My Bouchercon 2016 panel: The Scene, by Clarence Cooper Jr.

Clarence Cooper Jr.'s 1960 novel The Scene is so harrowing and so heartbreaking in places that a careless reader might be tempted to call the novel authentic and leave it at that.

Cooper was a heroin addict who spent much of his short life in prison, and the scene of the novel's title is a neighborhood and a state of being not just controlled but defined by heroin.  Cooper may well have written out of firsthand knowledge, but what makes The Scene great are the sympathetic detachment it displays toward its many significant characters, its cunningly fragmented narrative, and its sly allusions to crime fiction conventions.

It takes a gifted writer to get away with all that. It takes a writer at least bordering on great to get away with all that and make it serve the story the novel has to tell.  It's early days yet, but The Scene may be my crime fiction discovery of the year.

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Poster by Jon Jordan

Gary Phillips will discuss Clarence Cooper Jr. as part of a panel I'll moderate at Bouchercon 2016 in New Orleans in September. The panel is called "From Hank to Hendrix: Beyond Chandler and Hammett: Lesser Known Writers of the Pulp and Paperback Original Eras," and it happens at 9 a.m., Thursday, Sept. 15, at the Marriott, 555 Canal St., New Orleans. The room is LaGalleries 1. See you all there.

© Peter Rozovsky 2016

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

It's almost time for the Edgars

It's almost time for the Edgar Awards, presented by the Mystery Writers of America and recognizing the best in crime fiction published in the U.S., and the 2015 awards dinner ought to be especially entertaining: James Ellroy is one of this year's two MWA Grand Masters.

I'll also be pleased to see Charles Ardai receive his Ellery Queen Award. Ardai is an entrepreneur, a publisher, an editor, and an award-winning author who changed the look of American crime fiction when he founded Hard Case Crime with Max Phillips. He's thoughtful, he's intelligent, and he's a nice guy to boot.

I'll get to see Jon and Ruth Jordan accept the Raven Award for outstanding contributions to crime fiction in an area other than creative writing, and, as I wrote when they won an Anthony Award at Bouchercon in 2009, "I feel quite sure that no one has deserved an award more."

Jon and Ruth publish Crimespree Magazine, and they organize Bouchercons. They are friends to authors everywhere, inspirations to all who know them, and they live in the world's coolest house: over the family machine shop, housing more books than the Library of Congress, with fresh sausage on the stove 24 hours a day, a bathtub filled with beer, and nooks and crannies even they probably have never seen.

The awards dinner happens Wednesday, April 29, at the Grand Hyatt in New York, and it's just part of a slew of events this week and next; here's a page with links to everything that's happening. Here's a bit about the Jordans, Ellroy, and their fellow special-award winners.  And here's a complete list of nominees, including Stuart Neville, whose Final Silence is up for the best-novel Edgar.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

Nelson Algren: The answer, plus what the ancients can teach us

Yesterday's post here at Detectives Beyond Borders asked What ever happened to Nelson Algren, and why? The good people who run the Nelson Algren Twitter account suggested I might find some answers here. The article's headline:

"Despite his literary brilliance and humanist resolve, Nelson Algren was the type of loser this country just can't stomach."

***

 I miss the medal stand in the How Many Books Do You Own? Olympics (fourth place, behind Ali Karim, Jon and Ruth Jordan, and the Library of Congress), but I still can't take three steps anywhere in my house without tripping over a pile of mid-listers. So I took two bags of books to a used bookstore today and traded them for credit and three books.

Two of the three have some connection to crime: James Ellroy's Crime Wave, and Sophocles' Oedipus plays. Everyone knows about Oedipus Rex's sublime plotting, but what grabbed me was Oedipus' declaration in the prologue that

"Children!
"I would not have you speak through messengers
"And therefore I have come myself to hear you."

That has to be as good a job as any writer has ever done getting right to the heart of the action without, however, resorting to desperate action for the sake of action. It's a perfect balance among action, atmosphere, and suspense.  The ancients have much to teach us.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

A post about McGilloway, McMaster, and me

I have nothing to say today, so I'm going to write a newspaper column. You know the kind I mean: the ones the columnist calls "Not that it really matters but..." or "Sudden thoughts and second thoughts," unless he abandons all pretense and simply reproduces great chunks of previous columns. Here's my version of what I'd do if I were a columnist rather than merely what a reporter of pedestrian literary talent once termed "editorial support":

1) The first three words of Brian McGilloway's The Nameless Dead, available in paperback from the folks at Pan (the entire novel, not just the first three words), are a pretty damn good first three words that would make a fine title: "The cadaver dog ... " That makes me want to keep reading.

2) As a follow-up to Thomas E. Ricks' The Generals, I'm reading H.R. McMaster's Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. McMaster, a career military man and a scholar, shows a nice reporter's eye for detail in this vignette of the rivalry between Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Curtis LeMay, in 1963:

"LeMay’s bushy eyebrows, sagging jowls, and jutting jaw advertised an irascible personality. Aware of Taylor’s aversion to tobacco smoke, he hung his ever-present long dark cigar out of the left side of his mouth and intentionally puffed the thick smoke in Taylor’s direction."

3) Dana King has posted the second in his series of Bouchercon interviews, this one with me in my capacity as a moderator of panels. I've been moderating for five years now, and Dana's questions gave me the chance to think about interesting aspects of this most enjoyable pastime. I am especially pleased at his declaration that I am "among the Bouchercon moderators whose panels are worth attending even if you don’t think you have an interest in the topic." That's the highest compliment a moderator can receive. Thanks!

Dana's interview with those superb panel organizers Judy Bobalik and Jon Jordan appeared last week, and further interviews with authors, organizers, and readers, all talking about what goes into a successful crime-fiction convention, will appear weekly through December.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Bouchercon VIII: Roll, Jordans, roll

A tip of the battered baseball cap to Ruth and Jon Jordan of Crime Spree magazine, honored at Bouchercon 2009 with an Anthony Award for special services.

I got to hang with Ruth and Jon throughout the convention, and their warmth, energy and brains are contagious. They plan Bouchercons. They put out a magazine. They love crime fiction and its community, and they are full of creative ideas for bringing new readers to the genre. They are the sorts who make one want to roll up one's sleeves, get to work, and have fun doing it. I feel quite sure that no one has deserved an award more. (Visit the Rap Sheet for a complete list of Anthony Award winners and nominees.)

***

I occupy a fairly specialized niche, and one of the pleasures of conventions is the chance to break out, to meet authors and even entire genres outside my specialty of international crime fiction. In the past, this has led me to Scott Phillips, Megan Abbott, Christa Faust and, through Brian Lindenmuth, back to comics and graphic novels. In Indianapolis I met, mingled, dined, drank at the same table as or schmoozed with Victor Gischler, Kelli Stanley, Heather Graham, Theresa Schwegel and Rosemary Harris, among others whom I had known previously just by name or not at all.

Practitioners and fans of crime fiction's various subgenres sometimes spit on the ground at the mention of each other's specialties, so it was nice to see the hard-boiled and the cozy breaking bread in good fellowship in Indianapolis.

Of course, I had good fun with the usual suspects, too, notably talking P.G. Wodehouse with Ruth Dudley Edwards at a dinner outing that also included Leighton Gage, who started the Wodehouse ball rolling; Cara Black; and Stuart Neville. The latter drank a Newcastle Brown Ale.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009