Sweetheart of the Secret Service, or Bernie Sanders comes to (my place of) work

Bernie Sanders (Photos for Detectives Beyond Borders
by Peter Rozovsky)

Bernie Sanders came to Philadelphia today, including a stop at my newspaper for a chat with the editorial board and some reporters. 

We civilians got close enough for handshakes and, if one had a long enough lens, for good photos.  We were kept from getting too close to the glass-walled room where Sanders spoke by a woman I'd suspect must be the lowest-key and most genial agent in the Secret Service. 

"Where is the senator going next?" I asked.

"Need-to-know basis," she replied, but she smiled when she said it. "They only told me I was coming here this morning."

Granted, this was not the most dangerous situation in which a presidential candidate is likely to find himself. Still, the wide-shouldered, black-suited,  ultra-tense Secret Service man with a earphone stuck in his ear is such a reliable pop culture joke that the easy atmosphere surprised me. Even the black suits, the ones who stayed alert at all times and kept their eyes on the elevators and only occasionally wandered into the photos I was trying to line up seemed to be turned to 5 or 6, tops, on the tension meter.  So, props to the Secret Service for doing its job well.

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

Unlike Barack Obama eight years ago, Sanders did not walk through the newsroom. I was off  the day Obama dropped in, but everyone who was there reported that Obama joked about being shocked by the age of our computers, by one account giving the publisher a friendly chuck on the arm as he did so. And maybe that's why we kept Sanders away from our computers.

© Peter Rozovsky 2016

Detectives Beyond Borders puts the comics in the Philadelphia Inquirer

The Black Hood. (Courtesy of Dark Circle Comics)

My article on Duane Swierczynski's Black Hood comic appears in Thursday's Philadelphia Inquirer  (along with one of my photos). See what Duane has to say, along with comments from his editor, Alex Segura of Dark Circle comics; and props to artist Michael Gaydos and colorist Kelly Fitzpatrick.

Duane Swierczynski. Photo
by your humble blogkeeper.

"David Goodis was a huge inspiration," Swierczynski says. "His doomed characters roam the dark Philly streets after a major fall from grace. That's pretty much what happens to Greg Hettinger, the man under the hood."

Read the full article.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

My first book cover as a photographer!

Stark House Press, that terrific publisher of crime classics and crime originals, has a new mass-market crime line called Black Gat Books. The imprint's first three offerings include work by suck authors and photographers as Harry Whittington, Leigh Brackett, Charlie Stella, and me.

Yep, I shot the cover for Black Gat's edition of Stella's novel Eddie's World, and I could not be more chuffed. Stella is one of my favorite crime writers, a hell of a guy, a loyal family man and sports fan, and a passionate, entertaining social commentator whose only flaw is that he wouldn't know a good bagel if it bit him on his Buffalo Bills-loving rear end. Here's what I wrote about Stella in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

"Much of a crime novel's texture comes from the bits between the main action, and no one writes those bits better than New Jersey's Charlie Stella. If you like Elmore Leonard, you'll love this guy and his funny, unsparing yet sympathetic looks at mid-, high-, and low-level mobsters, hangers-on, and cops."

Judge the book by its cover, or the cover by its book. In this case, it really is all good.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

Pulp in the paper: I review Day Keene in the Philadelphia Inquirer

My review of The Case of the Bearded Bride and Other Stories: Day Keene in the Detective Pulps, Vol. #4 (Ramble House) appears in today's Philadelphia Inquirer.

The book is a collection of stories that originally appeared in pulp magazines covering two periods in the prolific Keene's career: 1931-35 and 1942-1950. 

The first group, written under Keene's real name, Gunnard Hjerstedt (spellings of both names vary by source), shows affinities with the wisecracking, fast-talking detective tales that had become popular in the late 1920s, such as Frederick Nebel's long-running Kennedy and MacBride tales. The later stories, written as John Corbett, move in darker territory that may evoke Cornell Woolrich and David Goodis.

That facility in widely different styles will likely be the most fascinating aspect of the volume for crime readers in today's era of specialization: Keene could write anything for a market that demanded everything. He was an earlyish representative of a crime fiction tradition whose last examples include Donald Westlake and Lawrence Block.

That's one reason this review, though a bit out of my territory, was among the most fun I've written. A tip of the battered old fedora to the editor who asked me to write it.

Here, again, is the review, And here are the Keene entries at Gold Medal Corner and the Thrilling Detective Web Site. Not only did the man write everything, he wrote lots of it and for a long time.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Eight crime writers in the Philadelphia Inquirer

My article on "Eight crime writers worth tracking down" appears in Saturday's Philadelphia Inquirer. This one was close to my heart, a chance to big-up some of my favorite crime writers and their publishers, to put their names before a wider public, and to help out eight authors who suffer the handicap, for a crime writer, of not being from Sweden or Norway.

Readers of Detectives Beyond Borders know them already, but if you're joining us for the first time, the Big Eight are, in alphabetical order:

Declan Burke. Allan Guthrie. Vicki Hendricks. John McFetridge. Adrian McKinty. Scott Phillips. Giorgio Scerbanenco. Charlie Stella.

I recommend all eight as the perfect stocking stuffer. Now, get reading.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Charlie Stella, Christy Mathewson, and me

One way I keep sane amid my current wave of side projects is to read for work during the day, for pleasure at night. That way I do what needs doing, and I send myself to sleep on a wave of good thoughts, work the farthest thing from my mind.

My most recent pleasure reading was Charlie Stella's Rough Riders, and man, this guy keeps getting better and better. He sets this novel, his eighth, in and around Minot, North Dakota, where he went to college. A killer from his 2001 book Eddie’s World has entered the federal Witness Protection Program and wound up in North Dakota, working a sting for the feds and also a side project of his own: a murder for hire in return for a share of a heroin stash into which a crooked Air Force physician has stumbled by accident. But a New York detective wants the killer also and tails him across the country to get him.

The plot, needless to say, is complex but not obtrusively so. Nor is Stella condescending in the least toward the characters and the landscape so different from those of his previous books. And he handles the clash between local cops and the FBI, a feature of approximately every American police novel or television show of the last twenty years, with great understatement and, hence, believability.

The jokes are fewer than in Stella’s previous books but the conversational byplay is just as bracing. And that tells me that Stella knows how to write believable human interaction and not just jokes.

Here are my previous posts about Stella (click the link, then scroll down), whom I recently proclaimed my favorite American crime writer.

And here, for the first time before the crime reading public, is the first of those side projects I keep going on about: my piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer about a century-old baseball book by that remarkable character (and great player) Christy Mathewson that's as fresh as today’s headlines.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

I walk in the footsteps of giants

My newspaper's new newsroom occupies a floor of Philadelphia's old Strawbridge's department store. It's a spooky feeling to walk to my desk through a corridor identical to the one where, one floor below, I had once pawed piles of socks, T-shirts, and boxer shorts.

The Beaux-Arts-style building dates to 1931 and was the second store the Strawbridge & Clothier company built at the site. Before that, Thomas Jefferson had his office here when he was secretary of state, across the street and a block up from where he had earlier written the Declaration of Independence (with some judicious copy-editing help).

But neither Jefferson nor his doubtless stream of important visitors captures my imagination as immediately as does another figure who once worked here and who is even more intimately associated with Philadelphia.

(That's an introduction to my new newsroom. Read and see my farewell to my old one.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Bye, Bye Broad Street, or my newspaper's moving experience

Tonight my newspaper moves from the building it owned and occupied, and that has borne its name, for eighty-seven years to new, rented quarters.

(R2D2 lends a hand to the
Philadelphia Inquirer's move from
400 North Broad Street to 801
Market Street. All photos
by your  humble blogkeeper)

Movers have been at work for weeks, so hard at work that Friday night they tried to cart away the possessions of one of my colleagues while he was still trying to lay out the newspaper.

Twenty-two years for me, eighty-seven years for my paper. That's a lot of stories, folks, and if the mood strikes me, I'll tell you one or two of those stories as the Inquirer and I settle into our new professional homes. Don't worry; I'm a copy editor, so my stories will duplicate none of those in the official accounts. 

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Andrea Camilleri in my newspaper

My review of The Potter's Field, thirteenth of Andrea Camilleri's Sicilian crime novels about Police Inspector Salvo Montalbano and the first in which Salvo goes to bed with Ingrid, appears in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer.

“Typically for a Montalbano novel,” I write, “the investigation becomes one of mob connections, heated emotions, and family secrets. But crime, investigation, and solution are the least of the Montalbano novels. Every word is a commentary, sometimes wry, sometimes righteously angry, sometimes touching, on the protagonist’s political, social, professional, and personal worlds. To choose just one typical example, `Ingrid’s husband was a known ne’er-do-well, so it was only logical that he should turn to politics.'”

Read the full review, and learn how to impress your server the next time you visit an Italian restaurant.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

The new (Benjamin) Black in my newspaper

My review of A Death in Summer, by John Banville writing as Benjamin Black, appears in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer:

"John Banville distinguishes between the artistic pleasure he derives from the literary novels he writes under his own name and the craftsman’s pleasure he gets from the crime fiction he writes as Benjamin Black. This makes it fair to ask a craftsman’s questions of the Black books: How well do the parts fit together? How smoothly does Black execute them? Are they beautiful? Do they work? Does the finished product perform the functions essential to an object of its kind?"

Read the complete review for all the answers.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Nesbø in my newspaper

My review of Jo Nesbø's The Snowman appears in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer. I had a bit of fun writing this one, and the headline writer picked up the fun rather nicely.

Here's what Nesbø had to say about that fun topic in my interview with him:

There's a big wave of Nordic crime fiction. Do you consider yourself part of that?

I am part of that whether I consider myself part of it or not because it's sort of a commercial label. It doesn't necessarily have much to do with Scandinavian writers having the same style. When I've been asked what I think are the similarities between Scandinavian authors, I would say that they were either from Denmark, Norway or Sweden.

I think my style is probably closer to some of the American writers — Bukowski, Hemingway — than to other Scandinavian writers. Then again, I write from Oslo, so the atmosphere would probably be similar to Stieg Larsson or Henning Mankell.

For me, my inspiration doesn't come mainly from Scandinavian crime writers. It comes from Scandinavian literature, like Knut Hamsun, Henrik Ibsen, lots of other Norwegian and Danish and Swedish writers.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Read a review, win a book

My review of Gerard O'Donovan's novel The Priest appears in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer, and it was a tough one to write.

An aspect or two of the book drove me nuts, and this distressed me for two reasons: I don't like knocking books, and I feared that my quibbles might seem like idiosyncratic nit-picking.

But I saw my editor preparing his bamboo shoots and thumb screws, so I wrote the review, and I'm glad I did. My complaints only brought into sharper relief the novel's most interesting aspects: It's about a serial attacker/killer, but it does not get inside the attacker/killer's head. Nor, despite the horrific injuries the attacker inflicts, does O'Donovan dwell on them in loving detail.

***

A reader from the state of Fatti maschii, parole femine knew that Pope John Paul II's visit to Dublin forms part of the backstory to The Priest. Her womanly words win her a copy of the novel. Congratulations.

***

My editor excised from the review one damned I'd used as an intensifier. What would he have made of this story?

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Declan Hughes in the news

My review of Declan Hughes' fifth Ed Loy novel, City of Lost Girls, appears in today's Philadelphia Inquirer.

Here's part of what I had to say about this bracing Dublin/Los Angeles P.I. story:

"In his fifth novel featuring Dublin private investigator Ed Loy, Declan Hughes:

• "Sets major parts of the story in Los Angeles, complete with breathtaking and melancholy scenery.

• "Gets inside a serial killer's head.

• "Sends great torrents of yearningly romantic prose tumbling onto the page.

• "Offers up any number of wisecracks and world-weary observations.

"Crime writers have done all that for years, so how does Hughes keep it fresh?

"By the sheer exuberance of his prose, including some gleeful stomping on Bono's reputation.

"By the angry topicality of his observations ... And mostly by the high respect he has for mystery."

Read my Inquirer review of Hughes' The Price of Blood and a whole lot about Hughes, including the fourth Loy novel, All the Dead Voices, right here at Detectives Beyond Borders.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Wake Up Dead reviewed in Philadelphia Inquirer

My review of Roger Smith's Wake Up Dead appears in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer.

"The thriller," I write, "the second novel from its South African author, is chock-full of types from those movies. An adventurer who comes home looking for what’s his. A woman in trouble and living by her wits. A crook who tries, too late, to make good. A hint of redemption. Even, after a fashion, a doomed story of obsessive love.

"Only the scene is not New York, San Francisco, or some nameless Midwestern town; it’s violent, deeply divided Cape Town, mostly the deadly slums known as the Flats. The setting recaptures all the blood and menace that time and nostalgia have effaced from Raymond Chandler’s mean streets — and redoubles them."

I also sneak in a plug for two more of my favorite crime authors, list a few more names from South Africa's flourishing crime fiction scene, and point the way to a good source for even more information. Read the complete review here after 3 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time and, in the future, on a good database near you.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Fred Vargas in the newspaper

My review of Fred Vargas' The Chalk Circle Man appears here.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Matt Rees in the Philadelphia Inquirer

My review of Matt Beynon Rees' third Omar Youssef mystery, The Samaritan's Secret, appears in today's Philadelphia Inquirer.

The book mines an ancient but little-known corner of history for its mystery, and it involves both secrets and some not so good Samaritans. Read the Detectives Beyond Borders interview with Matt Rees here.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Declan Hughes in the Philadelphia Inquirer

My review of Declan Hughes' third novel about Dublin P.I. Ed Loy, The Price of Blood (The Dying Breed in the U.K.), appears in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer:

"A fist to the jaw carries with it an intimacy that a bullet to the gut just can't match."

That's how the review begins. Read the rest on the Inquirer's Web site, or pick up the paper at a newsstand near you.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Technorati tags:
Declan Hughes\
Irish crime fiction

Adrian Hyland in the Philadelphia Inquirer

My review of Adrian Hyland's novel Moonlight Downs (a.k.a. Diamond Dove) appears in today's Philadelphia Inquirer. Click here to read the online version.

A heads-up: I liked the book.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Technorati tags:
Adrian Hyland
Australian crime fiction

Synergy and Swedes

Proof that print and blogging can co-exist, my article about four Swedish crime novelists appears in today's Philadelphia Inquirer.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

Technorati tags:
Swedish Crime Fiction
Scandinavian Crime Fiction