Bouchercon Day 3: Panelist takes a fall

Saturday was the seventh panel I'd moderated at a Bouchercon, the most fun I've had while dressed in respectable clothes, and it almost never happened.

The panel, called "Murder Is Everywhere," was on the docket for 10:15 a.m., and the previous panel ran over. When the moderator thanked the guests and dismissed the audience, one of his panelists plunged off the back of the stage and required brief medical attention. "Oh, great," I thought. "More delays." Happily a small bandage and a few stitches were all the falling panelist needed, and he was later able to joke about the mishap.

Once the stage was cleared of the wounded, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, Jeffrey Siger, Stanley Trollip (one half of the duo that writes as Michael Stanley), Tim Hallinan, Lisa Brackmann (filling in for Cara Black), and I took over for fifty-five minutes of illuminating and entertaining verbal high jinks that went over the allotted time by no more than a minute or two.

Bearer of appalling
animal parts

I knew the panelists well, and some of them had expressed a desire to do things a little differently, so I tried to avoid questions I'd asked in the past. One got the panel members debating whose country, Iceland, Greece, South Africa, Thailand, Mexico, or China, was worst off. Yrsa's mention of the surprising Icelandic food she had brought to this year's Bouchercon (pickled sheep's testicles) probably contributed to the fun.

Your jovial moderator, photo
courtesy of Annamaria Alfieri

Later, a launch party for Stuart Neville's Ratlines included much beer and much good chat with a group that included Ed Lin, an author new to me who has a book on the way from Soho Crime set in Taiwan.  I am an impatient reader, ready to set aside a book that does not grab me from the first word. This will not be a problem with Ratlines.

Earlier, lunch with Jennifer Jordan, Christa Faust, and Sean Chercover included thought-provoking discussion of what Dr. Faust called "sexualization of the other in porn."

Finally, thanks to the gang who organized Thursday's Snubnose Press edition of Noir at the Bar. Food-service delays forced me to miss most of the event, but I did arrive for the last two readers and the traditional closing salutation of "Fuck Peter Rozovsky!"

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Meet your CWA Dagger winners, plus a question for readers

The Crime Writers' Association in the UK presented its International Dagger, Short Story Dagger, Dagger in the Library and Debut Dagger awards tonight in London. (See information on the short-listed titles at the CWA Web site.) The CWA was also to announce its short lists for the Gold (the big prize), John Creasey (New Blood) and Ian Fleming Steel Daggers, about which more later.

Up for the International Dagger for best crime, thriller, suspense or spy novel translated into English for UK publication were:

• Karin Alvtegen, Shadow, translated by McKinley Burnett
• Arnaldur Indriðason, The Arctic Chill, translated by Bernard Scudder and Victoria Crib
• Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played with Fire, translated by Reg Keeland
• Jo Nesbø, The Redeemer, translated by Don Bartlett
• Johan Theorin, Echoes from the Dead, translated by Marlaine Delargy
• Fred Vargas, The Chalk Circle Man, translated by Siân Reynolds

Other short-listed authors whose names have popped up at Detectives Beyond Borders include Sean Chercover, Colin Cotterill, R.J. Ellory, Ariana Franklin and Peter James.

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• Colin Cotterill wins the Dagger in the Library award.
• Catherine O'Keefe wins the Debut Dagger for The Pathologist.
• A big huzzah to Short Story Dagger winner Sean Chercover, who becomes the first Noir at the Bar guest to win a Dagger.
• And finally, Fred Vargas and translator Sian Reynolds (a previous Detectives Beyond Borders interview subject) win their third International Dagger in four years for The Chalk Circle Man.

Congratulations to the winners, thanks to Ali Karim for his live Twitter updates, and, on a personal note, an expression of amazement at how quickly the presentations went. At the Oscars, the winner for sound engineering in a short foreign-language animated film would be still be thanking his wife, his producers, God, and the good people of his hometown.

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And now, your opinions, please. What was the biggest Dagger surprise? That five of the six short-listed International Dagger books were from Nordic countries? That the one non-Nordic entrant won? That French novels have won every International Dagger? That three of those have gone to a woman named Fred?

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

More awarders recognize crime beyond borders

With a hat tip to Crime Always Pays comes news of the Macavity Award nominations. CAP is excited that his fellow Irish crime author Declan Hughes is up for a best-mystery-novel Macavity. This follows on his short-listing for the best-novel Edgar Award.

I'm pleased that 3½ of the seven best-novel nominees are from beyond U.S. borders: Hughes' The Price of Blood (called The Dying Breed in the U.K.); The Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indriðason (Iceland); and The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny (Canada). The half is for Trigger City by Sean Chercover, who has divided his time between Toronto and Chicago and who blended in beautifully with the natives at the recent Noir at the Bar: TO Style in Toronto. This follows a short list for the best-novel Edgar that was 50 percent non-American authors.

Visit Mystery Readers International for a complete list of nominees for the Macavitys, which are to presented at Boucheron 2009 in October.

In other award news, Bob "I'm not Roger" Cornwell of Crimetime sends notice of nominations for the Glass Key prize, the top crime-fiction award in the Nordic countries. Crimetime announces the nominations here in a wrap-up that spins off into a look at other Nordic awards plus all kinds of neat stuff about the several languages involved as well as links to more sites on Nordic crime prizes and organizations. The article deserves an award of its own.

Read (in English) about the Glass Key nominees here, on a blog operated by the Skandinaviska Kriminalsällskapet, which awards the prize.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Noir at the Bar: Canadians and coincidences

Bouchercon 2008 in Baltimore included a panel on the private-eye novel at which Declan Hughes offered a ringing defense of the genre. Hughes' passionate theatrics are always a joy to behold, and they did at least as much as the hospitality-suite coffee to jar conventioneers out of their early-morning stupor.

I remember thinking at the time that defense implies attack. So when John McFetridge invited me to quiz Sean Chercover (left) and Howard Shrier (right) at Toronto's first Noir at the Bar, I thought about how these two writers both honor the venerable P.I. genre and keep it fresh.

They do it in some similar ways both small — Chercover's Ray Dudgeon and Shrier's Jonah Geller use computers and databases in their work — and large: both kill where their predecessors may only have felt like killing. Both also shed tears, which earlier tough P.I.s did not do.

The books share other features, too: Location (Both of Chercover's books and significant parts of Shrier's second are set in Chicago). And I don't remember Percocet previously figuring in the work of two consecutive authors on my crime-fiction reading list.

So John chose two well-matched authors. And if my reports on this Noir at the Bar are more disjointed than usual, I realize now that it's hard to take notes when one is asking the questions.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Extra time in Toronto, extra crime fiction

(From left: Sean Chercover, Peter "Deadbeard" Rozovsky, Howard Shrier)

My plane never made it off the ground, thanks to bad weather in my destination of Philadelphia, so I headed back into town to buy more crime fiction and Montreal-style bagels. Today's crime books come from England, Scotland, Ireland and the Netherlands.

On my way back to Sleuth of Baker Street, I saw a fellow passenger on the bus reading Howard Shrier's Buffalo Jump. She was reading the novel for a crime-fiction book group, and she also told me about a local university detective-fiction course that she said had been taught by Peter Robinson, among others.

"You should read this McFetridge guy, too," I said. "And this Sean Chercover guy, and this international crime-fiction blog, for which I just happen to have a business card right here."

Are crime-fiction sirens calling me to Toronto?

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Toronto: International crime-fiction capital

Always carry a camera that works. Had mine not conked out today, I'd have posted a picture of an even better subway placard than the one I wrote about yesterday. This one bore handsome blow-ups of the covers of Nemesis by Jo Nesbø, Revelation by C.J. Sansom, Kennedy's Brain by Henning Mankell and This Night's Foul Work by Fred Vargas. All four are part of Vintage Canada's World of Crime series, and the ad's tag line did my heart good: "The Best of International Crime Fiction."

Howard Shrier's novels are published under the same imprint, one reason I was proud to have him as a guest at tonight's Noir at the Bar: T.O. Style (that's not him in the photo at left) along with Sean Chercover. All of us were there at the invitation of novelist/TV writer John McFetridge, who brought along a lively but well-behaved gang of authors and other interesting folks.

I did my second stint as a Noir at the Bar moderator, after October's session with McFetridge and Declan Burke, and I am beginning to realize that I love asking questions. I'll follow with a fuller report once I get some sleep. Suffice it to say that Chercover and Shrier both honor the P.I. tradition and renew it.

Until I can borrow some pictures from my fellow attendees, this post offers a photo of me buying some international crime fiction on Sunday at Toronto's Sleuth of Baker Street. The beard is now gone. Sorry, Arlene.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Read a chunk of Chercover free: Offering lengthy book excerpts online

Read the first fifty pages of Sean Chercover's novel Trigger City free on the HarperCollins Web site.

The format is similar to those online look-inside-this-book features, but fifty pages is far more than such sites usually make available. An excerpt that size seems large enough to give readers a real feel for the book but not so large that they'll feel they won't need to buy it. I'm no businessman, but this seems like a sound marketing idea.

What are your thoughts on this matter?

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Keeping it fresh

Sean Chercover and Howard Shrier, the guest authors for "Noir at the Bar T.O. style" in Toronto on March 10, both face the challenge of keeping an old genre fresh. Each writes novels set in a big city (Toronto, principally, for Shrier, Chicago for Chercover), and each has as his protagonist a private investigator who's male, tough but reasonably sensitive, single and unhappily so.

How do these authors keep that well-worn fictional territory fresh? Yesterday I cited one way Shrier does it. Today is Chercover's turn. For one thing, he'll sharpen a traditional P.I. trait just enough to make it stand out. One such example in Big City, Bad Blood is his protagonist's willingness to use violence when necessary. Chercover's guy goes a bit farther than most. You'll recognize the example I have in mind when you read the book.

This protagonist is also comfortable with technology without compromising his toughness, slipping into geekiness, or getting obtrusive about how much research the author has done. I'd flagged one nice example of this, which I'll share with you as I soon as I can find the page it's on.

Now it's your turn. What are your favorite examples of authors' strategies for keeping a traditional genre fresh?

(Whether intentionally or otherwise, Shrier and Chercover have also given their P.I. heroes resonant names: Jonah — as in the whale guy who bounces back to life after being in a pretty tough situation — Geller in Shrier's case, Ray Dudgeon in Chercover's.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Nice poster, eh?

Generous John McFetridge, author, blogger and television writer, has invited me to Toronto to present "Noir at the Bar T.O. style."

I'll be up there Tuesday, March 10, quizzing Sean Chercover, author of Big City, Bad Blood and Trigger City, and Howard Shrier, author of Buffalo Jump and High Chicago.

Come join Sean, Howard, John and me at Scotland Yard Pub, 56 The Esplanade, one block east of Yonge Street and one block south of Front Street in one of North America's coolest crime fiction cities. The fun starts at 7:30 pm.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009