Books

False Advertising

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Scop_reviseA while back, author Sandra Scoppettone blogged about how the back cover of her THIS DAME FOR HIRE galley promised booksellers all kinds of advertising and promotion to support the book… which never happened. Why? Because they were lies and publishers assume booksellers won’t notice. Her editor even copped to it:

He said he knows it’s a problem and he’s talked about it at meetings.  Not
just my book, but the whole process.  He’s even said, “Why can’t we be honest?” 
I’m surprised he wasn’t fired for that.

I’m surprised they think booksellers are that stupid.

Garry Disher is Back

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Australian crime writer Garry Disher has a new book coming out this month "down under." It’s SNAPSHOT,  the third in his Inspector Challis series.

The neat suburban homes of the peninsula seem like an improbable setting for
sex parties, blackmail and murder. Winter is closing in on the coastal community
of Waterloo, and behind closed doors its residents have some peculiar ways of
keeping warm.

When Detective Inspector Hal Challis is called to investigate the brutal
murder of Janine McQuarrie–shot in a deserted country lane while her
seven-year-old daughter looks on–his progress is hampered by a web of lies and
secrets. It doesn’t help that Janine’s father-in-law is Challis’s
superior–bureaucrat, golfer and toady Superintendent McQuarrie–the Waterloo
coppers battle personal and political agendas from all sides.

Everybody has something to hide, something to lose. And someone in Waterloo
is determined to kill again.

I like the Challis books, but I love his hardboiled,
darkly-funny "Wyatt" capers,  which are obviously inspired by Donald
Westlake’s Parker books.  My friend Scott Phillips introduced me to Disher’s books
a few years ago and I’ve been grateful to him ever since. I read them all, one after another, over a solid week, along with several Wyatt short stories and novellas.

(Thanks to Perry Middlemass for the heads-up)

 

Les is More

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There was an interesting interview with CBS chief Les Moonves in the Sunday NYT. In explaining why he canceled JOAN OF ARCADIA, he revealed his take on what audiences want from a story.

On this particular Thursday, at 11 a.m., Moonves was considering which of the
network’s current shows to cancel in order to make room for new programs. He had
decided to take a once-promising show called ”Joan of Arcadia” off the air.
The show was about a teenager who receives directives and advice straight from
God. ”In the beginning, it was a fresh idea and uplifting, and the plot lines
were engaging,” Moonves said, sounding a little sad and frustrated. ”But the
show got too dark. I understand why creative people like dark, but American
audiences don’t like dark. They like story. They do not respond to nervous
breakdowns and unhappy episodes that lead nowhere. They like their characters to
be a part of the action. They like strength, not weakness, a chance to work out
any dilemma. This is a country built on optimism.”

The last point strikes home with me. We like heroes who move the story along…and, ideally, there should actually be a story to move along. That means a story with a beginning, middle and end with clear stakes for the characters.  The characters shouldn’t be caught up in events, reacting to what happens, they should be driving what happens through their own actions. That’s good story-telling, plain and simple.

Moonves has constructed a Bush-like universe (without the politics): in his
dramas, there is a continuing battle for order and justice, the team works
together and a headstrong boss leads the way.  Producers looking to sell shows to CBS either comply with this point of view
or take their shows elsewhere.

Curiously, most of CBS’s successful dramas — the three ”C.S.I.” shows,
”Without a Trace” and many of the new about-to-be-discussed drama pilots —
revolve around a group of specially trained professionals who work in unison and
are headed by a dynamic, attractive middle-aged man. These prime-time-TV teams
— much like Moonves’s own — are determined and work-obsessed. They seem to
think of their office as an extended family while, together, they solve crimes.

In a way, it’s an old-fashioned model, harkening back to hits like HAWAII FIVE-O and MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, but with a new spin (reminds me of how NBC touted LAW AND ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT as ground-breaking show because we’d also see things from the bad guy’s pov…I guess no one at NBC had ever seen BARNABY JONES or STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO). Speaking of taking cues from the past,  Moonves’ plans for revamping the news division sound like he’s channeling Fred Silverman.

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Mark on Mark

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Mark Baker, a regular visitor/commentor on this blog, posted a reader review of DIAGNOSIS MURDER: THE PAST TENSE on Amazon, where he’s a "top 500 reviewer."  Harriet Klausner better start looking over her shoulder. His review reads, in part:

This book is ingenious. About half of it is set in the past and
half set in the present. Really, you get two mysteries for the price of
one as we watch Mark solve both cases. Yet they interact in a way I
never saw coming…

…These books are fast becoming one of my favorite series around. If
you were a fan of the show, you owe it to yourself to pick up this
great continuation. Even if you’ve never seen the series, the plots
will pull you in and make you start looking for the reruns. Is the next
one out yet?

Thanks, Mark, for the great review and for the DIAGNOSIS MURDER  NOVELS list you’ve compiled on Amazon.

The Historian

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Over the labor day weekend, I read Elizabeth Kostova’s THE HISTORIAN. Never has Dracula been so dull. It’s a ponderous snooze. The book has been compared to THE DAVINCI CODE  and for good reason. Like DAVINCI, it’s also a series of lectures and speeches, devoid of character. But what DAVINCI had that the HISTORIAN doesn’t is a terrific plot and an utterly compelling mystery that pulls you through the long passages of exposition and history lessons. There’s nothing compelling about THE HISTORIAN.  It’s a six hundred page endurance test leading up to a climax that’s so
flat you might miss it during one of the catnaps you’ll inevitably slip
into while reading. If you’re still curious about this doorstop of a book, have a friend hit you over the head with  it. In those moments of unconsciousness,  you will have the same experience as reading it only with more enjoyment and less lost time.

Lee Child Writing Bond?

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Scotsman.com is reporting that the Ian Fleming estate is looking for a major-league author to pen a new James Bond novel… and that author Lee Child is among the contenders.

Plans for a one-off, new James Bond novel, to celebrate the centenary of its
creator, are being finalised by the estate of Ian Fleming.

As yet no author has been chosen for the project, but following the
surprising worldwide success of Charlie Higson’s young Bond novels, Ian Fleming
Publications say they are keen to commission a big, established name.

Early favourites to be approached include British thriller writer Lee Child,
spy novelist John le Carré and The Day of the Jackal author Frederick Forsyth.

The Scotsman asked Ian Rankin how he would approach a Bond novel.

"I think if I was writing it I would give it a little twist. That is what
they did in the movies when Pierce Brosnan came along, they made M a woman for
example…but it really needs a good spy writer who is interested in technology
because people who are interested in the Bond books tend to be technophiles –
which sort of counts me out as I can hardly work a word processor."

UPDATE (Sept 2) Lee Child responds on Galleycat to his name being in contention for the Bond gig.

I heard the first rumblings of this stuff about three years ago. I am obviously
very flattered to be in their thoughts, but I guess fundamentally my answer
would be generated by what the estate itself calls the need for a "professional"
writer … which means, what are they gonna pay? More than I make from a Reacher
book? (I’m not the type of guy who can do two projects at the same time.) That’s
possibly unlikely.

If it worked out though, it would be fun. Fleming was both very British and
very frustrated by Britain – lived as an exile, etc. That shows up in the
original Bond texts and it would be a background theme I would share. As would
be a sense that as time moves on Bond is operating in a changed Britain … the
contrast between the Eden/Macmillan years and the Blair years is huge, and it’s
a contrast that the existence of the fictional Bond helped create. My yardstick
would be Jill Paton Walsh’s first Wimsey book (Thrones and Dominions?) which was
both a superb Wimsey novel and simultaneously an embedded critique of the series
itself and the society that spawned it.

 

Killshot Shot

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Variety reports that production has begun in Toronto on KILLSHOT, the Weinstein Co. adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel. Diane Lane, Thomas Jane and Mickey Rourke star in the movie, which was written by Hossein Amini and is being directed by John Madden. 

For the most part, adaptations of Elmore Leonard’s contemporary novels over the last twenty years have sucked unless they are written are written by Scott Frank or Quentin Tarantino. Remember BE COOL? Or BG BOUNCE? Or CAT CHASER? Let’s hope this one breaks the curse.

Good News for Mystery Writers in LATBR

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I heard David Ulin, the new editor of the LA Times Book Review,  interviewed on KCRW. He promises that, in his revamped LATBR, there will be greater attention paid to contemporary novels, including mysteries and thrillers. He said he loves hardboiled  mystery novels, which he called an "indigenous L.A. art form" and "the literary equivalent of the blues." It all sounds very encouraging to me.

The Decline of the Western Writers of America

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For some time now, legendary western writer Richard S. Wheeler has been charting the demise of the western and, sadly, the preventable decline of the Western Writers of American (which should stand as a cautionary tale of what could happen to the Mystery Writers of America if we aren’t careful). On Ed Gorman’s blog, he notes that prominent agent Nat Sobel has resigned from the WMA as both its agent and as a member.

… it is
not hard to fathom why a successful New York agent would abandon the western
writers. For decades, WWA conventions were marketplaces in which New York
publishers, editors and agents gathered with solidly professional authors to do
business. That is how I got launched, and how many other western novelists got
going.

At the last convention, only one editor showed up, and he came
because one of his authors had won a Spur Award. When I first joined WWA in the
early eighties, there would be ten to twenty editors and publishers on hand, all
of them ready to do business, plus various agents, and often a few publishing
executives as well. Part of the reason they have vanished is that western lines
have shut down due to shifts of fashion. But there is more: A few years ago WWA
amateurized itself, at first covertly in defiance of its own membership bylaws
and then as a result of a bylaws amendment that permitted self-published authors
to join. That brought a flood of new members, so WWA is fat financially, but it also
meant that it was no longer a guild with clout in the publishing world or that
western literature was significant. Thus, Library Journal, diligent about
listing literary awards in other fields, no longer bothered to list Spur Awards.
What it also meant is the end of the western marketplace at WWA conventions.
Where once editors came to conventions to look for talent and good stories, now
they don’t come at all. It is pointless for them to show up.

I am a strong believer in limiting MWA membership to published mystery authors — and what’s happened to the WMA is a good example of the reasons why. Allowing self-published writers to become members diminishes the professional stature and legitimacy of the organization, not just among its members, but to the industry as a whole. This is going to make me very unpopular, but I also I believe associate memberships should be limited to people in the industry ( booksellers, editors, critics, publishers, etc).

Cliche City

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On my flight to Seattle, I read a book by a bestselling author. The plotting was good but the dialogue was so unbearably cliche-ridden that I left the book behind on the plane. I couldn’t bear to continue reading it.  Here’s an example (the character names have been removed to protect the guilty):

"Your deal will be history if you don’t make sure this goes off without a hitch. Blow this and you’ll wish you were in a cell with XYZ and a blowtorch. When we get to DC, we are going to have a come-to-Jesus meeting. The next time you make the slightest wave you are going to find yourself up shit creek. Is that clear?"

I count, conservatively, four cliches in that paragragh alone (not counting the character himself was a cliche).  There were pages and pages like that. The book did make me wonder about one thing — what’s the magic sales figure you’ve got to hit before editors stop bothering to edit your work?