What Were Some of Your Favorite Books of 2013?

I think this is New Year's Eve circa 1952

Mine are: 

THE BLACK HOUSE, Peter May
LIFE AFTER LIFE, Kate Atkinson
LET HIM GO, Larry Watson

These were all written this year (or last) but yours don't have to be.

My favorite forgotten book was SHACKLED by Bill Pronzini

Book Care

Dad and Josh circa 1976

I am now in possession of a book that belongs to a friend of mine. He wants me to read a story in it and I have had it for several months without doing so. I want to read the story, dear readers, but I am not careful with books. This book does not have the spine broken and the only way I could read the story is by holding the book open six inches or less. I am afraid even to touch it. When people loan me books, I take the same book out of the library and read that copy, returning the perfect one to its owner.

Books are sacred to me but not SACRED to me if you get the drift. I don't write in books or deface them in any way. But I do open them as far as I can, stick them open-faced on the floor, eat lunch over them. They are an extension of me--I am not an extension of them.

How do you treat your books?

Who Writes Beautiful Prose?

"The siren on the top of the Dalton, North Dakota, fire station howls, as it does five days a week at this hour. Its wail frightens into flight the starlings that roost on the station roof every day yet never learn how fixed and foreseeable are human lives. The siren tells the town's working citizens and students what they already know. It's twelve o'clock, time for you to fly too. Put down your hammer, your pencil; close your books, cover your typewriter. Go home. Your wives and mothers are opening cans of soup and slicing bread and last night's roast beef for sandwiches. Come back in an hour, ready to put your shoulder to it, to add the figures, parse the sentences, calm the patients, please the customer."

Larry Watson LET HIM GO

Whose prose do you admire?

What Female Writers Write the Most Convincing Males?

I am going to go out on a limb here and say Hercule Poirot, although an interesting character, never seemed quite like a man to me. Christie dodged it by making him "foreign" and full of tics and oddities that kept you from noticing that. She also had plots that kept you involved enough to not care. . I am sure some of you will disagree.

I think Elizabeth George does a great job with Inspector Lynley. Also Kate Atkinson with Jackson Brodie and Ruth Rendell with Wexford. Who else writes a believable male?

What Ingredients do you hope for in a crime novel?

I am always surprised at how we all share a love of mysteries or crime fiction and yet what we hope to find between the covers is very different beyond the notion of a "crime."

If you had to name 3-5 elements you expect to find in a book beyond some crime, what would they be? For me...

1) sparkling prose
2) complex and very well -defined characters
3) a sense of place
4) originality


Now I am betting these would not be everyone's top elements and perhaps it is because I came to this from reading and writing mostly novels without a crime.

Here is what I don't like or care about so much

1. I don't particularly care about whodunnit although I'd like to understand why.
2. I don't need a lot of action. In fact, action generally puts me off in a novel. The pacing can be quite slow. I don't mind a lot of detail.
3. I hate following a detective around while he interviews suspects. This is the main reason I have stopped watching Masterpiece Mystery. Every series seems scripted by the same writers. I like detective stories, just not ones where this is the main plot device.
4. don't want the same plug- in story format. In other words, if the story is laid out much the same way all the other stories the writer has written is laid out, I am put off
5. serial killers or child murderers
6. too many POVs. I am very happy with one, in fact. 

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

FROM HARDCASE CRIME: THE SECRET LIVES OF MARRIED WOMEN, Elissa Wald

We can't begin to tell you how excited we are -- we just learned that our newest book, THE SECRET LIVES OF MARRIED WOMEN by Elissa Wald, is featured prominently on the cover of next week's issue of the New York Times Book Review!  

The book hits stores on October 8, just two days after the Times review comes out, and it's a terrific one -- one of the best-written books we've ever had the privilege to publish and one that'll stay with you a long time after you turn the final page.  It's about two sisters whose lives are transformed by moments of violence, and who discover secrets about themselves that trouble and disturb them...but also tempt them...

And like Elissa Wald's previous books (HOLDING FIRE and the erotic cult classic MEETING THE MASTER) it is about the psychology and sexuality of submission, a topic she writes about with passion, clarity, and deep conviction. It's really quite breathtaking.  Daniel Bergner, author of the recent bestseller WHAT DO WOMEN WANT?, writes, "THE SECRET LIVES OF MARRIED WOMEN pulls back the veil.  It's a page-turner that's propelled forward -- relentlessly -- by a search for truth about desire.  Elissa Wald's unflinching vision makes for addictive reading."  This is Elissa's first new book in 12 years, and it's a stunning comeback.

I hope you'll give the book a look.  We're so excited to see this book on the cusp of big things, in exactly the way it deserves. 



Charles Ardai
Editor, Hard Case Crime

The Most Evil Character in Fiction

I saw OTHELLO for the second time this year last Friday. It is hard to imagine a more evil character than Iago, and we have very little idea of why he does what he does--although scholars have posited many reasons.

At the end of the play, when he has been responsible for great unhappiness and several deaths, and he is to be taken away to be tortured, he says only

"Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak a word."

In this way, Iago even triumphs at the end of the play, by giving no one the satisfaction of his motive.

Who rivals Iago for pure villainy? 

PLEASE REMIND ME IF YOU WILL HAVE  A FLASH FICTION STORY ON THURSDAY. 

Does your personality affect your book choices?

Day after day, I look at George's blog and see that he is reading books laying out  the demise of almost every facet of our society. I am very sure these books have it right, but I could never do this because it would make me an even gloomier person than I naturally am. I write dark stories because my view of humanity and especially the direction we are headed in is so despairing of mankind.

If I read this sort of book (both fiction and non-fiction) I would not be able to get through the day. This is why I have always steered away from dystopian literature or non-fiction analyses of what we are doing wrong to the environment, the educational system, our health, etc.

Does your personality affect what you read? Are you able to separate yourself from a dire prediction? The farther I stay from the newspaper, news shows, predictions of the future, the better I function. Some might say I am sticking my head in the sand but I say if the sand's going to cover me, I don't want to know about it now.

Scanning the Ending

A few weeks ago, Charles Gramlich said if he doesn't finish a book, he sometimes scans the ending. I rarely do this but I did do in recently. The characters were in such dire straits, and I do mean all of them, I wanted to see if any landed on their feet.

Do you ever do this if you don't finish a book? Because to me it means that the plot has intrigued you on some level. So what put you off then? For me with this book, it was just too depressing. Sometimes the plot was fine, but the writing was not. I know several women who always scan the ending first.

What about you?

What are the best classic whodunits of all time?

I don't often read classic whodunits anymore--or maybe fewer writers write them. But for the first ten years or so of reading "mysteries" I read almost exclusively in this area.  Probably my favorite was ROSEANNA by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo because of the depth of the characters and my interest in the setting.

What is your favorite classic whodunit?

Whose Books Do You Want to Read as Soon as They're Released?

I heard Daniel Woodrell talk about this book two years ago and having been waiting for it ever since. I will hold it in my hot hands as soon as its available.

Whose books do you feel that way about?

How Long Do You Stick with a Book?

                                          Music at the Diego Rivera Court at the D.I.A.


How long do you stick with a book? With me, it varies. Sometimes I know in a page or two. The voice or writing style just puts me off. I have also put a book aside 40 pages before the end. I recently read that you should give a book 100 pages minus your age. I guess the older you are, the less time you have left to read so don't tie yourself up with a book you don't like. Do you have a rule?

Some books Phil had recently enjoyed.

Phil really enjoyed THE EX-PATS by Chris Pavone, A CORPSE IN KORYO by James Church-both crime novels. He also liked THE ORPHAN MASTER'S SON by Adam Johnson and YELLOW BIRD by Kevin Powers, which he thought to be the best book he had read in years.

He is now reading THE FORGIVEN by Lawrence Osborn.

What books are being read by your spouse/kids/friends? Do you discuss books with them? Is their much overlap? Phil and I have very little overlap but I usually know what books he will like if I read a review. We also tend to like the same books as a couple we know so we can pass books and recommendations back and forth. Do your real life friends read similarly to you or just your online pals?

P.S. Asked my son this question at dinner and Josh chose MIDDLESEX and THE MARRIAGE PLOT (Eugenides), and the STEVE JOBS biography as his three most recent reads.

What Crime Fiction Writer Do You Keep Meaning to Read?

For me, Denise Mina. She wins all the awards (Old Theakston the last two years)

and I keep meaning to read her. Have even started one or two of her early books and found them a bit hard to get into. I do not persevere much, demanding immediate accessibility to the world of the book.

Who should you have read but haven't?

Best combination of a first and last line in a novel.

Phil's hydrangea

We are often asked our favorite first line.

The Atlantic Monthy just published this list.

But what about the combination of the two. My candidate for best is George Orwell's first and last line from 1984.

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

... and the last line.

"We all loved Big Brother."

What is yours?

Edward Champion and THE BAT SEGUNDO SHOW

Whereas I used to listen to books on tape while I did my housewifely chores, I recently found something else that's a lot of fun. Maybe you all knew about this long ago.

Ed Champion, host of the Bat Segundo Show has audio interviews via podcast with more than 500 writers, humorists,  musicians, film-makers, etc  Crime writers Ariel S. Winter, Charlie Huston, Megan Abbott, Laura Lippman, Ian Rankin and Duane Swierczyncki are in the archives along with humorists like Amy Sedaris and Dave Barry, film-makers like Mike Leigh and Sarah Polley, interviewers like Dick Cavett and musicians like Bonnie Tyler. There are also essayists and topics of interest examined.

What makes these comprehensive interviews work so well is that Ed has read the book. And not just a writer's current book but their previous ones. He is able to ask interesting and probing questions and get people to talk about their process, their influences, all of the things that you wished someone would ask. He is able to draw from an encyclopedic knowledge of literature for these interviews.

I especially enjoyed the interview with Laura Lippman done after her most recent book (AND WHEN SHE WAS GOOD), with Claire Messud after THE WOMAN UPSTAIRS, with Stewart O'Nan after LAST NIGHT AT THE LOBSTER and with Aimee Bender after THE PARTICULAR SADNESS OF THE LEMON CAKE. But I am still at the beginning of the archives. 

If you like hearing writers talk about their books, I highly recommend THE BAT SEGUNDO SHOW.

Who Was Your Literary Hero Growing Up?

Long before I thought about authors, I thought about characters. They were my heroes and I had more than a few. But if I had to choose one, it would be Betsy from the Betsy-Tacy series of books by Maud Hart Lovelace. They begin with Betsy-Tacy at the age of five and follow the two friends, and later a third friend, Tib into adulthood. The series began around 1940 and are still read today.

There is even a society. 

Now, no these are not particularly adventurous girls but neither was I. They reflected the safe, sane world I long to find.

My other literary hero was a real one. I read THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK a dozen times or more. I kept hoping for another ending. I never got one but her ability to write and be brave was the most inspiring story I ever read.

Who was your literary hero?

Bios, Memoirs, Etc

You're at your local library. You go to the biography section. Reviews aside, who are you most likely to pick up a book about should there be one. There are a few people who have always fascinated me. The Alcott family and that circle in Concord has always interested me. And then there's this crew.

1000 books, according to the doc on SHOWTIME, have been written about Marilyn Monroe. Why does she interest us so much?

Snubnose Press is having an anniversary sale and all of their books including mine are for sale for $.99 on Amazon. If you have a spare buck, they have lots of books for you to read.

How Much is Too Much?

I just read a review of LIFE AFTER LIFE (Atkinson) in the London Review of Books. There was not a single plot point, this reviewer did not discuss. There was no reason to read the book after this unless you wanted to read it for its style. Why do reviewers do this? Going through the plot page by page doesn't take much ability. Does it drive you crazy? Do you read reviews at all?






California-I am coming back to you soon. (Well, in January at least)

The Hardest Hardboiled?

What is the hardest hard-boiled crime novel you have read? Or the noirest noir?
I am going with THE KILLER INSIDE ME. Top that!