If you’ve read the Lincoln Lawyer series, you know Mickey Haller does most of his legal work from the back seat of his Lincoln Town Car, which has the vanity plate NT GLTY
Got my Michael Connelly fix for the year—The Reversal—a 2010 crime thriller that alternates chapters between brash lawyer Mickey Haller and his half-brother (or did you miss that one?) cynical LAPD detective Harry Bosch. Both men have teen daughters so are especially anxiety-prone when a man convicted of abducting and murdering a young girl is released from San Quentin as a result of DNA evidence and must face trial again after 24 years.
It’s interesting how Haller—working for the prosecution this time—must introduce old evidence without revealing to the jury the prejudicial information that the accused has already been convicted once. Nor can he say why some witnesses are unable to appear (dead or demented) and interviews with them, actually their previous trial testimony, must be read aloud.
While this isn’t Connelly’s best, he never disappoints and received four Amazon stars from readers. If you like every plot angle tied up with a bow, in this one, that doesn’t happen, and the author leaves Harry still pursuing leads as to the convict’s possible involvement in other crimes. It’s as if Connelly was leaving the door open for a never-written sequel.
Matthew McConaughey stars in the movie version – note vanity plate!
For a fun Netflix pick, Matthew McConaghey in The Lincoln Lawyer. Rotten Tomatoes Critics rating: 83%. I thought it was better than that, and I’d read the book! Also notice how the movie poster changed the license plate to “NT GUILTY,” thinking viewers were too dim to figure it out, I suppose.
Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth by John Singer Sargent (photo: farm2.staticflickr.com)
Word is out that Norwegian thriller writer Jo Nesbø, who writes a mystery series featuring brilliant and unorthodox Oslo police detective Harry Hole, is developing a crime noir, prose retelling of Macbeth. It’s part of the Hogarth Shakespeare project in which noted writers—including Pulitzer-winner Anne Tyler, noted Canadian author Margaret Atwood, and Man Booker prize-winner Howard Jacobson–are reinventing Shakespeare plays “for modern readers.”
It will be hard for Nesbø to top mystery writer David Hewson and Shakespeare scholar A.J. Hartley’s Macbeth: A Novel, which I have endlessly encouraged my friends and readers to immerse themselves in—especially the initial, audiobook version narrated by Alan Cumming. As a person who has listened to several hundred audio books, I can attest that this is one of the Very Best. You’ll never feel the same about Macbeth or those three witches, hereafter.
Fans of the PBS program The Bletchley Circle—I’m one!—who have been waiting for the return of the series, mark your calendars! The second season (which will consist of two, two-episode stories) begins Sunday night, April 13, after Masterpiece Theater. This smart series, harnesses the brain power of a group of women who worked as codebreakers at fabled Bletchley Park during World War II.
In Season 1, the patronizing attitude of the males (husbands, police, etc.) toward these women who were thinking rings around them was delightful. Their skills in pattern recognition, especially, to analyze massive amounts of seemingly random data stood them in good stead. And, the show apparently, despite minor quibbles, reaches standards of factual correctness about Bletchley Park itself. (One can only imagine how Hollywood’s funhouse mirrors would have distorted reality.) Can’t wait.
By Adrian McKinty (narrated by Gerard Doyle) – In the bleak Belfast spring of 1981, hunger strikers in HM Prison Maze are starting to die. Paramilitaries are setting off bombs and gunfire rakes the streets at night. Police detective Sean Duffy–a rare Catholic in the Royal Ulster Constabulary–is presented with what looks like a “normal” murder case that soon blossoms into the possibility of a serial killer at work, targeting homosexuals. At that time, homosexuality was still illegal in Northern Ireland and not tolerated. In the mix is the apparent suicide of the beautiful ex-wife of one of the hunger strikers. Mysterious mail begins to arrive. The backdrop of violence is persuasively portrayed and hearkens back to real events and people. First of a trilogy (actually, now probably a quartet).
This will make sense to the dwindling number of people who remember taking photographs with a Polaroid camera, when, as Anne Lamott says, “the film emerges from the camera with a grayish green murkiness that gradually becomes clearer and clearer.” She compares writing early drafts to watching a Polaroid develop, an inchoate beginning—often a vague mess, in fact—and an almost imperceptible sharpening, a coming into focus, with the people, the setting, everything as the writer sees it.
The question I’m most often asked about my writing is, do I plan the whole book out or do I let it develop as I go along? In writing circles, this distinction is between a “planner” and a “pantser”—a slightly snide reference to people who write “by the seat of their pants.” Most writers use one approach or the other. I use both, depending.
In the opening chapters of the mystery novel I’m finishing now (Sins of Omission), I throw in a lot of unexpected information—scars on a corpse’s wrists suggesting a serious suicide attempt, a snatch of overheard conversation—thinking it may be useful down the road. I also established the chief emotional conflicts for the main character (pride versus shame; bravery versus cowardice; and success versus fear of failing). I wrote about 20,000 words. I had a soup of messy situations, clues and maybe-clues, and a couple of dead bodies. I was at a stopping place, where the characters and plot needed to be reined in so that my eye was on the prize—the solution to the mystery—some 60,000 words ahead. And it would take that many words to get there and plausibly explain everything, consistent with the characters’ personalities and the difficult situations I’ve put them in.
At that 20,000 word mark, when I wasn’t quite sure where to go next, pantsing along, I took a big sheet of paper, wrote down each character’s name, scattered about, and listed every question I could think of relevant to that person. Mind, at that point, I could not answer these questions. But connections started to appear. Arrows. The next place the plot needed to develop was suddenly obvious. For a while, I unfolded that big sheet every morning and organized the plot around the actions needed to address the key questions. Not in 1, 2, 3 order, but in the order enabled by each new event or piece of information. Some could be answered with a single toxicology report from the police lab, some required several chapters of set-up and resolution. Ultimately, I had 36 of these questions. Here are a few:
Who was Hawk’s father?
Where did Hawk get the drugs?
Why did he confess to murder?
What is Charleston hiding?
What was Charleston’s relationship with Julia?
Who killed Julia?
Even this sample reveals the extent of what I did not know as I was writing! Julia dies in Chapter 1, but we aren’t positive who killed her until Chapter 47 (of 52). Every 10,000 words or so, I reviewed the list. Is this question answered satisfactorily for the reader? If not, am I on a path to answering it? Is the Polaroid coming into focus?
Lately, I’ve started describing this process as “solving the mystery along with the reader.” That’s what it feels like and why I can get up every morning at 5 a.m. to write.
By Eleanor Catton – Narrated by Mark Meadows – 29 hours, 14 minutes — When will I learn I can read faster than I can listen? This book was an interesting choice for the 2013 Man Booker Prize, as its style is so “unmodern” and seemingly born of the era it describes: the 1866 New Zealand gold fields. Catton expertly weaves together the stories of a half-dozen principal characters and at least a dozen more half-principal (or half-principled) ones trying to unravel the mystery behind a series of local events–a disappearance, a possible attempted suicide, and the death of a drunkard with a fortune in gold hidden in his cabin. At first the story is a deliberate muddle, but as the seemingly disconnected actions of this multitude of characters is brought to light, the reader assembles a gigantic, delightful literary jigsaw. Mark Meadows does an amazing job developing a unique voice for each character and delivering the reading with pizazz. But it’s a lot to keep track of. Much as I admire his reading, I recommend the print version. (1/25)
“Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners” – by Alexandre Cabanel
“The Poisoner’s Handbook”—a perfect TV show for mystery writers–initially seemed an odd choice for one of PBS’s fine American Experience documentaries a few weeks back. It was based on the book by Deborah Blum, who appears among the show’s interviewees. About the book, Kirkus said, “Caviar for true crime fans and science buffs alike.” And so was the documentary, which you can watch here and which begins:
In 1922, 101 New Yorkers hanged themselves, 444 died in car accidents, 20 were crushed in elevators. There were 237 fatal shootings, and 34 stabbings. And that year, 997 New Yorkers died of poisoning.
Not all those deaths were intentional, it turns out. Ninety years ago, life was full of poisoning hazards at work and at home. You may remember the below-stairs tour of cleaning products, rat poisons, polishes, and “remedies” in the great home in the movie Gosford Park, all of which looked mighty suspicious when the master was murdered.
A major cause of death was carbon monoxide, an odorless, tasteless gas that got into the air thanks to leaky stoves and the piping for gaslights. Even today, when houses are shut up tight for winter, we still hear about deaths from malfunctioning space heaters or, difficult to believe though it is, charcoal grills people roll in to heat up the house. (In 2011, five members of a Long Island family were hospitalized when the 43-year-old mom actually did this.)
Poisonings are so much rarer today, the PBS program explained, because in 1917 New York City hired Dr. Charles Norris to be the city’s (and the nation’s) first chief medical examiner. Norris, born into a wealthy family, was one of those larger-than-life characters who create their own weather. Norris, in turn, hired Alexander Gettler to head the City’s first toxicology laboratory. Gettler and his staff built the field of toxicology from scratch, and he and Norris created modern forensic science. CSI fans are grateful.
Gettler soon realized that he and his staff had to conduct definitive studies of the way different poisons killed, their symptoms in various concentrations, and how they could be detected. Murder by poison, which had been difficult to diagnose in many cases, especially if it wasn’t suspected, became less and less feasible.
In 2011, I read The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy by Adrienne Mayor, a finalist for the nonfiction National Book Award in 2009. During his lifetime (120-63 BCE), Mithradates Eupator fought some of the most famous Roman generals, mostly successfully. At the height of his career, he governed 22 nations around the Black Sea and could speak all of their languages. He was an infamous poisoner. He believed his mother murdered his father by poison, and, to protect himself, he learned as much as he could about them.
One protection he engaged in was to take small doses of certain poisons every day to build up his tolerance. (Anyone familiar with Dorothy L. Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey mystery Strong Poison is familiar with this strategy.) As a result, when Mithradates’ enemies at one point gave him a lethal dose of something, it had no effect, which didn’t hurt his reputation for invincibility. In the region where Mithradates ruled, there was a body of water made poisonous by a deadly plant. Many ducks lived there and fed on the plant, unharmed. Mithradates prepared a great banquet for his enemies, featuring—you guessed it—those self-same ducks, and, by morning, his guests were all dead. He also developed a “universal antidote” to poison, still of scholarly interest. When the Romans finally captured Mithradates, he tried to commit suicide by poison, but his protection worked too well, and he was ultimately stabbed to death.
Gardeners may have noticed the King’s name is familiar: Eupatorium is a genus of flowering plant with several hundred species, including (and in my garden) Joe-Pye Weed. One of its species is, of course, poisonous to humans.
Circling back to American Experience, the underlying message might be that, much as Americans complain about “government regulations,” in the 1920’s before the Food and Drug Administration took dangerous patent medicines off the drug store shelves, before there was a Consumer Product Safety Commission, and before the workplace safety rules that protect people like the poor young women who worked as radium dial-painters and died horribly of jaw and bone cancer, everyday life was full of deadly hazards, and mystery writers had one more handy tool in their store of potential mayhem-makers.
The mystery genre has retained its popularity over the years. Whether a classic “whodunit,” a cozy, a police procedural, or some new hybrid of mystery/suspense plus fantasy, sci-fi or horror, crime fiction still draws a strong audience of readers.
Surveyed for Library Journal’s annual round-up of trends in the mystery genre, more than half of the 232 librarians polled say mysteries are the most popular book genre they offer, as measured by circulation, shelf-space—accounting for almost a quarter of their print fiction materials—and e-collections, making up more than 20% of libraries’ ebooks.
While e-collections are growing (and most publishers have finally agreed to sell ebooks to libraries now), which e-mysteries they buy depends heavily on patron demand and costs. Ebook purchases are now about 6% of libraries’ acquisitions budgets, up from 1% three years ago.
“E-books aren’t the future of mystery, they’re the present,” said Soho Press publisher Bronwen Hruska. They accounted for two-thirds of the sales of the Soho Crime imprint in 2012 and half or more of sales by another mystery publisher, Minotaur. Sisters in Crime’s recent interviews with publishers revealed that while e-books are “the fastest growth sector for publishing revenues,” the effect on income—publishers’ or authors’—is not yet clear.
Amazon’s heavy promotion of low price-point books for the Kindle through various deals and free offerings has helped even a few new writers achieve electronic sales that outsell print. An example is when Leonard Rosen’s debut thriller, All Cry Chaos, was picked as a Kindle Book of the Day and sold 7,000 electronic copies and 4,000 print.
Presumably, it helps to write a good book, too. But quality—good or bad—isn’t a guarantee of sales numbers when so many books are free or $.99.
Writers—and some readers, too—are worried about the massive shifts in the publishing industry, including whether it will be possible to make a living as a serious writer for very much longer, not that it was ever very easy, and what making authorhood impossible means for the diversity of ideas in the cultural marketplace.
My professional organization, Sisters in Crime (it’s worth joining just to be able to say that!), recently released a new report on the state of publishing, based on expert interviews with 15 individuals involved, in various ways, in the industry. They asked about books in general and mysteries/suspense/thrillers in particular. The experts they talked to echoed the rather gloomy predictions heard for the last couple of years regarding the challenges the industry faces.
Given the difficulty new writers have being published, many are advised to go-it-alone. But “understand the risks,” one prominent agent said. Yes, it’s easy to self-publish with today’s technology, but publishing does not necessarily lead to sales and income for the writer. Because about 300,000 print titles and an almost uncountable number of ebooks are published each year—think of it as a thousand new books a day—the necessity for and burden of promotion and marketing are enormous. Accomplishing this shifts the emphasis entirely onto the self in self-publishing.
The few self-published books that have achieved financial success have encouraged many more writers to try to follow in those footsteps, creating such a rising level of background noise level, even excellent books go unnoticed.
The implications of the rise of e-books has yet to sort itself out. And, because of a number of economic pressures on publishers, the bar for new authors is constantly being raised. Worse, publishers aren’t interested in mid-list authors—“they want bestsellers.” Authors want to write bestsellers, too, but most won’t. The Great Gatsby sold poorly when it was first published in 1925, but now it is one of the most highly-ranked English-language novels of the 20th century (second-highest in the Modern Library’s list after Ulysses.) As of today it ranks #10 in Amazon’s bestsellers’ list, 4th among novels. For authors whose publishers aren’t banking on returns 88 years into the future, the emphasis on bestsellers is a problem.
The one bright spot for writers of mysteries is that the genre retains its popularity in this fast-changing environment. Mysteries account for 24 percent of ebook sales, though only 15 percent of the dollars, which means their prices are discounted compared to other books. Mysteries are 21 percent of library ebook collections and 24 percent of their print collections. And “cozy mysteries,” that less-sex-and-gore subgenre perfected by Agatha Christie and still practiced by many authors today are actually increasing in popularity.
Two weeks ago, this blog started a discussion of the differences between mysteries and thrillers. As reader David Ludlum pointed out, there can be elements of mystery in thrillers and vice-versa, since both contain suspense. Here are a few items from Carolyn Wheat’s handy list of the differences: mystery is a puzzle, suspense is a nightmare; in a mystery, the detective has skills, and in a thriller, the hero learns skills; mysteries have clues, while thrillers have surprises; and a mystery offers red herrings, whereas a thriller contains “cycles of betrayal.” John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy comes immediately to mind.
This week, I’m reading a mystery—Maze in Blue, by fellow U. of Michigan alumna Debra Goldstein—and the pages are littered with clues, potential clues, and red herrings. The fun is sorting them out, not to mention the familiarity of the Ann Arbor setting!
Coincidentally, the book mentions a real-life murder I was familiar with, one in a serial killer spree that began shortly after I graduated. A law student was murdered and her body draped over a tombstone in a local cemetery. Reading about the case several months after I moved away, I had a horrible flashback. On a warm spring evening in my senior year, I was pacing my second-floor apartment in a chopped up Victorian house, talking on the phone to a friend. I noticed a man standing across the street looking up into my tall second-floor windows, open to the fresh air. I didn’t pay much attention until he crossed the street, headed toward my house. The back of my neck tingled. “I think he’s coming over to look at my mailbox,” I said, slightly embarrassed to sound so paranoid. My friend and I talked a little longer, and the man recrossed the street, disappearing into the apartment building opposite. As soon as we hung up, my phone rang. “You don’t know me, but . . .” and he gave me his name. Yes, he had read my name on my mailbox, and he asked me out. “I don’t think this is a very good way to meet people,” I said and hung up, shaking, even though in those days such a casual meet-up was common. I called my friend back. “If I’m not in class tomorrow, here’s the name he gave”—the same name written in the calendar of the murdered law student on the day she disappeared. So Goldstein’s book has some resonance with me.
The most recent thriller I’ve read is Alan Furst’s latest, Mission to Paris, and while I don’t have the same kind of personal connection with pre-World War II Europe, Furst’s evocation of the era through his wonderful series of books immediately puts me there. In this one, Hollywood actor Fredric Stahl find himself enmeshed deeper and deeper in the snares of opposing spy machines and Carolyn Wheat’s “cycles of betrayal.”
Another superb read this year in the pre-war thriller mode is Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts, with one big difference: it’s all true.
Writers—and some readers, too—are worried about the massive shifts in the publishing industry, including whether it will be possible to make a living as a serious writer for very much longer, not that it was ever very easy, and what making authorhood impossible means for the diversity of ideas in the cultural marketplace.