Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind

NHPR's Word of Mouth on The State of Publishing

Earlier today I was a guest on New Hampshire Public Radio's lunchtime program Word of Mouth, talking with host Virginia Prescott on the current tumultuous state of the publishing industry. You can give it a listen right here.

Ruth Rendell As a Case Study in Anachronism

At the Guardian Books Blog, Imogen Russell Williams lodges her beef with the recent work of Ruth Rendell, namely that it's past its sell-by date and a strange amalgamation of tacked-on modernity with old-fashioned values. Her earlier work from the 60s and 70s "can be depended on to deliver a controlled hit of cosily sociopathic, retro fun," but the later books? Not so much:

When she attempts to be up-to-date, though, the results are less satisfactory. Her latest books are peppered with anachronisms, preventing readers from being drawn smoothly into the flow of the novel. A character in her most recent book, Portobello, complains of a rumour that all prescriptions will cost a pound in future. A rumour? A pound? In a book beetling with mobile phones and all the trappings of the 21st century, this is a disconcerting reminder that Rendell presumably makes use of the House of Lords prescription service and is unaware that the rest of us have been paying considerably more than a pound for quite a while. Prescriptions for plebs currently cost £7.10 – but they've been incurring charges since 1952. Get with the programme, Ruth!

And on it goes. While I think Williams is being a bit nitpicky here, there is a larger concern when authors keep at series for a long time, or deliver a book a year on subjects that they owned in their heyday but have a less firm grasp on as they age. There's a point when many people realize they don't have the time, energy or inclination to keep up, stay modern, or alter their viewpoints with changing times, and frankly, the result of such efforts between pages (or read with e-ink) can be pretty damn embarrassing. So should Rendell roll back the clock and write "period" work that's set in the 1960s and 70s? Somehow I don't see that happening anytime soon, but I wish she would remedy my main problem: a stunning lack of empathy for her characters that's crept in over the last decade, if not more.

UPDATE: Ed Gorman writes a tremendous response that should be read in full.

Your 2008 Agatha Award Nominees

And they are...

Best Novel
• Six Geese A-Slaying, by Donna Andrews (Minotaur Books)
• A Royal Pain, by Rhys Bowen (Penguin Group)
• The Cruelest Month, by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books)
• Buckingham Palace Gardens, by Anne Perry (Random House)
• I Shall Not Want, by Julia Spencer-Fleming (Minotaur Books)

Best First Novel
• Through a Glass, Deadly, by Sarah Atwell (Berkley Trade)
• The Diva Runs Out of Thyme, by Krista Davis (Penguin Group)
• Pushing Up Daisies, by Rosemary Harris (Minotaur Books)
• Death of a Cozy Writer, by G.M. Malliet (Midnight Ink)
• Paper, Scissors, Death, by Joanna Campbell Slan (Midnight Ink)

Best Non-fiction
• African American Mystery Writers: A Historical and Thematic Study, by Frankie Y. Bailey (McFarland & Co.)
• How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries, by Kathy Lynn Emerson (Perseverance Press)
• Anthony Boucher, A Bibliography, by Jeff Marks (McFarland & Co.)
• Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories, by Dr. Harry Lee Poe (Metro Books)
• The Suspicions of Mr. Whitcher, by Kate Summerscale (Walker)

Best Short Story
• “The Night Things Changed,” by Dana Cameron (from Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner; Ace)
• “Killing Time,” by Jane Cleland (Alfred Hitchock Mystery Magazine, November 2008)
• “Dangerous Crossin,” by Carla Coupe (from Chesapeake Crimes 3, edited by Donna Andrews and Marcia Talley; Wildside Press)
• “Skull and Cross Examination,” by Toni L.P. Kelner (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM], February 2008)
• “A Nice Old Guy,” by Nancy Pickard (EQMM, August 2008)

Best Children’s/Young Adult
• Into the Dark, by Peter Abrahams (HarperCollins)
• A Thief in the Theater, by Sarah Masters Buckey (American Girl)
• The Crossroads, by Chris Grabenstein (Random House
Children’s Books)
• The Great Circus Train Robbery, by Nancy Means Wright
(Hilliard and Harris)

Congratulations to all the nominees! The winners will be announced at Malice Domestic on Saturday, May 2.

Another Round of the Posterity Game

Robert B. Parker is 76 years old, the same age that John Updike was when he died earlier this year. So it's hard not to think of his potential legacy - not to mention just how many more books he has in him - when he's cranking out some of the same old answers in interview like the one published yesterday in the Wall Street Journal. Where RBP got more interesting was with this particular exchange:

WSJ: You wrote your Ph.D. thesis on the American hero, and included authors Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Ross Macdonald in it. Do you think any of them will be read in 50 years?

Mr. Parker: I don't think Ross Macdonald will be read. The other two, yes. Dashiell Hammett because of "The Maltese Falcon," which is an excellent novel, and Raymond Chandler because he was a master of the language. I don't know many who wrote better than he did. It seems to me that Macdonald became one note, one theme. I never found the wit there that I was hoping for. He was almost, but not quite.

WSJ: What does that say about the genre novel, then? In theory, only literary works survive.

Mr. Parker: I don't think of myself as a genre novelist. I think of myself as a person writing novels about people involved with crime. I go through the same process that Updike went through, but he may have gone through it a little better. It's all about the limits of your imagination and the limit of your skill.

Since the posterity game got brought up with Chandler/Hammett/Macdonald (and I do agree, more or less, with Parker's assertion) it's hard not to jump forward in time and wonder, as I often do, which of today's writers will be remembered years from now. But it's tough to answer that question because writers and styles fall in and out of fashion; someone mired in obscurity today may be tomorrow's greatest discovery. Still, Graham Powell zeroed in on what's a better question to ask: which crime writers working in the 1970s and early 80s, the time when crime fiction was by and large a midlist enterprise and not yet part of the commercial echelon, will be remembered from now? And will Robert B. Parker be one of them?

Gerald So thinks so: "RBP's legacy is that he helped re-popularize PI fiction in the 70s and has had a long career since." Except with each published book that is clearly a first draft, Parker helps diminsh that legacy a little at a time. Are readers going to return to the early Spenser novels when there's a caveat attached along the lines of "well, don't read any after A CATSKILL EAGLE" or "you might want to skip the later books"? They might - the early books really are that influential - but why not turn attention to writers with fewer books to their credit? And as much of a game-changer as Parker was, I'd argue he may not seem as much of one later down the line.

It's why, if I had to be a betting woman, I'd put my money on Joe Gores, a year older than Parker. Not just because SPADE AND ARCHER is bringing him more attention than he's ever had, or because it's a much better Hammett pastiche than POODLE SPRINGS was a Chandler pastiche, but because of this: his talent shows in the sentences. The DKA novels, INTERFACE,HAMMETT, on and on, it is so readily apparent Gores worked those sentences over and made the words count. But Parker's success with THE GODWULF MANUSCRIPT onward, to my mind, relied more on character and situation than finding just the right word to go with the next, and the one after that.

That said, I also doubt Parker cares all that much if he's remembered after he's gone. And even if he did, it's not like he's going to write second drafts anytime soon. But wouldn't it be fantastic if it turned out it wasn't too late for change?

UPDATE: Speaking of prequels, one of Robert B. Parker's upcoming projects is CHASING THE BEAR, a young adult novel published by Philomel this May that tells the tale of "Spenser’s formative years spent with his father and two uncles out West." I will resist the urge to editorialize further.

Jon & Ruth Jordan Connect the Mystery World All Over

How cool was it to see Saturday's edition of the Chicago Tribune and find a whole article devoted to Crimespree Magazine founders, Bouchercon 2008 and 2011 co-organizers, and all around awesome people Jon & Ruth Jordan? Because Robert Elder has it exactly right:

The Jordans aren't authors, editors or even agents. But almost everyone behind the scenes knows them and CrimeSpree Magazine, their magazine devoted to the mystery, crime and thriller genres. To use a term from Malcolm Gladwell's sociological study "The Tipping Point," the Jordans are "connectors": influential enthusiasts whose energy and network ripple through this community of writers.

Take, for example, HarperCollins author Sean Chercover ("Trigger City"). "Jon and Ruth have had a huge impact on my career," Chercover says. Even before his first novel was published, "they were the first people to welcome me into the mystery community. They really made me feel at home."

But the Jordans' impact reaches beyond individual careers, says Danielle Bartlett, publicity manager at William Morrow publishers. "They are probably in the top echelon of people connecting authors to readers and publishers to readers," Bartlett says. "They are truly the most hard-working people I've seen in crime fiction."

Damn straight.

Sunday Smatterings

Hallie Ephron has her say on new mysteries by Spencer Quinn, Jedediah Berry and Val McDermid.

Oline Cogdill looks at Tim Dorsey's new comic crime novel for the Sun-Sentinel.

The NYT's Marilyn Stasio opines on new crime fiction releases by Tim Dorsey, Frank Tallis Andrea Camilleri, Alfred Alcorn and Val McDermid.

Les Roberts reviews recent crime fiction by Ray Banks, Sean Doolittle and Dianne Emley at the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Laura Wilson looks at crime and thriller titles by Alafair Burke, Fred Vargas and Martyn Waites.

Is 2009 the year of David Peace? With his upcoming novel TOKYO OCCUPIED CITY, TV adaptation of the Red Riding Quartet and movie version of THE DAMNED UTD, it just may be. As a result he's making the interview rounds, talking to the Observer's Tim Adams about why he might be moving back to England and to the Sunday Herald about why he may give up novels after completing number 12.

The Irish Times uses Tana French's critical and commercial success as a jumping off point to talk about the boom in crime fiction over there. (And in light of recent news, that explosion will only keep on, I reckon.)

The National Post's Nathalie Atkinson engages Joe Gores in a Q&A about SPADE AND ARCHER.

More on Stieg Larsson-mania from the AP's Malin Rising.

Ed Park rides along with Benjamin Parzybok's debut novel COUCH in his new Astral Weeks column.

The Jane Austen & Zombies trend will not go away anytime soon. After all, we have PRIDE AND PREDATOR to look forward to!

If you think Hollywood adaptation of novels will run smoothly, see D.M. Thomas as a case study in how it is anything but.

And finally, I've got the music in me.

Why Was Spencer Quinn's DOG ON IT Left off the NYT Bestseller List?

It's just about common knowledge that getting on the New York Times bestseller list requires any number of variables from healthy pre-orders, selling in great quantities at certain bookstores and retailers, and some other X factors. The system isn't "rigged" per se, but it's not nearly as objective as the all-in-one bestseller list USA TODAY publishes each week (PDF alert!) where all formats are included in the top 150 books.

As a result I don't think much about comparing and contrasting NYT and USAT placement, but then I saw that Early Word published the splits on new hardcover fiction published during the week ending February 15 (which is reflected in the March 1 NYT list) and noted something curious: DOG ON IT by Spencer Quinn (which I reviewed favorably in my most recent "Dark Passages" column) ranked #62 on the USAT list and #32 on the NYT list, but T.C. Boyle's THE WOMEN was #94 on USAT and #12 on NYT. That struck me as rather odd. And since I was aware each bestseller list is tabulated according to different formulas and combinations, it made more sense to compare the NYT's hardcover fiction list with where hardcover fiction ranked on the USAT list. To wit:

NYT:

1. John Grisham, THE ASSOCIATE
2. James Patterson & Michael Ledwidge, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE
3. Stephenie Meyer, THE HOST
4. Christopher Moore, FOOL
5. Patricia Briggs, BONE CROSSED
6. Kristin Hannah, TRUE COLORS
7. David Wroblewski, THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE
8. Schaffer & Barrows, THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY
9. Janet Evanovich, PLUM SPOOKY
10. Adriana Trigiani, VERY VALENTINE
11. Bernard Cornwell, AGINCOURT
12. T.C. Boyle, THE WOMEN

USAT (with actual ranking in brackets)

1. John Grisham, THE ASSOCIATE (6)
2. James Patterson & Michael Ledwidge, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE (9)
3. Stephenie Meyer, THE HOST (16)
4. Christopher Moore, FOOL (23)
5. Janet Evanovich, PLUM SPOOKY (48)
6. Kristin Hannah, TRUE COLORS (53)
7. Patricia Briggs, BONE CROSSED (60)
8. Spencer Quinn, DOG ON IT (62)
9. Adriana Trigiani, VERY VALENTINE (74)
10. David Wroblewski, THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE (80)
11. T.C. Boyle, THE WOMEN (94)
12. Schaffer & Barrows, THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY (102)

The only book missing from the USAT's weighted top twelve hardcover fiction titles is the Cornwell - which didn't even make the top 150. As for Quinn, based on the USAT list, it should have been somewhere in the top ten of the NYT's bestseller list - not at #32, barely on the extended. Otherwise, the concordance between the USAT and the NYT lists is pretty close.

So how to explain the DOG ON IT disparity? Perhaps the NYT is severely undercounting Barnes & Noble stores, which sold the book in brisk quantities as a result of its "B&N Recommends" selection for the month of February. If that's the case, what does it say that the most influential list and the most influential chain store seem to be on divergent paths? Then again, this disparity might disappear with the March 8 edition of the hardcover fiction NYT list...

New Report Calls for Forensic Science Overhaul

Yesterday the National Academy of Sciences issued a lengthy report, two years in the making,on the current state of forensic science. It should not come as a surprise, that they found "serious problems" with the field. The report, according to NPR's Morning Edition, which did a segment on it today, "cites key deficiencies — such as the lack of mandatory certification programs for forensic scientists and the lack of standards for analyzing and presenting evidence. The study calls for new science research and major reforms to fix the fragmented, decentralized system." Not to mention that up to 80% of forensic laboratories are overworked and understaffed, and the "CSI Effect" means juries expect DNA and when they don't get it, they don't convict. It all adds up to the recommendation by the NAS that forensic science ought to undergo a serious overhaul.

Nothing brings the point home like Radley Balko's latest article in Reason Magazine, part of an ongoing series looking at Missippippi medical examiner Michael Hayne and how his less-than-stellar practice has led to innocent people on death row. One of them might be Jimmie Duncan, convicted of murdering 23-month-old Hayley Oliveaux in 1993 in part because of the presence of bite mark evidence. But as the video linked in the piece indicates, that evidence - conjured up by one Michael West - is beyond suspect:

The full 24-minute video opens with Michael West's initial examination of Haley Oliveaux's body on the night of December 18, 1993. He notes several injuries, but at no time does he mention the presence of possible bite marks on Oliveaux’s right cheek. The video itself shows no sign of bite marks, scrapes, or abrasions on the cheek.

At the 4:55 mark, there's a cut in the original video, representing the break between West's initial exam on December 18, and a follow-up bite-mark analysis on December 19. After the break, West stands over Oliveaux's body, which now contains a striking red abrasion on her right cheek—an abrasion that wasn't there before. West then takes the plaster cast of Jimmie Duncan's teeth and pushes it into the scrape on Oliveaux's jaw. Over the next few minutes he jams, drags, and scrapes the dental mold across Oliveaux’s cheek 17 times. For the entire 24-minute video, West uses Duncan's teeth mold on Oliveaux's skin more than 50 times....

...When asked how abrasions on Oliveaux's cheek not present when the video begins could later appear, [Ventura County Deputy Medical Examiner Michael] Bowers answered, "Because Dr. West created them. It was intentional. He's creating artificial abrasions in that video, and he's tampering with the evidence. It's criminal, regardless of what excuse he may come up with about his methods." Bowers added, "You never jam a plaster cast into a possible bite mark like that. It distorts the evidence. You take a photograph, or if there are indentations, you take an impression. But you don't jam plaster teeth into them." After viewing the video, Bowers submitted an affidavit for Jimmie Duncan's defense.

As shocking as that story is, I also understand why change may not be as forthcoming as the NAS hopes it will be. Creating new standards for established techniques, or tossing them out altogether, will be a costly, laborious, combative practice, one requiring a great deal of discussion and committees and hand-wringing. Forensic science funding has been difficult to obtain in the best of times, and these times are anything but rosy. Bad apples also don't mean the techniques themselves aren't useful, and DNA evidence is not always practical and necessary in every criminal case. And as I've said here any number of times, forensic science has moved more in the direction of repetitive specialization and away from the larger picture - which is problematic because looking for the larger story often yields the real one, while the telling detail means the forest gets lost for the saplings.

The report is the #1 topic of discussion at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences' annual meeting taking place in Denver this week, but I, like many others, hope some concrete ideas on how to tackle the issues highlighted by the NAS emerge from those who work in the field, on the ground level and further up the ladder.

Happy 80th Birthday, Len Deighton

And in honor of the occasion, as well as HarperCollins UK's plans to reissue several books starting this summer, the "famously publicity-shy" spy novelist sat down with the Telegraph's Jake Kerridge for a wide-ranging interview on his career, which began with the 1962 publication of THE IPCRESS FILE right around the time a little film named DR. NO put spy fiction on the map in a big, big way. Kerridge writes:

[Deighton's] first four novels are a wonderful mixture of the exciting and the amusingly humdrum, narrated by an unnamed working-class intelligence officer from Burnley who spends as much time trying to reclaim his expenses as he does searching for kidnapped scientists. His Eton- and Oxbridge-educated superiors are usually incompetent – “what chance did I stand between the communists on the one side and the establishment on the other” – or treacherous. Much is made of the fact that he is overweight: in Billion Dollar Brain (1966) he is told he has been chosen to go on a mission to Helsinki because he is “the one best protected against cold”. Well, James Bond may be thinner, but so is his dialogue.

Deighton doesn’t see the character as an anti-hero, and stresses that he is a romantic, incorruptible figure in the mould of Philip Marlowe. "This is not the way it is now. Modern fiction is not so keen to guard the integrity of our heroes … When I started writing I had rules. One was that violence must not solve the problem, and I cannot have the hero overcome violence with a counterweight of violence."

Indeed, Deighton hopes his readers will "get a laugh" out of his work (an antidote to the often gloomy and taciturn tone of much spy fiction, necessary as it might be) but is also somewhat disdainful about prizes: "To allow someone to give you a knighthood is to admit that there is someone who is allowed to appraise you on a scale which you are going to agree with. The audacity of it!"

I'm glad to see renewed interest in Deighton because it always seemed something of a shame his work became neglected over the years. And if Deighton can be revived, why not, say, Helen MacInnes?

UPDATE: Jeremy Duns, whose first novel FREE AGENT comes out this July over here, writes a Deighton appreciation for the Guardian Books Blog:

Now is the perfect moment for a Deighton revival. In the current political climate, his novels – particularly his cold war spy stories – act as a refresher course in what happened last time round. Unlike John le Carré's work, they don't make for bleak or melancholic reading, and are often rather jaunty in tone. But running through them is a deep mistrust and cynicism of the powers that be. His protagonists are anti-authoritarian, laconic, past their best, bitter and seething at the absurdity of their business.

The books have one foot in the realist camp of the espionage genre, in the tradition of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene, depicting the spy game as a bureaucratic muddle. But Deighton was often very funny, and he had a way of nailing the atmosphere concisely. In An Expensive Place to Die (1967), a courier from the British embassy passes the narrator a dossier and asks him to read it and hand it back while he waits. "It's secret?" asks our hero. No, the courier tells him – the photocopier's bust and this is his only copy.

Crime Writer Trying to Solve Real-Life Murder

Pauline Rowson has been a crime writer for a number of years, but it's only fairly recently that she's begun to look at the real-life crime that may well have been the impetus for her fictional mysteries. Unfortunately, as the Portsmouth News reports, Rowson has hit a roadblock trying to uncover the truth behind the unsolved murder of her great-aunt:

A crime writer campaigning for information about a 50-year-old real-life murder mystery in her family has been refused access to the archives – because of a remote possibility that the case may be reopened by police.And Hayling Island author Pauline Rowson fears the information will now be withheld until 2030 at the earliest.

On February 12, 1959, Mrs Rowson's great-aunt Martha Giles was found dead on the bowling green of Wolverhampton's New Cross Hospital. The nurse had been due to work a night shift on February 11, but on her way to work she was battered with a rock and stabbed in the heart and lung.

The murder caused an outcry and was given national media coverage, but the 45 year-old's killer was never brought to justice.

The reason cited for the rejection? The FOI officers claim even the smallest chance the investigation could be reopened means the files should stay sealed. Rowson, however, plans to appeal and to contact her MP about it - and spread the word with news stories like this one...