Happy Halloween from Dean Koontz' Dog!

Got this in email today, via Dean Koontz' website, and it cracked me up.

I, Trixie Koontz, who is dog, wish Halloween 2004 will be your best ever. Here are my ten wishes for you:

1) May you have celebrity dinner date with Big Foot, and I mean real Big Foot, not hairy lummox you used to date.

2) May you eat so much free candy, you hurl and hurl like whale blowing ambergris.

3) When goblin eats your nose, may National Nose Graft Foundation give you perfect donated nose of dead movie star.

4) If you contract case of flesh-eating virus, may virus eat only those parts of your body you think unattractive, not eat parts you think pretty.

5) When evil entity pulls you through vortex into parallel dimension, may you discover fantastic shopping mall with, like, the biggest Gap ever.

6) When extraterrestrials abduct you to mother ship and give usual proctological exam, may they not find anything requiring referral to specialist.

7) If rotting cannibalistic zombies take over world, may you smell unappetizing to them.

8) If doorbell rings on Halloween and you answer, find burning bag, stomp out flames, then find little blue bag full of poop all over shoe -- may you not blame me. Am good dog, good. Must be some other dog, some bad dog, devil dog. Not me. Am good dog, good. Was not me. No way, Jose. No chance, Lance. Might’ve been cat.

9) If you hear jack-o’-lantern whispering “Kill everyone, kill everyone,” take it to driveway, run over with car. Go to market, buy less psychotic species of squash, carve spooky face. Just to be safe, make sure new squash knows what you did to pumpkin.

10) May you have lots of sausage.

By the way, Koontz new book, Life Expectancy, is due out at the beginning of December and it's amazing! It's one of those rare books I actually couldn't put down.

Michael Crichton's latest

Just found out today that Michael Crichton has a new book coming out December 7 (with an announced first printing of 2 million copies). This looks like it's probably old news already, but somehow I missed it.

The book is to be called State of Fear and here's the plot description:

Once again Michael Crichton gives us his trademark combination of page-turning suspense, cutting-edge technology, and extraordinary research. State of Fear is a superb blend of edge-of-your-seat suspense and thought provoking commentary on how information is manipulated in the modern world. From the streets of Paris, to the glaciers of Antarctica to the exotic and dangerous Solomon Islands, State of Fear takes the reader on a rollercoaster thrill ride, all the while keeping the brain in high gear.

Sounds interesting. I'm a definite admirer of Crichton's work, so I look forward to it.

January Magazine's Rap Sheet

A new issue of the Rap Sheet is now up over at January Magazine.

It contains reviews of Stephanie Kane's Seeds of Doubt, James Hime's Scared Money, Larry Karp's First, Do No Harm, Max Phillips' Fade to Blonde, Richard Aleas' Little Girl Lost (that's the worst pseudonym ever!), Sam Hill's Buzz Riff, and a handful of others.

The Rap Sheet also includes a useful roundup of all the crime fiction awards that have been handed out recently -- and there are seemingly scores of them!

The piece could probably have done, though, without editor Jeff Pierce's political proselytizing -- what does that have to do with crime fiction, anyway?

Bouchercon 2004 Picture

We didn't end up with many pics from B'con, but here's one:


James Born, Ralph Pezzullo, David Montgomery & Jim Fusilli

The Return of Hannibal Lecter

Exciting news today on the publishing front. Thomas Harris, who usually takes a decade to produce a book, will return only 6 years after the much-excoriated Hannibal.

The book, to be called Behind the Mask, will be published next fall by Bantam Dell. I was one of the few people who actually dug Hannibal, but even if I hadn't, I'd still be eager to read this one.

Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs established Thomas Harris as one of the finest writers of psychological suspense and he is still the market setter in this corner of the genre.

2004 Shamus Award Winners

Late news, I know, but in case you missed it...

Here are the winners of the 2004 Shamus Awards, given out by the Private Eye Writers of America at Bouchercon earlier this month.

Best Novel: Ken Bruen - The Guards

Best First Novel: Peter Spiegelman - Black Maps

Best Short Story: Loren D. Estleman - Lady on Ice (in A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime, ed. Jeffery Deaver)

Best Paperback Original: Andy Straka - Cold Quarry

Eye Award for Lifetime Achievement: Donald E. Westlake

PWA/St. Martin's Press Best First Private Eye Novel: Michael Kronenwetter - First Kill

Congrats to all the winners and nominees!

Whither Thomas Perry?

One of the best writers in the crime fiction genre has seemingly disappeared off the map, prompting some readers to ask, "Has Thomas Perry retired?" (His last book, Dead Aim, came out in Dec. 2002.)

The good news is, he has not. The bad news is, we won't see his next book until late-2005 at the earliest. (It is to be titled Nightlife and will be published by Random House.)

Here is Perry's explanation of what happened:

During the early part of last year, I wrote a book-length manuscript. It was an attempt to think about characters unlike any that I had ever written about. The plot had some interesting twists and the writing included some good passages, but the story never quite came together as a finished, coherent whole. I rewrote it several times, but I still couldn't get it to work. When people asked me how it was coming, I would usually say, "It's long enough. Now I have to make it good enough." I kept writing drafts, changing the story considerably each time, but still couldn't get it right. Last winter I decided that the best thing to do was to set it aside and go to work on something else.

I admire Perry for having the guts to pull the plug on a book because he didn't think it's good enough. I'm sure there was considerable pressure from everyone involved for him to produce. (That being said, I'd still be very interested in reading it.)

But I guess we'll just have to wait 'til next year for our fix. In the meantime, if you haven't read the Gumshoe-winning Pursuit or the excellent Jane Whitefield series, you've got some catching up to do.

Now that's an idea!

Came across a new blog, Query Leters I Love.

Here's a choice one:

Scent of Mirrors: A ghostly assassin haunts a city with an invisibletouch, possessing the souls of his targets with a singular and uniqueskill----his adapted sense of smell.

Now that's a ripe idea!

Welcome, Gregg Hurwitz

I was pleased to discover earlier today (thanks to Aldo) that Gregg Hurwitz has joined the blogosphere.

Gregg has already published 5 novels, though he's 4 years younger than even my tender age. His latest is the excellent The Program, featuring ex-U.S. Marshall Tim Rackley doing battle with a mind control cult. (See my review in the Sun-Times.)

I had the chance to talk to Gregg for a while at Bouchercon earlier this month and found him to be a very nice fella.

The Return of Kent Harrington

Just got a wonderful piece of news today! Kent Harrington, a terrific guy and a truly fine writer, has a new book coming out soon.

Dennis McMillan will be publishing Red Jungle later this year.

You don't have to wait to read the first chapter, though. Pop on over to Got Text and you can get started right away.

Kent has previously written some incredible noir-influenced novels (like Dark Ride and Dia De Los Muertos), so this is definitely one to look forward to.

Edit (10/19): I was disappointed to learn that things aren't quite as certain with Kent's new book as I believed. Apparently he's still shopping for a publisher and the McMillan deal is only a possibility. It's a shame that nobody has snatched this fine writer up yet!

Lee Goldberg vs. the FanFic Universe

Television writer and novelist Lee Goldberg has launched a one-man crusade against the underground world of "FanFic" (stories written by fans using characters from movies, TV shows, and popular culture in new situations or adventures) and the people who write it (see here, here, here and here).

Okay, maybe he's not really going that far, but he's unhappy about it. Lee's objections are basically twofold: 1) most fanfic consists of stealing the work of others and thus is unethical if not illegal; and 2) fanfic is pointless, not real writing and of little or no value.

I wasn't aware of the extent of the FanFic sub-culture, but it really seems to have become quite a phenomenon on the internet. I have been surprised (and, admittedly, a little disturbed) to see the passion that FanFiccers have for their endeavors and the vehemence with which they will defend them.

I love the fact that these television programs and novels have resonated so strongly with viewers and readers that they want to continue the stories on their own.

At the same time, though, I lament that so much energy is being spent (I won't go so far as to say wasted) on something that ultimately is fairly pointless. Not that we always have to spend our time wisely -- after all, that's why God invented Free Cell -- but I do hate to see potentially good writing being squandered.

There is so much awful writing in the world already that it saddens me to see would-be writers pursuing something that doesn't even have the chance to be great.

As my wife will freely admit, I love to argue and occasionally find myself getting sucked into these pointless discussions. Of course, that doesn't mean they can't be fun as well.

After reading the ongoing arguments, and throwing in my two cents, of course, I have come to the following conclusions:

1) Most FanFic is a violation of the copyrights of the original creators. (The main exception to this is works in the public domain, which are free for all.)

2) This violation doesn't really amount to much and is probably not actionable in most cases.

2a) Most writers of FanFic are unaware (or don't care) that they are violating copyrights.

2b) They aren't making any money off it anyway.

3) There is no essential difference between writing FanFic involving Huckleberry Finn or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, other than the copyright concerns.

4) Writing FanFic is a diverting hobby for some people.

5) Writing FanFic might be of some use to its creator as a learning tool, but the writer would be a lot better off creating his/her own works, if they can.

6) Presumably FanFic is fun for some peple to read, although hardly anyone seems to be making this point. (I get the impression that FanFic has many writers, but few readers.)

7) Most FanFic is crap (Sturgeon's Law in action), but some of it's pretty good.

8) The sexually-oriented FanFic (slash, mpreg, etc.) is downright creepy -- and there's quite a bit of it out there.

9) One will never convince FanFic writers that they'd be better off pursuing works of their own -- and they'll get mad if you try.

And, perhaps, most importantly...

10) FanFic is not a serious thing, nor an important one, so there's no point in treating it as such. It's fun for those who practice it, largely harmless, probably pointless, and the discussion of it has occupied too much of my time the past couple days.

Ignore that man behind the curtain!

Interesting discussion going on over at Lee Goldberg's blog...

Lee brought up the recent revelation (recent to he & me, at any rate) that author Michael Gruber (Tropic of Night) was the real writer behind the popular legal thrillers published under Robert K. Tanenbaum's name.

Gruber's bio in the official Bouchercon program admitted as much: "[Gruber] ghostwrote the Butch Karp and Marlene courtroom thrillers for Robert K. Tannenbaum."

I happen to find this outrageous (and more than a little bizarre) but such things happen more than you'd think in the literary world. Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy and James Patterson, among others, have all published bestselling novels under their own names that they only partially (at best) wrote.

What I find truly odd is that nobody seems to give a damn. When infamous lip-synchers Milli Vanilli were revealed to be nothing but pretty faces who hadn't sung a word on their multiplatinum album, the music world was rocked.

The album was removed from print (the biggest-selling album ever to suffer such a fate), their Grammy was taken back, their careers were destroyed. Rob Pilatus (not sure if he was Milli or Vanilli) sank into depression and killed himself.

Lip-synching allegations have also dogged the careers of such artists as Madonna, Janet Jackson and Britney Spears. When it was learned that Whitney Houston only mouther her famous rendition of The Spar-Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl a few years back, she took her share of heat in the media.

Strangely, though, the fact that a best-selling book wasn't actually writen by the person whose name is on the cover doesn't seem to bother anyone. At least Britney Spears actually recorded her own music, even if she doesn't always perform it during her concerts. (She also has the excuse that she's doing some rather aerobic dancing at the same time.)

But when someone like Tannenbaum puts his name on a book he didn't write -- and then shows up at signings to personalize it with his signature -- no one cares. Or do they?

Put me down as someone who does care. This is a disreputable practice that publishers should cease. Authors might be commodities to sell books, but they're more than that. The great tradition of literarure demands that they be more than just brand names. Otherwise, why doesn't Putnam just slap "Patricia Cornwell" or "Tom Clancy" on everything they publish and just dispense with the pretense of art.

If we can't trust that the name of the author on the book actually wrote it, it undermines and diminishes both publishing and literature. At a time when tragically few people actually buy and read books, this is a risk we cannot afford to take.

Cozies for our times?

Saw an interesting piece of info from Willian Kent Krueger the other day:

I'd like to pass along a bit of insight my agent recently offered me. According to her, traditional mysteries (a term I prefer to “cozy”) are often an easier sell with publishers these days than grittier mystery novels. This is especially true when it comes to sales in foreign markets. In a world as chaotic and violent as ours appears to be right now, a comfortable, traditional mystery seems to be the preferred cup of tea for many readers. So, yeah, I think the softer-boiled books have a great future.

While I don't buy the premise that our world is any more chaotic or violent than at other periods in history (and, if anything, it's much less so), it's still an interesting theory.

If you look at the crime fiction books currently populating the bestseller list, though, it doesn't appear to hold much water.

4. The Big Bad Wolf by James Patterson
10. Blow Fly by Patricia Cornwell
11. Angels & Demons by Dan Brown
13. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
18. Trace by Patricia Cornwell
19. The Killing Hour by Lisa Gardner
21. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
27. Sacred Stone by Clive Cussler and Craig Dirgo
34. Seizure by Robin Cook
35. Split Second by David Baldacci
36. The Hanged Man's Song by John Sandford
40. Deception Point by Dan Brown
50. The Tristan Betrayal by Robert Ludlum
55. Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
56. Reckless Abandon by Stuart Woods
67. Double Homicide by Faye and Jonathan Kellerman
71. Stone Cold by Robert Parker
82. Every Secret Thing by Laura Lippman
86. Blacklist by Sara Paretsky
96. The Teeth of the Tiger by Tom Clancy

Is the Haddon book "traditional" (aka cozy)? Maybe. None of the rest of them are, though.

Part of the appeal of crime fiction, I think, is that it tends to be comforting in terms of good vs. evil, order vs. chaos, justice vs. lawlessness, etc. No matter what happens in the real world, we can still turn to our fiction for a glimpse of a more idealized universe.

If anything, it seems that the darker stuff would have just as much appeal, if not more, in troubled times.

The intersection of literature and politics

Slate does a report on "Who are novelists voting for?" Among them were a couple of crime fiction writers.

Robert Ferrigno, author of The Wake-Up:

Mark me on the Bush side of the ledger, a lonely side for this survey, I'm certain. Most novelists live in their imagination, which is a fine place to be until the bad guys come knock knock knocking. I don't agree with Bush on shoveling free meds to granny and grandpa, or his antipathy to fuel conservation along with opening up the arctic reserve, but this is small stuff. I'll be voting for Bush because his approach to stopping the people who want to kill my children is the right one, i.e., kill them first. Kerry will dance the Albright two-step with Kim Jong-il, consult with Sandy Berger's socks, and kowtow to the U.N. apparatchiks who have done such a fine job of protecting the Cambodians, Rwandans, and the Sudanese. No thanks. No contest.

Roger L. Simon, author of Director's Cut : A Moses Wine Novel:

I am a registered Democrat. I disagree with George W. Bush on gay marriage, stem-cell research, a woman's right to choose, and, to a lesser extent, a host of other issues, but I am supporting him unreservedly for president. We are in a protracted war with Islamofascism and I do not trust John Kerry to lead us in that war for one minute. Also, I think my party has been hijacked by a cult of know-nothing isolationism out of the 1930s. But if they win, I hope the hell I'm wrong.

Both, I'm sure coincidentally, are voting for Bush. I know that in Ferrigno's case his position is already getting him hammered, prompting a slew of nasty, negative reviews of his latest book on Amazon.

This election has gotten so nasty that I have great respect for anyone willing to publicly state their position. (Of course, most of the other authors on the list are rabid Kerry supporters.)

For the record, I am a somewhat reluctant Bush supporter, mainly because Kerry hasn't given me a single reason to vote for him other than the fact that he's not Bush. Sorry, but that's not enough.

Rain Storm is drenched in intrigue

USA Today ran my latest review for them today, a bit belated but better than never.

The book in question is Barry Eisler's superb Rain Storm, a book I previously raved about in January Magazine.

The Rain series is one of the best things going on in the thriller genre right now and a personal favorite of mine.

New Reviews on Mystery Ink

A handful of new reviews went up on Mystery Ink today, with more waiting in the can.

Patricia Cornwell's Trace, reviewed by Fiona Walker

Alina Adams' On Thin Ice, reviewed by Yvette Banek

Isaac Adamson's Kinki Lullaby, reviewed by Bob Walch

Reginald Hill's Good Morning, Midnight, reviewed by Fiona Walker

Latest Sun-Times Column

Back from Bouchercon and still recovering...Had a wonderful time, although it was exhausting. I'll try to write something about it later.

My latest column in the Chicago Sun-Times ran on Sunday.

It includes my rave on T. Jefferson Parker's California Girl (probably the best book of the year so far), as well as very positive remarks for Elaine Flinn's Tagged for Murder, Jim Fusilli's Hard, Hard City, Greg Rucka's A Gentleman's Game and Benjamin M. Schutz's The Mongol Reply.

(Sorry, no pans this time. These days I seldom finish the awful ones, so I don't review 'em.)

Check out USA Today tomorrow for my next review (hopefully)!

Latest from Lawrence Block

Two intriguing tidbits from Lawrence Block's latest newsletter:

I'm one of three writers of a new ESPN dramatic series that's set to air weekly for nine weeks starting Wednesday, January 13. (Officially, I'm an executive story editor.) The show is called TILT!, and the background is big-time poker in Las Vegas; my friends Brian Koppelman and David Levien, who wrote ROUNDERS and wrote and directed KNOCKAROUND GUYS, created the show and will be producing it; Roberto Benabib (of Ally McBeal) and Nick Kendrick (Law & Order: SVU) and I worked together to develop story lines and outline episodes, and now we've each got an episode to write in the next two weeks, and then we go back to the office for more of the same. I don't know that I've ever worked harder or had more fun, and I think the show's going to be outstanding. I will keep you posted on this, but meantime you can mark the date in your book. January 13—TILT!

That's one of the things you've got to love about Block...he always keeps you guessing what he's going to do next. This sounds like it might be good. I really enjoyed Rounders. Who'da thunk it -- LB writing for TV!

Let me get back to ALL THE FLOWERS ARE DYING. I didn't mention this before, but some of you sussed out on your own that it is in fact a Matthew Scudder novel, and I think that's as much as I want to say about it. The book will come out in March (from Morrow/HarperCollins in the US and Orion in the UK) and I'm afraid you'll have to wait until then to know more. In fact it's our intention not to publish Advance Reading Copies of this one. There are some surprises in this book, and I'd just as soon avoid having some largemouthed jackass spoil them for you three months ahead of time. All I'll say is that those people who've read it tell me it's one of the darkest Scudders to date, and the most suspenseful.

I was one of those who suspected this new one might be a Scudder -- and I'm very pleased to learn it's true. This series definitely represents the best of Block's work. It ranks as one of the top PI series ever created. I'm already looking forward to it!

I regret the lack of ARCs, but understand why they're doing it. (Mike Connelly did the same thing with his last book, The Narrows.) I'm actually surprised this isn't done with more books.