Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind

Shel Silverstein's Secret, Raucous Recording Sessions

Shel Silverstein's 80th birthday was last Saturday, and since my admiration (okay, uh, general fannishness) is hardly a secret in these quarters, it seemed like as good a time as any to write about the series of recordings he did approximately 40 years ago that were too profane to release to the general public. That piece runs today on TheAtlantic.com's culture channel, and includes YouTube clips for two of the unreleased recordings: "Fuck 'Em" and "I Love My Right Hand."

Because of time and space constraints, the final version of the piece didn't include some of my recollections of how I first got a hold of one version of these bootleg sessions:

In early 1999, I was still a college student, a fan of Silverstein's works for children but barely cognisant of his work for adults. Thanks to a long-defunct site run by one Carol Arnett, I got up to speed in record time, my own dormant archival instincts awakened. On April 17 of that year - just three weeks before Silverstein died - a curious item went up for auction on eBay. It was an acetate, with two sides of eye-popping titles like "Fuck 'Em", "I Am Not a Fag" and "I Love My Right Hand." It bore the marks of Glenbrook, CT-based blank tape manufacturer Audio Devices Inc., which would be bought by Capitol Records in 1972 and closed down just two years later. The seller, now consigned to the dark, dank basement of the Internet, seemed just as bewildered as the small but enthusiastic community of Silverstein fans made aware of the acetate for the very first time: "This acetate was probably never intended to see the light of day because 1) Shel Silverstein sounds as though he is high on something and 2) the subject matter of most of the songs is-shall we say-adult rated? I realize that Mr. Silverstein is a very unusual artist, but this material is out there even for him."

Eventually the acetate sold for $431.60. I, being a frugal-minded college student, didn't bother to bid, though eBay secured me a rare 1963 Silverstein interview published in a college magazine, first editions of out-of-print titles and other material currently gathering dust in my parents' house. But then an out-of-the-blue email came from a fellow Silverstein enthusiast. He could burn me a copy of a slightly different version of the acetate, did I want a copy?

Indeed I did. Per the estate, there are no plans to release these tracks commercially, and it remains to be seen if Silverstein ever intended them to see the light of day or if it was just him having way too much fun in the recording studio. But there are still so many unanswered questions: where were the sessions recorded? Who was the producer who says "take number one, Fornicate Them" and is privy to Shel's madcap lyrical stylings? Was the acetate that sold on eBay a decade ago the master of all the recordings or a multiple-generations-removed copy, like the version I have? Or does the master actually live in one of CBS's vaults somewhere?

One more note: this piece would never have been written without the power of Twitter. So thanks first to Alexis Madrigal for expressing his interest, and to his colleague Eleanor Barkhorn, the culture channel editor at The Atlantic, for signing off and whittling the piece down by about half. And I think I'd better go listen to the "Julie's Working" outtake again...

The Sudden Loss of David Thompson

I've spent the better portion of the afternoon racking my brain trying to remember when I first met David Thompson. And I can't. Which says less about the state of memory and more about how deeply woven into the mystery community fabric David was. If you were and are part of this world, you knew David. He simply was, with his tremendous enthusiasm for the genre that was his life from the time he started at Murder By the Book more than two decades ago. He inhabited this world as it inhabited him, spurring him to spin off from bookselling to publishing with Busted Flush Press, where he could release all those needlessly neglected books and shine some much-warranted light back upon them.

And the hell of is that things were going so damn well for David. He'd sold Busted Flush to Tyrus Books just weeks ago, prepping for the next stage of his career in the book trade. He still recommended key favorite books at MBTB and was a social media force, tirelessly tweeting and Facebooking and emailing, always on, always engaged. And there was McKenna Jordan, the love of his life, their story straight out of a romantic comedy, complete with a storybook wedding in an Edinburgh castle.

This isn't the way it was supposed to end. David had enough life force for several people, and instead he's gone at the way-too-young age of 38. He was meant for such great things, and now it's up to us - the mystery community - to take the best of him and make it matter, make it mean something to those who didn't have the pleasure of knowing him, even a little. McKenna has asked that no tributes be sent to the bookstore, but the best tribute I can think of is to buy a book, in person or by mail order. Maybe you've been thinking about picking up a Busted Flush title and put it off. Buy one now. Even if it's merely symbolic, as gestures go it has to mean a hell of a lot.

R.I.P., David Thompson. Condolences to his family, by birth and through the bookstore, and especially to McKenna. Other tributes are linked below, and many more will pour in throughout the day, I expect, but first I'll sign off with this.

• Houston Chronicle on David's passing - a fuller obituary is now available and reports that an autopsy will be conducted to determine the cause of death.
• Houston Press obit
• CultureMap Houston obit
• Tyrus Books tribute
• Tribute from Alafair Burke, who knew David for about 20 years
• GalleyCat obit
• MBTB Facebook page, with tributes piling up
• Many Twitter tributes
• Publishing Perspectives
• Janet Rudolph
• Bill Crider (ii)
• Brad Meltzer
• Jon Jordan
• Jon Mesjak
• J.B. Dickey, Seattle Mystery Bookshop
• Meg Gardiner
• Bev Vincent
• Clair Lamb
• Kat Richardson
• Louise Penny
• Declan Burke
• Mike Cane
• Gerald So
• Anthony Neil Smith
• Jedediah Ayres
• Jeannie Holmes
• Janet Reid
• Kaye Barley
• Jim Winter
• S.J. Rozan
• David Handler
• Dan O'Shea
• J.T. Ellison
• Duane Swierczynski
• Dennis Tafoya
• Jen Forbus
• Alan Bradley
• J.D Rhoades @Murderati
• Mulholland Books
• Scott D. Parker
• Russel McLean
• Donna Moore
• Graham Powell
• Scott Phillips
• Adrian McKinty
• Dave White (mirrored here)
• Chris La Tray
• Lou Boxer
• Miss Eliza
• Kathryn Casey
• Margaret Maron

 A memorial is planned, and more details will be posted here when they are available.

UPDATE: On Sunday, September 26, there will be a celebration of David's life at the Briar Club, 2603 Timmons Lane, Houston, 77027, between 2 and 5 PM. More information on the celebration, as well as on a fund set up for those who wish to donate money in David's name, is available at the Murder By the Book website.

Dark Passages: Where American Dreams Go to Die

Over the weekend, my newest Dark Passages column ran online at the LAT, featuring my take on new books by Elizabeth Brundage and Chandra Hoffman. Although the books don't seem connected, I found some larger themes to link them as I explain in the piece's opening:

America has long trafficked in the idea that so long as you have a sound mind, a strong work ethic and maybe a connection or two, the sky is the limit, and dreams can come true. Most of the time this idea is mythology, its metaphorical streets littered with broken souls who never came close or were within tantalizing reach of everything they wanted. And yet, the country still keeps this myth alive thanks to the scant few who do make it happen and the thousands, if not millions, panting for success.

Nowhere is the dichotomy between mythos and reality more prominent than in Hollywood, where nubile young things and those with serious acting and filmmaking chops flock to assert their right to a sliver of glory — or, if they are lucky, much more than that. So what if the price of fame means getting plastered on the cover of a tabloid or being abandoned by the moneymen when your ability to make money is compromised? Those are just painful ends justifying the striving needs of those with stars in their eyes. For some, they are attractive choices compared to more violent alternatives....

Read on for the rest. And apologies for the radio silence around here, but moving to a new apartment and a lack of reliable Internet access curtails all but necessary (read: paying) activities. More regular dispatches are available via Twitter.

The Criminalist: The Legacy of Charlie Chan

My newest - and final - column for The Barnes & Noble Review focuses on Yunte Huang's new book about the famed fictional Chinese detective, one whose influence has ranged wide and provoked all manner of controversy and uncomfortable discussion about race in the United States. Here's how my piece opens:

Despite the many strides the past few decades have made toward eliminating ethnic injustice, race is an issue that isn't going away just yet  -- and is, instead, heating up. A black president in conjunction with a crippled economy and a 24/7 news cycle means innocuous comments are blown out of proportion, latent ugly feelings become blatantly manifest in comments sections and public demonstrations alike, and complex examinations are passé  in the face of cartoon-style rhetoric. There are many days when it feels like America hasn't learned from past mistakes, or can't admit it's making them again and again.

Into this volatile mix comes Yunte Huang, an English Professor at UC Santa Barbara. He has spent the past two decades researching one of the most popular and troubling characters in American culture, a star of books and movies and a reminder of some of the country's worst anti-immigration sentiments and practices. Can this character be as Huang writes in Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and his Rendezvous with American History, "a funny, beloved, albeit somewhat inscrutable...character who talks wisely and acts even more wisely" while also "a pernicious example of a racist stereotype"? Can he truly carry "both the stigma of racial parody and the stimulus of creative imitation?"

The answer, of course, is yes, because the character in question is Charlie Chan, born of a primordial stew of culture and politics that includes a legendary Chinese-Hawaiian police detective, a Harvard-educated novelist, a journeyman Swedish actor, argumentative critics and millions of Americans looking for fleeting entertainment. Naturally this is a tricky maze of contexts to navigate, but in choosing to assemble a psycho-biography of Charlie Chan, Huang had to merge these disparate strands into a cohesive narrative whole. The end result is not merely successful, but a revelation: you're never going to think the same way again about the wise detective's broken English aphorisms like "An idle brain is the devil's workshop" or  "Biggest mistakes in history made by people who didn't think."

Read on for the rest, and for a much fuller and comprehensive treatment, see Jill Lepore's excellent essay on Huang's book and the cultural significance of Charlie Chan in the New Yorker. 

On Martin Cruz Smith and His New Arkady Renko Novel

My review of Martin Cruz Smith's newest novel featuring his iconic Russian detective, Arkady Renko, appeared in yesterday's Los Angeles Times (but was only put online this afternoon.) Here's how the piece opens:

Russia may be nearly 20 years removed from the end of Soviet Communist rule, but the latest events in that country truly bring home the phrase "the more things change, the more they stay the same." Spies are still trying to infiltrate American soil, albeit with the help of social media and encrypted Wi-Fi connections. The Kremlin still all but controls the flow of media, and don't use the words "election" and "democracy" or you'll be laughed out of Moscow. There's more money for the rich to throw around, and the underworld swells larger with more small- and big-time criminals on the make.

In other words, contemporary Russia is still a prime setting for crime fiction, rife with narrative avenues for a detective to wander down at his or her peril. For Martin Cruz Smith in particular, Russia has proved to be a rich mine for more than three decades, never ceasing to provide tales of corruption, abuse and world-weary observation for his iconic protagonist, Arkady Renko, to investigate.

Read on for the rest, and for comparison purposes, see Olen Steinhauer's rave review of the book that graced last weekend's cover of the NYTBR.

New and Forthcoming: FOLLOWING THE DETECTIVES, and A New Short Story

So the busy summer (and year) continues but a couple of new and upcoming publications featuring work of mine that I should draw your attention to. First up is FOLLOWING THE DETECTIVES: REAL LOCATIONS IN CRIME FICTION, a collection of essays and illustrated maps about some of your favorite crime writers and their chosen settings edited by the indefatigable Maxim Jakubowski. New Holland Publishers will release this at the end of September, and the contributor list is pretty noteworthy: Barry Forshaw, Peter Rozovsky, J. Kingston Pierce, Oline Cogdill are among them. I've contributed two pieces: New York as filtered through the work of Lawrence Block, and George Pelecanos's Washington, DC. I haven't seen an advance copy yet, but I know they are in the wild, and supposed to be real objets d'art.

Just published is issue 2 of Needle: A Magazine of Noir, the brainchild of Steve Weddle and John Hornor, and along with pieces by Chris Holm, Ray Banks, Stephen Blackmoore and Frank Bill, it includes my first new short story in a long time. "Mirror Image" had a fairly long road to publication. I wrote the initial draft in the fall of 2005, pretty much in one burst as I was able to write first drafts of short fiction back then (now, not so much...) At the time it was a literary story about a young woman's rather dark exploration of body dysmorphia - a topic I, and I think a great many women, understand all too well - and I sent it to a few such publications, many of whom liked the style but felt something was missing. I let the story gestate and then it became obvious to me what was missing: it needed to be more definitively a crime story, and some restructuring and tweaking made it so.

But the end result still felt like it was burning a hole in my hard drive it wasn't a good fit for the mystery mags, and while the late, lamented MURDALAND gave me some good feedback, it wasn't the right fit for them. I'd revisit the story every few months, still think it had some merit, but what to do? And time marched on and priorities shifted.

Then came Needle, and its first issue, which impressed me greatly. Weddle and Hornor had kindly sent me a complimentary copy earlier this year. Nnot only did the magazine look and feel good, the stories were very high calibre all-round. I wanted to be part of that, and casually mentioned I had a story if they were interested in taking a look. They said sure, send it along. And now "Mirror Image", what I think of as a tale of body dysmorphia noir, is between two covers and available for public consumption. So thanks to Steve and John for giving it a home, and I'll be curious what you all think when you buy a copy of the new issue.

On Don Winslow's Hyper-Charged New Novel SAVAGES

I read many books annually, so that means I don't reread all that much. But for Don Winslow's SAVAGES, I couldn't help but make an exception. The book was, at least for me, the literary equivalent of narcotic stimulants* which I wanted to indulge in several times over. So I know I spent much of the year to date urging people to read it, feeling pleased when others loved the book and engaging in debate with those who weren't so wowed.

How, then, to elucidate what's essentially a visceral HFS** reaction in 800 words? The answer, or at least an attempt at an answer, ran over the weekend in the print edition of the Los Angeles Times. Here's how the piece opens:

I'm of two minds about whether "Savages," Don Winslow's marvelous, adrenaline-juiced roller coaster of a novel, is a rookie reader's best introduction to his work. There's a delicious sense of satisfaction in seeing how Winslow has chiseled his increasingly lean prose to diamond-like precision over the course of 12 novels and fused the themes of "The Power of the Dog" (2005), his epic account of the country's never-ending war on drugs, with the razzmatazz syntax of his surf-detective novel "The Dawn Patrol" (2008) to produce something heady and new. "Savages" is both a departure and a culmination, pyrotechnic braggadocio and deep meditation on contemporary American culture.

All those reasons, however, justify foisting "Savages" into the hands of Winslow unfamiliars. The rationale — mine, anyway — is that if newcomers are sucked in by the fierce narrative velocity and perpetual peppering of aphorism upon biting aphorism, each will realize what Winslow fans have long known and will reach for the writer's back catalog.

Read on for the rest about one of my favorite books of the year, bar none. And you'd better believe I'm having a hard time holding off on reading SATORI, the prequel to Trevanian's SHIBUMI that Winslow wrote and Grand Central is publishing in February, resisting only because, well, February is still a while away.

*which, by the way, I don't indulge in, unless coffee counts as a narcotic.

**I think you can guess the particular profanity-laced acronym in question.

Dark Passages: Real Estate Noir

My newest column for the Los Angeles Times looks specifically at Justin Peacock's new novel BLIND MAN'S ALLEY and at the seeming dearth of crime fiction centered around real estate. Here's how the piece opens:

Though I write for this West Coast newspaper, I live in New York City. That means, like a lot of dwellers of the five boroughs, I spend a disproportionate amount of time thinking about real estate, whether griping about too-high rents for tiny apartments or the erection of another steel-heavy skyscraper in my neighborhood. Walking underneath scaffolding, zigzagging through hastily constructed passageways and watching the work of those awe-inspiring cranes brings to mind other salient points about the making of buildings: construction delays, unfortunate accidents and financial mismanagement. And all of those ingredients seem a natural for mysteries and thrillers.

Indeed, the inner workings of real estate deals provide juicy plot points for many a crime novel, but somehow writers seem to shy away from making this business their primary focus — or readers don't gravitate toward this particular professional subject...[b]u another entry into the miniscule "real estate noir" category, however, might stand the best chance of opening up this wonderfully byzantine world to a larger audience, largely because the author frames this world in the context of other career paths well-familiar to the crime fiction reader: lawyers, journalists, and cops."

Read on for the rest, and what other books should I have mentioned that deal with this very New York-centric topic?

Before Stieg Larsson, There was Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo

With the hype and phenomenal success of the Millenium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson, a lot of news outlets have been asking the natural but obvious question: who's the next big breakout star? Is he or she Scandinavian? Or from some other country? Or not writing thrillers? But too many of these pieces seem to think the Scandinavian crime wave began in the past decade or so and don't reference Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, whose 10-book "Story of Crime" novels featuring the ordinary, dour but always fascinating detective Martin Beck not only paved the way for Scandinavian crime writers, but for the genre as a whole.

I've wanted to write about Sjowall & Wahloo for many months, ever since Vintage started reissuing the books with striking new covers (cribbed from the UK editions, published by HarperCollins) and introductions from notable types like Henning Mankell, Val McDermid and Michael Connelly explaining how each book and the whole arc merits close reading. Then I found out for myself starting with ROSEANNA, working my way through the tenth and final book THE TERRORISTS, which is reissued today. And that book, in particular, seems a natural segue to Larsson's books - it's the most overtly political, the most pointed, the most rooted in frustration at the system and outrage over how women are abused and tossed aside by system, and by men.

There's much more detail in my essay, which runs today at The Daily Beast, but the quote that really hit home how Sjowall & Wahloo influenced Larsson comes near the end of the series, when Beck is told this: "Violence has rushed like an avalanche throughout the whole of the Western world over the last 10 years. You can't stop or steer that avalanche on your own. It just increases. That's not your fault."

(For further reading, see the Guardian's profile of Maj Sjowall, still alive at age 75, and Tom Nolan's 2009 Sjowall/Wahloo essay in the WSJ.)

The Criminalist: Mysteries for the Teenage Set

At the Barnes & Noble Review, I delve into crime and mystery fiction for young adult readers, discovering that there are some real gems in the mix but even so, there could be so many more. I certainly hope so. In any case, here's how the piece opens:

One of the things that has puzzled me the most in my years of serious mystery reading is why there are relatively few standout books geared specifically for middle grade and young adult readers. Consider that more than 1500 genre novels are published each year for grownups, and that many of those avid readers cut their teeth reading Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Encyclopedia Brown and Agatha Christie (who wasn't writing for children, but whose prose style and subject matter often appeals to that group.) As they grew older, these readers gravitated towards the creepily suspenseful work by Lois Duncan, Ellen Raskin (her 1978 novel The Westing Game is an indescribable pleasure) and Caroline B. Cooney, who is still producing strong novels like 2009's If The Witness Lied.

Even big-name writers have moved into young adult territory, with mixed success: John Grisham's Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer is more entertaining than it has a right to be (even if Theo seems to share more personality attributes with an older generation) while Carl Hiaasen's eco-themed Hoot nicely captured a middle-school protagonist.  But what teen novels are out there that best reflect pre-teen and adolescent culture as it stands today?

It turns out, after some deep digging and recommendations from trusted sources, there are a number of wonderful recently published books that deserve a wider readership. But before I turn my attention to those, I should mention my favorite young adult mystery writer, Nancy Werlin. Her books offer strong plotting, multi-faceted characters and a keen eye for social issues that speak directly to her readers. At her best, as with the National Book Award nominee for The Rules of Survival and Edgar-Award winner The Killer's Cousin, she's among the best writers of the crime genre, period....

Read on for the rest, and to see which books I think live up to billing.