Crime Fiction Friday: JOE CLIFFORD

Joe Clifford is a rising star in the world of crime fiction. His new novel Junkie Love is getting great reviews, and his short story collection Choice Cuts is a barrel full of seedy goodness. Joe was kind enough to give us a link to one of his stories. It’s titled “One Good Reason” and is the last story in Choice Cuts.

http://www.shotgunhoney.net/2011/08/one-good-reason-by-joe-clifford.html

HARD WORD VISITS A WICKED CITY

In preparation for Ace Atkins May 31st signing of Wonderland and The Broken Places, The Hard Word Book Club is looking at his second historical crime novel, Wicked City. Atkins looks at Phenix City, Alabama, a town that was so corrupt, General George Patton wanted it leveled because of the affect it had on the nearby army base. When the newly elected, reform minded DA was was shot in front of his home, a group of citizens took matters (and guns) into their own hands.

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In many ways the story is as much western (Hard Word’s other favorite genre) as much as crime fiction, with a pretty clean line of good guys and bad guys, with a few ugly ones operating between. It’s also a great example of Atkins ability to create a world. He evokes time and place with fun dialogue, great characters, and a sweaty, Southern feel.

This Hard Word is all out, including a conference call-in from Ace for the discussion and a viewing of Phenix City Story, the Phil Karlson directed movie inspired by the same events. We’ll be meeting at 7PM, Wednesday, May 29th. Copies of Wicked City are 10% off for those who attend.

GET YOUR SNUBNOSE! EXCLUSIVELY AT MYSTERYPEOPLE

The snubnose is easy to conceal and carry
The snubnose is powerful
The snubnose is compact

That’s how we like our fiction

That is part of the mission statement of Snubnose Press, a great imprint started a few years ago by the folks at the online zine Spinetingler. They take the crime fiction genre and hard boil it down to its down and dirty essence. Needless to say, we at MysteryPeople had been wanting to work with them and we’re happy to announce we have the opportunity.

Most of the books are tight and under two hundred pages. Many are modern takes on the classic hard boiled style, focusing on the criminals like Tom Pitts Piggyback with two drug runners on a road trip to Hell, looking for thier missing stash or Dig Two Graves, Eris Beetner’s tale of a night of desperation and revenge for a robber hunting down the prison lover who set him up. There’s even a noir memior, All The Wild Children, that proves Josh Stalling’s life was as rough as his detective novels.

Since Spinetingler is partly known for showcasing some of the best short fiction, it’s no surprise they have about a half dozen collections from some of the edgiest authors. Court Merrigan takes us from the wild west to South east Asia in Moondog Over The Mekong.  A dark sense of humor runs through both Johns Kenyon’s First Cut and Joe Clifford’s Choice Cuts and if your offended by the title of Jedidiah Ayers A F*ckload Of Shorts, don’t even bother cracking it open.

Since Snubnose started, you’ve only been able to get them online or by print on demand. Recently, we worked out a deal with many of the authors and are carrying them exclusively at MysteryPeople. Check our website this month for reviews of the books and interviews with some of the Snubnose writers and check out our display of the books with covers done by the artist and author, Eric Beetner.

Now On Our Shelves: THE BLACK COUNTRY

Alex Grecian’s debut novel The Yard was a big hit with us. As Tommy said in his review, “He makes us feel as if we are walking the gas lit, refuse choked streets of Whitechapel, shoulder to shoulder with London’s finest. The Yard is one of my favorite mysteries of the last few years. Alex Grecian takes us on a dark journey that includes grisly murder, a visit to a 19th century sanitarium, and enough bone chilling tension to fill three books.”

The good news is that Grecian in fact has filled a second book with a new story of Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad, The Black Country, and it’s on shelves today! Alex answered a few questions for his publisher, which they were kind enough to send along. They were also kind enough to agree to send Alex here to BookPeople – you can catch him speaking about and signing The Black Country here this Friday, May 24 at 7PM.

Q: THE BLACK COUNTRY is the second book in your series about Scotland Yard’s first Murder Squad in Victorian England. This time you’ve left London for the Midlands…what’s THE BLACK COUNTRY about?
A: In the Midlands village of Blackhampton, a couple and their toddler go missing. Then a little girl finds an eyeball in a bird’s nest and the local constable sends for help from Scotland Yard. When the detectives get there, they discover that the village itself is sinking into the mines beneath it and half the population has been stricken with a plague. To top it off, there’s a mysterious figure lurking in the woods and the villagers are convinced it’s a monster from a local children’s rhyme: Rawhead and Bloody Bones.

Q: Which characters from The Yard return in this novel?
A: All three of the main characters from The Yard return for this second outing. Inspector Walter Day is back, along with Sergeant Nevil Hammersmith. And they call in Dr Kingsley and his assistant Henry for some help with forensics. A handful of the supporting characters from the first book make appearances here, too, but they’re only seen briefly.

Q: You have said that you were somewhat inspired by the old British horror films put out from the Hammer Studios in the 1960s and 70s. How so? Did elements of those films make their way into THE BLACK COUNTRY?
A: The Hammer horror films I remember seeing as a child were more like creepy adventure stories. At least, that’s how they’ve survived in the back of my head somewhere. I’m sure they were influential on me because I tend to write creepy adventure stories now. That said, if there’s a film that influenced THE BLACK COUNTRY, it would have to be The Wicker Man, which used some of the same stock actors as the Hammer movies, but was a little more sophisticated and disturbing than most of the Hammer Studio’s films were. In The Wicker Man, a policeman goes to a Scottish island that’s cut off from the mainland. A girl’s gone missing and he’s got to find her, but runs afoul of the villagers’ superstitions. It’s incredibly atmospheric and among my favorite films of that period. Aside from the obvious surface similarities, though, THE BLACK COUNTRY is a very different sort of story.

MP Pick of the Month: ONION STREET by Reed Farrel Coleman

I’ve stated before that Reed Farrel Coleman is the greatest living private eye writer. We have watched his character, Moe Prager, struggle to find grace while dealing with moral compromise, and feeling every emotional bump along the way. Coleman has said he will be winding up the series with two more books. The second to last, Onion Street, takes us to the past, before Moe was a private eye or even a patrolman.

As with some of the Moe Prager novels, Onion Street is book-ended in a time long after the main story. Moe and his daughter, Sarah, attend the funeral of his friend Bobby Friedman. He tells Sarah that Bobby is the reason he became a cop. She she asks how that happened, Moe tells her they need to go back to his apartment and put on a pot of coffee for that.

We then go back to 1968 when Moe is a college student, still living at home. He and his girlfriend, Mindy, are dealing with the deaths of their friends, Martin and Samantha, Bobby’s girlfriend. The two were activists who apparently died when a bomb they built went off. After a night of desperate sex with Moe, Mindy isfound beaten into a coma. Moe goes out looking for answers, revenge, and Bobby, who has gone missing.

The story is probably some of the best plotting Reed has ever done. With the help of Lids, a burnt out prodigy turned drug dealer, young Moe finds links to Mindy’s beating and Bobby’s disappearance to a group of underground radicals, a holocaust survivor, and a local mafioso. The tale reflects place and time perfectly, with reveals that move at a strong pace, never seeming forced or contrived.

That said, we read the Moe books for detailed characters and emotion and Coleman delivers. With great, subtle skill he gives us a young Moe by doing more than just taking away his limp. He’s less grounded with less understanding of love and friendship, falling into their traps that many of us do at that age. We also get a better understanding of his obsession with getting a detectives shield. Once again, Moe is a personification of sins and sorrows we can identify with.

Coleman has created Onion Street as a young man’s story. It moves a bit quicker than most of the others in the series, set in a time in our country when the youth were finding their voice. In Onion Street Moe gains knowledge, if not wisdom. We know there’s a long road for that. Onion Street is a vivid account of his first steps on that road.

New Releases in MysteryPeople: May 21st 2013

The Double Game by Dan Fesperman (paperback)

A few years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, spook-turned-novelist Edwin Lemaster revealed to up-and-coming journalist Bill Cage that he’d once considered spying for the enemy. For Cage, a Foreign Service brat who grew up in the very cities where Lemaster’s books were set, the news story created a brief but embarrassing sensation and heralded the beginning of the end of his career in journalism.

More than two decades later, Cage, now a lonely, disillusioned PR man, receives an anonymous note hinting that he should have dug deeper into Lemaster’s pronouncement. Spiked with cryptic references to some of Cage’s favorite spy novels, the note is the first of many literary bread crumbs that lead him back to Vienna, Prague, and Budapest, each instruction drawing him closer to the complex truth, each giving rise to more questions: Why is beautiful Litzi Strauss back in his life after thirty years? How much of his father’s job involved the CIA? As the events of Lemaster’s past eerily—and dangerously—begin intersecting with those of Cage’s own, a “long stalemate of secrecy” may finally be coming to an end.

A story about spies and their secrets, fathers and sons, lovers and fate, duplicity and loyalty, The Double Game ingeniously taps the espionage classics of the Cold War to build a spellbinding maze of intrigue. It is Dan Fesperman’s most audacious, suspenseful, and satisfying novel yet.

Pale Gray For Guilt by John D. MacDonald

From a beloved master of crime fiction, Pale Gray for Guilt is one of many classic novels featuring Travis McGee, the hard-boiled detective who lives on a houseboat. Travis McGee’s old football buddy Tush Bannon is resisting pressure to sell off his floundering motel and marina to a group of influential movers and shakers. Then he’s found dead. For a big man, Tush was a pussycat: devoted to his wife and three kids and always optimistic about his business—even when things were at their worst. So even though his death is ruled a suicide, McGee suspects murder . . . and a vile conspiracy.

“As a young writer, all I ever wanted was to touch readers as powerfully as John D. MacDonald touched me.”—Dean Koontz

Tush Bannon was in the wrong spot at the wrong time. His measly plot of land just so happened to sit right in the middle of a rich parcel of five hundred riverfront acres that big-money real estate interests decided they simply must have. It didn’t matter that Tush was a nice guy with a family, or that he never knew he was dealing with a criminal element. They squashed him like a bug and walked away, counting their change. But one thing they never counted on: the gentle giant had a not-so-gentle friend in Travis McGee. And now he’s going to make them pay.

Angel Baby by Richard Lange

A woman goes on the run in this intense and cinematic thriller by an award-winning writer. To escape the awful life she has descended into, Luz plans carefully. She takes only the clothes on her back, a Colt .45, and all the money in her husband’s safe. The corpses in the hallway weren’t part of her plan. Luz needs to find the daughter she left behind years earlier, but she knows she may die trying. Her husband is El Principe, a key player in a high-powered drug cartel, a business he runs with the same violence he has used to keep Luz his perfect, obedient wife. With the pace and relentless force of a Scorsese film, ANGEL BABY is the newest masterpiece from one of the most ambitious and talented crime novelists at work today.

Here are a few recent releases that we want to remind you about:

Onion Street by Reed Farrel Coleman

Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland by Ace Atkins

Point & Shoot by Duane Swierczynski

MysteryPeople Q&A: MARK PRYOR

We are excited to be hosting Mark Pryor Sunday, May 19th for his signing of The Crypt Thief. The book is a follow up to his successful debut, The Bookseller. The stories feature Hugo Marston, the head of security of the US embassy is Paris. His sense of right finds him involved in adventures in the shadowy corners of the city, helped by Garcia, a Parisian police detective, his sexy journalist girlfriend, Claudia, and hard living CIA buddy Tom Green. We recently asked Mark about his new book and his characters.

MysteryPeople: Was it easier to write Hugo and his friends in the second book since you were familiar with them or was it more difficult in finding that balance of delivering what people like, but making it different?

Mark Pryor: That’s a hard question to answer because I wrote both books before finding a publisher. In other words, I really had no feedback as to the characters until both were finished, which I suppose means that I simply wrote the characters as I felt they needed to be. Quite nice to be able to do so without any pressure, actually!  Now, I just finished the third Hugo Marston book (THE BLOOD PROMISE, to be published in January of 2014) and I did incorporate feedback from readers to some degree. Interesting, Claudia is the one who has provoked the most comments from people, something I wouldn’t necessarily have predicted. Tom, of course, tended to be either loved or not by readers and that’s exactly what I’d have guessed!

 

MP: The Scarab is one of the most chilling villians I’ve across in a while. How did you come up with him?

Pryor: Why thank you.  I knew I wanted to have him… wait, that’d give the story away. Let’s just say that his physical appearance and her personality match very much how he moves about the city. The other thing with him, I wanted to have a serial killer but not the suave, dead-eyed, handsome man who seduces and murders his victims. He’s not really a sadist, he kills because he has a purpose, although (and I didn’t necessarily intend this) he does come to enjoy it. But then he makes himself suffer, too, so he’s all kinds of messed up. Or evil, if you will…

 

 MP: Hugo is a refreshing because he is a throwback to the old fashioned good guy. What drew you to create a lead who is more of a boyscout than the current flawed and brooding heroes in the genre?

Pryor: You know, I always liked those heroes, the old-fashioned ones who drank martinis (Mr. Bond) and were suave (the Saint). Hugo is more in their mold than the tortured alcoholics of some modern series. I don’t mean that as a criticism, I just always felt that I’d be able to write a more emotionally balanced hero and not be as capable as some are of creating the flawed hero. I think it also allows me to focus on moving the plot forward, the mystery itself. I hope that Hugo still comes across as a complete character and in some ways his niceness is, in fact, a flaw, I suppose. Certainly, Tom and Claudia make fun of him for being the nice guy all the time.

 

MP: The supporting characters like Tom, Claudia, and Inspector Garcia are so well drawn they could easily carry their own book. What’s the best advice you could give about writing your hero’s allies?

Pryor: Thank you again, I’m pleased to hear that. I always intended these books to be a series, and I knew I’d want a strong cast of people around Hugo. Any detective, in fiction or in real life, needs interesting and smart people to work with, be friends with, or make love to. I think it’s dangerous to rely on just one strong character for a single book, let alone a series, so each facet of Hugo’s life is complemented in the form of a complete character. And, of course, their roles over-lap, which makes it more important that they are well-drawn, and in some ways makes that task easier for me. As far as advice, I think I’d sum it up by suggesting that a writer should create supporting characters that their hero will enjoy spending time with, who will reflect his strengths and complement his weaknesses.

The other thing I should say, and this is aimed at those characters you named, well, they better watch out. As any hero will tell you, if you start to steal the limelight bad things can happen. Of course, Hugo’s too nice to say that or fight for the spotlight so I’ll warn the reader right now – in the third novel, things go very, very badly for one of the supporting characters…

MP: I was surprised you addressed Tom Green’s drinking so early on in the series. What prompted you to do that?

Pryor: That’s easy. If he’d kept going like he did in THE BOOKSELLER, he’d have died of liver failure by the end of THE CRYPT THIEF. Actually, it was an organic, unplanned thing. I didn’t set out to have him dry out; rather it was his extreme reaction to an extreme event. Of all the characters, Tom is the most reckless and appears to have the least regard for human life and this realization, this taking control of his own life and health, was a way (his or mine, I’m not sure) of showing that deep inside, he’s as scared of dying and as respectful of life as anyone.  It also creates tension between him and Hugo, and within himself because, as you say, it’s early in he series and it’ll be very hard for him to stay sober over the long term. Who knows what might happen if he falls off the wagon?!

 

MP: You practically make Paris another character in both The Bookseller and The Crypt Thief. What do you want to come across most about the city?

Pryor: Paris is a city of many faces. It’s history is as rich as any in the world, and visually it’s one of the most beautiful. That’s a lot of material for me to work with, no?  With the first two books, I wanted to feature particular aspects of the city, the bouquinistes in THE BOOKSELLER and the amazing cemeteries in THE CRYPT THIEF (and one other aspect of Paris which I can’t mention for fear of giving something away!).  I wanted, in other words, to write books that could only have been set in Paris. Hopefully, I can do that with future books in the series, and it looks like Hugo will start venturing out of Paris deeper into France and even to other countries. If I do my research right, each book will explore a (new?!) place and make it integral to the story.

Crime Fiction Friday: R. THOMAS BROWN

Three Reasons why R. Thomas Brown is MysteryPeople’s new best friend.

1. His book Hill Country, one of the titles from Snubnose Press we exclusively carry, sold out the first week got it in. Don’t  worry, we have more you can purchase.

2. He’s from Texas.

3. His writing is from Texas. It contains a dry wit, well sketched small town losers, and a storytelling sense that that interacts with the reader. For proof her’s a little tale Mr. Brown gave us that first appeared in Shotgun Honey and will later be published in Kwik Krimes.

PIECE OF CAKE

R. Thomas Brown

Hap Callahan walked through the saloon doors of Cowboy Coffee, shaking his head at the lassos in the logo. Seemed every place he went these days tried to make you feel like you were at a theme park, not next door to a James Avery in yet another strip mall filling up suburban space and giving the local commuters a place to spend their money.

He eyed the caffeine cowboy that labored under a flimsy hat. “I’ll have a cappuccino.” He glanced down at the rows of trucked-in sweets. “And that thing with the little marshmallows on top.”

“A cappuccino and a lolli, that’s eight bucks even.”

Hap handed over a ten. Waved off the change. He turned away. Scanned the room. Holding the treat on a stick in front of his face. Dumbest fucking way to meet someone. Ever. In the corner, a jittery little man made eye contact.

Hap walked among the tables and couches, past the bar with saddle seats and took the chair opposite “Pete. Looks like you’ve had too much coffee.”

“Fuck you. I’ve been waiting an hour.”

Hap checked his watch. A nice Tag he took off a guy who couldn’t dodge punches. “Did you remember to set your clock back, asshole?”

Pete shook his head. Not in response, more like a tick. “You got it?”

Two seconds and Hap was already tired of the guy. “Sure. You?”

“Yeah. I got the pics with me.”

“Memory too?” Digital pictures could be anywhere. Everywhere. Made his solution attractive to clients.

“Yeah. All of it. It’s right here.” He tapped his lap.

Hap took a sip. The drinks were always too damned hot. “Pete. I’m gonna tell you something.”

Pete shuttered. “Didn’t come for a lecture.”

“No. But you’re gonna listen anyway.” A small sip. “Blackmail’s a bad deal, Pete. People with enough money to make it worthwhile usually have enough money to make problems go away.”

“Is that a threat?”

Hap rolled his eyes. “Just advice. My guess is you got lucky. Took some pics and thought you’d make a quick score.” He took another sip.

“So?”

“So. Look at you. You’re a mess. The stress. The fear. Better for you if give it up. Walk away.” Hap fiddled with the ball on a stick.

“Yeah? Or what?”

“See, Pete. My client wants to play along. Most of them do. Just want it to go away quietly. I do what I’m paid to do.” A long sip. “I’d rather hunt you down. Find you at night. Alone. Or with someone, I don’t care. End it all. No more threats, payments, worries. ”

Pete swallowed before trying to act tough. “Thanks for the advice. Now. The money.”

Hap pulled an envelope from his jacket. “This is the spot. The choice. You take the money, and it doesn’t go well from here. Give me the stuff. Leave now. No money. No pics. No trouble.”

“Money.”

Hap sighed. “Your choice. Here ya go.”

Pete started to open it.

Hap slapped his hand. “Not in here, moron. Take it out back. Count it there.”

“What if it’s not all there?”

Hap sat back. “Keep the pics until you count.” He spread his arms across the back of the booth. “Come back when you’re done.”

Pete furrowed his eyebrows. “What if I just run?”

“Then I’ll get to do things my way. Either way, I win.”

Pete stood and left out the back. Hap took another drink and twirled the frosted ball on a stick. “Weird shit.”

A man sat across from him. Handed him an envelope. “Thanks, Hap. Finding the guy made this a lot easier.”

Hap nodded. “Always does. Anonymity makes people brave. Being found makes them stupid.” He finished his drink and set it down before a sound like a car backfiring rang out from behind the mall. Hap grinned and placed the envelope in his jacket pocket.

“You’ll bring the pics by the office?”

“As soon as I make sure he didn’t have any copies anywhere else.”

“Thanks again, Hap. You really are the best.” The man left the shop.

Hap took a bite of the ball. “Piece of cake.”

Guest Post: REED FARREL COLEMAN

The End in Sight

by Reed Farrel Coleman

Now that Onion Street, the eighth and penultimate installment of my Moe Prager Mystery series, is about to hit bookstore shelves, I’m in a very odd place. Not only is Onion Street a few weeks away from release, but I’ve also just finished The Hollow Girl, the final book in the series. So basically, Moe and I have shaken hands and parted ways. Yes, I have mixed feelings about reaching this point because I owe a lot to Moe. Moe is responsible for getting me on the big stage even if my run hasn’t always been a smooth one. Moe got me my biggest contract. The vast majority of books I’ve sold have been Moe books. To the extent I have fans, Moe supplied them. Moe is responsible for nearly every nomination I’ve received or award I’ve ever won. Any notoriety I have achieved has been due to Moe. Moe has leased space in my head for fifteen years. Even when I was working on my many other projects—Tower with Ken Bruen or Gun Church or Dirty Work or Bronx Requiem with John Roe or my short stories or when I was writing as Tony Spinosa—I have always had Moe to keep me company. I was either editing a Moe book, thinking of the plot for the next Moe book, or waiting for the release of the most recent Moe book.

It may seem odd to readers and maybe even to some of my colleagues, but it was precisely because of what Moe has meant to me that I decided the time had come not to renew his lease. The works of Raymond Chandler are largely responsible for my choosing to become a PI writer. His works are also partially responsible for my parting company with Moe. I will never forget my disappointment in reading    Playback, Chandler’s final Marlowe novel. I think I was actually more saddened than disappointed. I suspect that most seasoned mystery readers have had similar experiences with a favorite series .To make a sports analogy: it’s always better to trade or release a great player a year too early than a year too late. As a a kid growing up in Brooklyn during the ‘60s and ‘70s, I watched both Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays struggle to hang on at the ends of their careers. Mantle, ravaged by injuries and alcoholism, could barely walk let alone field or hit and although Mays ended his career with the Mets at Shea, the most complete player in baseball history had left his skills five years behind him on the outfield grass in Candlestick Park. You read Playback and you know Chandler had kept Marlowe on the roster one book too many.

I had anticipated an end to the series in its conception. In fact I had built a limiting factor into the novels: Moe’s age. By the end of The Hollow Girl, Moe is in his mid-sixties. And while sixty-five may be the new forty-five—I hope so, since I just turned fifty-seven—it’s not a reasonable age for a hard-boiled PI. At Moe’s age, the only thing he could flash with any credibility was his AARP card. I never wanted Moe to develop into a joke. I couldn’t envision Moe down in Boca Raton, hunting down stolen scooters and lost hearing aids. Knowing the end was in sight, I felt I had to give readers a look into Moe’s past, a past that I hadn’t revealed before. And I wanted to explore a new Moe, the Moe before he became a cop and then a PI. Onion Street is largely that story. In explaining how Moe became who he is now, I got to know him in a way I hadn’t before. So although Walking the Perfect Square is the first book in the series, Onion Street is really where Moe’s story begins.

Bio:

Called a hard-boiled poet by NPR’s Maureen Corrigan and the “noir poet laureate” in the Huffington Post, Reed Farrel Coleman has published sixteen novels. He is a three-time recipient of the Shamus Award and a two-time Edgar Award nominee. He has won the Macavity, Barry, and Anthony Awards as well. He is an adjunct instructor of English at Hofstra University and a founding member of Mystery Writers of America University. He lives with his family on Long Island.

About Onion Street:

“Few writers working in any genre offer tales with such moral complexity, dark humor, and, most of all, heart.

Megan Abbott, author of Dare Me

 

“The twists and turns are unpredictable, but Coleman pulls everything together by the end.”

Starred review, Publishers Weekly

 

“Coleman’s latest is a slam-dunk recommendation for readers drawn to smart, gritty, crime fiction with label-defying characters.”

Starred Review, Booklist

 

“Coleman has won multiple awards for his gritty but soulful series, and this entry is of that same high caliber. Don’t miss it.”

Library Journal  

 

 

MysteryPeople Q&A: DAVID MORELL

David Morrell has written several different kinds of books for over four decades. He gave the world John Rambo with First Blood, wrote one of the most memorable spy novels, The Brotherhood Of The Rose, and recently gave us Creepers, a thriller about urban explorers. His latest, Murder As Fine Art is a historical mystery dealing with Thomas De Quincey. BookPeople’s Joe Turner was able to ask Mr. Morell some questions about this novel and one about his personal favorite.

Joe Turner:  Thomas De Quincey is an extremely interesting and virtually unknown writer to today’s audience. I read somewhere recently that he has contributed the second most amount of words to the English language, that only Shakespeare has coined more words. What was it about this author that inspired you to devote not just a novel but a mystery novel to him? And what book of his would you most recommend to someone who has never read him?

David Morell: When I was in college many years ago, my Romanticism/Victorian professor relegated Thomas De Quincey to a footnote. I suspect that’s because De Quincey was the first person to write about drug addiction in his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. In his day, De Quincey was notorious because of that topic, and evidently he remained so to my professor. Only a chance reference to De Quincey in a film about Darwin’s nervous breakdown (Creation) reminded me of him. Someone says, “Charles, people such as De Quincey are saying that we can be controlled by thoughts and emotions that we don’t know we have.” That sounded like Freud, but Freud came a half-century later. Curious, I started to research De Quincey and was amazed to find that he invented the word “subconscious” and investigated the nature of dreams in a way that may have inspired Freud. De Quincey invented the true-crime genre in the “Postscript” to his sensational essay, “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts,” in which he described the Ratcliffe Highway murders, the subject of Murder as a Fine Art. De Quincey inspired Edgar Allan Poe, who in turn inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes. He’s far more important than literary history acknowledges. The two titles to start with are the ones I mentioned.

JT: Was it a challenge to write about De Quincey and remember to not accidentally ascribe to him ideas that came from Freud and other psychologists who came much later in the 19th century?

DM: In the case of Freud, I didn’t need to worry because De Quincey anticipated him. Basically, though, every scene needed to be watched for anachronisms. At one point, a lock becomes an important plot point, and I almost described the lock from a modern perspective. But then I read a history of locks and discovered that locks at the time didn’t have doorknobs. Nor did they have levers that locked them from the inside. A key needed to be used to secure a door after it was closed. The lock mechanism wasn’t recessed into the door as is the case now. Instead a lock was bolted to the door, on the inside of the building. I spent two years on research. No exaggeration. I have shelves and shelves of books about Victorian life in London in the 1850s. I can even tell you how much a middle- or upper-class woman’s clothes weighed. An astonishing thirty-seven pounds because ten yards of satin were needed to cover the hooped dresses.

JT: At the same time you were telling the story of De Quincey, you were also telling the story of the origins of the modern police force. What were the inspirations for the characters of Detectives Ryan and Becker?

DM: Scotland Yard was founded in 1829. The detective division was founded in 1842. In 1854, when Murder as a Fine Art takes place, London’s police department was still relatively recent. Detective Inspector Ryan is an amalgam of several real-life detectives of the period. Becker, a young man who is trying to make a transition from patrolman to detective, is more my own invention. I enjoy situations in which an older man teaches a younger one. It was interesting to illustrate the crime-scene techniques of the period. Things we take for granted were innovative, such as making plaster casts of footprints and compiling a card catalogue about the physical characteristics of people who’d been arrested.

JT: The ending of the book seems to be left open for more books to come involving these characters. Can we expect more adventures of De Quincey in the future?  Has there been any interest into turning this book into a film?

DM: Nearly everyone who has read Murder as a Fine Art asked if there would be other novels about De Quincey. This caught me by surprise. I’ve written a few sequels (to The Brotherhood of the Rose, for example), but it’s not usual for me. I keep finding new characters that I want to write about. De Quincey and his daughter, Emily, have grabbed me, though. An editor said that it was as if I’d become a ventriloquist for De Quincey. It’s enough to make me believe in reincarnation. I’m almost finished with the second book, and Mulholland Books wants to bring it out, so it appears that I’ll be living in Victorian London a while longer.

JT: And, on a completely different note, are there any plans to reissue The Totem? It’s my favorite novel of yours and I’ve been trying to turn people onto it for a few years now after discovering it in Stephen Jones and Kim Newman’s 100 Greatest Horror Novels.

DM: I’m very pleased that you enjoy The Totem. At the time, the Washington Post called it one of the scariest books of the last 20 years. It was initially published in 1979. A drastically different version was published in 1993. The difference is explained by a disagreement that I had with my then-publisher. A severely edited version first appeared. Later, I had a chance to re-instate my original text. The 1993 version is still available in a gorgeous edition from Donald M. Grant, who did Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. Its list price is $24.95. In 1993, that was costly. Now it’s a bargain, given the quality of the bookmaking. Both versions are combined in an e-book. I don’t put supernatural elements in my work, but the eerie mood has given me many fans in the horror community, to the point that I received 3 Bram Stoker Awards from the Horror Writers Association. At the same time, I have a Thriller Master Award from International Thriller Writers, which proves that genres can be fluid. While Murder as a Fine Art is a historical mystery/thriller, those fogbound streets of 1854 London are moody enough that they could be considered as non-supernatural horror. The original Ratcliffe Highway murders certainly fit in that category.