The Mail I Get – Monk Edition

MrMonkOnTheCouchI still get lots of questions and comments each day about my Monk books… here’s a sampling:

Dear Lee, It was with mixed feelings that I read Mr. Monk’s last adventure.  Happiness at reading more enjoyable Monk escapades, and sadness that there will be no more of them. I did appreciate that one of the lipo-suction patients was Frank Cannon.  ha ha   What a ride.  Barb

Thank you, Barb. The other lipo patient was McCabe, the character William Conrad played on JAKE AND THE FATMAN…but so far, nobody has caught that reference.

It’s a rare to find an author who understands that a unique quirky character is really one of the most important parts of a good book. Love your character and I think the books are really wonderful. So often they are just plot oriented by vanilla unmemorable characters. So congratulations of writing truly fantastic books. Allan

Thank you, Allan. But I can’t take credit for creating that brilliant character. The credit belongs to Andy Breckman. He just let me borrow Monk for the books.

Hello Lee, You end your chapters in a manner that makes it difficult to not keep reading. Please stop doing that. You will thank me later. It might tempt some people into stopping in the middle of a chapter, and that violates the natural order of the universe.

Now that the above is out of the way, let me pass along my delight for both the Monk series and the Fox and O’Hare series – mysteries and absolutely hilarious! After thirteen years of retirement at age 70 it is getting harder to head for the treadmill daily, books the only way to get through it. My wife and I had read all the Janet Evanovich books (also all the Agatha Christie’s and a whole lot in between), so glad to have found The Heist, The Chase, and will read The Job (a Christmas book to each other) after Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants. We have also seen all of the Monk TV episodes, and reading the books and remembering the appearance of the characters is extra fun. Thanks for these two series, and will explore your other books! Leonard

Thank you for your very kind words about my MONK and FOX & O’HARE books… though they are meant to be serious drama. It troubles me that you find them funny.

I just want to let you know that I really enjoy the books you contributed to the Monk series. As someone who has been diagnosed with OCD (whether rightly or wrongly), I have to say that you seem to have done a good job portraying what really goes on in the brain of an OC person (here I should add the caveat that I haven’t actually gotten far in any of your books – they’re too thought provoking to finish in a timely fashion). If in the past I would firmly deny that I had OCD (“My unusual behavior is not symptomatic of any illogical thought processes, thank you very much. It is a combination of *ultra*-logical thinking, and natural responses to my excess anxiety”), now I am not so sure. I find it very easy to identify with your version of Mr. Monk. [..]Without changing the way I view myself and my rationality, I now find it easier to accept the label of OCD.[..]In the future, I intend to use your books as “textbooks” to help other people better understand the true nature of OCD. Sammy

Now that is frightening. You do know I make it all up, right? I have no special understanding of OCD… I just have a rich fantasy life.

Janet Evanovich Books – A New Stephanie Plum Novel for June

Top Secret Twenty-One by Janet Evanovich - On Sale June 17

Top Secret Twenty-One by Janet Evanovich - On Sale June 17

 

Here’s a guest post from my friend Kate Goldstone, a big fan in the UK of crime shows, crime novels and everything noir, who has just discovered, thanks to The Chase, my good friend and co-author Janet Evanovich‘s Stephanie Plum books, which she says aren’t yet the mega-bestselling sensation over there that they are here… 

Plenty of US crime fiction authors have already crossed the Atlantic with ease and aplomb, delighting British audiences with their books. Others are right on the cusp: massive over there, right on the edge of hitting the crime books best seller scene big time over here.

Lee’s friend and writing partner Janet Evanovich is the creator of the tremendously engaging bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, the heroine of 20 novels that have sold tens of millions of copies in the states… but haven’t made the same splash here yet.

Well, now that her 21st novel in the series,  Top Secret Twenty One, is coming out in a few weeks, I think it’s about time Janet took our British crime book readers by storm. So I thought it’d be cool to take a look at Stephanie Plum and whet the appetites of all you UK readers out there.

Janet Evanovich Books – Treat yourself to a compelling 21 novel series

Janet’s writing career began with a series of short romance novels, written under her pen name Steffi Hall. They were pretty damn good. But she hit big time in the states with her light hearted mystery novels starring Stephanie Plum, an unlikely heroine, originally a lingerie buyer who became a Trenton, New Jersey bounty hunter to make ends meet after losing her job.

Now that’s what I call a great back story: knicker buyer turns crime fighter!

Janet and Lee on Set for TV interviews 1
Janet Evanovich and Lee on the set for a TV interview for their book THE HEIST.

About Stephanie Plum – Best selling books with a difference

Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum character was inspired by Midnight Run, the Robert De Niro movie. What was appealing to Janet about bounty hunters is that they are not nine-to-fivers, they can wear what they want, work when and how they want, with whomever they like. That gave Janet a lot of creative flexibility for her heroine and the stories she could tell. Janet then went out and spent a lot of time with bond enforcement agents, studying the way they work as well as spending time getting familiar with the novels’ setting, the city of Trenton in New Jersey.

The first in the Plum series, One for the Money, came out in 1994 and struck an immediate chord with U.S readers. The fact that the heroine is barely competent at her job lent the book considerable charm and it soon shot to stardom, becoming a New York Times ‘notable book’  of the year  as well as earning Publishers Weekly’s award for Best Book of 1994. She even sold the movie rights, though it would be almost twenty years before the movie got made with Katherine Heigl in the starring role.

Hot Six, the sixth in the series, was the first to grab a place in the New York Times bestseller list and since then every one of Stephanie Plum’s romantic adventures has debuted at number 1, an astonishing achievement. As someone with one foot in the romance camp and the other firmly planted in crime fiction, Janet Evanovich’s work has an enviably wide appeal.

is the star of the novels anything like the author? It’s a question every reader loves to find the answer to. In Janet’s case it’s a resounding ‘yes’. Both are from New Jersey. And they share a bunch of seriously embarrassing real-life experiences. There’s nothing quite like a perfect, all-knowing, flawless character for making a reader feel inadequate. Plumb’s beautifully-expressed balls-ups are nothing if not realistic, and knowing that she is – on occasion – a bit of a twit adds an extra human dimension to the character and makes her even more appealing than if she’d been disgustingly, annoyingly, unrealistically perfect.

Janet Evanovich books – The Stephanie Plum series in order

It’s always better reading a series of novels in the right order, and it’s easier with her series than others, since the numbers are right there in the title! Here are the Stephanie Plum books in chronological order:

  1. One for the Money (1994)
  2. Two for the Dough (1996)
  3. Three to Get Deadly (1997)
  4. Four to Score (1998)
  5. High Five (1999)
  6. Hot Six (2000)
  7. Seven Up (2001)
  8. Hard Eight (2002)
  9. To the Nines (2003)
  10. Ten Big Ones (2004)
  11. Eleven on Top (2005)
  12. Twelve Sharp (2006)
  13. Lean Mean Thirteen (2007)
  14. Fearless Fourteen (2008)
  15. Finger Lickin’ Fifteen (2009)
  16. Sizzling Sixteen (2010)
  17. Smokin’ Seventeen (2011)
  18. Explosive Eighteen (2011)
  19. Notorious Nineteen (2012)
  20. Takedown Twenty (2013)
  21. Top Secret Twenty-One (to be released on June 17, 2014)

More Janet Evanovich books – Fox & O’Hare

I hate it when I finish a writer’s work while I’m still more than halfway in love with the writing style, the characters, the settings, the plots, the Zeitgeist. Once you’ve read, enjoyed and digested all twenty-one of the current Stephanie collection, what’s next?

Luckily there’s the Fox & O’Hare series to get your teeth into, courtesy of Janet and co-author Lee, a literary collaboration well worth exploring. Pros and Cons, The Heist and The Chase, the third novel released earlier this year, await you. They’re action-packed stuff, rich in thrills, starring the master con artist Nicolas Fox and his sidekick, the tenacious FBI agent Kate O’Hare.

Let’s talk Plum…

If you’re already a convert, what’s your favourite Stephanie Plum novel, and why?

 

Where Have All The Cool Heroes Gone?

You want to know why I love writing the Fox & O’Hare books with Janet Evanovich? This blog post, which I first ran here ten years ago, explains why. While some of the TV references in the post are dated, nothing has really changed in the television or even literary landscape in the years since I wrote this. Which may be why readers have embraced The Heist and The Chase so enthusiastically, making them both top New York Times bestsellers.
KoD11There’s nobody cool on television any more.

Not so long ago, the airwaves were cluttered with suave spies, slick private eyes, and debonair detectives. Television was an escapist medium, where you could forget your troubles and lose yourself in the exotic, sexy, exciting world inhabited by great looking, smooth-talking, extraordinarily self-confident crimesolvers.

You didn’t just watch them. You wanted to be them.

When I was a kid, I pretended I had a blow-torch in my shoe like James T. West. That I could pick a safe like Alexander Mundy, seduce a woman like Napoleon Solo, and run 60 miles an hour like Steve Austin. I wanted to have the style of Peter Gunn, the brawn of Joe Mannix, the charm of Simon Templar, and the wealth of Amos Burke, who arrived at crime scenes in a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce.

But around the time coaxial cable and satelite dishes made TV antennaes obsolete, television began to change. Suddenly, it wasn’t cool to be cool. It was cool to be troubled. Deeply troubled.

TV cops, crimesolvers, and secret agents were suddenly riddled with anxiety, self-doubt, and dark secrets. Or, as TV execs like to say, they became “fully developed” characters with “lots of levels.”

You can trace the change to the late 80s and early 90s, to the rise of “NYPD Blue,” “Twin Peaks,” “Miami Vice,” “Wiseguy,” and “The X Files” and the fall of “Magnum PI,” “Moonlighting,” “Simon & Simon,” “MacGyver,” and “Remington Steele.”

None of the cops or detectives on television take any pleasure in their work any more. They are all recovering alcoholics or ex-addicts or social outcasts struggling with divorces, estranged children, or tragic losses too numerous to catalog and too awful to endure.

FBI Agent Fox Mulder’s sister was abducted by aliens, his partner has some kind of brain cancer, and he’s being crushed by a conspiracy he can never defeat.

CSI Gil Grissum is a social outcast who works knee-deep in gore and bugs while struggling with a degenerative hearing disorder that could leave him deaf.

Det. Lennie Briscoe of “Law and Order” is an alcoholic whose daughter was murdered by drug dealers.
Det. Olivia Benson of “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” is a product of a rape who now investigates the worst forms of sexual depravity and violence.

“Alias” spy Sydney Bristow’s loving boyfriend and caring roommate were brutally murdered because of her espionage work, she’s estranged from her parents, one of whom just might be a murderous traitor.
I’ve lost track of how many of Andy Sipowitz’s wives, children and partners have died on horrible deaths on “NYPD Blue,” but there have been lots.

screenshot_2_12516Master sleuth Adrian Monk solves murders while grappling with his obsessive-compulsive disorder and lingering grief over his wife’s unsolved murder. And Monk is a light-hearted comedy. When the funny detectives are this psychologically-troubled and emotionally-scarred, you can imagine how dark and haunted the serious detectives have to be not get laughs.

Today’s cops, detectives and crimesolvers work in a grim world full of sudden violence, betrayal, conspiracies and corruption. A world without banter, romance, style or fun…for either the characters or the viewer. Robert Goren, Bobby Donnell, Vic Mackey, Chief Jack Mannion… can you imagine any kids playing make-believe as one of those detective heroes? Who in their right mind would want to be those characters or live in their world?

And that, it seems, is what escapism on television is all about now: watching a TV show and realizing, with a sigh of relief, your life isn’t so bad after all.

I think I preferred losing myself in a Monte Carlo casino with Alexander Mundy or traveling in James T. West’s gadget-laden railroad car… it’s a lot more entertaining than feeling thankful I don’t have to be Det. Joel Stevens in “Boomtown” or live in the Baltimore depicted in “The Wire.”

At the risk of sounding like an old curmudgeon at my tender young age, I long for a return to escapist cop shows, to detectives you envied, who live in a world of great clothes, sleek cars, amazing apartments, beautiful women and clever quips. Detectives with lives that are blessedly free of angst and anxiety. Detectives who aren’t afraid to wear a tuxedo, sip fine champagne, confront danger with panache, and wear a watch that’s actually a missile-launcher. Detectives who are self-assured and enjoy solving crimes, who aren’t burdened with heartache and moral ambiquity.

Yeah, I know it’s not real. Yeah, I know it’s a fantasy. But isn’t that what television is supposed to be once in a while?

Now You Can Join THE CHASE…

The Chase coverNow you can pre-order The Chasethe sequel to The Heistthe international bestseller that I wrote with Janet Evanovich. I am so excited about this book, which picks up right where the first one left off and takes readers on a whirlwind, global adventure. Here’s the book jacket copy:

Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg, New York Times bestselling authors of The Heist, return in this action-packed, exciting adventure featuring master con artist Nicolas Fox and die-hard FBI agent Kate O’Hare. And this time around, things go from hot to nuclear when government secrets are on the line. 

Internationally renowned thief and con artist Nicolas Fox is famous for running elaborate and daring scams. His greatest con of all: convincing the FBI to team him up with the only person who has ever caught him, Special Agent Kate O’Hare. Together they’ll go undercover to swindle and catch the world’s most wanted—and untouchable—criminals. Their newest target is Carter Grove, a former White House chief of staff and the ruthless leader of a private security agency. Grove has stolen a rare Chinese artifact from the Smithsonian, a crime that will torpedo U.S. relations with China if it ever becomes public. Nick and Kate must work under the radar—and against the clock—to devise a plan to steal the piece back. Confronting Grove’s elite assassins, Nick and Kate rely on the skills of their ragtag crew, including a flamboyant actor, a Geek Squad techie, and a band of AARP-card-carrying mercenaries led by none other than Kate’s dad.  A daring heist and a deadly chase lead Nick and Kate from Washington, D.C., to Shanghai, from the highlands of Scotland to the underbelly of Montreal. But it’ll take more than death threats, trained henchmen, sleepless nights, and the fate of a dynasty’s priceless heirloom to outsmart Fox and O’Hare.

 

The Mail I Get

diagnosis murder
Here’s a sampling from the mailbag this week.  I got this note from a Diagnosis Murder fan:

please  put diagnosis murder back on youtube it is one of my favorite tv shows in the wide world and also airwolf is one of my favoritew shows as well  i miss diagnosis murder  very much i watch it almost  all day long  signed  a upset fan of the show    anna

I have nothing to do with any Diagnosis Murder episodes that are posted on YouTube. That said, whoever posted them as violating the copyright and the studio probably had the videos yanked. The good news is that the entire series is coming out on DVD later this summer…and I wrote the liner notes for the seasons that Bill Rabkin and I worked on. More on that soon.

Hi Lee

I just love your Monk Books, and when it was on TV, the show too.

I was noticing in my iTunes there is an author who has written some Mr. Monk books by the name of Hy Conrad. Is this a pen name or is someone actually writing Mr. Monk books and why aren’t you?

I have bought all of Mr. Monk books by you either through stores or in my iTunes.

I would appreciate it if you could email me and let me know the reason for the change in authors.

Thank you for your kind words about the book. I decided, after 15 books, that it was time to move on to other things. Hy Conrad is, indeed, a real person and he’s picked up where I left off. His first book, Mr. Monk Helps Himself, just came out. You can read more about it here.

Mr. Goldberg,

After reading THE HEIST I have read most of your work and enjoyed it a great deal.

Wondering if we will indeed see Tom Wade …..or even Harvey Mapes again ( the references to Travis McGee and Spenser et al hilarious….and prompted me to reread a couple of old John D McDonalds..great fun)

And why are you not in ibooks?

Thank you for your work!

I will definitely be writing a King City sequel, but I’ve got the sequel to The Heist to do first! King City was published by Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint, and I believe iBookstore refuses to carry Amazon titles. As for my backlist titles (Watch Me Die, The Walk, etc), I have an exclusive agreement with Amazon to publish and sell those books…at least for the time being.

 

The Heist Commercial and Trailers

Random HouseRandom House is going all-out promoting THE HEIST, the novel I wrote with Janet Evanovich. They’ve produced three trailers and a slick national TV commercial for the June 18th roll-out.  I’ve never had that kind of promotional support before and it’s very exciting. I think they’ve done a good job selling the “franchise” and tone of the book in just a few seconds. I’ll have the commercial and trailers posted on the site soon…but in the mean time, here are links to them on YouTube. Let me know what you think!

NATIONAL TV SPOT: The Con is On!

TRAILER #1 – Meet Nick Fox and Kate O’Hare from THE HEIST

TRAILER #2: Meet FBI Agent Kate O’Hare from THE HEIST

TRAILER #3: Meet Con man Nick Fox from THE HEIST