worthy of our attention and esteem but also wholly overlooking the small fact that he/she was too devoid of originality to tell a story that he/she had actually, you know, created.

He then goes on to say that Clockers is "one of the few Great American Novels in the North American canon."

Put that on the paperback

"Scooby-Doo-meets-The Sopranos."

From Entertainment Weekly's review of Lisa Scottoline's Lady Killer.

Do we all read a different book?

There's an expression that some readers like to use -- I just saw it earlier today -- and I've always found it a curious one: "We all read a different book."

I know what people are trying to say when they use that phrase, but it still grates every time I see it. One of the things that I think is most enjoyable about reading is that, to the contrary, we all read the same book. Thus it's a shared experience that provides a common point of interest and reference for fellow readers.

Books are immutable -- one of their most remarkable features, I think. While everything around us changes, the words on the page stay the same. When we pick up a copy of Huckleberry Finn, the story is the same as Twain wrote it over 120 years ago. And that's a wonderful connection to the past that is almost impossible to get otherwise. (How else can we have a direct experience of late-19th century American life and thought?)

Of course, we as readers are all different, and we bring our own thoughts, beliefs, knowledge, expectations, emotions, biases and everything else to a book -- so the way in which we experience it is different. But it is we that are different; not the book.

No matter how times change, and technology advances, and trends come in and out of fashion, the book remains the same. And thank God for that.

Get free books!

Those of you who know me know I love free stuff. I live for swag. The only reason I became a book critic was 'cause of the free books. I don't even like to read.

So this is something cool: Tor is giving away free books!

Okay, they're e-books. But still -- they're free. And one of them's actually good: John Scalzi's Old Man's War. (The others may be good, too. Dunno. Haven't read 'em.)

John has the details on his site.

"The Liar's Diary" Blog Day

Over 300 bloggers from the world of publishing are blogging today in support of the paperback release of Patry Francis' book, The Liar's Diary. Patry was recently diagnosed with cancer and has been frequently hospitalized. Since she's unable to do any promotion in support of her book, a few of her friends decided to help out.

Patry is blogging about her battle with cancer, in case you're interested in learning more.

To learn more about how she came to write The Liar's Diary, read her Backstory.

You can watch a trailer for The Liar's Diary on YouTube:

Here's hoping that Patry's health improves soon!

Recommendations for reading Ross Macdonald

Ross Macdonald has been enjoying something of a renaissance in recent months, as Vintage Crime/Black Lizard has been reprinting many of his books.

I had a conversation recently with Tom Nolan, crime fiction critic for the Wall Street Journal and the acclaimed biographer of Macdonald, in which I asked Tom for his recommendations for a reader who is new to Macdonald's work. This is his reply:

The Underground Man, with its forest-fire motif, is an exciting work, as much of a thriller as a murder-mystery; the fire itself is almost a character, racing towards its own destruction.

The Chill is maybe RM's masterpiece, combining his particular themes with memorable characters, terrific sequences, and a surprising plot.

The Galton Case is what he called the fulcrum of his oeuvre, upon which the rest of his work would turn; it was the book in which he most explored his own past (fictionally), and when he consciously committed his most serious writing ambitions to the mystery-novel genre.

I think any RM book from the golden period of the 1960s, when he had come into his mature prose style, would be a good Macdonald to start with; The Zebra-Striped Hearse, The Far Side of the Dollar, and Black Money are all excellent.

Then again, those who prefer a more hard-boiled approach might favor a '50s book. The Way Some People Die or The Barbarous Coast are among my own favorites.

I'm woefully unfamiliar with Macdonald's work, having only read (that I can recall) one novel and a couple of short stories. So I've definitely got some catching up to do.

TBR Stack

Here is a snapshot of my current to-be-read stack. (Along with some that I've read recently but haven't gotten around to filing yet.)

Every couple of months, I go through and remove the ones I never got around to reading, in order to make room for the new batch.

If you think this is bad, you should see the basement...

Gary Phillips' serialized online novel

Gary Phillips, the excellent writer of such under-appreciated novels as The Jook* and Bangers, is writing a serialized novel for The Nation.

Here's the description:

Political fact marries political fiction in Citizen Kang, an online serialized novel that unfolds in weekly installments on The Nation.com throughout Campaign 08.

I haven't read it yet, but Gary is a fine writer, so it's worth checking out. It's a shame Gary isn't still writing and publishing crime fiction.

*If you're a fan of George Pelecanos, I recommend you read The Jook. It's a book that most people aren't familiar with, but it's very good.

Edit: It turns out my impression of Gary's publishing hiatus was, fortunately, exaggerated. He has two anthologies coming out later this year: Politics Noir, which he edited, from Verso, featuring stories from the likes of Ken Bruen, John Shannon and Sujata Massey; and The Darker Mask, edgy prose superhero stories from Tor, which he co-edited with Chris Chambers, featuring stories from Walter Mosley, Naomi Hirahara, Lorenzo Carcaterra and others.

Gary has also written another serialized online story, the novella The Underbelly, which can be read on FourStory and will be published in hardcover later this year by PM Press.

Top 10 Mysteries/Thrillers of 2007

I know I'm late with this. I wasn't going to make a list at all, but then I decided I'd bite the bullet and put one together. Part of the difficulty is that my list has changed several times. It would probably be more accurate to make a Top 20 list and then I could include all the books I was considering. That seems like cheating, though, so I went ahead and narrowed it down to just ten. (Note: the books I selected for my Top 5 Debuts were not considered for this list.)

All of these were books that delighted me during the year. But I'll be honest and say that there were several others that I enjoyed very nearly as much, and that could reasonably have been included here instead. But ten seems to be the magic number, so here they are, in alphabetical order:

Robert Crais - The Watchman
Joseph Finder - Power Play
Robert Harris - The Ghost
John Hart - Down River
Gregg Hurwitz - The Crime Writer
Charlie Huston - The Shotgun Rule
David Ignatius - Body of Lies
Laura Lippman - What the Dead Know
M.J. Rose - The Reincarnationist
Daniel Silva - The Secret Servant

I reviewed most of these, and wrote about the rest here on the blog, in case you're interested in learning a little more about why I liked them.

If anyone else has a list, I'd like to see it. Please share in the comments section.

Sean Chercover's "Big City, Bad Blood" to be adapted for television

It was announced awhile ago that my friend Paul Guyot was hired by Fox to adapt Sean Chercover's PI novel Big City, Bad Blood for a possible television show. Crimespree Cinema has some more details.

Guyot is a good writer, despite his limitations as a human being. So this project actually has some potential.

Of course, the strike killed all that. But hopefully things will get back on track once the labor strife is resolved.