Howard Engel's Memory Book, or What happens when a writer loses his ability to read?

(The graphically brilliant
and thematically relevant cover
of the Canadian edition of
Memory Book)

The Crime Writers of Canada announced the winners of the Arthur Ellis Awards this week, an honor my landsman Howard Shrier has won twice in the past. This year's awards inaugurated a Grand Master category, and the first winner is the author of what must be one of the most unusual crime novels ever published. In honor of the award here's a post I put up some years ago about Memory Book, by grandmaster Howard Engel.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

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This was the first crime novel I can remember that comes with an afterword by a neurologist. That neurologist, Oliver Sacks, writes of his acquaintance with Howard Engel, which came about because of Engel's alexia sine agraphia, a condition in which the sufferer loses the ability to read but not to write -- a difficult affliction to bear for a novelist.

Sacks tells us about some of the surprising ways Engel overcame this condition and resumed his writing career. The first product of this resumption was Memory Book, the eleventh novel featuring private eye Benny Cooperman, and the first in which Benny must, like his creator, overcome alexia sine agraphia. (Engel's condition was the result of a mild stroke. Cooperman's was the result of -- but you'll have to read the book to find out.)

Confined to a rehabilitation hospital as he is, Cooperman must, like Alan Grant in Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time, solve a mystery from his sick bed. Cooperman is alive to the world of the hospital, to the personalities of his fellow patients, his nurses and his doctors.

The mystery Cooperman must solve is how he wound up in the condition in which he finds himself. This leads him back into the case that had brought him from his home town of Grantham, Ontario, to Toronto, where he was hospitalized. He must solve these dual mysteries as he struggles with neurological conditions that leave him constantly tired and unable to retain names and words. His discoveries of his own slowly returning cognitive abilities as he chases down the people who put him where he is add an intriguing dimension highly unusual in crime novels to say the least. Handicapped detectives have been around for almost a hundred years, if not longer, but I don't know of any others who have shared an affliction with their creator.

I also found myself wondering if Engel's cognitive struggles accounted for my one quibble with the novel's style. In at least two places, long stretches of dialogue are uninterrupted by reaction on Cooperman's part. In at least one of these, the lack of reaction was obtrusive. Is this a quirk of Engel's style unrelated to his condition? I'll tell you after I've read more of his books.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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Howard Engel
Canadian crime fiction

A crime writer whose name is a soft drink, and an antipodean award

While I travel across the country, interesting things happen in crime fiction around the world:

If you should happen to be in Belfast next Thursday, December 12, No Alibis bookshop will present

INTERNATIONAL CRIME FICTION RESEARCH 

State, Crime and Investigation in Kondor Vilmos’ Crime Fiction 

Dr Kálai Sándor, University Debrecen. Introduction by Dr Andrew Pepper, School of English, QUB h, 5-7. University Square, House 11, Room 101 Refreshments provided.

I wonder what Dr. Pepper's students call him. And I suspect that Dr. Andrew Pepper is also crime novelist Andrew Pepper.

*

Down in the Antipodes, Paul Thomas has won the Ngaio Marsh Award for his novel Death on Demand.  I'd read Thomas' Guerrilla Season years ago and found the humor annoyingly wacky and obtrusive. But Thomas has chops, and I said back then that

" ... slowly I began to realize that damn, this man knows how to tell a story. I’ll be reading more of this guy and, without knowing anything about his body of work, I’d bet Paul Thomas could write a first-rate, not necessarily comic thriller if he set his mind to it."

Asked recently to name his favorite hero and favorite villain from crime fiction, Thomas chose Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe and, for the bad guy, P.G. Wodehouse's Roderick Spode, leader of the Black Shorts. I note Thomas' predilection for characters whose creators attended Dulwich College.  And I think the time has arrived for me to read more of this guy.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

McKinty makes the Ned Kelly shortlist

Kelly's Horse, by Sidney Nolan

Detectives Beyond Borders friend Adrian McKinty is a finalist for what may be the world's only literary award named for a man who wore a metal trash can over his head. The prize is the Ned Kelly Award for best novel, Australia's highest honor for crime fiction, and the shortlistee is Adrian McKinty, for I Hear the Sirens in the Streets.

Here's what Detectives Beyond Borders said about McKinty's novel, the follow-up to his The Cold Cold Ground:

"Like its predecessor, Sirens is a serious portrait of one man's progress through troubled times (early-1980s Belfast and Carrickfergus, the author's home town). Like The Cold Cold Ground, it feels organic. Every joke, every grim encounter, or musing on the crappy Irish weather, or setback or advance in the police investigation contains the seeds of the whole. And it's a hell of a whole; these books are as smart and fun and harrowing as crime fiction gets."

McKinty's competition includes Blackwattle Creek by Geoffrey McGeachin, whose name has come up here a time or two.

The awards will be presented by the Australian Crime Writers Association Sept. 7 as part of the Brisbane Writers' Festival.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

McKinty's stock rises; analysts say buy

The Wall Street Journal profiles Detectives Beyond Borders favorite Adrian McKinty on the occasion of the U.S. release of I Hear the Sirens in the Street, a novel as good at its title.

The article also invokes McKinty's "Dead" trilogy: Dead I Well May Be, The Dead Yard, and The Bloomsday Dead, the books that got me reading McKinty.

Not many newspapers devote space to crime fiction these days, so props to the folks at the Wall Street Journal. Something is happening, and you know what it is, Mr. Dow-Jones.

*

McKinty's novel The Cold Cold Ground recently won a 2013 Spinetingler Award for best novel. That's a worthy feat; those Spinetingler folks and the people who follow them are some of the sharper and more discerning minds in the crime community. And hey, we Spinetingler winners have to stick together.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Getting ready for the Edgars

The Detectives Beyond Borders wardrobe department is busy kitting me out for Thursday's Edgar Awards dinner at the Grand Hyatt in New York, hosted and presented by the Mystery Writers of America.

Overseas nominees (several from Ireland, naturally) are up for awards in several categories: Alan Glynn, for best paperback original (the excellent Bloodland); Declan Burke and John Connolly for best critical/biographical book (Books to Die For); and Jane Casey's The Reckoning, for the Mary Higgins Clark award. Teresa Solana (Spain) is up for best short story with "Still Life No. 41."  Malla Nunn's Blessed are the Dead (South Africa) is on the shortlist for best paperback original.

Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China by Paul French is up for best fact crime book. (See French in conversation with Parker Bilal and Adrian McKinty at the Adelaide Writers' Festival.)

Read my reports on the 2012 Edgars. See a complete list of the 2013 Edgar nominees.

(This just in: The wardrobe committee has made its decision. We're going with the charcoal gray suit, the white shirt, and a silk tie with a splash of purple.)

*

Meanwhile, Open Road is celebrating the Edgars with contests, news, and low-priced e-book versions of selected past winners.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Edgar is Irish, or DBB friend lands a nice nomination

Books to Die For: The World's Greatest Mystery Writers on the World's Greatest Mystery Novels, edited by John Connolly and Detectives Beyond Borders friend Declan Burke, has been nominated for a 2013 Edgar Award in the best critical/biographical category.

The Edgars will be presented May 2 in New York. Congratulations to Burke and Connolly for a bit of payoff on their stupendous effort, and good luck.

*

Alan Glynn's Bloodland is up for best paperback original novel, Glynn joining Burke and Connolly as Irish nominees for this year's Edgars. Bloodland has its finger on the pulse of contemporary paranoia and manipulation like no other crime novel I can remember, not least in its invocation of 21st-century Orwellianisms such as "narrative," "brand," and "to the next level."

*

Here's Glynn on  the Golden Age of paranoia.   Here are my previous posts about Bloodland. And here's a list of nominees in all categories, from the Edgars Web site.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Awards down under

The weather is heating up in the antipodes, and so is the crime-fiction awards scene.

From Craig Sisterson comes word that Neil Cross (right) has won the Ngaio Marsh Award for best New Zealand crime novel for Luther: The Calling.

Across the Tasman Sea in Melbourne, Australia, Sisters in Crime presented the Davitt Awards for crime fiction written by women. The awards honor the memory of Ellen Davitt, who wrote Australia's first known mystery novel in 1865, and the 2012 winners include Sulari Gentill, adult fiction, for her novel A Decline in Prophets. Find a complete list of winners at the Sisters in Crime Web site.

Finally, Australia's Ned Kelly Awards honored Pig Boy by J.C. Burke (best fiction), The Cartographer by Peter Twohig (best first fiction), Sins of the Father by Eamonn Duff (best true crime), A.J. Clifford "Summer of the Seventeenth Poll (S.D. Harvey Short Story Award).

Well done, mate, to all the winners and presenters.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Andrea Camilleri and Stephen Sartarelli win the CWA International Dagger

Andrea Camilleri and Stephen Sartarelli have won the 2012 CWA International Dagger for translated crime fiction for Sartarelli's translation of Camilleri's novel The Potter's Field. Here's part of what I wrote about the book last year:

“Typically for a Montalbano novel, 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.'”

Camilleri becomes the first non-French non-Swedish author to win the award, following Fred Vargas, Fred Vargas, Dominique Manotti, Fred Vargas, Johan Theorin, and Anders Roslund & Börge Hellström.

For those on the lookout for sexism in crime fiction, the estimable Sartarelli becomes the first male translator ever honored by the CWA, following Sian Reynolds for her Vargas translations, Amanda Hopkinson and Ros Schwartz for their work with Manotti, Marlaine Delargy for translating Theorin, and Kari Dickson for translating Roslund & Hellström's Three Seconds. Congratulations to Camilleri and Sartarelli.

Read my complete posts about The Potter's Field. And read Sartarelli's account of one of Salvo Montalbano's favorite curses in this comment thread.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Win a shelf of New Zealand crime fiction

Not everything from New Zealand is fuzzy on the outside; green, sweet, and delicious on the inside. Readers worldwide can win a set of seven New Zealand crime novels, the titles shortlisted for the titles shortlisted for the Ngaio Marsh Award. The titles are:

COLLECTING COOPER by Paul Cleave (Simon & Schuster)
LUTHER: THE CALLING by Neil Cross (Simon & Schuster)
FURT BENT FROM ALDAHEIT by Jack Eden (Pear Jam Books)
TRACES OF RED by Paddy Richardson (Penguin)
BY ANY MEANS by Ben Sanders (HarperCollins)
BOUND by Vanda Symon (Penguin)
THE CATASTROPHE by Ian Wedde (Victoria University Press)

Quoth the king of Kiwi crime fiction, Craig Sisterson:

"Anyone can enter the prize draw simply by emailing a photo of themselves reading any New Zealand crime, mystery, or thriller title - contemporary or from days gone by - to ngaiomarshaward (at) gmail (dot) com. 

The book in your picture doesn't have to be set in New Zealand, as long as the author is associated with New Zealand (lives in New Zealand, was born or grew up in New Zealand, etc). So whether it's a well-loved copy of a Ngaio Marsh, Elizabeth Messenger, Laurie Mantell, Michael Wall, or Paul Thomas novel that's been sitting on your bookshelf for years, or a brand new New Zealand crime novel you've recently picked up from a bookstore or library, grab your camera, take a smiling photo of yourself with the book, and send it to ngaiomarshaward (at) gmail (dot) com. If you need some inspiration when it comes to finding an eligible, mystery, or thriller novel to read and photograph, check out this list of more than 80 authors and more than 250 titles here."

I like very much that the contest offers the chance to learn something and not just scarf up a prize. So get educated and enter today!

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

McGeachin and Cleave are tops down under

The Detectives Beyond Borders research branch has been so busy preparing for Bouchercon that it has neglected some antipodean crime-fiction honors.

Congratulations to Geoff McGeachin, whose Diggers Rest Hotel took Australia's Ned Kelly Award for best novel. McGeachin is a funny guy whose novels Fat, Fifty & F***ked  and D*E*D Dead! I've discussed here, and he once sent me some Vegemite along with a package of books, for which I should thank him, I think.

Over in New Zealand, Paul Cleave's Blood Men is the second winner of the Ngaio Marsh Award for best crime novel. Cleave told New Zealand's Herald on Sunday newspaper last week in an article that bears the headline "Paul Cleave: Too dark for home market"  why he was surprised to win the award. As always for things New Zealand, a hat tip to Craig Sisterson.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Best of New Zealand crime fiction, Year II

 The Kiwi crime king, Craig Sisterson, sends word that a shortlist has been chosen for the 2011 Ngaio Marsh Award for best New Zealand crime novel. The 2011 finalists are:

• Blood Men by Paul Cleave (Random House);

• Captured by Neil Cross (Simon & Schuster);

• Hunting Blind by Paddy Richardson (Penguin);

• Slaughter Falls by Alix Bosco (Penguin).

I was a judge in last year's contest, and novels by Cross and Bosco were among my choices for the shortlist (Bosco's Cut & Run won). Cleave is a respected name in New Zealand crime writing, and Richardson is new to me, so I have a nice mix of the old and the new to look forward to on this year's list.

The winner will be announced Aug. 21.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

New Zealand crime awards rescheduled

Ever have one of those days when the alarm clock doesn't go off, you miss your bus, or an earthquake forces cancellation of your inaugural Ngaio Marsh Award New Zealand crime-fiction prize ceremony?

The hard-working Craig Sisterson did when a quake forced postponement of the event, initially scheduled for Sept. 10 .

Geological conditions permitting, the ceremony will now take place Nov. 30. The details:

Whodunnit and Whowunnit? with the presentation of the inaugural Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel 7:30pm, Tuesday 30 November 2010 Visions on Campus Restaurant, CPIT, corner Madras St & Ferry Road, Christchurch Drinks and nibbles from 7pm, author panel from 7:30pm $10, includes a glass of wine and nibbles.

Contact: Ruth Todd 03 384 4721 or ruth.todd@xtra.co.nz

The finalists:

• Cut & Run by Alix Bosco (Penguin)

• Burial by Neil Cross (Simon & Schuster)

• Containment by Vanda Symon, (Penguin)

The judges:

• Lou Allin: crime writer, vice president of Crime Writers of Canada

• Mike Ripley: author of the "Angel" series of comedy thrillers, crime-fiction critic and commentator

• Sarah Minns: writer, deputy editor of Australia's Good Reading magazine

• Graham Beattie: former managing director/publisher of Penguin Books (New Zealand), creator of Beattie's Book Blog, book-industry consultant

• Craig Sisterson: crime fiction reviewer and features writer, creator of the Crime Watch blog

• Ros Henry: (See biographical information in comment, courtesy of Craig Sisterson.)

• Your humble blog-keeper

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

And then there were three ...

The finalists for the first Ngaio Marsh Award, for best crime novel by a New Zealand citizen or resident published in New Zealand in 2009, are:

• Cut & Run by Alix Bosco (Penguin);

• Burial by Neil Cross (Simon & Schuster); and

• Containment by Vanda Symon (Penguin)

Craig Sisterson, the driving force behind the awards and the man who kindly invited me to be one of the judges, sends along this note from Dame Ngaio's nephew:

I am delighted to hear of the progress of the Dame Ngaio Marsh Award, and congratulate the finalists for what sounds to be a very high standard of detective story writing. I know that Dame Ngaio would be so proud of all the entrants, and to know that her name is associated with the award. I hope you will extend my own congratulations to the writers, but also to those who have taken what will have been an enormous amount work, research and thought to create the awards very sincerely

John Dacres-Mannings

The winner will be announced Sept. 10 at The Press Christchurch Writers’ Festival, and congratulations are in order for all the nominees and to Craig for his hard work in putting the awards together. Perhaps this enterprising promoter of New Zealand crime writing will have an award or a convention named for him one day. Hey, they did it for Anthony Boucher.

***

Here's a bit about Dame Ngaio, a pioneer in theater and an author whose novels and stories featuring Inspector Roderick Alleyn made her one of the pillars of crime fiction's Golden Age. Here's a personal reminiscence from author Roy Vaughan.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Swedish crime novel wins the International Dagger

Johan Theorin and translator Marlaine Delargy have won the 2010 Crime Writers' Association International Dagger for The Darkest Room. The prize follows the pair's 2009 John Creasey New Blood Dagger (best first novel) for Echoes From the Dead.

Thorin and Delargy beat out competition that included:

Badfellas by Tonino Benacquista, translated from the French by Emily Read.

August Heat by Andrea Camilleri, translated from the Italian by Stephen Sartarelli.

Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indriðason, translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb

Thirteen Hours by Deon Meyer, translated from the Afrikaans by K.L. Seegers.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, whose correct placement of the apostrophe, in contradistinction to the novel's American edition, was not enough to secure a triumph over Larsson's fellow Swede. Reg Keeland was the translator.

Ruth Dudley Edwards won the Non-Fiction Dagger for Aftermath: The Omagh Bombing And the Families' Pursuit of Justice.

Visit the CWA Web site for other awards and shortlists announced today and links to more information about each.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

All rise

The US has the Edgar Awards, the UK has the Daggers, and Canada has the Arthur Ellis Awards. The Nordic countries have the Glass Key, Australia the Ned Kellys and the German-speaking world the Friedrich Glauserpreis.

Now New Zealand has its own crime award, and your humble blog keeper is one of the judges. The award, named for Dame Ngaio Marsh and the brainchild of the enterprising Craig Sisterson of the Crime Watch blog, will go to one of the following novels:

Burial by Neil Cross

Cut and Run by Alix Bosco

Access Road by Maurice Gee

Bold Blood by Lindy Kelly

Containment by Vanda Symon

No details on my choices here. Suffice it to say that the shortlist contained some very pleasant surprises. More to come.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

More prizes for Peter Temple's "Truth"?

The crime-fiction world is understandably excited that Peter Temple's novel Truth has breached a literary barrier and won Australia's Miles Franklin Award.

England's Guardian newspaper wonders if the Man Booker Prize could be next to go to a crime novel.

Probably not, says John Sutherland, a former chairman of the Booker judges' panel. "The twice I've been on the Booker panel they weren't submitted," he told the newspaper. "There's a feeling that it's like putting a donkey into the Grand National."

Temple's UK publisher, Quercus, plans to submit Truth for this year's Booker, according to the article, to which Temple says: "Just to make the the Booker longlist would be a wonderful thing."

So, could Truth win? With passages like this, why not:

"One spring morning in 1970, the bridge's half-built steel frame stood in the air, it crawled with men, unmarried men, men with wives, men with wives and children, men with children they did not know, men with nothing but the job and the hard, hard hangover and then Span 10-11 failed."

***

An early exchange between the protagonist, Inspector Stephen Villani, and his daughter has just a hint of the byplay between Bill James' Colin Harpur and his daughters. A tribute? Perhaps; Temple has called James "a star."

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Genre writer Peter Temple wins literary award

From several quarters comes the news that Peter Temple has won Australia's Miles Franklin Award, given annually to "the best Australian published novel or play portraying Australian life in any of its phases." Nothing about best crime, just best.

Previous winners include Tim Winton, Peter Carey, and Patrick White.

Read Detectives Beyond Borders' discussions of Peter Temple and his work here (click link, then scroll down), including several witty interviews and reviews.

Says one newspaper account of the award: Temple's Truth "makes history for being the first work of genre fiction to win the award, which was established in 1957." And that's good crime news.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Tonino Benacquista's "Someone Else" plus a provocative question

Tonino Benacquista's Someone Else poses a problem for category mongers.

This tale of two Parisians who meet on a tennis court and agree to shed their identities features crime only incidentally. The plot sounds in outline like a Patricia Highsmith-style psychological thriller, yet the novel is much more a social comedy, though occasionally of a heart-rending kind. And, though the author is French, the novel is no frothy farce.

But call Someone Else a meditation on love, aging, and the cruelties of the corporate world, and you're apt to paint too solemn a picture.

I was carried away with reading the novel and so took few notes. One passage that I did highlight comes close to capturing the book's appeal:

"Trying to find predictable aspects in everyone was to deny the irrational element in each of them, the hint of poetry, absurdity and free will. Some kinds of madness were beyond any logic, and most — like Thierry Blin's — were not recorded in the great books on pathology."

That may not be the world's freshest philosophical statement, but it's quite another matter to take the theory and put it into practice in the form of a story, and an entertaining, occasionally affecting one at that. Benacquista does it here.

***

Tonino Benacquista (right) was a guest of honor at Crimefest 2010, where he made the provocative statement that "It must be understood that the dominant source of innovation (in crime fiction) is the U.S."

His interviewer, Ann Cleeves, disagreed. What do you think?

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Crimefest, Day II, Part II: Dagger shortlists announced

[Maxim Jakubowski (left) and director/screenwriter Mike Hodges at a Crimefest screening of Hodges' Get Carter]

Day Two of Crimefest saw the announcement of shortlists for five of the Crime Writers' Association's Dagger awards. Of chief interest here is the list for the International Dagger, awarded to the best crime novel translated into English and published in the United Kingdom. The nominees are:

Badfellas by Tonino Benacquista, translated by Emily Read (Bitter Lemon Press)

August Heat by Andrea Camilleri, translated by Stephen Sartarelli (Picador)

Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indriðason, translated by
Victoria Cribb (Harvill Secker)

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest by Stieg Larsson, translated by Reg Keeland (MacLehose Press)

Thirteen Hours by Deon Meyer, translated by K.L. Seegers (Hodder and Stoughton)

The Darkest Room by Johan Theorin,
translated by Marlaine Delargy (Doubleday)

Winners will be announced in July at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival.

Canadian, Australian, Scottish and Irish writers are represented on the other shortlists announced today. Visit the CWA Web site for a complete list of nominees.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

2010 Spinetingler Award winners

This year's list of winners in the Spinetingler Awards has an international flavor. OK, an Irish flavor. All right, Northern Irish.

Stuart Neville's The Ghosts of Belfast won for best novel by a new voice and Adrian McKinty's Fifty Grand for best novel by a rising star. (Spinetingler breaks down its categories by the number of books the author has published. Michael Connelly's The Scarecrow won in the "legends" category, for authors who have published lots and lots of books. He beat a field that had international presence of its own, in The Complaints by Ian Rankin and Tower by Reed Farrel Coleman & Ken Bruen.)

My favorite international contender, Jacques Tardi & Jean-Patrick Manchette's West Coast Blues, fell short in the comic/graphic novel category, and a guy named Peter Rozovsky did the same in his bid for a historic second Spinetingler victory, losing as best reviewer after sharing last year's award for special services to the industry.

I'll be brave. Meanwhile, congratulations to the winners.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010