Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind

The Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award Nominations

Though the official announcement of all the Dagger Awards won't be made until Tuesday June 3, the Times has an exclusive preview of the world's richest crime fiction prize as given by Natasha Cooper. And the nominees are:

James Lee Burke, THE TIN ROOF BLOWDOWN
Colin Cotterill, THE CORONER'S LUNCH
Frances Fyfield, BLOOD FROM STONE
Steve Hamilton, NIGHT WORK
Laura Lippman, WHAT THE DEAD KNOW
R.N. Morris, A VENGEFUL LONGING

The winner of the award - netting a cool 20,000 pounds -  will be announced on July 10.

The 2008 Barry Award Nominations

Deadly Pleasures announces the nominees for the 2008 Barry Awards:

BEST NOVEL (Published in the U.S. in 2007)

SOUL PATCH, Reed Farrel Coleman (Bleak House)

THE UNQUIET, John Connolly (Atria)

DOWN RIVER, John Hart (St Martin’s Minotaur)

DIRTY MARTINI, J.A. Konrath (Hyperion)

WHAT THE DEAD KNOW, Laura Lippman (Morrow)

RED CAT, Peter Spiegelman (Knopf)

BEST FIRST NOVEL

(Published in the U.S. in 2007)

MISSING WITNESS, Gordon Campbell (Morrow)

BIG CITY, BAD BLOOD, Sean Chercover (Morrow)

IN THE WOODS, Tana French (Viking)

THE SPELLMAN FILES, Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster)

THE COLLABORATOR OF BETHLEHEM, Matt Beynon Rees (Soho Press)

THE BLADE ITSELF, Marcus Sakey (St. Martin’s Minotaur)

BEST BRITISH CRIME NOVEL (published in the U.K. in 2007, not necessarily written by a British writer nor set in the U.K. )

A QUIET BELIEF IN ANGELS, R.J. Ellory (Orion)

PIG ISLAND, Mo Hayder (Bantam Press)

ONE UNDER, Graham Hurley (Orion)

THE DEATH LIST, Paul Johnston (Mira)

THE 50/50 KILLER, Steve Mosby (Orion)

DAMNATION FALLS, Edward Wright (Orion)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

QUEENPIN, Megan Abbott (Simon & Schuster)

BLACK WIDOW AGENCY, Felicia Donovan (Midnight Ink)

CHOKE POINT, Jay MacLarty (Pocket)

THE MARK, Jason Pinter (Mira)

WASH THIS BLOOD CLEAN FROM MY HAND, Fred Vargas (Penguin)

WHO IS CONRAD HIRST?, Kevin Wignall (Simon & Schuster)

BEST THRILLER

NO TIME FOR GOODBYE, Linwood Barclay (Bantam)

THE CLEANER, Brett Battles (Delacorte)

THE WATCHMAN, Robert Crais (Simon & Schuster)

VOLK’S GAME, Brent Ghelfi (Henry Holt)

SILENCE, Thomas Perry (Harcourt)

MIDNIGHT RAMBLER, Jim Swain (Ballantine)

The winners will be announced at Bouchercon in Baltimore. Congratulations to all the nominees! (Full disclosure: I was on the judging panel.)

You cannot top this headline

But the story comes damn, damn close:

A JAPANESE man puzzled by food mysteriously disappearing from his refrigerator got a shock when he discovered a woman had been living in his home for months without permission, police said today.

The 57-year-old man who lives alone - or so he thought - in the western city of Fukuoka installed a security camera and called the police when he saw images of someone walking around his home while he was out.

"We searched the house in the man's presence. We found the woman in the closet," said a local police spokesman.

The woman, named as 58-year-old Tatsuko Horikawa, was found in a flat storage space only just big enough for a person to squeeze into lying down.

And the kicker? She had been there a year, more or less, "but not all the time." Uh, yeah...

Q&A with Cory Doctorow at emusic.com

On the occasion of the publication of his first young adult novel LITTLE BROTHER, I spoke with Cory Doctorow over at emusic.com. The conversation was fairly wide-ranging, talking about the book's origins, privacy vs. security, how Doctorow's anti-DRM stance fits in, and what the book's main character Marcus might listen to. But as is often the case, a lot of material got left on the cutting room floor, like these two exchanges:

SW: How did you balance the need to move the story along and maintain momentum with the need to explain certain critical concepts in computer hacking – Denial of Service, infected PCs, Bayesian analysis, creation of networks, to name a few? Was it a challenge to keep the number of expository paragraphs to a minimum?

CD: Some people view exposition as a necessary evil but I think exposition, when done right, and in science fiction most of all, the right exposition at the right moment can be just as fascinating as character development or plot twists. People don't just read young adult science fiction to be entertained; they also want to know how the world works. They not only forgive you from going away from [the] main thrust of the action, they thank you for it. I wrote the book intuitively, taking as the starting point that if Marcus was a supergeeky kid, he had superheated conversations on how things -- be it computers, or the internet, or specific hacking concepts -- are explained. His whole life would be defined by explaining to people what [he is] super-passionate about.

I don't think Marcus would view this as information overload. If you're excited, if you're the right person, it's okay to explain things that are over their head. It's a privilege to be around people if they are passionate about a subject. Ennui is [a] terrible characteristic trait – people who are bored don't make interesting narrators!

SW: Let's talk a bit about the role of women in LITTLE BROTHER. There's Vanessa, Marcus's hacker friend, and Ange, the cool hacker chick Marcus later likes; there are also contrasting female figures in Marcus's mom and Carrie Johnstone, the DHS interrogator. Were you consciously trying to appeal to female readers who may not be inclined to pick up science fiction?

CD: I was raised by feminists to be a feminist. I had to tell the story from a particular point of view, and a boy's made sense because I was a young man – it was easier, more plausible than the point of view of a young woman. Of people I know who are competent and strong and technologically skilled, the smartest and most knowledgeable about civil liberties are all women. EFF's executive director and legal directors are all women. There have always been strong, intelligent, passionate women all my life. When I was growing up, I ran in social circles where most of the young women in my social circles were intelligent, motivated, politically astute and involved in all kinds of admirable causes. So when I think of young women, I think to the girls I dated when I was a teenager, and pretty much to a one they were smart, great passionate people.

As for a groundswell of female science fiction readers, whatever else is going on, women are 52 percent of the book-buying public! Excluding women from the clubhouse is a bad idea. I saw great video presentation of woman who is a software hacker, speaking at conference called LugRadio. She was talking about getting women involved in open source software project. "I could sit here talking to you about gender parity and software projects because it's great to get women involved….forget that. I think we should get them involved because free, and open-source software should control the world! If women aren't involved then only get 50%." Social change that doesn't involve women means we only get halfway there.

Devil May Care Mania

It would be damn near impossible to link to all of the articles published today in the wake of the release of DEVIL MAY CARE by Sebastian Faulks, but I can give it a college try. To wit:

• Carlin Romano weighs in at the Philadelphia Inquirer
• Janet Maslin and Patrick Anderson review the book, respectively
• The LAT's Tim Rutten doesn't really care much for the book
• Sam Leith at the Telegraph is similarly lukewarm,
• The UK launch event is covered by the Independent
• Faulks himself reports on the event for the Telegraph, but also tells AP he won't be writing any more Bond novels
• The BBC's coverage, video included
• DEVIL MAY CARE is excerpted in the July issue of Vanity Fair
• More event pics at MI6.co.uk
• The Times' Peter Millar implores readers not to take this "ripping yarn....too seriously."
• Lots more over at the Rap Sheet

Tuesday Linkpile

Since Gregory Beyer's NYT piece last weekend posed the question of whether mystery writers face a challenge in depicting murder in a rapidly gentrifying city, I wonder if this photoessay, originally posted in 2006, is a rebuttal of sorts. At the very least, it's beautiful and haunting and impossible to look away from.

The Washington Post's Neely Tucker has a wide-ranging interview with crime fiction king Elmore Leonard.

Janet Maslin sure does love her gimmicks of late, doesn't she? Makes me wonder if she's getting bored with the whole book reviewing thing.

Charles McGrath previews the movie version of THE ROAD, coming out near the end of the year.

Rivka Galchen continues to garner attention for her debut novel ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCES, this time from the Wall Street Journal.

PW's Jordan Foster chats with Tana French about her upcoming novel THE LIKENESS.

Salon's Louis Bayard and Laura Miller discuss the death of the critic and recommend summer thrillers.

Mariella Frostrup is profiled at the Telegraph, and what with her hosting a book show on Sky Arts, I wonder if she'll amass the kind of clout that Richard and Judy are about to lose now that they are vacating Channel 4 for cable and its lower viewership.

Lindsey Davis chatted with Nigel Beale during the Blue Met Literary Festival in Montreal a few weeks ago.

Robert Darnton writes of the library's place in today's world for the NYRB.

It's all Hay Festival, all the time at the Guardian.

Speaking of literary festivals, the Independent weighs the pros and cons of them.

Is it terribly unseemly that every time a new issue of Bookforum is published I let out a little cry over how much I want to write for them and how no one seems to listen? It is, but what the hell.

The more I read about Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's parent Riverdeep, the more I shake my head. And am I surprised the new headquarters will be located in the Cayman Islands? Nooooo.....

Damn the critics who call Charlotte Roche's book pornography. I still want to read it when the translation is published.

Hanif Kureishi: not a fan of creative writing courses, even though he's affiliated with one.

The movie version of Greg Rucka's WHITEOUT finally has a release date: September 19.

Canada's foreign minister resigns and scandal erupts, as it should in this case.

And finally, RIP Sydney Pollack. Too damn young.

The Weekend Update on Memorial Day

To kick off the Update, I encourage everyone with even the slightest interest in crime fiction to read Gregory Beyer's article in the Times' City section on the relationship between crime fiction and actual crime, especially as it relates to New York. (Disclosure alert: Beyer interviewed me for the piece on background.)

NYTBR: I have to say, it's pretty cool to see Shannon Burke's dark novel of ER foibles grace the cover of the Book Review; Raymond Bonner is profoundly affected by STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE, the book; and Mike Meyer previews the Beijing Olympics from a literary standpoint.

Lawrence Block, Speed Racer

Tucked in the middle of this week's Artvoice interview with Lawrence Block, which focuses primarily on his screenplay for the Wong-Kar Wai movie MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS, his Buffalo background, and his prolific novel writing career, is the news of his next book - a memoir:

For such a productive scribe, Block is hardly chained to his typewriter. He and his wife are avid travelers, having moved on to explore the rest of the world after spending two years in the late 1980s driving around the US to visit different cities named Buffalo. (Without exhausting the list of possibilities, they made it to 66.) And he has a passion for walking—not the kind you do to get from point A to point B, but race walking. It will be the subject of his next book, Step By Step: A Pedestrian Memoir, to be published in 2009. As he explains, “It’s an Olympic event, though not the way I do it. The people who do it, aside from some youthful athletes, are people who ran for awhile and then our knees went.”

Block also comments on the recent spate of republications of older work (including the upcoming Hard Case Crime reissue of KILLING CASTRO) and when pressed as to whether anyone has approached him about work he'd rather stay consigned to permanent out of print status, replies, "Not really. I’ve found that greed is just an enormously powerful motivator. And if you leave anything to the dustbins of history, some son of a bitch is going to find it there anyway.” Truer words never spoken...

Carlotto Goes Historical

One of my favorite noir fiction writers, Massimo Carlotto, moves back a few hundred years for his new novel CRISTIANI DI ALLAH. Amara Lakhous at Reset DOC interviewed Carlotto (the whole thing was later translated by Helen Waghorn) about his latest project:

Why are you writing a novel on the Mediterranean renegades today?

To recover a ‘deserted’ story, one which disappeared from collective western memory for religious and political reasons. I see the Mediterranean as a closed sea where one civilisation was born which then divided into two cultures. Open identity is the tool for being able to bring this knowledge to life and to develop discussion.

Between the 16th and 19th centuries, 300,000 European Christians converted to Islam. Were they ‘religious’ or ‘political’ refugees?

Some were religious, some political, certainly all were ‘social’ refugees, fleeing from an oppressive system which prohibited them from social redemption. Islam represented a genuine possibility to change the way in which they lived. One can state that it was convenient to become a Muslim, while this did not apply to Christianity. In fact there were very few conversions to Christianity.

Is it possible to use the Mediterranean’s past as a key to understanding our present day?

It’s not only possible, it’s necessary. We westerners cultivate a distorted vision of our history which leads us to perceive ‘the other’ with an unprovoked suspicion. It’s not by chance that in recent years there has been a rediscovery of the so-called rhetoric of [the Battle of] Lepanto, which is referred to as a strategic victory which saved Christian Europe from an Islamic invasion. Nothing could be more wrong, and yet numerous essays have been published in the press which have provided room for discussion.

I'll echo the Literary Saloon's wish: Europa Editions, bring out an English translation of this book ASAP.

And in other news...

Effective December 31, Marie Arana will no longer be the editor of the Washington Post Book World. She tells the Maynard Institute of Journalism's Richard Prince that she will still write for the paper on contract, is looking for a fellowship position at a university and plans a book about Simon Bolivar, which will follow a novel due for publication in January.

Pascal Dessaint and Daniel Woodrell are the winners of the Prix Mystere de la Critique in French and foreign categories, respectively.

Imani passes along this fabulous 1948 Harper's essay by W.H. Auden on his addiction to detective fiction.

Patricia Highsmith's Ripley novels will be released by Norton together in a five-volume edition, giving Oline Cogdill the chance to wax eloquent about the novels.

Patrick Anderson is still annoyed John Sandford won't listen to him about how to write his Lucas Davenport thrillers.

The Bat Segundo Show releases new podcasts with Cynthia Ozick, Ed Park, Tobias Wolff and Sloane Crosley.

John Barth wins a literary prize in Iran...for a book he wrote over 50 years ago...that was illegally translated.

Laura Benedict talks with Hammett nominee Katie Estill about her recent novel DAHLIA'S GONE.

I think J. Kingston Pierce is about to become a fan of the marvelous Mobile Library novels by Ian Sansom.

Joseph O'Neill may be a cricket fanatic, but lacrosse still trumps all.

And finally, um, find a caption for this please! (via)