Three Picks for April

Murder Once Removed by S.C. Perkins – Austin genealogist Lucy Lancaster’s discovery of a senatorial candidate’s ancestor having possibly murdered the relative of his rial in 1849 triggers a murder in the present that stolen daguerreotype could be the key to and prevent another homicide. Perkins has a lot of fun with ancestry, Texas ways and the genre itself in this light thriller. She will be at BookPeople June 3rd with Terry Shames.

 

A Bloody Business by Dylan Struzan – Drawn from the accounts of Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes Alo”, the model for The Godfather Part 2‘s Johnny Ola, this sprawling story follows the Prohibition era he came of age in working with the likes of Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano , and Bugsy Seigel. A riveting mob saga that captures all the players and their strategies as well as their violence. Illustrated by the great movie poster artist Drew Struzan.

 

Like Lions by Brian Panowich – After years of waiting, the sequel to Bull Mountain is out and proves to be worth the time. Sheriff Clayton Burroughs and his wife Kate are still trying to heal from previous events when an oxy ring wants to move in to their town bringing blood and bad history. Violent, poetic, and often humorous, Like Lions examines kin, morality, ghosts from the past  and the effect they have on one another. Brian will be here May 1st to discuss the book.

Interview With Glen Erik Hamilton

Mercy River, Glen Erik Hamilton’s third outing with ex-Army Ranger and ex (for the most part) thief Van Shaw, plays to his military background. When an army pal is charged for murder, a group of criminally bent rangers hold the evidence to clear him and will give it to Van if he helps them locate contraband that was taken from them. The book is topical with a moody, hard boiled attitude. Glen was kind enough to talk to us about it.

MysteryPeople Scott: With the previous books, you’ve mainly looked at Van’s criminal past, what did you want to explore about his time in the military?

Glen Erik Hamilton: In Mercy River, Van is among hundreds of his fellow Special Ops veterans, and that offers a chance to show both how Van is similar to his brothers in arms – most notably in his unwavering dedication to protect people for whom he cares – and also how he’s not your average Ranger, if there is such a thing.  That intense military training forged something unique out of the raw ore of Van’s very unusual upbringing.

Specifically, readers get a view into some of Van’s earliest experiences in the Army – the uncompromising selection process for the 75th Ranger Regiment and the leadership program of Ranger School.  These trials formed the foundation for his adult self, stepping away from the criminal perspective of his youth. They also established lifelong friendships, something that the solitary Van needed more than he knew.

MPS: You also took him out of his Seattle stomping ground and put him in a small town. Did that present any challenges?

GEH: Challenges and opportunities. Unlike Van’s established haunts, I had to create the Oregon town of Mercy River and its surrounding Griffon County from scratch.  Which of course means I stole aspects liberally from real places. I visited mall towns (and ghost towns) and dramatic landscapes in sparsely populated counties like Wheeler and Wasco. People might have an image already in their mind when you say Seattle or Portland, but for more remote parts of Oregon, a writer needs to paint the picture of these beautiful and somewhat dangerous environs and provide some insight into a town struggling to survive.

The opportunities, of course, come from playing God as a fiction writer.  Take a gigantic rock formation here, an abandoned mine from there, unique features of the local towns, and mix and match. I get to place Van’s adventures in the most striking locations imaginable. I also get to invent the history, politics, and law enforcement of the community of Mercy River, all of which play into the mystery Van must solve to save his friend.

As someone who has now lives away from your native Northwest, does it give you a different perspective when writing about it?

Absolutely – moving away from Seattle is what originally inspired me to write about it. The city has changed so dramatically in the past decade, it’s hard to encompass all of its transformations. For example, the gap between the haves and have-nots has become a chasm, and large swaths of the city have been razed and rebuilt, for good or ill. I have to – slash – get to visit Seattle frequently just to try and keep a pulse on current events and the challenges facing the Puget Sound area.

MPS: The book deals with both white supremacists and opioids, two things that have been in the news a lot. Is there a responsibility an author has when dealing with current topics?

GEH: First and foremost, a thriller has to entertain.  But when my books involve subjects such as post-traumatic stress, or the opioid crisis, or the encroaching white nationalist movement, then I aim to use those story points as real matters in Van’s world and not just buzzwords.  Van’s fictional fight is grounded in our battles to conquer those very real horrors. And if I’m very fortunate, his endurance might offer readers hope for our own victory.

MPS: You have some excellent action and heist sequences in the book. What do you keep in mind when writing those parts?

GEH: Thank you! First and foremost, any action scene has to be very clear to the reader.* That means understanding the geography of location and characters, the immediate danger, and the intent the protagonist has at any given moment.  There are some rules of thumb: The faster the action, the slower the pace of the writing, and the shorter the sentences. It may seem counter-intuitive, but the writing will feel faster to readers, and action scenes are all about gut feelings.  If my pulse quickens when I’m re-reading a draft – and bear in mind I already know what’s going to happen because I wrote the darn thing – then I’m on the right track.

*The exception to the “clarity” rule is when the protagonist’s head is addled due to getting hit or getting doped.  That can be exciting too, as the hero or heroine scrambles to figure out what the heck is happening.

MPS: As a writer, what makes Van Shaw a character coming back to?

GEH: Van has experienced at least one full lifetime’s worth of drama and action, but he’s still a young man.  While he might never admit it to himself, a part of him did not expect to survive this long. Instinctively, Van approached his time in Special Operations with the mindset of a samurai, being prepared to die any day.  Now that he’s out in the world he’s having to learn skills that aren’t just tactical in nature. For example, forming lasting relationships and being part of a family. He also has to wrestle with his purpose in life, given that what he’s really good at – crime, violence, and ticking off dangerous people – often clash with the moral center he’s trying very hard to hang onto.  That’s a lot of fun for me to write. I learn new things about Van with every book, and hope readers enjoy his growth as much as I do.

Three Picks for March

Run Away by Harlan Coben: A few months ago, Simon Greene and his wife Ingrid made the difficult decision not to go after their drug addicted daughter Paige when she ran away to her abusive boyfriend Aaron. One morning Simon sees Paige in Central Park, a shadow of her former self, playing guitar for tips, but when he tries to talk to her Aaron intervenes. Countless cell phone cameras are there to record their encounter, and the resulting video of a privileged white man who tries to accost a young woman and then beats the homeless man who comes to her aid quickly goes viral. A few months later Aaron is dead and Paige is missing, and Simon is drawn into the dark underbelly of the New York drug scene to try to find her. You just can’t turn the pages fast enough. – Meike

 

A Friend Is A Gift You Give Yourself by William Boyle: The incredibly funny yet tough novel follows a mob widow and retired porn star thrown together through fate involving family dysfunction, bad men, and stolen mafia cash. Boyle works the humor toward the characters instead of the other way around and never lets it mute the danger these ladies are in or the people they are. Instead it serves as a way to explore female friendship. Major actresses over forty should be fighting over the film rights. – Scott

 

 

 

The American Agent by Jacqueline Winspear: When a young American correspondent named Catherine Saxon is found murdered in her London apartment, Maisie is called in to investigate her death. She’s asked to work with Mark Scott, an American agent from the US Department of Justice–and the man who helped Maisie get out of Hitler’s Munich in 1938. While the blitzkrieg rains terror and destruction on London, Maisie is torn between the need to find Catherine’s killer and the need to love and protect her young ward Anna–and the pull of her feelings for the American agent. – Meike

SCOTT BUTKI’S INTERVIEW WITH GREG ILES

Greg Iles, the bestselling author of the Natchez Burning trilogy, returns with a new novel, Cemetery Road, about friendship, betrayal, and shattering secrets that threaten to destroy a small Mississippi town.

I was captivated by the Natchez Burning trilogy with deep characters, a fascinating protagonist in Penn Cage, lots of plot twists and an interesting exploration and investigation of white supremacists in the south in the past and present.

For this new book the main character is Marshall McEwan. He vowed never to return to his hometown after leaving at 18. The trauma that led to his departure won him journalism praise. As a former reporter I approve of Iles’s descriptions of journalism in this and other books.

But now events in McEwan’s hometown have conspired to make him return: His father is dying, his mother is struggling to keep the family newspaper from going under, crime rates are high, to name a few.

Mr. Iles, the author of 16 books and a novella, was kind enough to let us interview him by email for his new book, which comes out today.  He worked for several years as a guitarist, singer and songwriter in the band Frankly Scarlet. He quit the band after he got married and started writing his first novella. He, along with Stephen King, Dave Barry, Amy Tan and others, is a member of the literary musical group The Rock Bottom Remainders.

Scott: Where or how did this story come to you?

Greg: Cemetery Road actually grew out of the shocking secret revealed at the novel’s conclusion.  I don’t want to say more than that, but the core of my novels is always psychological and emotional, rather than depending on the externalized structure or details.

Scott: How would you describe your protagonist, Marshall, and his struggle in this book?

Greg: He’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington, D.C. journalist, who is forced to leave his career at its height to return to the small Mississippi town where he was raised.  Because of a bad relationship with his father, he swore he would never go back. But when his father is dying, he must return to run the family newspaper until it can be sold.  This is what throws him into contact with the corrupt group of men who run the town, much as their ancestors had since the Civil War. To his surprise, the crimes he uncovered there stretch all the way back to Washington, D.C.

Scott: What do you hope readers will take away from this book?

Greg: That much of what we see around us in life is dictated by knowledge that remains hidden.  At bottom, this is a book about secrets between parents and children, husbands and wives, and siblings.

Scott: Did it feel weird to be doing a book other than Penn Cage after your amazing trilogy?

Greg: It was actually a relief after the ten-year struggle that it took to produce the trilogy, which ended up exceeding two thousand pages.

Scott: I really enjoyed your three volume trilogy set in Natchez, Miss., which I only recently learned you wrote while recovering from a terrible car accident. What did the folks of Natchez, the city where you grew up and now live, feel about your portrayal of it?

Greg: A critic once wrote that I do my hometown the backhanded compliment of setting my novels there.  In general, the people of Natchez have been great about what I have written. That may be partly because the novels have ended up generating a fair amount of tourism for the city.

Scott: When does your next Penn Cage book come out and what’s it about? I read you said there was still more you wanted to write about Penn Cage. Will we found out what that means in that book?

Greg: A lot of readers were a bit disturbed by the fate of Tom Cage at the end of the trilogy.  I always intended to return and deal with the rest of Tom’s thread. The Fates aren’t quite finished with Penn and Tom, and I think readers will be glad to learn that.

Scott: I have read that you long avoided writing series. What changed your mind on that?

Greg: Nothing changed my mind.  The first Penn Cage was intended to be a standalone.  Seven years later I wrote Turning Angel, thinking it would be the last.  Seven years after that, Penn tapped me on the shoulder, and the Devil’s Punchbowl was the result.  And when I decided to deal with the Ku Klux Klan in Louisiana and Mississippi, Penn and Tom Cage turned out to be the ideal characters to do that.

Scott: As a Southern writer do you feel an obligation to tackle the mythology and stereotypes about the south?

Greg: Yes.

Scott: How does your work as a musician affect or help you as a writer?

Greg: As a musician and a songwriter, you learn a great deal about the rhythm of language and develop the ability to say a lot with very few words.  I write very long books, but I can hit readers in the solar plexus when I need to.

Scott: What is the status of the films being adapted from your books?

Greg: There has been a lot of interest all along, and some abortive deals made, but nothing is headed into production at this moment.

Scott: What are you working on next?

Greg: I’m working on at least three other things.  I don’t want to give away what they are, but they are all very different from each other.  There is one more Penn Cage novel to come. A lot of readers were unhappy with where Penn’s father ended up at the end of the last novel.  So that will come, but it’s unlikely to be the next novel.

3 Picks for February

The Book Artist by Mark Pryor

Mark Pryor returns with Hugo Marston, head of security for the U.S. embassy in Paris. Hugo has to clear his girlfriend Claudia for the murder of a sculptress he took to dinner. Also, Cofer, the criminal from Tom Green and his FBI past comes back for revenge. Pryor juggles both of these stories with wit, suspense and a seemingly effortless style. Mark will be at BookPeople February 9th at 6PM  to discuss The Book Artist.

 

Brother’s Keeper by Donald Westlake

A monk tries to save his monastery on Park Avenue from being bought out by a greedy land developer, committing several sins in the process. Hard Case Crime brings back this Donald Westlake novel from 1975 that demonstrates his craft for character and humor. A subtle satire of religion, big business, and all our human frailties that the author appears to embrace.

 

Last Night by Karen Ellis

When a black working class nineteen year old helps a white upper middle class girl find some weed to buy, they take a dark journey through New York. Ellis weaves their story with the the two police detectives each trying to find them after they have been reported missing. Every character you meet is both fully formed and sharply delineated in this story that looks at class, race, and the ways a city divides.

3 Picks for January

New Iberia Blues by James Lee Burke

Dave Robicheaux has to contend with the body of a dead woman found floating on a cross, a wunderkind film director with plenty of secrets, and a new partner he’s falling for with her own history. Burke brings his sense of place, people and poetry to one of crime fictions most tortured cops.

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

Psychotherapist Leo Faber’s obsession with the case of Alicia Berenson and artist who refuses to talk after she murdered her husband takes him to the run down psychiatric hospital she was put in. with only her art and a diary to lead the way, Faber unlocks what really happened that night. A thriller with one hell of a reveal.

Take Out by Rob Hart

Hard boiled author Rob Hart gives us a collection of stories involving crime and food. All of Hart’s pathos, humor, and style are on display here. The story “Creampuff,” about a bouncer at a pastry shop, is worth the price alone.

Scott Montgomery’s Top 10 Crime Novels Of 2018

Emotion was the consistent thing that made crime fiction great in 2018: whether the lead was a hard boiled detective or Brooklyn woman looking for redemption, the lead lived in the suburbs of New York State or Ancient Rome, each author mined what they were going through with their bruised hearts speaking to ours. Here are the ten I thought spoke the most clearly.

The Man Who Came Uptown by George Pelecanos

A truly humane hard boiled tale of a man fresh out of jail, blackmailed into going back to his life of crime, who finds solace in a job well done, books, and the prison librarian who turned him on to reading. Pelecanos aims for the quieter moments in this story to deliver real people and emotions.

Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott

Another piece of beautiful, dark prose poetry from the queenpin of noir set in the world of science a tale that female competition, friendship, and the burden of secrets. Abbott continues to push the genre in new directions without ever clipping off its roots.

The Lonely Witness by William Boyle

A former party girl who has retreated into a more enclosed life finds herself returning to her ways of the night when she witnesses a murder. A gritty crime novel that explores society, mind, and heart with eloquence and pathos.

Depth Of Winter by Craig Johnson

Sheriff Walt Longmire searches for his kidnapped daughter in Narco Mexico and a final confrontation with his nemesis Tomas Bidarte. Johnson proves he can retain the humanity of his hero, even when placed in the most inhumane of situations.

The Line by Martin Limon

Limon starts out with the best opening of the year with Army CID investigators Sueno and Bascome examining a murder victim on the demarcation bridge with North Korean and U.S. armies pointing rifles at each other, then unravels a mystery that examines the plight of women in both Korean and military society. This series has hit its stride with no evidence of faltering.

The Line That Held Us by David Joy

Joy gives us a rural noir set up of a poacher who has his friend help him bury the town tough’s brother he accidentally shot and sets us on an intimate tale of friendship, adulthood, and grace. Best introduction of an antagonist (who may be the protagonist) this year.

In The Galway Silence by Ken Bruen

Bruen somehow finds an even more harrowing rabbit hole for his Jack Taylor to go down, facing off against a killer who calls himself Silence out to take the remains of his shattered life. A crime thriller of style, wit, and madness that perfectly reflects our times.

What You want To See by Kristine Lepionka

In the second Roxane Weary novel, the Ohio PI tries to clear her client for murder and dives first into a real estate scam where the con artists have no problem with killing to cover their tracks. Lepionka brings all the goods for a great private eye read.

If I Die Tonight by Allison Gaylin

Gaylin weaves through the dark side of suburbia and social media in this thriller concerning a teen killed while supposedly saving a former teen pop star from a car jacking. Through a jigsaw puzzle of several perspectives, the reader puts together a narrative that questions how we interact with one another today.

Throne Of Caesar by Steven Saylor

Gordianus The Finder is confronted with another historical crime while dealing with the assassination of the emperor during The Ides Of March. An entertaining blend of well researched history that brings time and place alive and skillfully drawn characters (both historical and fictional) that does the same for the emotions.

TOP FIVE DEBUTS OF 2018

There was an interesting year for fresh voices in crime fiction. While there were many first timers, some folks came from other genre, mixing what they learned from the others in their tale of crime and punishment. All brought a fresh perspective. Here are my top five.

Bearskin by James McLaughlin- McLaughlin gives us a set up for suspense and emotion with a man hiding out from a drug cartel in an Appalachian wilderness preserve, going up against a bear poaching ring. He then has it delivered with nuanced characters and a great sense of place and its people.

Charlesgate Confidential by Scott Von Doviak – Three stories, three periods, and three sub genres dovetail perfectly into this highly entertaining crime story involving an art heist, college friends, and Boston’s Charlesgate Building. where most of it takes place. Von Doviak’s craftsmanship and skill with character takes it beyond a novel experiment.

Blood Standard by Laird Barron – Barron, mainly known for his horror and weird fiction, tackles the hard boiled genre head on with an exiled mob enforcer search for a kidnapped girl. All the tough guy tropes are here along with a the feel of unsure footing from the horror world.

Little Comfort by Edwin Hill – Hill proves librarians aren’t just for cozies in this psychological thriller/detective tale featuring Hester Thursby who moonlights as a finder of missing persons, tracking down someone who will kill not to found. Hill displays a wonderful sense of mood and character.

Hearts Of The Missing by Carol Potenza – Potenza introduces us to Pueblo Police Sergeant Nicky New Mexico’s Fire Sky Tribe. She uses the mystery theme of identity for a cultural exploration of the idea. Tony Hillerman fans will enjoy.

IF YOU LIKE MEGAN ABBOTT…

First, if you don’t see a doctor. If there is any complaint about this author of exquisitely dark fiction that puts noir in a female perspective it’s that she doesn’t have as high an output as her contemporaries. If you need something to read between books or getting a gift for that Megan Abbott fan, here are some like minded authors doing some great things with the genre.

Allison Gaylin- Few cut into the dark side of family and “ideal” society like Allison Gaylin. her plotting is both complex and clean with stories that often don’t truly reveal themselves and their characters until the final paragraph. Either her Hollywood thriller, What Remains Of Me, or her look at crime and community in the social media age, If I Die Tonight, this reader will take you down some dark emotional paths, having you enjoy it all the way.

 

 

May Cobb- Consider her the Pine Curtain Megan Abbott using the East Texas setting to provide the gothic mood for Big Woods, her debut novel dealing with a young girl looking for her sister in her small town during the eighties scare of satanic cults. She builds incredible tension in her relationship between point of view and setting.

 

 

Patricia Abbott- Yes, she is related. Megan’s mother proves she shares the gift of dark mood and compromised characters. Her gifts as a short story author an be found in the collection I Bring Sorrow: And Other Stories Of Transgression and she is also an accomplished novelist with her books Concrete Angel and Shot In Detroit. 

3 Picks for December

Atlanta Deathwatch by Ralph Dennis

Brash Books is bringing back this acclaimed and hard to find series from the seventies featuring disgraced ex-cop Jim Hardman working the grimy streets of Atlanta as an unlicensed PI with former pro-baller Hump as back up. In this first outing Hardman looks into a murdered girl tied to both a street dealer and politician. Good gritty stuff, with subtle emotions, and lots of gunfire. These books partly inspired Joe Lansdale’s Hap & Leonard series.

 

Hearts Of The Missing by Carol Potenza

Winner of the Tony Hillerman prize, this mystery takes us into the Fire Sky tribe on New Mexico’s Tsiba-ashi D’yini reservation. Tribal police officer Sgt. Nicky Matthews’ discovery of a body without a heart leads to a history of other unsolved murders and a conspiracy on the reservation. Potenza explores the idea of identity in a well crafted debut that should hook any western mystery fan.

 

 

Nightfall/ Cassidy’s Girl/ Night Squad by David Goodis

Three fine books by one of the masters of classic noir. Whether the man on the run, the disgraced pilot-turned-bus driver caught between two women, or the shady cop torn between loyalties, all three of these intense tales show how no one captured the dark streets and lives of desperation like David Goodis. As crime writer Ed Gorman said, “David Goodis didn’t write novels, he wrote suicide notes.”