The blog spot My Book The Movie asked William Boyle who he would cast in his latest and our Pick Of The Month, City Of Margins. Bill knows his movies, founding the site Goodbye Like A Bullet that focused on crime films from the seventies. City Of Margins captures the grit, tone, and language of those films.
While our doors remained closed to the public through March 29th, you can grab your copy of City of Margins by ordering online or giving us a call at (512) 472 – 5050 to request curbside pick-up service.
Are Snakes Necessary? is the novel debut of director and screenwriter Bran DePalma along with his producing partner Susan Lehman, released in the states by Hard Case Crime. DePalma has often been criticized as being a filmmaker high on style, but of little substance. In Are Snakes Necessary? he proves, when executed properly, style alone can engage your audience.
The plot moves through the lives of several interlocking characters. At the center of this perfect storm of sex, politics, and violence stands Nick Scully, reminiscent of heores in DePalma’s Blow Out and Body Double. A photographer of middling talent, riding on a lucky shot he got during the Ferguson riots. The two women he becomes involved with provide the tendrils for the plot that relies on a fir amount of happenstance and coincidence.
The first he falls for is Elizabeth DeCarlo who kicks the story off, involving herself with a
Filmmaker and author, Brian De Palma
blackmail scheme that works for Barton Brock, a political hack, but backfires on her. Nick meets her a few years later on a Vegas flight where they end up falling in love. Unfortunately she is now married to a casino mogul who could destroy them both. The last time he sees Elizabeth is her going into one of her husband’s casino to snag a painting that will fund her escape. He never sees her come out and that last image burns in his mind.
To lick his wounds, he takes a job as a still photographer in Paris where his old girlfriend is starring in a remake of Vertigo. (It wouldn’t be a DePalma tale without a Hitchcock reference.) There he meets Fanny, a videographer who ran away from her lover, the senator Barton Brock works for. The aid drives much of the story with his conniving and committing his first murder. Elizabeth, now lying low as an advice columnist, also plays an integral part at the end.
The characters have the depth and nuance as something scripted without the actors fleshing them out.
If this sounds hard to follow, it isn’t. The authors keep the plot mechanics twisting and turning cleanly and clearly. The characters have the depth and nuance as something scripted without the actors fleshing them out. Fanny is described as being “in her full flush of carnality”. However nuance is not what a story like this hinges on and it may have bogged down it’s twenty-four-frames-a-second pace. Through bits of dialogue, action, and some cinematic descriptions, we are connected enough to who we need to be to care about.
That connection is all that is required as DePalma and Lehman put the Rube Goldberg plot into action. Much of the suspense comes from how each of these characters will affect the other, even when they are thousands of miles apart. The construction is reminiscent of many of the films DePalma scripted like Sisters, Dressed To Kill, and Blow Out, delivered with his quirky, perverse humor. One reviewer wrote that it should have been written as a parody to the potboiler. I’d argue it is, but not done in a brash tone and it is also in love with the kind of story they are telling.
It moves at a cinematic clip, bouncing from one character to another, through the romantic, violent, tragic story, that wraps up with some poetic justice.
Much like Samuel Fuller’s Brainquake that Hard Case also published, Are Snakes Necessary? is like one the filmmaker’s movies in book form. It moves at a cinematic clip, bouncing from one character to another, through the romantic, violent, tragic story, that wraps up with some poetic justice. If only DePalma could figure out how to do split screens on the page.
While our doors remained closed to the public through March 29th, you can grab your copy of Are Snakes Necessary? by ordering online or giving us a call at (512) 472 – 5050 to request curbside pick-up service.
Malcolm Kershaw is living my dream life–he’s the owner of the Old Devils Bookstore in Boston. Run by his very capable staff, the store leaves Malcolm the freedom to come and go as he pleases. Some days he only goes in to keep company with the resident (yup, you guessed it) CAT named Nero. And he has the financial security to not only live in downtown Boston but also indulge in the occasional libation.
But the dream is threatened when an FBI agent comes to call. Years ago Malcolm wrote a blog post titled “Eight Perfect Murders,” a compilation of literature’s most unsolvable murders. From Agatha Christie’s ABC Murders to Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train to Donna Tartt’s Secret History, the titles represent the best of the genre. Now the FBI has sensed a connection between these stories and a series of unsolved murders, and the agent is anxious to learn what Malcolm might know. But it seems like the real killer might also be interested in Malcolm, so Malcolm begins his own investigation and soon senses threats everywhere he turns. As events escalate, it appears that Malcolm’s seemingly enviable livelihood, perhaps even his life, are at stake.
Any avid reader of crime fiction is going to love this book. It’s a cleverly-plotted story with some ingenious twists and a few red herrings sprinkled in for good measure. And at its heart it honors the legacies of some of the greatest mystery writers of all time. It’s a clever whodunit that will keep you guessing until the very end.
Meike is a part-time bookseller and full-time Mystery fanatic. Her reviews regularly appear on our blog and you can find her recommended reads peppered around the store.
Be sure to grab Eight Perfect Murdersthis week and find your new favorite crime reads when you visit us in-store or shop with us online!
Scott Phillips is one of those authors other authors revere (or are downright jealous of). He often uses the crime novel as a frame for satire, but never lets his characters simply fall into types or symbols. His latest target is Southern California with attorney Douglas Rigby, who lost all of his money, actually his last client’s money, on a drug deal. To get it back, he hatches an art fraud scheme involving his wife, mistress, and a forger dealing with a painting owned by the client, Glenn Haskill, a t.v. producer in sixties and seventies with fond memories of his casting couch. The book is funny, profane, and engaging as all hell. Scott will be joining Jon Bassoff and Jason Pinter for our Crime Writing Outside The Lines discussion on March 16th, but went solo for this interview we did with him.
Scott Montgomery: You’re mainly known for covering the Midwest, what set your sights on L.A.?
Scott Phillips: I lived there for more than a decade. It’s really about Ventura and Santa Barbara than LA, about an hour to two hours away, depending on traffic. I think I can only write well about places I’ve lived or spent lots of time. Parts of this one are set in St. Louis, where I live now. This was one I couldn’t have set entirely in the Midwest — the old TV producer, Haskill, wouldn’t have fit in, for one thing. Also the desperation of the real estate business and the equally desperate need for a certain kind of Southern Californian to maintain a level of conspicuous consumption.
SM: What is the major difference in writing about the two areas?
SP: There’s a certain kind of ruthlessness to life in Southern California, be it show business or real estate or the law or getting your kids into the right school.
SM: How did you come upon art fraud as the center of the story?
SP: I’ve always wanted to write a book about art forgery. Forgers like van Meegeren, the Vermeer forger who’s mentioned in the book, and Elmyr de Hory, about whom Orson Welles made his documentary F for Fake, have always fascinated me. Originally the book was much more about the forgery and the relationship between Paula Rigby and the old forger, but that didn’t work for me so I trimmed it way back and made it more of a crime novel.
SM: This crime novel has even more moving parts to it than The Ice Harvest and The Rake. How do you approach something like this without the characters being drowned out by the plotting? SP: As I said, this book was originally much more about the forger and Paula, with the other characters being much more minor. When I started concentrating on the plot, each of the characters started taking on more heft. Because a character like Keith, the golf pro, becomes more important to moving the plot forward (one thing I always knew was that he and Rigby were going to have a beat down of some kind), I have to dig a little deeper and figure out what motivates him.
SM: Glenn, the old producer, is a character I like despite myself. How did you go about constructing him.
SP: One thing that I love about Southern California is the presence of the ghosts of Hollywood. I know and knew some old character actors, and they all had great stories about the old days in TV and movies. The fact is that predatory creeps like Haskill were all over the place then, and they’re all over the place now, as the Weinstein trial just demonstrated. Haskill’s not based on any one person, but there were lots of guys just like him. I wanted him to have a little kernel of humanity, which shows through his devotion towards his nephew back in the Midwest, a devotion that doesn’t work out very well for him.
SM: I was happy to hear that SOHO is also reprinting two of your earlier books, The Walkaway and Cottonwood. How would you describe these books, particularly
SP: The Walkaway is a followup to The Ice Harvest, more than a sequel. I started with the premise of the money in the satchel–what happens to that money? It all started one day when I was getting on the 405 freeway near the VA hospital (where my grandfather used to work as a barber) and I saw an elderly man in a suit trying to hitch a ride on the onramp. Later it occured to me that he might have been attending a funeral at the National Cemetery nearby, or he might have just walked out of the VA hospital. SO that was the hook: man with dementia walks out of a nursing home looking for some money he vaguely remembers having hidden years earlier. Cottonwood is the story of the Bloody Benders, serial killers on the Kansas prairie, and it’s also the story of the birth of a town. Its protagonist, Bill Ogden, is the ancestor of a lot of characters in my other books, mostly illegitimately. I’m really grateful to SOHO for bringing them back.
That Left Turn at Albuquerque is available for purchase in-store and online today through BookPeople. And be sure to catch Scott Phillips alongside Jason Pinter and Jon Bassoff for MysteryPeople’s Crime Writing Outside the Linesdiscussion of crime fiction on March 16th at 7PM!
Jon Basoff’s latest, The Lantern Man, is a mix of different media, created news clippings, repots, and diary, as well as prose that tell a gothic psycho noir story of a family whose three children suffer much dark fate. Jon will be attending our Crime Writing Outside The Lines panel discussion with Scott Phillips and Jason Pinter. He was kind enough to take a few questions from us about this different sort of book.
Scott Montgomery: The Lantern Man is a very unique story, especially in its telling. How did it come about?
Jon Bassoff: I’ve always been somewhat obsessed with the narrative techniques of novels, maybe more so than plot or character or anything else. I don’t have anything against conventional narratives, but I get excited when I read works by Nabokov or Danielewski or anybody who pushes the envelope of what a narrative can be. With The Lantern Man, I knew the basic story I wanted to tell, knew that I wanted it to take place in Leadville, Colorado, but it took me a while to figure out how I could effectively use a multitude of point-of-views in a relatively fresh way. I decided to use footnotes and journals and artifacts. Basically, you’ve got the main narrative, which is a journal written by a girl shortly before a rather awful death, but you’ve also got the detective’s investigation, told through the footnotes and artifacts. It’s up to the reader to put all the pieces together, namely, to determine how much of the journal can be believed and how much of the investigation the detective is getting right.
SM: What was the biggest challenge in writing it?
JB: Keeping all the pieces of the puzzle straight. Different characters know different things at different times. Different characters have different motives for being dishonest (or honest). And, as with every novel, a huge challenge was determining how much to reveal to the reader at various points in the narrative. That balance is tricky. I hope I did it right.
SM: One of the themes of the book is about storytelling. What did you want to explore about telling tales?
JB: One of my favorite lines in the novel is this one: “We all need a narrative. Something to get us through the day.” From the time we’re old enough to understand language, we’re told stories. Hell, religions, entire civilizations are based around them. In a lot of ways, The Lantern Man explores the power of stories, not just how they can be used to comfort, but also to frighten and manipulate. The characters are manipulated by the stories. And so, I think, are the readers.
SM: How did Leadville get chosen as the backdrop?
JB: For the better part of the past decade, I’ve gone up to Leadville every summer to write. It’s an anomaly in Colorado—a living, breathing mountain town without skiing or gambling. It’s got an amazing mining history and plenty of secrets buried beneath the dirt. I always knew I needed to write a story that took place there. And when I stumbled upon this old abandoned railroad tunnel, called Hagerman Tunnel, I knew where I wanted the heart of my story to take place.
SM: Is The Lantern Man based on any urban legend?
J.B. : Well, there are mythical creatures referred to as lantern men, and I expanded on that myth to make it my own. More generally speaking, my particular lantern man is based on the boogie man, which has a place in most societies, and in most children’s imaginations. But it comes back to storytelling. That’s what the boogie man is. A story. An archetype. And in my story, he represents the evil that we all possess, depending on the right circumstances.
SM: You live in Colorado where there seems to be a concentration of dark and offbeat crime authors. What’s in the water?
JB: It’s true! We’ve got a lot of strange ones here. Ben Whitmer and Steven Graham Jones to name a couple of the stranger ones. I don’t know if it’s the water. Maybe the high altitude? Messes with our cognitive functioning? But, yeah, I’m glad to have discovered the crime fiction/horror community in Colorado.
The Lantern Man is available for purchase in-store and online today through BookPeople. And be sure to catch Jon Bassoff alongside Jason Pinter and Scott Phillips for MysteryPeople’s Crime Writing Outside the Linesdiscussion of crime fiction on March 16th at 7PM!
Jason Pinter’s Hide Away introduces Rachel Marin, a mother of two who, after a horrifying incident, molds herself into a vigilante. A murder of the former mayor draws her into a plot that puts her up against the two police detectives investigating it and risks her life as well as her children.
Jason, also the founder and editor of the acclaimed indie press Polis Books, will be joining Scott Phillips and Jon Bassoff for our Crime Writing Outside The Lines discussion panel on March 16th at BookPeople. He was kind enough to do this pre-interview with us.
Scott Montgomery: How did the character of Rachel Marin come about?
Jason Pinter: I had been thinking about starting a new series, and Rachel’s character came to me shortly after the birth of our first daughter. I was fascinated by the notion of a protagonist who was smart, capable, and strong but also incredibly vulnerable. And I don’t think you ever feel more vulnerable in your life than when you are literally responsible for the lives of others. So the gears started turning—how would someone balance being a brilliant criminalist with raising two children? How would she deal with the trauma in her past, and how would she try to help her children with it? But I also wanted to know how and why she became who she is. Why did she feel the need to train her mind and body obsessively? Answering all those questions for myself was an intriguing prospect, and I thought readers would enjoy learning them too.
SM: Is there a challenge writing a character who is a vigilante and single mother?
JP: Absolutely. There’s a reason Batman is single with no kids. Can you imagine if he went out every night with the possibility of getting shredded in a million different ways, but also had a spouse and/or children to care for, who loved him? I really wanted to explore the conflict Rachel felt in being someone who was capable of solving crimes, but in doing so could also jeopardize the tranquil life she’d created for her family. And she doesn’t always make the right decision. And when she does, there are more lives at stake than just hers.
SM: You have two story lines, the murder mystery and Rachel’s origin story. Is there a certain rhythm you developed from going from one to another?
JP: It was very important to me that we saw how Rachel got to the point where we see her in the opening chapters. We know something terrible happened to her, and we know that, down the road, she’s very, very capable. But how did she get from point A to point B? I thought it of like Sarah Connor in the first two Terminator movies. How did the waitress become the warrior? I didn’t want the “flashback’ scenes to overwhelm the narrative—after all, the inherent existence of a flashback means the story isn’t being driven forward—so I had to be very judicious about when I used them and how, and that they only came when they needed to.
SM: All of your characters are indelible. How do you go about constructing them?
JP: That means the world to hear. First and foremost, I hate “stock” characters. People who exist in a book (or movie, or show) just for the sake of existing, or to further the plot. I wanted my main cast of characters to have full lives. This was most important when it came to creating the two police detectives, John Serrano and Leslie Tally. They are at odds with Rachel a great deal of the book, but I didn’t want them to be stereotypical “cops who get in the way of our hero” types. They both have interesting lives and interior motives. They could each be the protagonist of their own novel. And because of that, we understand them and can sympathize with them, which creates more conflict with Rachel. Serrano and Tally are quite competent, and because of that it allows us to doubt Rachel just a bit.
SM: Has being a publisher affected your writing at all?
JP: Absolutely, the most in terms of time. I essentially put my writing career on hold
Jason Pinter, author of Hide Away
while I was launching Polis Books because, frankly, there are only so many hours in the day. I always wanted to, hopefully, work on both sides of the desk, but I needed to concentrate on the company for a fairly lengthy period of time to get it up and running. Nowadays, I’m very careful about how I wear both hats, especially when I’m at a conference or convention when I might be promoting both Polis titles and my own. It’s hugely hugely important to my authors at Polis that they know I keep my writing and publishing separate—I do not use one to benefit the other. It’s impossible for there to be no overlap—that would be easier if I was, say, a publisher and an auto mechanic. But being a publisher also inspires me, in that we have so many writers telling incredible stories, and it’s a privilege just to work in the same industry as them.
SM: I’ve heard Rachel is going to be a series character. What can you tell us about the future you have in store for her?
JP: I actually just turned in the last edits for the second book in the Rachel Marin series. It’s currently titled A Stranger at the Door, and it’s scheduled to come out in early 2021. After that, I have an idea for the third book that’s hugely exciting to me, and whether that comes out depends on how readers react to the first books. The great thing about writing the second book in the series is that you’ve established the world and the main characters, and now you can go about expanding and exploring that world, deepening the readers’ relationship with the characters you’ve already introduced, while also sprinkling in new ones to spice things up. So I hope I can keep adding to that stew as long as readers are hungry for it.
About the Author: Jason Pinter is the bestselling author of six novels: the acclaimed Henry Parker series (The Mark, The Guilty, The Stolen, The Fury, and The Darkness), the stand-alone thriller The Castle, the middle-grade adventure novel Zeke Bartholomew: SuperSpy, and the children’s book Miracle. His books have over one million copies in print worldwide. He has been nominated for numerous awards, including the Thriller Award, Strand Critics Award, Barry Award, and Shamus Award.
Pinter is the founder of Polis Books, an independent press, and was honored by Publishers Weekly‘s Star Watch, which “recognizes young publishing professionals who have distinguished themselves as future leaders of the industry.” He has written for the New Republic, Entrepreneur, the Daily Beast, Esquire, and more. He lives in Hoboken, New Jersey, with his wife, their two daughters, and their dog, Wilson.
Scott Phillips returns with a conniving lawyer at the end of his rope when he loses his only client’s money on a drug deal gone bad. To get back in the black and ahead he hatches an art fraud scheme that depends on a forger, his wife, and his mistress. Tight, funny, and populated with the sleaze bags he writes so well, this caper novel skewers L.A. life with precision. Scott will be joining Don Bassoff and Jason Pinter for our Writing Outside The Lines discussion at BookPeople on March 16th at 7PM.
Bassoff mixes psycho-noir with the gothic tale in the tragic story of the Grenier siblings in Leadville, Colorado. After one is drowned in front of the other two, the brother is arrested for murdering a classmate. The remaining sister’s charred body is found in a burned up cabin along with her diary in a safe that proves nothing may be as it seems. Bassoff uses the diary, newspaper clippings, and other media along with his moody prose style to deliver a unique thriller with one hell of reveal. Jon will also be at the Writing Outside The Lines Discussion on March 16th.
The acclaimed director of films like Dressed To Kill, Blow Out, and The Untouchables collaborates in prose for this entertaining potboiler of a photographer, his two lovers, and a ruthless senator’s aid who weave around each other in a tale of sex, politics, and murder. The book contains the style, pace, and quirky, dark humor of many of the director’s films.
You can shop for all three titles in-store and online this month at BookPeople. And be sure to catch Scott Phillips and Jon Bassoff in-store for their MysteryPeople-hosted panel discussion on March 16th at 7PM.
MysteryPeople’s Pick of the Month for March 2020 is William Boyle’sCity of Margins. It hits shelves on March 3rd, but before you purchase it, check out what Crime Fiction Coordinator Scott Montgomery had to say about Boyle’s latest.
Anybody around me for the last twelve months heard me rave about William Boyle’s A Friend Is A Gift You Give Yourself. The mix of crime fiction and dramedy was a fresh breeze blowing into the genre. The book created some slight trepidation when I cracked open his latest, City Of Margins. I expected a strong piece of writing, but feared it would come off lesser in comparison. Those doubts vanished by the first chapter.
At first glance, City Of Margins, appears to revisit his debut, Gravesend, with him examining the impact of a crime on a Brooklyn community. This time, it is the murder of a degenerate gambler who owed money to the burrough mobster “Big Time” Tony Ficalora. Tommy sends a cop on his payroll, Donnie Rotante, to collect. Donnie’s already problematic temper has recently been pushed by the suicide of his teenage son. Donnie ends up tossing the man off of a bridge. The death is believed to be a suicide.
Two years later, Donnie has been bumped off the force for striking a superior and works full time for Big Time Tommy. The victim’s son Mikey Baldini, dropped out of college and returned home to his mother, Rosemarie, who struggles to pay her husband’s debt. Tommy propositions Mikey to work for him as a collector to erase it quicker.
Instigating much of the action is Nick Bifulco, a weasley high school teacher who wants to break out of his dismal life my selling a screenplay, even though he has no knowledge about the art form. He decides to base it off of Donnie, due to an incident where he went after Mikey with a ball bat years ago. It leads to Mikey going over to Donnie’s ex, Donna. The woman is still trapped in the mourning of her son with a roomful of records. The two find a connection as they and other characters crash into each other, either helping or hurting.
Boyle uses a full author’s pallet to tell this story. Where Gravesend always carried a somber tone, Boyle goes deeper into his into his characters and the reactions to their situations. He discovers they each contain different feelings in combat with each other. Instead of relying on quirks, like lesser writers, Boyle knows these people so well he is able to play off their experiences and degrees of desperation to make each of them stand out. with pathos, humor, and the overhanging threat of violence, he ties the community together and depicts its inertia.
Boyle makes City Of Margins a gritty crime version of Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show. It looks at two different generations struggling with the despair their lives have trapped them in and the missteps and moves they make to break free, William Boyle brings them to life in all their sad, funny, brutal glory.
City of Margins is available for purchase in-store and online today.
About the Reviewer: Scott Montgomery has worked over a decade as a respected bookseller and authority on crime fiction. His articles and interviews have appeared in crimespree, Crime Reads, and his own site, The Hard Word. His short fiction has appeared online in Slag Drop and Shotgun Honey and the anthologies Murder On Wheels, Lone Star Lawless, and The Eyes of Texas. He is the co-author of the novella Two Bodies, One Grave with Manning Wolfe.
About the Author: William Boyle is from Brooklyn, New York. His books include: Gravesend, which was nominated for the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in France and shortlisted for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger in the UK; The Lonely Witness, which is nominated for the Hammett Prize; and, most recently, A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi.
Russ Thomas has created a much talked about debut with Firewatching, featuring D.I. Adam Tyler. Tyler catches a high profile case when the body of a loathed businessman is discovered walled in his own estate. Tyler was picked up by the man’s son the night before. Paired with the funny and feisty Det. Amini Rabbani, Tyler pursues the case his lover could be a part of that is also connected to several fires being set around Sheffield. Thomas will be at BookPeople on March 3rd at 7PM to sign and discuss Firewatching, but was kind enough to volunteer for this advance grilling about this character driven and moody police thriller.
Scott Montgomery: Firewatching is a very unique police thriller and very character driven. Which came first, DS Adam Tyler or his adversary?
RT: Hmmm. Interesting question. Stories always start with character for me but in this case it was the character of Lily which came first. I wrote a short story about her many years ago, and she stayed with me. I think I always planned to revisit her and try and tell more of her story. Then, when I realized I was writing a police procedural novel, the rough idea of DS Adam Tyler was formed. It took a long time, many, many rewrites, and a name change or two before I got him right. The book was called Firewatching from very early on though and the concept of an arsonist setting light to various places around the city hasn’t changed all that much. So I suppose the concept of Tyler came first but it took me a while to fully realize him.
SM: The way you deal with Tyler’s homosexuality is deft. It’s definitely a part of him and he has obstacles because of it, but it doesn’t define him. What did you want to explore with that aspect of the character?
RT: I always saw Tyler as a gay character, right from the start but I really didn’t want the story to be about the fact that he’s gay. Growing up gay myself in the 1980s and 90s I always wondered why, when they included gay characters in TV shows/books/films (which was rarely), the story always had to be about them struggling with their sexuality or coming out. I’m not saying those stories aren’t important, I just feel they’ve been very well-explored and that there are other gay stories to tell. After all, LGBTQ+ people are also husbands and wives, mothers, fathers, daughters, sons; they are police officers and fire-fighters too. I wanted to write a story with a gay character where his sexuality is just one part of who he is and not necessarily the driving force of the plot. Yes, he has issues with his sexuality in the workplace, and his love life puts him in a very tight corner in this book, but his bigger problems stem from his past and who he is as a person. If he’d been a straight man in this story I think the outcome would have been the same, pretty much.
SM: Rabbani is already a character readers of the book love. How did you construct her?
I didn’t really construct her, she just turned up fully formed. I wanted another voice in the book, someone who could show us a side of Tyler he perhaps doesn’t see himself. And someone who would be his ally in the novel, even though he doesn’t necessarily think he needs one. So I wrote the scene near the start of the novel where he turns up at the crime scene and the officer on duty tells him he isn’t allowed in. I made her a woman, for contrast, and Asian for much the same reason, and also because there’s a large Asian community in Sheffield, much as there is in most major cities in the UK and it felt right to reflect that. But other than that I didn’t plan her character. She just turned up, got in Tyler’s way and suddenly began to steal the show. I love her so much.
SM: History plays an important part in the novel. Where there any challenges of dealing with the past?
RT: I had one major problem, which was Lily and Edna’s ages. Without giving too much away, it was crucial that they met during World War II but that made them a little older than I would have liked. It’s one of the reasons the book is set a few years in the past. Some people are very fit well into later life but Lily has to be quite able-bodied in the story and I was stretching credulity a little bit. Other than that, not really. I did some research of course but mainly into the famous fires detailed in the blog posts. The flashback scenes with Lily and Edna came almost wholly from my imagination so if I’ve got some historical detail wrong it’s entirely my fault.
SM: This being your first book, did you draw from any influences?
RT: I’m sure I did in all sorts of ways both conscious and unconscious. There are definitely shades of the Golden Age of crime here. I read an awful lot of Agatha Christie when I was young and I love that way she had of presenting a small cast of characters as suspects in a locked-room mystery. That’s much harder to do across a city landscape but I’m sure there are reflections of that, especially in the village of Castledene and its dubious residents. I read a lot of Lee Child and I’m in awe of his ability to leave you breathless as the story rattles along. If I’ve managed to echo that even slightly then I would be happy. Finally, there’s a definite nod to Chandler and the gumshoe detective. I like to think of Oscar as an homme fatale, dangerous and seductive, with an agenda the reader is not quite sure about.
SM: Do you have another case for DS Tyler ready?
RT: Yes, indeed. The second book is already written. Nighthawking picks up a few months after the end of Firewatching and we discover that Tyler is a little preoccupied by something Doggett has told him about his past. Then a body is dug up by a metal detectorist in Sheffield’s Botanical Gardens and… well, I’d better leave it there for now.
Russ Thomas, author of Firewatching (2020)
Don’t miss Russ Thomas in-store on March 3rd at 7PM where he’ll discuss and sign his burning debut, Firewatching.
Malcolm Kershaw is living my dream life–he’s the owner of the Old Devils Bookstore in Boston. Run by his very capable staff, the store leaves Malcolm the freedom to come and go as he pleases. Some days he only goes in to keep company with the resident (yup, you guessed it) CAT named Nero. And he has the financial security to not only live in downtown Boston but also indulge in the occasional libation.
Scott Phillips is one of those authors other authors revere (or are downright jealous of). He often uses the crime novel as a frame for satire, but never lets his characters simply fall into types or symbols. His latest target is Southern California with attorney Douglas Rigby, who lost all of his money, actually his last client’s money, on a drug deal. To get it back, he hatches an art fraud scheme involving his wife, mistress, and a forger dealing with a painting owned by the client, Glenn Haskill, a t.v. producer in sixties and seventies with fond memories of his casting couch. The book is funny, profane, and engaging as all hell. Scott will be joining Jon Bassoff and Jason Pinter for our 
Jon Basoff’s latest, 
Jason Pinter’s 
Scott Montgomery: Firewatching is a very unique police thriller and very character driven. Which came first, DS Adam Tyler or his adversary?
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