More New York crime seen

This time it was (from left) Ed Aymar, Jenny Milchman, Angel Colón, and Hilary Davidson stopping in at Mysterious Bookshop to talk about The Night of the Flood, a novel to which they and a bunch more authors contributed.

All photos by Peter Rozovsky for Detectives Beyond Borders

They talked about the book, the story behind it, the issues it embraces, and the chords it struck with them. Colón and Davidson were especially compelling and, as was the case when Scott Adlerberg touted his new novel at Mysterious not long ago, authors talking can be even better than authors reading when it comes to making a case that you ought to buy their books.

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There's more to New York than crime writers. The city is also rife with picturesque precipitation, and its ethnic diversity is nearly as great as Toronto's.

© Peter Rozovsky 2018

Photos from the 2015 Edgar Awards banquet

James Ellroy

The Edgar Awards, given by the Mystery Writers of America, are coming up April 28, 2016, and this year two friends and associates of Detectives Beyond Borders' are up for awards: Adrian McKinty, up for Best Paperback Original Novel for Gun Street Girl, and Duane Swierczynski, nominated in the best novel category for Canary.

Ian Rankin, Stephen King,
Karin Slaughter, Stuart Neville

I'll be there taking pictures, schmoozing, and maybe asking a question or two of 2016 MWA Grand Master Walter Mosely.  In the meantime, some photos I took at the 2015 Edgars.

Stephen King, Hilary Davidson

© Peter Rozovsky 2016

Sara Paretsky

Stephen King, Karin Slaughter

James Ellroy

Sara Paretsky

Edgar Awards 2015 — The speeches, or Charles Ardai on editors, plus DBB and YA

Charles Ardai

I've long admired Charles Ardai for founding and running Hard Case Crime. I've long respected him for what Hard Case authors say about his devotion to their work. And I am grateful for his  generosity when I had some questions about publishing and editing a few years ago.

But I like him even better after this week's Edgar Awards dinner. Ardai was on hand to receive the Ellery Queen Award, and his acceptance speech constituted the best vindication of editing and editors I have ever heard.

Would anyone scold a great conductor for not letting the first bassoon play more? he asked. Would anyone denigrate a great movie director for exercising casting control over his or her own movies? No. Yet people these days disguise their ignorant contempt for editors and editing behind references to "gatekeepers," perpetrating the delusion that editors only interfere with a writer's "voice."  Ardai became the second person I know to describe gatekeeper as a "sneering" term. Since I was the first, while I maintained my composure and kept snapping pictures during Ardai's speech, inwardly I was cheering myself hoarse.

Ardai said he gained his respect for editors early, when an editor performed surgery on one of his stories, changing almost every sentence. That taught him that editors make stories better, and that's what made him decide to be an editor when he grew up. On the way, though, he founded an Internet company and became an award-winning author. Yet an editor is what he wanted to be and what he talked about.

If I were an author, I'd want a man like Ardai behind my work. Join me in saluting a righteous dude, Charles Ardai.

  ***

Hilary Davidson

Lois Duncan

I was a youth and then an unmodified adult; young adult fiction had not been invented when I was a YA myself.  That's why I had never heard of Lois Duncan before Edgar night.

Duncan was named a Mystery Writers of America grand master, and I learned from Hilary Davidson's introduction that Duncan is rated alongside S.E. Hinton and Judy Blume on the young-adult Mount Rushmore. I learned that her books had been censored, and that she wrote an account of the quest for her daughter's killer.  I learned from Davidson and later from Sarah Weinman how much Duncan's work had meant to them.  And that's one of the things I like best about conventions, dinners, and other mass crime fiction gatherings: The chance to learn about fascinating people and genres I might not otherwise have considered.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

I shot Stephen King: Photos from the Edgar Awards dinner 2015

Stephen King (All photos by
your humble blogkeeper.
List of winners and
nominees at the Mystery
Writers of America Web site.)

Charles Ardai

Sara Paretsky, Hilary Davidson

James Ellroy

Jon and Ruth Jordan

Ian Rankin, Stephen King, Karin
Slaughter, and Stuart Neville

Sara Paretsky and her shadow

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

Masters and mistresses of suspense: How do they do it?

I'm giving away nothing when I reveal that Hilary Davidson's The Damage Done is about a young woman called back to New York by the news of her sister's death, only to find that the dead woman is someone other than her sister; blurbs for the book reveal as much.

The canny revelation sets the suspense high right from the beginning. The protagonist explores her sister's apartment, mournful, puzzled and not getting the clues that something odd is up. The reader feels like Jimmy Stewart helpless in his wheelchair in Rear Window as he watches Grace Kelly snoop around Raymond Burr's apartment.

What are your favorite scenes of suspense, preferably in books, but in movies as well, if you like? What makes them work? What are the necessary ingredients of a suspenseful scene?

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Sports, crime, Neil Young, and everything

This blog has an eclectic group of sports fans-cum-readers: an Irish New York Yankees fan who lives in Australia, for one, and an ice hockey fan in New Zealand.

So, with a nod to the hard-working Craig Sisterson, here is a picture of your humble blogkeeper with the Stanley Cup.

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And here's the evidence of Neil Young's influence on crime writing.

That's two crime novels with titles taken from Neil Young songs. What other rock and roll songs have lent their titles to crime novels?

(YHBK with Hilary Davidson, author of The Damage Done)

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Speaking of sports, the protagonist of Peter Temple's An Iron Rose finds himself the de facto guardian of a aspiring teenage golfer. If memory serves, Peter Corris, the godfather of Australian crime writing, wrote a story in which a young aspiring tennis player figures.

Temple especially gets some nice drama out of this: The young man in question has dropped out of school, in part to work on his golf game, and the protagonist wants him to go back. And there you have it: suspense and generational conflict in one neat, subplot-size package.

Any other stories in which an aspiring athlete plays a role?

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

There is a town in south Ontario ...

1) Visited Sleuth of Baker Street to hear Hilary Davidson read from The Damage Done and, while browsing, found myself at nose level with a novel called Down by the River. Neil Young has a more powerful presence in Toronto than I thought.

You know those readings where three people show up, and one works for the store and another wandered in by mistake? This was not one of them. Davidson grew up in Toronto and, I think, worked here as well. To judge from the evening's attendance, she is much loved; the place was packed.

2) Saw a copy of Following the Detectives: Real Locations in Crime Fiction on display, the first time I'd seen my own work on sale in a bookshop. This was very cool. And the book makes an ideal holiday gift!

3) Overheard a customer refer to "someone who likes to read x, y and zed." It is a pleasure to be in a country that knows what the last letter of the alphabet is. (Canadians also know that an entrée is a small course preceding the main dish.)

4) Bought Peter Temple's An Iron Rose off a rack labelled with disarming honesty "Expensive British Imports." Would any American shop or any chain store have been that straightforward? Nah.

5) Got up in the middle of the night at my brother's house, took one step down from the guest room, and turned right toward the bathroom. Only the guest room has two steps, so I took a header onto the living-room floor, landed on my right knee, and only the saving grace of a benevolent god prevented the big-screen TV from shattering into a million pieces. The knee was a little tender today, but Nephew Beyond Borders #2, asleep on the couch, slumbered right through the ordeal of his precipitating uncle.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

DBB goes to Toronto

In Toronto to visit Brother Beyond Borders and to hear Hilary Davidson read from her novel The Damage Done at Sleuth of Baker Street on Wednesday.

On the ride up, I:

• Read "$106,000 Blood Money" and cursed Dashiell Hammett for not having written more.

• Wondered when plain old bus and train stations became transportation centers.

I should have figured from her pleasing manners at Noircon 2010 that Hilary Davidson was Canadian, and if that was not clue enough, her titling her debut novel for a Neil Young song should have given her away. More tomorrow.

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On the subject of fine independent bookstores, here's a belated thanks to Farley's Bookshop of New Hope, Pa., official book purveyor to Noircon 2010. These guys brought in not just books by festival attendees, but a well-chosen selection of related noir and hard-boiled and, to my pleasant surprise, a nice selection of international crime fiction from Bitter Lemon, Soho Crime, and maybe a title or two from Europa Editions.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010