Non-traditional book distribution and other non-fictional news
Via Crime Scraps comes the news that a truckload of the Spanish edition of Jo Nesbø's The Redbreast was hijacked in Buenos Aires, Argentina.Here on the North American landmass, Sandra Ruttan was happy to report receiving author's copies of her novel What Burns Within even though the box containing them had been ripped open and one of the books "liberated along the way."
Here's hoping that the hijackers and liberators enjoy their books and that the authors get the royalties they deserve.
Back in South America, Brazil's government wants to fine all foreigners who visit the Amazon wilderness without government permission. Under a bill the government plans to send to the country's Congress, those caught in the Amazon without a permit from military and justice authorities could be fined $60,000, according to the Associated Press.
"We want the world to visit the region. But we want them to tell us when they’re coming and what they’re going to do,” said National Justice Secretary Romeu Tuma Jr., who added that the government was looking at Brazilian organizations in the Amazon for possible illegal activities.According to the AP, "The bill reflects suspicions among conservative politicians and the military that foreign nongovernmental organizations working to help Indians and save the rain forest are actually attempting to wrest the Amazon and its riches away from Brazil."
“We have information that some international groups disguised as NGOs have come to carry out bioprospecting and have entered public and indigenous lands to try and influence their cultures,” Tuma is quoted as having said. “There is piracy and the theft of (traditional) knowledge in the region.”
Sounds to me like a story idea for Leighton Gage.
© Peter Rozovsky 2008
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Jo Nesbo
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Labels: Argentina, Brazil, Jo Nesbø, Leighton Gage, miscellaneous, Sandra Ruttan
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 2:41 AM
10 Comments:
Hi Peter,
In my second book, Buried Strangers, due out in January of next year, there's a character called Romeu Pluma. What a coincidence, huh?
Leighton
Wow, looks like you know a good potential villain when you see one.
Damn, hijacked! That's incredible.
You'll know you've made it when someone rips off a truckful of your books.
Apparently the police are denying they knew what was in the truck, but the publisher says that's not true. Something odd seems to be afoot.
Mr. Gage, you'll be glad to know that the Hawai'i State Library has a copy of Blood of the Wicked, and it's sitting on my kitchen table awaiting my attention. I have to finish David Marannis's biography of Roberto Clemente first.
Linkmeister, I can imagine some crime-fiction-loving baseball fan savvy enough to recognize the American public's weird love of conspiracy theories constructing a thriller around the death of a Latin American baseball star who was on a mercy mission to an earthquake-stricken country. Was that plane crash really an accident?
By the way, we have a school named after Roberto Clemente here in Philadelphia.
Considering the rather damning evidence that the owner of that plane was at best a rogue and at worst a crook, and that the one FAA inspector trying to force him to divest himself of that plane and follow regulations was transferred to Miami a few months before the crash. . .
And that one of the reasons that Clemente was on the plane was that he felt Somoza and his goons couldn't divert relief aid if a famous personage like himself was delivering it. . .
Yep. If I were a writer I'd try it.
I never knew that background to the crash. I was just a kid when it happened, and I suppose the heroic sentimentality of the story pushed thoughts of evil from everyone's mind. The story was just too Hollywood, wasn't it -- heroic and noble mission, Clemente finishing his career with exactly 3,000 hits, and all. The hagiography probably overwhelmed any possibility of public pressure for investigation.
I'd say it was stupidity and cupidity rather than criminal behavior that caused the crash. The owner wasn't rated to fly DC-7s yet he was co-pilot, the pilot was on the verge of losing his commercial license for previous accidents, the people who loaded the plane put too much cargo on and then didn't balance the load, and the Puerto Rican Air Transport people were not as diligent as they should have been in stopping flights which were of questionable airworthiness.
Maraniss writes well. I own his bio of Vince Lombardi but haven't read it yet, and he wrote a good bio of Bill Clinton.
I suspect, too, that an athlete carrying out a similar mission today would be more cautious about whom he hired to do his flying.
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