Off the Cuff in Canada, with Canadians

Over at Dietrich Kalteis' Off the Cuff, talented crime writers, organizers, and editors from Canada talk about crime writing in that country, their discussion illustrated by a Canadian who lives in this country.

The participants are Jacques Filippi, Sam Wiebe, and John McFetridge, and the illustrator (photographer, really) is your humble blogkeeper, with the noirish shot reproduced above right

Talk turns to Canadian identity in crime fiction, and both Jacques and John (the latter of whose gifts include a flair for naming minor characters) suggest that Canadian crime writers can best get themselves noticed by writing novels that could be set nowhere but Canada. 

But Canada's immensely long border with the United States, and the cultural ties between the two countries, are part of Canada's uniqueness. That may be why a fair amount of Canadian crime fiction, including John's, Dietrich's, and Howard Shrier's, straddles the border and embraces the geographically equivocal position. That, I think, is part of that makes their writing special.

Elsewhere in the discussion, Jacques muses on clichés, and I hope he won't mind if I quote him at length:

"Clichés are usually bad, but hockey, poutine, maple syrup, the Québécois swear words and bad driving; our politeness; our bilingualism (when in fact we are bilinguals in only 2 provinces and part of a third one out of 10), etcetera, are all aspects of who we are. If some of these Canadian attributes end up in your story, should you edit them out to avoid clichés? I don’t think so if it’s not just decorative to your story. I don’t think Louise Penny would have the same success if Three Pines was a village in North Dakota, Wyoming, or any other states for that matter. Penny inserts some of the Québécois clichés in her novels, but they are clichés only to those who know about the Québécois way of life in small villages. To Penny’s readers, the so-called clichés are Québécois and Canadian ‘flavours’."

Finally, as I wrote in a comment to their post, Canada is by reputation polite, progressive, and civilized, and its crime writing has not had the international impact deserves. Sweden, on the other hand, is by reputation, polite, progressive, and civilized, and we all know what its crime writers have done.  Why is this?

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

More shots in the dark, and a round-up of the usual crime suspects at Off the Cuff

(All photos by your humble blogkeeper)

Over at Off the Cuff, Dietrich Kalteis and Martin J. Frankson talk about crime fiction influences. They get to the usual suspects (Chandler, Hammett, and so on), but not before the discussion takes an interesting detour or two. Their exhange takes up a question I asked a while back in a post called "End of story, or what ever happened to plot?"  Read theirs, read mine, and discuss.

Dietrich again illustrates the post with one of my noir photographs (above/right), this one from especially close to home. And here's another recent shot of mine, not noir, but weird all the same, I think:

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

Westlake, Kalteis, Frankson, Morganti and me, plus a question for readers

Dietrich Kalteis and Martin J, Frankson are back with another Off the Cuff discussion, this time with Canadian novelist Charlotte Morganti, hashing out a matter dear to my heart: setting as character in crime fiction. Once again, Dietrich illustrates the discussion with one of my nourish photos (left), whose setting is right here in South Philadelphia.

Elsewhere, here's Donald Westlake, interviewed by Al Nussbaum in 1974, from the Westlake nonfiction collection The Getaway Car:

"I have felt for some time, with growing conviction. that there weren't any stories around to be written. I haven't been able to do a Richard Stark novel in a year and a half, the comedy caper is dead, story lines are drying up like African cattle.  Storylines reflect, refer to and attempt to deal with their period of history, and that's why they become old and obsolete and used up. Another reason is that the same story gets done and done and done and done, and suddenly one day nobody wants to read or hear that story again."

1974 marked the beginning of Westlake's 23-year hiatus from the Parker novels he wrote under the name Richard Stark. It was also the year of Jimmy the Kid, the worst of his comic caper Dortmunder books, Westlake's writing of which began to grow more sporadic around the same time. Instead, he concentrated on standalone novels for the next few years, though he eventually returned to both Parker and Dortmunder. So 1974 obviously marked a kind of crisis for Westlake. Now here's your question: Was Westlake's crisis merely personally, or was 1974 indeed a crisis year for crime fiction? Was his gloomy pronouncement accurate?

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

More pics, plus a couple of novelists sitting around talking

All photos by Peter Rozovsky

Those two good guys, Dietrich Kalteis and Belfast's own Martin J. Frankson, talk about bad guys in the 13th installment of  Kalteis' Off the Cuff discussions. Once again, Dietrich illustrates the noirish palaver with a photo by your formerly humble blogkeeper photographer, shot right here in Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago (right). 

Says Kalteis: "I love dialogue and there’s nothing better than some foulmouthed bad guy to lend color to the page."

Kalteis knows something about writing bad guys. Here's part of what I wrote last year about his novel Ride the Lightning:

"What I like best is that it sustains a breakneck pace without sacrificing character to action, or action to character. Kalteis made me care about his cast of lowlifes, screw-ups, and marginals without stopping the action too often for endearing moments of humanity or self-conscious wit. What these characters show of themselves, they show in the act of doing what they do."

Here are all the Off the Cuffs, at http://dietrichkalteis.blogspot.ca/. Here, too, are some more recent photos.

 © Peter Rozovsky 2014

Detectives Beyond Borders goes back Off the Cuff, with pictures

I'm up once again at Dietrich Kalteis' Off the Cuff, one of my noirish photos illustrating Dietrich's discussion with Martin J. Frankson and their guest, author-filmmaker Glynis Whiting, of how writers do their thing.

Above and right is the photo in question, and here (at left I think) is one of Dietrich that I took at Bouchercon 2014 in Long Beach. The rest are a few shots from Southern California, with signs of habitation by humans and earlier creatures. All photo by Peter Rozovsky, your humble blogkeeper.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Detectives Beyond Borders around the world, in the news, and on the Web

I am pleased to have been quoted at length in the Irish Examiner's review of Akashic Books' upcoming Belfast Noir volume of  crime stories. The piece appears under the entirely appropriate headline "`Belfast Noir': Move over Scandinavia, the Irish are the real thrillers ...," and it calls me "an international authority on crime-writing, whose blog ‘Detectives Beyond Borders’ has for many years been the last word on all things noir." Grateful thanks to my Irish peeps, and don't go accusing them of committing blarney. 

Stuart Neville, author
and member of my
Belfast Noir panel.
Photos by your formerly
humble blogkeeper.

I'll discuss Belfast Noir next week at Bouchercon in Long Beach. The panel is called "Belfast Noir: Stories of Mayhem and Murder from Northern Ireland," and it happens at 11:30 a.m., Friday, Nov. 14. I'm not saying I'll buy a pint of Guinness for everyone who shows up, but there's only one way for you to find out.

Paul Charles, also part 
of the Belfast Noir panel
 at Bouchercon.

Over at Dietrich Kalteis' Off the Cuff, which has published a number of my noir photos, I put down my camera to join Dietrich and co-host Martin Frankson for a chat about crime-fiction conferences. Dietrich and Martin talk a bit about how how authors might approach conventions from a business point of view. I talk fun, including a link to the story of the wandering bridesmaids of Bouchercon 2009.

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I took the two author photos at Noircon 2014, the most fun one can have without leaving Philadelphia. Here are two more photos, from the event's concluding program at Port Richmond Books, just before the pierogi-fueled piss-up.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Off the Cuff on names, plus why the hell am I flying to Bouchercon (when I could go by train)?

(Trees early in the morning in Fullerton, Calif., December 2013.
Photo by Peter Rozovsky, your humble blogkeeper)

I've been reading Max Allan Collins' Quarry novels, which makes Dietrich Kalteis and Martin J. Frankson's latest Off the Cuff post especially timely: It's about character names in crime fiction. "For example," writes Frankson:

"is it credible to have a twenty-year-old Edith or Beryl or Victor? It’s possible, but those names may be unknown in certain demographics. Similarly, how many fifty-year-olds are named Kanye or Jadyn? If one really wants to name a character as such, a bit of backstory behind the mismatching name-to-age might be interesting in the story."

I would add any name ending in -ee to that latter group, along with Jen, and all the world's non-Irish Brendans.

The photo, reproduced above, with which Dietrich illustrates the discussion, is also timely. I've been posting about Bouchercon 2014, which takes place next month in Long Beach, Calif., about 25 miles west and south of Fullerton, where I took that photo of palm trees at sunrise last year.

I took the photo from my compartment in the Southwest Chief, at the end of a glorious two-day train ride from Chicago to Los Angeles. So why, given the chance to repeat the trip for Bouchercon, am I willingly subjecting myself to the misery that is American commercial air travel?

(See all Off the Cuff posts.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Three authors in a dark and friendly place

(Photos by Peter Rozovsky, your humble blog keeper)

Once again, Dietrich Kalteis and Martin Frankson discuss aspects of crime writing at Kalteis' Off the Cuff site, this time with fellow author  Robin Spano as a guest. Once again, Kalteis illustrates the discussion with one of my noir photos (above).

This discussion  touches on a number of issues that have come up here at Detectives Beyond Borders, noticeably that off setting a crime story in a historical period other than one's own. So head on over, have a seat at the Friendly Lounge, and join the discussion.

And here are a few more photos.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Off the Cuff and on the road: Words and a picture

("We Drive By Night," Eastern Shore of Maryland.
Photo by your humble blogkeeper, Peter Rozovsky)

Dietrich Kalteis discusses setting in his current Off the Cuff discussion, including some comments pertinent to his own novel Ride the Lightning, and once again, he illustrates the discussion with one of my noir photos.You can see the photo above; here's Dietrich:

"For me, Vancouver creates an interesting backdrop, partially because it hasn’t been overused. It’s also a busy seaport and tucked up against the US border, just begging for some crime fiction. Using where you live as a story’s setting makes it both easier for the writer and more convincing to the reader. When I wrote Ride the Lightning I also chose Vancouver because of the unusually high number of grow-ops here which served the story."

That tallied nicely with my remark when I wrote about the book that

"This novel, appropriately for a book under consideration at Detectives Beyond Borders, crosses the U.S.-Canada border, from Seattle to Vancouver, where most of the action happens. So Karl, the bounty hunter who loses his job and has to shift from the U.S. to Canada, muses that he expects less violence as compensation for his reduced income. (Karl states this in a more entertaining fashion, but this was an uncorrected galley, so no quotations allowed.)"

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

An off-kilter noir photo at Off the Cuff

(Photograph by Peter Rozovsky,
your humble blogkeeper)

Once again Dietrich Kalteis and friends sit for a chat among authors at Kalteis'  Off the Cuff site, this time to talk about character, dialogue, and dialect. Here's a sample of the discussion:

"Back to the accent/dialect question: you can do more with it - with perhaps more reader interest - than simply using a typical vocabulary or syntax of a place. You can use dialect-like giveaways and ‘verbal tics’ to reveal many aspects of character, while also making your characters separate and distinct from one another."

Read the complete discussion at Dietrich's place under the heading Off the Cuff 5.

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Kalteis demonstrates once again that the right side of his brain works as well as the left. He's a novelist, he also has an eye for photography, and he again illustrates Off the Cuff with one of my noir photo (left).  Here are the first two noir shots of mine that he used (click the link, then scroll down)  and, if you're on Facebook, here are all my noir shots.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Off the Cuff and on the clock: What makes a noir image noir?

(Clock in Reading Terminal Market. Photo by your humble blogkeeper):

Dietrich Kalteis once again uses one of my noir photographs to illustrate his Off the Cuff conversation with fellow novelist Martin J. Frankson. The photo above is the one he chose, so I thought I'd ask you, dear readers, what makes a noir image noir? Here's why I stuck this one in my noir photos folder on Facebook:

1. It looks good.
2. It's black and white.
3. The suggestion of a ticking clock conveys a hint of anxiety.
4. The cropping of the image enhances feelings of tension and suspense, in part by focusing on just the two numbers. What is going to happen in those five minutes, of which more than one and a half have already elapsed?
5. The image of a clock face is highly familiar but, I hope, still packs a visual punch. That means it carries a rich set of associations.

Your job, readers, is to choose an image that strikes you as noirish and to think about why it does and post your thoughts here. The image can be from a photo, a book cover, a newspaper, online, anywhere. (The real-life suspense behind this photo was whether I would make it to work on time.  I did.)

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Kalteis' chat with Frankson covers character and originality and includes the following:

"(W)hat makes a book original includes:

"Characters with lifestyles and attitudes that have been rarely portrayed before. The alcoholic, divorced middle-aged male detective with a drinking problem was once the most popular character in the genre. It’s still popular, but readers wanted fresh detectives with fresh lifestyles to reflect the times we live in. Along came young female detectives which was a breath of fresh air, but writers now need to look at society and see its diversity in the round. There are very few gay or non-white detectives in modern day crime literature I’ve noticed. I say ‘few’ as opposed to none at all. They do exist, but you have to go looking for them."

Read the entire conversation at Off the Cuff, http://dietrichkalteis.blogspot.ca/2014/08/off-cuff-4.html

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Discussion by Kalteis and Frankson, photo by Detectives Beyond Borders

(Photo by your humble blogkeeper, Porto, Portugal, 2011)

Dietrich Kalteis, a novelist whose debut I reviewed earlier this year, also has a penchant for verbal mano-a-mano and an eye for atmospheric scenes, and he has chosen to illustrate some of the former with some of the latter. His newish Off the Cuff site pits Kalteis and fellow author Martin J. Frankson in a series of discussions that include the kinds of questions I like to ask and, in its current edition, some thoughts on crime-novel titles that I suspect you will enjoy reading. And now Kalteis, whose Facebook feed regularly includes stunning photography, plans to illustrate his posts with my noirish photos. The current Off the Cuff discussion unfolds under a photo I shot in Porto in 2011 (above/right). So feast your eyes and feed your head.

And read what I had to say about Kalteis' Ride the Lightning: 

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I read Dietrich Kalteis' debut novel, Ride The Lightning, as an uncorrected galley, so no quotations allowed. But trust me: The book is pretty good.

What I like best is that it sustains a breakneck pace without sacrificing character to action, or action to character. Kalteis made me care about his cast of lowlifes, screw-ups, and marginals without stopping the action too often for endearing moments of humanity or self-conscious wit. What these characters show of themselves, they show in the act of doing what they do. 

What they do is grow, develop, and sell drugs; rip each other off; try to stop each other from growing, developing, and selling drugs; and seek revenge. Even the worst of the main characters is good enough at what he does that he earns a reader's respect. He gets kicked around and beaten up and gets his leg caught in an animal trap, all of which he deserves, and his very resilience is admirable. I also like Kalteis' understated nude-beach scenes.

This novel, appropriately for a book under consideration at Detectives Beyond Borders, crosses the U.S.-Canada border, from Seattle to Vancouver, where most of the action happens. So Karl, the bounty hunter who loses his job and has to shift from the U.S. to Canada, muses that he expects less violence as compensation for his reduced income. (Karl states this in a more entertaining fashion, but this was an uncorrected galley, so no quotations allowed.)

I also like characters' references to Medicine Hat, Alberta, as "the Hat," as well as the mostly downmarket setting, not so much because I got to go slumming, but as a reminder that peaceful, low-key Canada has its lowlifes, too. 

© Peter Rozovsky 2014