Writers who set books away from home — and why they do it

I started Detectives Beyond Borders in 2006 with a wariness of crime writers who set books in countries other than their own or where they did not live. They must be arrivistes, I suspected, tourists in search of tax write-offs who had no more understanding of local conditions and attitudes than does CNN. Americans (or Brits) parachuting in to tell the locals how to solve their problems.

Over the years I've asked such authors what they see in their chosen settings that a local might miss, or what they might miss that locals take for granted, and I wrote the introduction to a book of essays on the subject (Christopher G. Moore's The Cultural Detective). But not until last night did I think to ask such a writer why she had chosen the country she did.

Turns out that Cara Black, currently in Philadelphia for an American Library Association convention, has ties to France that long predate her Aimée Leduc novels. Her father introduced her to Jacques Tati movies. An uncle had literary ties to the country. Nuns from the Society of the Sacred Heart taught her a mildly archaic French that would later bemuse the children of her hosts on visits to France. There's more to her attraction to Paris, that is, than the Eiffel Tower and bargains on designer clothes.

So now I'll assume that every such writer has stories of his or her own, that there is a reason he or she writes about the Greek islands rather than the south of France, or Italy rather than Spain, or vice versa.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is a Bouchercon panel waiting to happen.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

A nice scene from Bouchercon 2013

Authors Cara Black and J. Robert Janes
Photo by your humble blog keeper.

In France, as Cara Black said, it's complicated

I've reached a convenient temporary stopping point in my Franco-Algerian reading. Before I go, though, here are some thoughts I found today about the Algerian War's lingering effects in Algeria and France from a crime writer who sets her books in the latter.

The crime writer is Cara Black, author of the Aimée Leduc novels, and her post on the Murder is Everywhere blog begins "They killed our cook, threw her body down the well and stuck her head on the fence post."

Lest you think the post is all partisan wailing, its title is "In France it's Complicated."

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Paris throught the eyes of Léo Malet and Nestor Burma

Léo Malet was a singer, a poet, an anarchist, a surrealist, a prisoner of war, a novelist. and a crime writer.

Perhaps his surrealist leanings gave rise on the first page of The Rats of Montsouris to the odd juxtaposition of

“It was one of those summer nights we don’t get often enough. Just the way I like them: dry and stifling”.

and

“The rue du Cange was damp and torpid. … No other sound disturbed the clammy quiet.”

Or maybe a spot of slapdash writing or mistranslation was responsible. But no matter; the lapse (or quirk) appears isolated.

The Rats of Montsouris (1955) is somewhere around the seventeenth of Malet’s many novels featuring the phenomenally popular Nestor Burma, a relatively rare private investigator in French crime fiction commonly called a counterpart to Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, or both. Something more than half the books were among what Malet called his "New Mysteries of Paris," each set in one of the city's districts, or arrondissements, the series a nod to Eugène Sue's nineteenth-century "Mysteries of Paris." (Cara Black continues the tradition today in her Aimée Leduc mysteries.)

Burma likes to wander the streets, sometimes with his beautiful secretary, sometimes into artists' studios and surrealists' ateliers. But the real attraction to far is the zest with which Burma carries out his wanderings, exclaiming with wonder at a part of the city he had never seen before despite his long residence or remarking, perhaps sardonically, about some monument or public square's best feature.

I'm along for the ride, and Malet must have done something right; Nestor Burma has enjoyed a sixty- or seventy-year career in novels, short stories, television, movies, and, more recently, graphic novel adaptations by Jacques Tardi. Has any fictional P.I. not named Holmes had a longer career?

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Cara Black dans le Métro

Cara Black's 12th novel, Murder at the Lanterne Rouge, brings her protagonist, Aimée Leduc, back to Paris' Marais district. This is a slight departure for Black, whose previous books were each set in and named for a different part of the city, from Murder in the Marais and Murder in Belleville through Murder in Passy.

The novel's early chapters include brief but evocative scenes in the tunnels of Paris' metro, which makes this as good a time as any to dig up an old blog post, not mine but Cara's. Her post of April 11, 2011 at the Murder is Everywhere blog begins thus:

"With metro tunnels, sewers, old quarries and catacombs crisscrossing under its streets, Paris is a city of layers,"

and it's just one of several she has put up about subterranean Paris. I suspect that some of the notes she took to write those posts found their way into Murder at the Lanterne Rouge, and I get a kick of reading the raw material of the research side by side with the finished product.

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Cara Black will be part of my "Murder is Everywhere" panel at Bouchercon 2012 in Cleveland, Saturday, October 6, 10:15-11:05 a.m.

Here's the complete Bouchercon schedule.

©Peter Rozovsky 2012

Bouchercon, Cleveland, and what I'll do there

The Bouchercon 2012 schedule is up for public viewing. I’ll moderate a panel called “Murder Is Everywhere” Saturday, Oct. 6, with panelists Timothy Hallinan, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, Cara Black, Jeffrey Siger, and Stanley Trollip. Trollip is one half of the team that writes as Michael Stanley, and the panel takes its title from the name of a blog to which all five authors contribute.

I know all five and have panelized with three of them at previous Bouchercons, included twice before with Yrsa. I interviewed Tim Hallinan in 2008 here at Detectives Beyond Borders, and I’ve met and chatted with Jeffrey Siger through the others.

In this case, familiarity will lead not to contempt but to good questions, as I’ll want to avoid queries that I (and others) have asked the authors before. Such challenges are among the joys of moderating a panel. The first time I had the job, at Bouchercon 2009 in Indianapolis, for example, my panel included two translators from other languages into English, one who translated from English into French, and an author. The search for common elements among these three categories of panelists led to questions I’d likely not have come up with had I had to quiz them separately, in groups consisting solely of their exact peers.

I’ve already come up with a couple of good questions, but you won’t read about them here, because then the authors might read them. I always feel that a bit of mystery is best at a crime-fiction convention.

I’m also developing an itinerary of things to do in Cleveland, with the help a colleague who comes from there. The Cleveland Museum of Art tops the list, and Bouchercon’s opening ceremony happens at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Other recommendations include kielbasa, kraut, pierogies, the West Side Market, East Sixth and Prospect Avenue, the Flats, and jazz clubs on West Sixth Street. Unfortunately I’ll have left town by the time the Harvey Pekar statue is dedicated, but such a statue leaves me with warm feelings about Cleveland.

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"Murder is Everywhere" happens Saturday, Oct. 6, 10:15-11:05 a.m. View the Bouchercon Web site for more information.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Bouchercon, Day 5: A preliminary wrap-up

Eddie Muller was the #Bcon2010 toastmaster. He's also a native San Franciscan and was a member of Friday's "San Francisco noir" panel. He had this to say about the city as a breeding ground for noir after someone said people come there to reinvent themselves:

"We breed people who exploit those people when they come to San Francisco. ... There are people who are waiting here to exploit those who come here to find themselves."

***

Three authors who impressed me with their intelligence, humor, critical acuity, willingness to stake out provocative positions, or some combination of these: John Connolly, Denise Mina, Val McDermid.

***

Three of my panelists whom I enjoyed listening to as they talked about their native country of South Africa at the bar: Jassy Mackenzie, Michael Sears, Stanley Trollip.

***

Two panelists with whom I ate dim sum in Chinatown on Sunday: Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, Christopher G. Moore. (Their spouses were there, too, and I'm happy to have them as panelists-in-law.)

***

Panelists who were exceedingly pleasant to work and spend time with: the lot of them. Really.

One hears whispered tales of difficult panelists, but none was mine. The aforementioned plus James R. Benn, Cara Black, Lisa Brackmann, Henry Chang and Stuart Neville were good company, and concise, entertaining and informative in their answers. I enjoyed our discussions on stage and off. Thanks, guys.

***

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Blogs beyond borders

The titles of the panels I'll moderate at Bouchercon next week, combined with their geographically diverse makeup, leave me with the obvious choice of talking about setting, about a sense of place and how authors create it.

Fortunately, five of the ten writers on the two panels already do that regularly in group blogs with fellow crime authors. Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip, who write together as Michael Stanley, contribute to the Murder Is Everywhere blog, as do Yrsa Sigurðardóttir and Cara Black. Christopher G. Moore is part of International Crime Authors Reality Check.

The first thing to know is that these are not authors' promotional Web sites. You'll find no book excerpts here, no blurbs, no fancy pop-ups and graphics. Instead, the authors write seriously, and sometimes whimsically, about the countries where they live, write, and set their books.

Thus Yrsa shares thoughts on the pronunciation of her name and the difficulty of rendering that pronunciation in a post that expands to take in Icelandic phonetics, conventions of naming, and mythology.

Or Cara Black, whose most recent novel, Murder in the Palais Royal, takes us briefly underground, spends a bit more quality subterranean time in a post that probes Paris' medieval past as well as her own literary history.

Sears writes about South Africa's pride in the success of soccer's World Cup. Moore explains that "In Thailand, highchairs illustrate the great urban and rural cultural divide."

So check out their posts for informative and informal lessons and stories on France, Iceland, South Africa and Thailand. And if you like the blogs, check out the books.

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(Michael Sears, Stanley Trolli, Christopher G. Moore and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir will be members of my "Stamp of Death" panel at Bouchercon 2010 in San Francisco, Thursday, Oct. 14, at 3 p.m. Cara Black will be on my "Flags of Terror" panel Friday, Oct. 15, at 10 a.m.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Any more panels, and I'll be able to furnish a rec room

I'm moderating two panels at Bouchercon 2010 in San Francisco, Oct. 14-17. "The Stamp of Death" happens Thursday, Oct. 14, at 3 p.m. (The panel's title is a tribute to the host city's crime-drama tradition.)

Panelists are Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip, who write together as Michael Stanley; Yrsa Sigurðardóttir; and Christopher G. Moore, with yours truly lending an unobtrusive guiding hand.

"Flags of Terror" (whose title has a similar origin) on Friday, Oct. 15, at 10 a.m., brings together James R. Benn, Cara Black, Lisa Brackmann, Henry Chang, Jassy Mackenzie and Stuart Neville for an hour or so of civilized discussion, with your humble blogkeeper again asking the questions and frisking the participants for weapons.

The authors on these panels take readers to Iceland, Botswana, China, South Africa, Thailand, Northern Ireland, England, France, and what may be the setting richest with possibility, New York's Chinatown. And you're invited along for the ride, whether at the convention or by reading, reading and reading.

I'll see you at Bouchercon. And remember: If you're baking in San Francisco, be sure to wear some flour in your hair.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Murder is Everywhere in the blogosphere

Another group of crime writers from around the globe has banded together to form a collective blog. Murder is Everywhere is Leighton Gage, author of the Mario Silva series set in Brazil; Cara Black, whose Aimée Leduc investigations take readers all over Paris; Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip, collectively known as Michael Stanley and the authors of the Detective Kubu mysteries, set in Botswana; Iceland's Yrsa Sigurdardòttir; and, from the exotic land of England, Dan Waddell.

Initial offerings include Gage's account of a crime reporter from northern Brazil, with emphasis on crime and reporter.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Detectives beyond glitches: International crime fiction on the radio

Missed Bouchercon? Still have a hunger for international crime fiction? You can hear an archived version of Leighton Gage's Blog Talk Radio Webcast with Yrsa Sigurdardòttir, Michael Stanley, Stuart Neville and Cara Black. Click here to hear the program, Around the World in Crime Fiction, first broadcast today. That address again: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Leighton-Gage.

Technical glitches marred the show's first few minutes, but you can get around that by hitting download rather than play, then advancing your player to 3:15, at which point the problem clears up, and discussion ensues.

I especially liked some of Yrsa's observations about the exigencies of writing about crime in a country where everyone knows everyone else, as well as some suggestions from Stanley Trollip (half of the Michael Stanley writing team) about South African crime authors.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Me llamo Peter, plus international crime on the radio

The good folks at Yareah Magazine: Literature, arts and Myths. Literatura arte y mitos have reprinted one of my blog posts as a short article in their October issue.

"The detective who almost loved Berlioz" is my contribution to an issue featuring articles in English and Spanish about cover boy Emile Zola.

***

Detectives Beyond Borders friend Leighton Gage takes his panel-moderation skills to blogtalkradio.com this Saturday, October 24th at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time. He'll host "Around the World in Crime Fiction," a discussion with four more D. Beyond Borders favorites: Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, Michael Stanley, Stuart Neville and Cara Black, and they'll field calls from listeners. If you miss the live broadcast, the program will be archived for a month.

Tune in, click on, and support international crime fiction.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Strictly business in New York

This evening's Soho Crime event at Partners & Crime in New York was more meet and mingle than rap and read, and time passed too quickly for me to do all the meeting and mingling with the authors that I'd have liked to do. Still, editors, publicists, booksellers and a collector and fan with apparently wide Irish crime-fiction contacts made for an enjoyable and possibly productive evening.

Eliot Pattison, one of the six featured meeters and minglers, writes series about Tibet and colonial America, but he's a big fan of Irish and other Celtic music, it transpires. We didn't get the chance to chat about his Tibet books, of which I've read two and bought a third at the event. But he did tell me about some good places to hear Celtic music. (The other authors were Cara Black, Garry Disher, Mick Herron, Henry Chang and James R. Benn. I'd particularly have liked more time to talk technique with Disher.) I also saw a copy of Adrian McKinty's Fifty Grand on display, and a Soho editor told me about a new title they're really excited about: Stuart Neville's Ghosts of Belfast. There's something to this Irish crime fiction thing.

Alas, my train ride home called to mind another Irish crime novel. Three passengers on the Amtrak Quiet Car, where cell-phone use is barred, were using their cell phones. The serial killer in Ken Bruen's Calibre would have known what to do about that.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Cross-border crime-fiction events in Philadelphia and New York

Cara Black and Garry Disher headline the next Robin’s Book Store’s Crime Fiction Book Club brunch this Sunday, May 24, 1 p.m. at Bridget Foy’s, 200 South Street, Philadelphia, 215-922-1813.

On Wednesday, May 27, at 7 p.m., Black and Disher will join Mick Herron , Elliot Pattison, Henry Chang and James R. Benn for a Soho Crime chat and signing at Partners & Crime, 44 Greenwich Avenue, in New York. Call 212-243-0440.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

CrimeFest, Day III, Part II: Appetizers, dinner and dessert

Donna Moore, Declan Burke, Cara Black and Paul Johnston's panel called "Natural-Born Killers: Maxim's Picks" (the name honored moderator Maxim Jakubowski) took meandering paths with brief stops at several interesting destinations.

Moore recalled her childhood admiration for the Nancy Drew books, for the heroine, her handsome boyfriend, her fun friends and young Nancy's car. But then, she said, "I actually read one a few years ago and decided Nancy Drew was a bit of a whiner, her boyfriend was pathetic, and her friends were neurotic. I still liked the car, though." Perhaps you won't be surprised that Moore's first novel, Go to Helena Handbasket, pokes fun at every crime-fiction cliche Moore could think of.

Burke's comment that "I'm fascinated by the power of the Internet and what it can do" sparked a discussion of that medium's potential, both good and bad, for writers and publishers. Burke works hard to exploit that potential, both in his own fiction and as keeper of the Crime Always Pays blog. If Ken Bruen and Colin Bateman are godfathers to the current wave of Irish crime fiction, Burke is the godfather of Irish crime blogging, so he knows what he's talking about. Still, the discussion was leavened by a bracing sense of dread and blissfully free of the wifty optimism (pure shite, really) that can infect discussions of consumer technology.

I also quite liked Johnston's comment on writing about a country where one lives but is not a native: "That book I wrote about terrorism in Greece, I don't think a Greek could have written."

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The baked cod at the gala dinner in the King's Room was more than acceptable, accompanied by waves of ecstatic verbiage to my left, and graceful acknowledgment to my right. The former came from Ali Karim, world's most voluble booster of Stieg Larsson (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire). The latter came from Reg Keeland, the books' English translator.

Each guest of honor (Simon Brett, Håkan Nesser, Andrew Taylor) gave a short, funny, speech, joyously irreverent of the proceedings. My favorite of the three was Taylor's deconstruction of the prizes he'd been given for each of his many Dagger awards from the Crime Writers' Association. Fook, the gent is twisted.

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As a rule, the reporters' notebooks shut when the hotel bar opens. Still, I can't resist mentioning Kevin Wignall's scintillating impersonation of Marlon Brando as the Godfather, cut short only when Wignall almost swallowed one of the napkins he'd stuffed in his cheeks.

As always, view the complete CrimeFest program here.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Bouchecon III

It's not specifically an international-crime-fiction conference, but Bouchercon 2008's second day touched from its beginning directly on a number of subjects often mentioned on this blog. And I do mean from its beginning. I was up, scrubbed, dressed and at an Edgar Allan Poe panel at 8:30 in the morning.

As is always the case with a good conference, much worthwhile stuff happens informally, and I don't mean just drinking and carousing. I hope to devote a post to the informal side of the convention in the next day or two. For now, on with the business at hand (and these reports cover a small selection of the panels on offer. For a full schedule, click here.):

1) The Poe panel, chaired by Philly Poe Guy and Detectives Beyond Borders friend Ed Pettit, focused principally on Poe's centrality in American literature, but Pettit also cited Poe's internationalism, specifically in "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt." Quoth Ed: He's living in Philadelphia, he writes about a crime in New York, he sets it in Paris."

Panel member Shelley Costa Bloomfield said: "There's something about Poe's work that's not very American. He's not a naturalist. He's not a realist." The French, she said, were ready and waiting for what Poe had to offer: "Maybe it takes an older civilization to feel comfortable with the dark side and be able to enjoy it," a statement pregnant with meaning and ripe for future blog posts if I've ever heard one.

2) A panel on "the influence of music on/in writing." John Harvey offered a striking remark or two about his jazz-loving protagonist Charlie Resnick: "I try and get onto the page what he actually hears" – not always an easy task for music much of which is instrumental. "Sometimes he'll listen to Billie Holiday if he's feeling particularly melancholy" or to Lester Young, who suffered much.

Peter Robinson discussed a rather puckish invocation of technology in his Inspector Banks books. Odd things pop up occasionally when Banks' iPod is in random-play mode, Robinson said: "Sometimes a song will perhaps ironically reflect a situation."

3) Michael Genelin, an American who lives in Paris and writes novels set in Slovakia, suggested during a Soho Crime panel that an author writing about a country not his or her own can see things a native would miss because they are so commonplace. Cara Black, who lives in San Francisco and sets her Aimée Leduc novels in Paris, said that city works as a setting because "Many people have their own Paris."

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Cara Black

The author of the Aimée Leduc series of mysteries, each set in Paris and named for a district of the city, posted a complimentary comment here last week. In return, I thought I'd investigate her work. Murder in the Marais, the first in the series, delves into ugly details of World War II and unsettling parallels in 1990s France.

I know that much from reviews of the novel, which I've just begun reading. What I know first hand, from the opening chapters, is that Black has a nice touch for atmospheric dialogue. Leduc's early encounter with the old man who hires her for the job that sets the plot in motion has an edgy intensity. She's reluctant; he never answers her questions directly, communicating the urgency of his request instead with appeals to the memory of Leduc's father. The indirection works, and it captures what many of us must have felt: annoyance at a persistent petitioner, and annoyance at ourselves for somehow being moved, despite ourselves, to hear the petitioner out.

I mentioned that each book in the series is named for a district in Paris: Murder in Belleville, Murder in Clichy, etc. I wonder if Black took her cue from the pioneering French crime fiction writer Léo Malet, who planned to set one book featuring his anti-hero detective Nestor Burma in each of Paris' arrondissements, or districts.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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