Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind

Smatterings

The Southern Illinoisan profiles Laura Benedict, debut author of ISABELLA MOON.

Patrick Anderson is very impressed with Caro Ramsay's debut crime thriller ABSOLUTION.

Janet Maslin, however, has problems with Jason Goodwin's THE SNAKE STONE.

Jane Jakeman makes me want to read Jakob Arjouni, something I should have done years ago. Also in the Independent, Mark Timlin goes wild for James Lee Burke's THE TIN ROOF BLOWDOWN.

The CBC's books blog has a short Q&A with Peter Robinson.

For those seeking a refresher on the mystery surrounding Edgar Allan Poe's demise, the student newspaper at University of Maryland, Baltimore County has a decent overview.

Smithsonian Magazine has an extended interview with book designer extraordinaire Chip Kidd.

For some reason I never got around to commenting at length about the whole PFD mess - which ranks as one of the craziest, most fascinating publishing stories of the year - but the mere idea that CSS Stellar can "fire" agents already on the verge of leaving to start their own agency is pretty ironic and rather silly.

Much congratulations to Jason Pinter, about to make the jump to full-time writing and the ten-second commute.

Oooh, US publication of Conrad Black's weighty Nixon tome. Oh wait, no one cares? Oops.

Were the Hardy Boys gay? Um, oookay.....

And finally, it would be fantastic, fantastic news if she were to be identified - one of the many Jane Does who have haunted me throughout my adult life.

Louise Penny's Curious Cases

...form the basis of my debut in Maclean's, Canada's national weekly news magazine. To say it is a thrill to be included in one of my home country's media staples is rather the understatement.

For some reason, the final paragraph was cut off in the online version (it's fine in the print edition.) That paragraph should read: "Dark urban thrillers may remain today’s commercial and critical darlings, but by combining a retro sensibility with characters readers demand to know more about, Louise Penny may well be ushering in her own brand of golden age."

The Strange Convergence of Film, Literature and Music in One Longass Video

First, go here. Watch both parts (or go here for the whole thing in one clip.)

Then come back and amuse me by answering, or at least attempting to answer, the following questions:

• Richard Price, WTF? And was this the first or final kernel of Hollywood hell that propelled him into writing the novel that would eventually become CLOCKERS?
• Was Scorsese gettable because he needed $$$ to get THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST off the ground?
• Are any of the actors involved remotely convincing as high school students?
• Would the video have been better or worse if the song had been a duet with Prince like it was originally intended?
• What's up with the West Side Story overtones?
• For that matter, could the whole Wizard of Oz switcheroo from black & white to color have been handled just a wee bit more effectively?
• Just how dead-on is Weird Al's parody?
• What other critically acclaimed or cult favorite directors should try their hands at a music video? I vote for David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan and Whit Stillman. Just because.
• Was this the moment when Jackson's dancing style stagnated and began its downward slide into mannerisms and tics?

I have spent far too much time pondering this, but 20 years later, I can't think of a music video quite so fucked up on so many levels.

The After Hours Weekend Update

First up is my newest LA Times column, pretty much devoted to all things Jo Walton. Her work is classified as SF (being published by Tor and all) but mystery readers would do well to pick up FARTHING and HA'PENNY.

Also, my review of Caryl Phillips' FOREIGNERS ran in Time Out New York a few days ago.

NYTBR: Geoff Dyer feels the music of Alex Ross's THE REST IS NOISE; Stephen King is a rather inspired choice to review Eric Clapton's autobiography; Kevin Bazzana's tale of a failed musical prodigy wins the approval of Michael Kimmelmann; and Joseph Kanon looks at two similar but different takes on "Agent Zigzag".

I Want a Copy now

Long a fan of Laura James' true crime blog CLEWS, I've been waiting for this news for a while. Now, here it is:

Attorney, true crime historian, and founder of CLEWS: The True Crime Blog Laura James's THE LOVE PIRATE, the untold story of Dr. Zoe Wilkins, a wealthy American playgirl and osteopath who shot one of her husbands, experimented with a slow poison on another, drove a lover to suicide, ruined two banks, swindled investors and friends, blackmailed her abortion clients, and dealt in illegal drug and drink during Prohibition, all culminating in her brutal unsolved murder in Kansas City in 1924, and the evidence suggesting her lawyer, Jesse James Jr., son of the famous bank bandit, was the one who slit her throat for a fortune in diamonds, to Philip Turner at Union Square Press, by Rick Broadhead at Rick Broadhead & Associates (NA)

Sure sounds like a doozy and a good read to me.

Maureen Jennings Escapes Drowning

But not without cost, as the Orlando Sentinel's Laurin Sellers reports:

COCOA BEACH - Maureen Jennings believed there would be a happy ending.

Even as she and her two would-be rescuers struggled against the violent rip current, the popular Canadian mystery writer said Tuesday that she was sure they would all emerge safely to marvel at such a "close one." She never imagined only two of them would make it out alive.

Fred Hunt, 51, who had been strolling down the Brevard County beach Monday morning when he was summoned to help, lost his life trying to save someone he had never met.

   "He died a hero," said Jennings, 68, who was still shaken by the tragic outcome.

More here, here and here. My thoughts are with Jennings and her husband Iden Ford, a longtime reader of this site.

Taking "Can You Top This" to a New Level

For years, Russia claimed Andrei Chikatilo as its most prolific serial killer. That "honor" has now been superceded, at least unofficially:

MOSCOW, Oct. 24 — A former supermarket worker, nicknamed the “Bittsa Maniac” in the Russian news media after the wooded park where he lured victims into drinking sessions before killing them, was found guilty of murdering 48 people in Moscow today.

The worker, Aleksandr Y. Pichushkin, 33, testified during the trial that his initial murder was “like first love.” He often killed his victims by bashing their heads with a blunt object or drowning them in a sewer. Saying he hoped to become Russia’s most prolific serial killer, he confessed to killing 63 people, one shy of his goal of one murder for each square on a chessboard.

He was trying to best the bloody toll of Andrei Chikatilo, dubbed the Rostov Ripper, who was executed in 1994 for raping and murdering 52 people.

Pichushkin was caught when one of his final victims left a note stating she was going for a walk with him - something he knew in advance but didn't deter him from killing her. “I burnt myself, so there's no need for the cops to take credit for catching me. I'm a professional." Um, that's one way of putting it, I suppose...

The Greatest Link Known to Mankind

Well perhaps not, but this is still pretty damn funny. (via)

Crime Writers in the IHT

The International Herald Tribune's culture pages are primarily devoted to crime fiction today. First there's John Burdett talking up his Sonchai Jitpleetcheep novels and how they fit into contemporary Bangkok society:

Modern Bangkok is many things to many people. Tourists these days are likely to come for the shopping, the fabulous restaurants, the $5 foot massages and the nearby golf courses and beaches.

But Burdett keeps a tight focus on Bangkok as sin city, a "lusty, clawing" metropolis of exotic bar girls, shady jade dealers, Viagra-popping Western johns and corrupt cops.

Burdett explores a side of Thai society that has long fascinated Westerners: the apparent willingness of large numbers of women here to sell their bodies without obvious shame - and in a country where brothels are illegal, the willingness of the police, the government and the society as a whole to look the other way.

Then there's Carlo Lucarelli explaining why his books and career stem from Italy's unsolved crimes and their sinister underpinnings:

So many cases remain unsolved, Lucarelli suggested, because for decades Italian institutions were instrumental in hushing up the truth, in part because Italy's role in the Cold War period as a bulwark against communism may have justified the coverups in the minds of some. The truth could have upset the global order. "Italy was in a particular situation," he said.

Conspiracy theories stretch both ways, he has been challenged: How else to explain that his 1993 book "Falange Armata," about a gang of murderous cops that had been terrorizing the Bologna countryside for years, was published the year before investigators arrested a gang of murderous cops that had been terrorizing the Bologna countryside for years.

"I was as surprised as anyone else," he said. "All I said in the book was that two plus two makes four."

But leaps in logic sometimes appear in fiction before real life...

D.B. Cooper May Finally Be Unmasked

To New York Magazine's Geoffrey Gray's credit, he never out and out says that Kenneth Christiansen, who died of cancer in 1994, was the notorious hijacker immortalized in many a song and story. But it's pretty clear from this very interesting piece that he sides with the conclusion drawn by Manhattan PI Skipp Porteous after a chance email by Christiansen's brother Lyle got him investigating retroactively. A few years ago, U.S. News & World Report fanned the flames when it named Duane Weber as a likely candidate, since rebuffed when his DNA and fingerprints didn't match those recovered from the hijacking.

And until comparisons are made between the recovered forensic evidence and a fingerprint or DNA sample from Christiansen, I'm holding back on absolute belief here. (I'm surprised no real mention of this, even that it might be in the works, is in the NYMag piece, but that's probably because it might be a way to get things rolling on that front.) Though the reaction of flight attendant Florence Schaffner to photos Gray showed her of Christiansen circa 1971 is mighty intriguing:

She zeroed in on the passport photo all blown up. She rubbed his features on the page. “The ears, the ears are right.” She moved to the lips. “Yes, thin lips. And the top lip, kind of like this, yes.” Then the forehead. “A wide forehead, yes.” Then the hair. “Receding, yes, the two areas—yes, yes—sort of like this.” She was pushing down on the photo hard now, rubbing the image like a charcoal drawing. “There was more hair, though.” The eyes. “About like that.” The eyebrows. “Yeah, about like that.” The images were closer in resemblance to Cooper than any of the suspects she’s ever seen, she said. But? “But I can’t say ‘Yay.’” We got up from the table. “I think you might be onto something here,” she said.

That is most certainly the case.