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

Variation on a Swedish crime theme, plus a Bouchercon hosanna

There may be something to this Scandinavian crime fiction hoopla. I've just read Anders Roslund & Börge Hellström and Agnete Friis & Lene Kaaberbøl in preparation for a panel I'll moderate at Bouchercon 2011 next month, and readers of this blog will know that I've been impressed.

Most recently I noticed that even as they build the tension in Three Seconds, Roslund and Hellström shoot the novel through with social concerns and tell their story from multiple points of view. Each of these is characteristic of Nordic crime writing, though their sympathy for individuals crushed by a system prepared to dispose of them when they are  longer useful makes R&H distant cousins of Jean-Patrick Manchette's as well. So, even though Three Seconds does not read like much of the other Swedish crime fiction that comes immediately to mind, it shares with it certain thematic interests.

***

I'll take time between books to send Bouchercon bouquets to Ruth Jordan and Judy Bobalik, in charge of programming for this year's convention. They should be thanked on principle for their hard work on this and other cons over the years, but they've done two especially nice things this time: They got panel notifications out early, and they scheduled multiple panels on similar themes. This will increase chances that convention goers get to attend at least one session on their topics of special interest.

Thanks, ladies, and may every one of Bouchercon's  1,600 attendees buy you at least one drink.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

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