Shtetl, with a glottal stop

Rick Ollerman, Adrian McKinty

You haven't lived until you've heard an Irishman say "shtetl." Thanks to Adrian McKinty, I can now say I've lived.

Oh, sure the audience at Sunday's Noir at the Bar in New York ate up McKinty's reading from his latest novel, Rain Dogs, and sure, his was not the evening's only good reading, but that was no shock. Hearing shtetl pronounced with a glottal stop, on the other hand, was an experience I never thought I'd have. (McKinty's wife's ancestors were from a shtetl, in case you were wondering how the subject came up.)

MC Todd Robinson

Rick Ollerman was there, too, and was too polite to correct me when I kept referring to his fine novel Shallow Secrets as Shallow Grave. Rick Ollerman: Editor, novelist, mensch.

Dennis Tafoya

The Philadelphia area's own Dennis Tafoya read from a work in progress—searing, hard-hitting stuff from one of the original readers from back when I created Noir at the Bar in 2008. (Dennis read the next year.)

New York's Noirs at the Bar happen at Shade Bar, and accolades to the bartender, Laurie, who not only mixes a good Hendrick's and tonic, but also knew my name. And thanks to Suzanne Solomon and Tim Hall, who joined forces for a two-part reading; Dana Cameron; Danny Gardner; Vincent Zandri; and Jason Pinter, who also read, and to Jen Conley, who sat quietly in the audience without organizing an event, reading a story, or announcing her engagement, all of which she tends to do at Noirs at the Bar.

Danny Gardner

Adrian McKinty, Suzanne Solomon, Tim Hall

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

NoirCon 2014 is almost here // Noir at the Bar comes back home

I'll be part of another con before Bouchercon, the fourth incarnation of the event that introduced me to the joys of the con, Philadelphia's own Noircon.

This year's event happens Oct. 30-Nov. 2, and it has a more international flavor than the versions in 2008, 2010, and 2012, including several authors who will be part of my Bouchercon panels two weeks later in Long Beach. Stuart Neville will be here. So will Paul Charles, who will join Stuart, Adrian McKinty, and Gerard Brennan on my Bouchercon "Belfast Noir" panel.  Sarah Weinman and Charles Kelly will be here, sharpening their oratorical skills for their appearances on my "Beyond Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane: Lesser Known Writers of the Pulp and Paperback Eras" panel in Long Beach.

The gang from Soho Press is coming to Noircon to receive awards. The delegation will include author Fuminori Nakamura and Paul Oliver, whose current reissues of Ted "Get Carter" Lewis' novels are an event of high importance to noir readers. Trust me: You want to read these books.

I'll be doing my part by MC'ing a NoirCon edition of Noir at the Bar as N@theB returns to the city where I staged the very first ones in 2008.    The list of readers includes several of the original Noir at the Bar authors and moderators, so here's a special thank you to Duane Swierczynski, Jon McGoran (who set this event up), Dennis Tafoya, and Sarah Weinman. Welcome back.

NoirCon 2008 was my first convention, my first chance to meet authors and others in the profession. It's where I met Ken Bruen and Christa Faust and Scott Phillips and Sarah Weinman and Reed Farrel Coleman and Ed Pettit and Charles Ardai and Megan Abbott and more, and not just met them, but hung out with them and talked with them. The experience was so much fun that I signed up for that year's Bouchercon almost immediately, and the rest is history. 

NoirCon: Because Not Everything Great That Started in Philadelphia Was Run By Guys Who Have Their Faces on Money.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Poor Boy's Game: Dennis Tafoya reads

(Photo courtesy of Jon McGoran)

That's Dennis Tafoya at the far right, reading from his new novel The Poor Boy's Game, in New Hope, Pa.,  and me just to the left of the author's head, appearing to be ignoring him, but really just acting fast to keep my steak sandwich from leaping off the plate.

I suggested a few years ago that Tafoya, along with authors such as John McFetridge, David Corbett, and Wallace Stroby, might constitute a school of crime writers who "share certain features: yearning emotion, stories at least as wistful as they are tragic, and empathy with characters whatever their orientation on the legal or even moral compass." and here's part of what I wrote when I first ran into The Poor Boy's Game.

Hear Tafoya and Jon McGoran read, this Thursday at 6:30 p.m., at Mysterious Bookshop in New York. Support good authors and independent bookshops.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

How Dennis Tafoya and Richard S. Prather keep it fresh

Some days the USPS knows just what to do. Monday's delivery brought an advance reading copy of Dennis Tafoya's The Poor Boy's Game and a package from a friend that included Richard S. Prather's Shell Scott novel Gat Heat.

I would not normally associate Tafoya's harrowing urban trips with Prather's light-hearted, action-packed hedonism, but early, brief glimpses suggest that each provides an answer to that favorite Detectives Beyond Borders question, How do authors keep their material fresh?

I've twice heard Tafoya read from The Poor Boy's Game, and this brief exposure suggests that he reinvigorates that old standby in which a character takes a drug- or alcohol-addled, barely-in-control trip through a dangerous urban environment, usually streets, bars, or both. I'll know more once I read the novel, but in the portions he read, Tafoya is emotionally invested in the character taking the trip. And that saves the scene from cliché, that and the sheer weight of the character's dissipation.

In Prather's case, the convention the author reinvigorates and pokes fun at is one he had made his own: that of the over-the-top description of usually pneumatically endowed women. This bit of Always Leave 'em Dying will serve as a fair example:

"...she'd just turned twenty one, but had obviously signaled for the turn a long time ago.... she wore a V-necked white blouse as if she were the gal who'd invented cleavage.”

That's why the opening of Gat Heat is so much fun. The book appeared in 1967, when the Shell Scott franchise had been around for more than fifteen years. Prather, presumably, had to strike a balance among giving the readers what they had come to expect, making each book different enough from what had gone before to keep the readers buying, and maintaining his own interest in a character who had been around a long time.

Readers of Gat Heat who knew their Prather and their Shell Scott must have delighted in such lines as: "You could say she was so thin she had to wear a fat girdle" and "Her complexion was the delicate tint of poisoned limeade."  They could enjoy the lines for their own sake, they could enjoy the fun Prather had at his own expense. And the lines work as references to the author's more familiar descriptions. Prather's usual descriptions are present by their absence.

So much for theorizing. How do your favorite crime writers reinvigorate conventions that in lesser hands might have seemed stale?

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

From Syria to Jalisco to Noir at the Bar in Baltimore

(Feasting Scene, Jalisco, Proto-
Classical 200 BC-AD 250. Earthen-
ware, red-slipped resist painting,
appliqué 20 1/4 x 19 3/4 x 17 in.
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.)

(Bearded Figure
With Necklace.
Syrian, 2400-
2000 BC. Terra-
cotta. H: 5 3/8
x W: 2 3/4 x
D: 1 5/16 in.
Walters Art
Museum, Baltimore.

Good fun Sunday at Noir at the Bar in Baltimore (That's a few of us at right, gathered around one of the evening's early readers.)

Some good stuff got read by Dennis Tafoya, Art Taylor, et al., not all of it unquotable on a family blog, but my favorite part was just hanging out and talking about writing and writers, notably with Dana King. Talk turned to James Ellroy, and author/Thuglit editor Todd Robinson said Ellroy made him nervous when they met.

Now, Robinson is wide, he's bald, and he's tattoo'd — not the first person I'd picture getting nervous in the presence of others. I took this as an endearing surprise, and also as evidence that despite Ellroy's intelligence, sensitivity, hard work, wide reading, and sometimes intense self-awareness, perhaps the man really does get close to the edge sometimes.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Noir at the New Hope Bar

From left: Wallace Stroby, William Hastings, Dennis Tafoya, Scott Adlerberg

Noir at the Bar made a convivial, entertaining, informative return on Thursday evening to the state where it was born. The place was John and Peter's in New Hope, Pa., the literary midwife was Farley's Bookshop, and the author/readers were Wallace Stroby, William Hastings, Dennis Tafoya, Scott Adlerberg, and Don Lafferty.

Highlights included Stroby on why he called his upcoming novel Shoot the Woman First, Tafoya with a stunningly good bit of post-violence emotional confrontation from a novel that should see the light of day next year, and three guys who were either new to me or who I had not known were writers in addition to their accomplishments in other fields.

I may post more after a good night's sleep, but for now, I was pleased with the happy medium we achieved between my original one- or two-author Noirs at the Bar (I started the concept in 2008), with a question-and-answer session with each writer; and the high-spirited literary mosh pits that Jedidiah Ayres and Scott Phillips made of their events in St. Louis. (Noir at the Bar has since spread to New York, Los Angeles, Austin, I believe San Diego, and, in an unprecedented harmonic Noir at the Bar convergence, Denver, where a Noir at the Bar also took place last night.)

Each  of the five authors here in New Hope read from his work, I threw out a question, and the questions turned into discussions, with all the writers eventually gathering on stage to take matters largely into their own hands.  I'd like to do this again, and I think we will. The original Noir at the Bar lives.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Noir at the Bar brings it all back home this Thursday

If you're in Pennsylvania, New York, or New Jersey, or if you can get there by 9 p.m. Thursday, come on out to John & Peter's at 96 South Main St. in New Hope, Pennsylvania, for the return of the original Noir at the Bar.

Dennis Tafoya and Wallace Stroby, both of whom I've written about here, will read from new work, and Scott Adlerberg, previously unknown to me, will join them. Tafoya, a reader in the original Noir at the Bar series, becomes the first two-time guest in the state where Noir at the Bar was born.

I started Noir at the Bar in 2008 and good people and talented writers in St. Louis, Los Angeles, New York, Austin, Denver, and elsewhere took the idea, ran with it, and staged Noirs at the Bar of their own. So, thanks to Scott Phillips, Jed Ayres, Eric Beetner, Scott at Mystery People, Todd Robinson, and anyone else who ever threw a Noir at the Bar. Drop me a line here, and I'll give you a plug Thursday night.

And thanks to the hardworking, crime-loving folks at Farley's Bookshop for putting this thing together.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Noir at the Bar comes back home

Philco 90 cathedral-style radio, 1931

Noir at the Bar is a quintessential Philadelphia phenomenon: It started here before other people took it elsewhere and made it bigger and better. But, while Philadelphia is no likelier to resume its status as the U.S. capital any time soon than Philco is to start making radios again, Noir at the Bar is coming back home.

The date is Thursday, May 23, the time is 9 p.m., the bar is John & Peter's at 96 South Main St. in New Hope, PA, and the noir is courtesy of Wallace Stroby and Dennis Tafoya, plus a special guest or two. Sponsors are the good folks at the excellent Farley's Bookshop, purveyors of fine reading material at Noircon since 2010.

Noir at the Bar has become an international phenomenon since I started it in June 2008, first guest Philadelphia's own Duane Swierczynski. Los Angeles has a Noir at the Bar series. There's one in New York. Austin, Texas, has staged a Noir at the Bar. Declan Burke and John McFetridge came to Philadelphia for a special international Noir at the Bar, and I hosted an evening with Sean Chercover and Howard Shrier in Toronto a few years ago. But the kings of neo-Noir at the Bar are Jedidiah Ayres and Scott Phillips, whose St. Louis Noirs at the Bar have spawned not one, but two collections of short fiction.   Jed and Scott: Make it to New Hope, and I'll buy you a drink.

And the rest of you are invited, too. Long live the New Original Noir at the Bar!

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Crime Factory: The First Shift rules!

Crime Factory: The First Shift (New Pulp Press) is fat with fiction, thirty-some noir stories from:

Dennis Tafoya, Andrew Nette, Jedidiah Ayres, Roger Smith, Josh Converse, Charlie Stella, Greg Bardsley, Hilary Davidson, Kieran Shea, Nate Flexer, Cameron Ashley, Patti Abbot, Chad Eagleton, Ken Bruen, Jimmy Callaway, Dave Zeltserman, Steve Weddle, Craig McDonald, Keith Rawson, Leigh Redhead, Anonymous-9, Jonathan Woods, Liam Jose, Dave White, Chris F. Holm, Frank Bill, Adrian McKinty, and Scott Wolven.

I've read Tafoya's, Smith's, and Stella's contributions so far. Tafoya and Smith are established Detectives Beyond Borders favorites, and Stella became a new one with his story "The Decider," an act of workplace wish fulfillment that management might want to keep out of workers' hands.

Smith's "Half-Jack" is marked by this memorable phrase that isn't even part of the main action: "...the carefully coded conversation of the sex-addicted." And Tafoya's story, "Stinger," opens the collection thus: "They met in Arraignment, and she knew he was the one."

And I still have twenty-five stories left to read. This is going to be fun.
© Peter Rozovsky 2011

A school of crime?

Several crime novels I've read recently share certain features: yearning emotion, stories  at least as wistful as they are tragic, and empathy with characters whatever their orientation on the legal or even moral compass. Some of the books enhance the effect by alternating point of view among several characters.

Most notable to me has been that the emotion suffuses not just the characters but the social and physical landscapes as well. The books are The Wolves of Fairmount Park, by Dennis Tafoya (Philadelphia); Done for a Dime by David Corbett (San Francisco Bay Area); and Cold Shot to the Heart by Wallace Stroby, whose heister heroine ranges fairly widely.

Domenic Stansberry's The Big Booom (San Francisco) may belong on the list as well. Same with John McFetridge's novels (Toronto, Montreal, and those American cities just over the border from them).

Several of these books have publishers, editors, or both in common. So, how many crime writers does it take to make a school, anyhow?

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Dope Thief visits Noir at the Bar

Manny and Ray work in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, making a nice living ripping off drug dealers, but they're a pair of crooks with intimations of their own mortality:

"You could only do this shit so long. Someone was going to recognize them, or follow them, or just do something brainless when they came in the door. They wore the cop jackets and badges and they moved with purpose and told themselves they were smart, but there was only so much luck and then it was gone. At the end of the day they were as doomed as the goofy bastards they were ripping off. Manny and Ray would do lines in the truck before they went in, getting their edges sharp, making their minds fast. It couldn't go on forever. Everyone was high. Everyone was stupid. Everyone had guns."

That's the end of Chapter Two of Dennis Tafoya's novel Dope Thief, and such weighty sentiments so early in the book are a key to Tafoya's purpose. "Showing the consequences of violence, the panic, is the thing I think is missing from TV shows" — at least until The Sopranos and The Wire — he told a gratifyingly crowded house at this evening's Noir at the Bar in Philadelphia. (And thanks to the good people at the Pen & Pencil Club for being such good hosts.)

I'm unsure how much more to report, since political events at the Pen & Pencil are traditionally off the record, and I don't know whether similar etiquette applies to readings, but Tafoya also had some sobering words about current conditions in the publishing business, conditions to which he seems to be adjusting exceedingly well.

Pete Dexter read next in an event independent of mine. That legendary newspaper columnist, novelist and screenwriter told fine old newspaper stories and read a heartbreaking section of his new novel, Spooner. I shall follow his future and his past career with interest.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Dennis Tafoya/Pete Dexter in Philly tomorrow!

If you're within driving, biking, walking or public-transportation distance, or if you can catch a cheap flight, come out to America's oldest press club Wednesday evening for Noir at the Bar with Dope Thief author Dennis Tafoya and columnist/screenwriter/National Book Award-winning author Pete Dexter.

=======================

When: Wednesday, September 30th at 6:00 p.m.

Where:The Pen and Pencil Club,

1522 Latimer Street, Philadelphia, 215-731-9909

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Noir at the Bar with "Dope Thief" author Dennis Tafoya

Noir at the Bar

presents

Dennis Tafoya

author of

Dope Thief


“Dope Thief is first-rate literary noir, the hardest-core crime novel I’ve read this year. It manages to be funny without ever descending into the trivial, and at its core it’s harrowing. An amazingly assured debut by Dennis Tafoya.”
— Scott Phillips, author of The Ice Harvest, The Walkaway and Cottonwood

“The plotting is solid, and the action has a hard, violent edge that recalls Richard Price.”
— Booklist

“A boy `born into the life’ makes a wrenching attempt to change course or die trying in a first novel that marks Tafoya as a writer to watch.”
— Publishers Weekly

“An impressive debut by a writer savvy enough to understand that the way to a
reader’s heart is often as not through flawed characters.”
— Kirkus Reviews

Read an excerpt from Dope Thief here.

======================

When Dennis is done, stick around for legendary columnist, novelist and screenwriter Pete Dexter reading from his new novel, Spooner.

=======================

When: Wednesday, September 30th at 6:00 p.m.
Where: The Pen and Pencil Club,
1522 Latimer Street, Philadelphia, 215-731-9909
http://www.penandpencil.org/index.php

Mystery brunch in Philly

Come meet, greet and eat with authors Dennis Tafoya (Dope Thief) and Keith Gilman (Father's Day) tomorrow, Sunday, June 14, 1 p.m. at:

BRIDGET FOY’S
200 South Street,
Philadelphia
215-922-1813

A la carte brunch is served at 1. Once you've splashed yourself awake, author presentations begin at 2, followed by a discussion and a question and answer period. The program is organized by Robin's, Philadelphia's oldest independent book store, at 110A South 13th Street.