December 2006
Cross This One Off Your Christmas List

As a novelist and someone who studies the publishing industry, I know how difficult it is to get published. Simply writing a good book doesn’t guarantee to publication. In fact, in some genres and within certain publishing programs, the better the book, the better the chance it won’t get published. Before I started writing this review column, I was aware that a lot of so-called disposable books were being published—light, fluffy entertainments meant for temporary distraction and little more. But over the past year, as review copy after review copy rolled in on FedEx and UPS trucks, I have been absolutely astounded at the sheer volume of poorly written books being published these days—Cross (Little, Brown /$27.99) by James Patterson is one of them.

I rarely write negative reviews. I know how difficult it is to finish a book and get it published, and I have a lot of respect for people who do. I don’t like being critical of others. It goes against the grain of my nature. My philosophy has been to share the books I like and ignore the ones I don’t. After all, it’s not like I have the time to read and review a fraction of what’s published—even limiting myself to crime fiction. I’m making an exception here for several reasons. Patterson is a well established bestseller, and nothing I write is going to change that—I would never be this critical of a new writer. I love crime fiction literature and I don’t like what Patterson and authors like him are doing to the genre. I’m not saying everything written and published has to aspire to the level of art, but there’s something disingenuous about Patterson’s approach. He’s creating focus group driven products written by several people that have become indistinguishable in many ways from the worst of what Hollywood is churning out.

As a rule, I avoid hyper-commercial fiction—books that sacrifice character and good writing for plot. Unlike many of my writer friends, I don’t equate commercial success with artistic failure. Each year a number of very good books break out of the masses of mass-produced ink, paper, and cardboard to find a large enough audience to be considered an economic success. Cross is not one of them. It will, no doubt, do well, but it is not well written.

The plot of Cross, which involves forensic psychologist, Alex Cross (Kiss the Girls, Along Came a Spider, etc.), begins with a flashback to the murder of his wife, Maria, and introduces Michael Sullivan, the Butcher of Sligo. Most of the rest of the book is a series of rapes and killings by Sullivan, who was once employed by the mob as a freelance hit man, and now is at war with them. Cross, a single parent, eventually decides to leave his job of profiling and hunting serial killers for his family, but is drawn back in when presented with a chance of finding his wife’s killer all these years later. The title of the book promises that this entry into the long-running series will be about the man at the center of it, and though this is Cross’ most personal case, we’re not allowed to plumb the depths of the character because there’s no depth to dive.

I understand a writer attempting to reach the largest possible audience, to have as his primary goal creating thrilling, distracting, and ultimately disposable entertainment, but he can do all that without weak or bad writing. Character doesn’t have to be completely sacrificed on the altar of plot, nor are cliches the only way to make a book accessible to the masses. To me, the best example of what the Alex Cross series could be is John Sandford’s Prey series. The two series are similar enough that the comparison is a fair one, but Lucas Davenport and the other characters that inhabit Sandford’s books strike me as more developed, more authentic, than Cross and his cronies. Sandford’s writing is much stronger than Patterson’s, the sloppy, shortcuts of sentimentality and cliches absent, even though his plots are just as fast-paced and exciting.

Cross is not without its pleasures—the plot moves along at a fast pace, twisting and turning, and occasionally surprising. The chapters are short and almost all end on an upbeat or with a surprise that makes the reader want to turn the page and continue reading. However, the writing is so weak, the cliches and overused phrases coming so fast, it was difficult for me to get past them to actually enjoy the plot.

Give books to the people on your Christmas list this year. There’s no better gift. Just don’t include Cross in the things you wrap and place beneath the tree. Crusader’s Cross by James Lee Burke would be a far better choice—or the Easy Rawlings series by Walter Mosley, or the crime novels of George Pelecanos, or the suspense novels of Harlan Coben—all of which have similarities to Patterson’s books, but combine good writing and character development with a fast-pace and plenty of suspense.

November 2006
They Don’t Make Them Like They Used To

Last weekend at the inaugural Florida Noir Festival (www.FloridaNoir.com) we screened the classic Florida Film Noir picture, Dead Reckoning—a1947 Columbia motion picture starring Humphrey Bogart and Lizabeth Scott, directed by John Cromwell. It is, among other things, a reminder that they don’t make movies like they used to.

Set in the fictional Florida town of Gulf City, Dead Reckoning is one of three classic Florida Noir films—all of which star Humphrey Bogart. The other two are Key Largo and To Have and Have Not (though technically the movie changed the setting from Florida to Martinque).

The term film noir was coined in 1946 at a Paris retrospective of American films embargoed during World War II as audiences recognized a trend toward visibly darker, more cynical crime melodramas. French critics christened this new Hollywood export "film noir," or black film. What they found remarkable was how gloomy and pessimistic the postwar world view had become, replacing the prewar optimism. American cinema wasn’t just darker visually, but in theme and content. The world had become a darker place and the more word spread and images appeared of the atrocities of the war, the deeper the shadows grew. It was out of this world that the dark Dead Reckoning was born.

Though not as good as the best examples of classic film noir (such as In a Lonely Place or The Maltese Falcon, both of which also star Bogart), Dead Reckoning is still a fine film worth the hour and a half of your life it’ll cost you to watch it. Besides, sub-par Bogart is still worlds better than nearly everybody else. As Eddie Muller, the "Czar of Noir" said in his welcome letter to festival attendees, "While you’re watching Dead Reckoning, try to think of a single actor working today who could drink at the same bar with Bogart, let alone fill his shoes onscreen."

Returning home from World War II, ex-paratroopers Captain Murdock and Sergeant Johnny Drake are to be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and Medal of Honor respectively. While on their way to Washington, Drake disappears. Murdock follows the clues and tracks his friend to Gulf City, where he learns Drake is dead–burned to death in a car accident. While in town, Murdock finds out that Drake joined the Army under an assumed name to avoid a murder charge. He was accused of killing a rich old man named Chandler, because he was in love with his wife, Coral. During the investigation of his friend’s mysterious past, a dead body is planted in Murdock’s hotel room. Now the police are after him. He teams up with the man’s widow, Coral, to help straighten out the many twists and turns in the story.

Dead Reckoning has all the elements of film noir—the essentially modernist crisis of culture that is reflected in its characters’ feelings of nightmarish alienation, disorientation, and disintegration. It can be seen in the characteristic noir cinematic style of low-key lighting, high contrast black and white film, chiaroscuro effects, deep focus photography, extreme camera angles, and expressionist distortion. It can be heard in the unique storytelling techniques of subjective voice over narration, flashback sequences, and the distinctive dialog that’s such a pleasure to listen to. Here are just two examples: When Murdock asks a reporter if Philadelphia really is the City of Brotherly Love, the reporter responds, "People in New York say that because they don’t live here." And when his buddy’s girl asks him "Have we met before?" Murdock responds, "Yeah, in another man’s dreams."

The femme fatale of Dead Reckoning is played by Lizabeth Scott, who I just don’t find particularly convincing. The role was originally intended for Rita Hayworth, but she had already been cast by her husband, Orson Welles, for another noir classic, The Lady from Shanghai released the same year. I’d love to see a version of the film with Hayworth as Coral Chandler. Maybe in movie heaven it’ll be playing at an all-night bijou.

Bogart is the best. For a reminder of why, buy or rent Dead Reckoning on DVD today. Even without as much to work with as he had in The Big Sleep or Dark Passage, he remains peerless. It’s not just that they don’t make movies like they used to. They don’t make movie stars like they used to either. Of course it’s entirely likely that the one has everything to do with the other.

October 2006
For Those Who Like a Little Mystery with Their History

Each remarkable in its own way, The Interpretation of Murder and The Black Dahlia are more historical fiction than mystery novels. Both manage to work as explorations of the periods in which they're set and as crime thrillers—though succeed more in the former than that latter.

Inspired by Sigmund Freud's only visit to America, The Interpretation of Murder is an intricate tale of murder and the mind's most dangerous mysteries. It unfurls on a sweltering August evening in 1909 as Freud disembarks from the steamship George Washington, accompanied by Carl Jung, his rival and protégée. Across town, in an opulent apartment high above the city, a stunning young woman is found dangling from a chandelier—whipped, mutilated, and strangled. The next day, a second beauty—a rebellious heiress who scorns both high society and her less adventurous parents—barely escapes the killer. Yet Nora Acton, suffering from hysteria, can recall nothing of her attack. Asked to help her, Dr. Stratham Younger, America's most committed Freudian analyst, calls in his idol, the Master himself, to guide him through the challenges of analyzing this high-spirited young woman whose family past has been as complicated as his own. The Interpretation of Murder leads readers from the salons of Gramercy Park, through secret passages, to Chinatown—even far below the currents of the East River where laborers are building the Manhattan Bridge. As Freud fends off a mysterious conspiracy to destroy him, Younger is drawn into an equally thrilling adventure that takes him deep into the subterfuges of the human mind.

The Interpretation of Murder is written by Jed Rubenfeld, a Professor of Law at Yale University. He's a first-time novelist, but, except for a few rare occasions, you'd never know it. His well written, finely wrought book is meticulously researched and extremely interesting. Though at times the pacing flags and plot and character development suffer from too many leaps from point-of-view character to point-of-view character, the author more than makes up for it with fascinating observations on Freud and the birth of psychoanalysis, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Turn of the Century New York City.

Set nearly forty years later on the opposite side of the country, The Black Dahlia is James Ellroy's masterwork (something that can't be said of Brian De Palma's film).

Based on a notorious, unsolved Los Angeles murder case, the central drama of this hard-boiled mystery set in the late 1940s begins when the body of Elizabeth Short, an engagingly beautiful and promiscuous woman in her 20s, is discovered in a vacant lot, cut in half, disemboweled and bearing evidence that she had been tortured for several days before dying. Dubbed "The Black Dahlia" by the press, the victim becomes an obsession for two LAPD cops, narrator Bucky Bleichert and his partner, Lee Blanchard, both ex-boxers who also are best friends and in love with the same woman. Despite a huge effort by the department, leads seem to go nowhere, and Bucky is mortified when he inadvertently helps to suppress evidence the apparently innocuous fact that a woman he spends many nights with, casually bisexual Madeleine Sprague, daughter of a crooked real-estate tycoon, knew "the Dahlia"' and slept with her once. Bucky begins to fear for his future, but slowly and dangerously, he learns that his is one of the tamest crimes of corruption committed by the many people he knows.

Expertly crafted, Ellroy's fictional take on the real life case brings Post War Los Angeles, the LAPD, and the Elizabeth Short murder investigation to life so convincingly that the book would seem like a nonfiction account were it not for the thrilling plot. But far more than a town or a time, Ellroy has brought characters to life so vividly that we feel like we know them better than most of the "real" people in our lives. And these living, breathing people, who strut and fret their hour upon the sound stage known as LA, are players that make brilliant entrances, but never quite exit. They linger, like the Dahlia has all these years, haunting us, more apparitions than walking shadows, themselves haunted by dark obsessions, unbridled ambitions, and a certain knowledge of the depths to which human beings can sink—having plumbed that fathomage themselves.

September 2006
Anatomy of an Anthology

An anthology, like any artistic endeavor, begins with an idea, a spark, a suggestion. The seed for North Florida Noir came from the David Bowie of publishing, Jim Pascoe, that beautiful guy from Uglytown. We were driving through North Florida in my fire-red 2005 Mustang (which is not really germain, but I truly love that car) talking about crime fiction, writing, publishing, and probably women (femme fatales no doubt—our lovely wives are anything but), and out of our conversation North Florida Noir was conceived. And now a year later it’s being born.

From the very beginning, I wanted North Florida Noir to be different from any other anthology being published these days, and I think three elements accomplish this: the region, the writers, and the time frame the collection covers.

Noir anthologies tied to specific geographic locations, mainly cities, are very popular these days, but for a while now I’ve wanted to put one together that has as its geographic boundaries an entire region instead of a single city. This concept fits North Florida well because it consists almost entirely of small towns, each with very specific and unique characteristics.
Traditionally, noir has been set in urban, mostly nocturnal landscapes—dimly lit bars, seedy motels, greedy corporations, corrupt municipalities, the soulless, often nameless cities that never sleeps. But dark deeds aren’t just done before the backdrop of tall buildings and in their shadowed alleyways. According to Ecclesiastes, evil happens everywhere under the sun, and the greatest detective of all time said that the isolation of rural areas provides impunity for the crimes committed there, and that the lowest and vilest alleys of the largest cities do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

The mean streets of North Florida may be mostly flat, straight, desolate rural highways or backwoods dirt roads, but they are no less capable of cruel indifference to criminal acts than their urban analogues. The ubiquitous slash pines remain just as silent as their concrete and steel counterparts in the asphalt jungle when witnessing the wicked and inhumane ways of humanity.

Part of what makes noir such an engaging and enduring art form is its fluidity and adaptability. Perhaps more than anything else, noir is an ethos—one that resists defining. Clues to its definition might include bleak settings, a violent tone, tough and cynical characters, eroticism, nihilism and of course, darkness—after all, noir means “black”—but noir is so much more. It’s an art form of shadows and should always be partially left in them. Noir is a mind set, a sensibility—the existential sense of futility, desperation, and isolation.

When searching for contributors for North Florida Noir, I looked for writers with inimitable voices, singular perspectives, who were in someway haunted by North Florida. A select group of writes qualify in all three categories, but no one more than Victor Gischler. The author of Gun Monkeys, contributes two stories, one featuring Pensacola PI, Connor Samson, the other a pair of harvesters finding out just how dangerous dealing in Florida’s darkest vintage can be.

I knew this collection wouldn’t be complete without also including three of my fellow Florida MWA Chapter members Judge Terry Lewis, who, in his story, turns the gavel on a retired judge; Mary Anna Evan, whose story reveals the claustrophobic hell Florida theme parks can be; and M. Diane Vogt whose contribution explores guilt, shame, lies, and deceit between good friends. Though he’s never lived in North Florida, I saw how his visits here affected him and knew Ben Leroy, publisher of Bleak House Books, would have an interesting angle on the area.

For my own two contributions, I take the opportunity to introduce a new series character, 1940s Panama City PI, Jimmy “Soldier” Riley, and also to explore something I call Family Noir in the quiet coastal town of Port St. Joe.

This collection of dark, well-written stories, which also features many other new and veteran writers, some of whom are being published for the first time, is unique in another way. It’s stories span from classic noir through contemporary neo-noir to future sci-fi-noir (this last in award-wining fantasy writer Lon Prater’s bleak vision of future Panama City Beach).

From the initial conception to completed book, creating North Florida Noir has been euphoric, and I’m very proud of end result. If you enjoy exploring the complexities and ambiguities of adulthood and are not afraid of the dark, give it a try. I’m confident you’ll discover an anthology that traverses a diverse terrain telling disparate stories of desperate people from writers who know how to tell entertaining tales.

For more information about North Florida Noir or to find out about The First Annual Florida Noir Festival go to www.FloridaNoir.com

August 2006
Summer Sunshine and Crime Wave

Maybe it's the heat, but this summer has been good for crime. There's an embarrassment of riches for those of us who like walking down mean streets with gun-carrying protagonists. Below are three of the best examples, each of which I highly recommend.

James Lee Burke's rich, multi-layered, lushly written 15th Dave Robicheaux novel, Pegasus Descending, opens with a flashback of South Florida during the early 1980s. Dave is still "going steady with Jim Beam straight-up and a beer back" when a friend of his, Dallas Klein, is killed during a bank robbery gone awry in Opa-Locka. Unable to help his friend, the whiskey-wasted young detective has always felt guilty about it. Now, twenty-five years later, the victim's daughter, Trish Klein, has come to New Iberia, Louisiana where Dave is a mostly sober detective. She's passing counterfeit bills and scheming revenge on Whitey Bruxal, the aging mobster
who had her father killed. Dave is also investigating the apparent suicide of Yvonne Darbone, a pretty young co-ed, and he thinks the two cased could be connected. With the help of his colorful and chaotic sidekick, Clete Purcel, he tries to prove it.

As usual, Burke's intensely expressive writing is in evidence here. His evocative use of language, full of metaphors only a Southern author could get away with, creates prose so powerful it'd be worth reading even if it were in the service of less lofty literary ambitions (i.e. not used to create such a multi-layered character, a magical place, and timeless themes).

As the title suggests, Burke is telling tales with mythological ramifications. His hero is on Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, which is far more what these books are about than what they appear to be. Ultimately, the crimes, the investigation, and the resolution take a backseat to larger issues and more resonate themes. Saying James Lee Burke writes hard-boiled detective novels is like saying Larry McMurtry writes westerns. James Lee Burke writes poetically about a nearly mythological man and the world he knows. The man just happens to carry a gun (and the weight of his world).

Another fine writer turning to a life of crime these days is John Updike. His latest novel, Terrorist, is a look at American popular culture through the eyes of an angry adolescent Muslim in New Jersey. Billed as a literary thriller, Terrorist is more literate than thrilling ("not that there's
anything wrong with that," he says in his best Jerry Seinfeld voice).

Ahmad Mulloy Ashmawy is 18 and attends Central High School in the New York metro area working class city of New Prospect, N.J. He is the son of an Egyptian exchange student who married a working-class Irish-American girl and then disappeared when Ahmad was three. Ahmad, disgusted by and disillusioned with his family and the world, has come under the spell of
Shaikh Rashid, who runs a storefront mosque and preaches divine retribution for "devils," including the "Zionist dominated federal government." There are other "devils" as well-Joryleen Grant, the wayward African-American classmate; Tylenol Jones, a thug with whom Ahmad obliquely competes for Joryleen's attentions; Jack Levy, the Central High guidance counselor;
Jack's wife, Beth, oblivious and overweight; and Teresa Mulloy, a nurse's aide and Sunday painter who's desperate for Jack's attention.

With his usual brilliant writing, Updike has created finely wrought characters and carefully rendered the base, vulgar world they inhabit with telling details. He is relentless at gazing into the abyss of American shallowness and self-centeredness, though not without a modicum of sympathy and understanding showing through. With amazing insight and adroitness, Updike captures the post 9/11experience and sees terrifying possibilities. Perhaps what this great American author has accomplished more than anything else is to reveal the heart of darkness that results from an angry, self-righteous religion without compassion, poetry, humility, or doubt.
His depiction of Ahmad, the mixture of adolescent angst, testosterone inebriation, abandonment issues anger, and rigidly skewed view all these bring is as disturbing as it is dead on. The lack of humanity certain people (benighted, literalists, enraged, insane, fundamentalists, extremists) bring to religion, how they use religion to justify their all-to-human hatred, and how they are proliferating is most terrifying of all.

I had been anxiously awaiting the opportunity to see the crime movie Brick since it was first released in March, but had no illusions that it would play anywhere close to our little rural part of the world. Like last year's Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Brick promised to be an indie flick that would reinvigorate the crime genre. When I finally got to see Brick just a few weeks ago (at the wonderful and truly miraculous Miracle 5 on Thomasville Road in Tallahassee that regularly features independent and foreign films you can't see anywhere else) it exceeded my very high expectations in every way.

Brick, which arrived on DVD August 8th, shows how much like the world of the hard-boiled detective novel the high school experience can be. Though this is writer-director Rain Johnson's debut effort you'd never know it. Brick looks like the work of a skilled and confident old aueteur.

Perhaps creating a new crime sub-genre to be known as High School Noir, Brick begins with Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) receiving an SOS phone call from an old girlfriend (Lost's Emilie de Ravin), and his transformation into a tough guy gumshoe it's easy imagining a very young, modern Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe as he searches first for her then her murderer.

Using a mixture of classic and neo-noir language fired like rounds from a tommy gun, Johnson's dialog is pitch perfect street poetry. His characters are complex and engaging-this is not merely a high school drama department putting on a production of The Maltese Falcon. The characters and dialog are so good, in fact, that the plot, which is solid enough, is nearly merely the means to an end-the stage these lost and limbo-bound noir characters strut and fret their hour upon.

Brick is a modern noir masterpiece, and when the femme fatale crosses the empty football field in the final scene, wearing a fur coat with an upturned collar reminiscent of Brigid O'Shaughnessy of The Maltese Falcon and Rachel of Blade Runner, you will know that high school is more noir than any mean street in the soulless city and that Rain Johnson's Brick is the stuff cinematic dreams are made of.

July 2006
Christmas in July: Noel Noir

Here's a Christmas in July present for you: The Ice Harvest, a new noir film starring John Cusack, Billy Bob Thorton, and Oliver Platt recently released on DVD.

Crime movies don't get much darker or more funny than this neo noel noir destined to be a classic, watched year after year like It's A Wonderful Life during the holidays (at least at my house), but don't wait until Christmas to treat yourself to this dark comedic caper.

In icebound Wichita, Kansas, it's Christmas Eve, and this year Charlie Arglist (John Cusack) just might have something to celebrate. Charlie, an attorney for the mob of Wichita, and his unsavory associate, the steely Vic Cavanaugh (Billy Bob Thornton) have just successfully embezzled $2 million from Kansas City boss Bill Guerrard (Randy Quaid). But the real prize for Charlie is the stunning Renata (Connie Nielsen, a modern Femme Fatale who's a cross between Lauren Bacall and Veronica Lake ), who runs the Sweet Cage strip club. Charlie hopes to slip out of town with Renata. But as daylight fades and an ice storm whirls, everyone, from Charlie's drinking buddy Pete Van Heuten (Oliver Platt, giving yet another wonderful performance), who is married to his ex-wife, to the local police, begin to wonder just what exactly is in Charlie's Christmas stocking.

I'm old enough to remember when all movies weren't made for and targeted to 13 year-olds, when adult movies with flawed, adult characters, and adult themes were made for, well adults. I miss those days, and when the rare exception-to-the-rule adult movie like The Ice Harvest comes along, I miss them all the more.

With a director like Harold Ramis ( Groundhog Day, Analyze This) , you might expect a straightforward comedy, but his work here is subtle and restrained, and writers Robert Benton and Richard Russo ( Nobody's Fool and Twilight ) adapting from the novel by Scott Phillips do their usual stellar job.

Though all performances are strong, it's Cusack's embodiment of Arglist that sets the film apart. His ability to make the small-time, small-town, lawyer a likable everyman trying to break out of his quiet life of desperation gives the film its charming and redeeming qualities.

This isn't a film for all adults, but adults with certain tastes and sensibilities. It's dark, quirky, and comedic, filled with double-crosses and bloodshed, but also some poignant moments of existential meditation, erudite contemplations of the elusiveness of the spirit of the season, and stinging satire on the hypocrisy of Christmas in corrupt, greedy corporate America.

"As Wichita Falls, So Falls Wichita Falls," is written and spoken repeatedly throughout the film like a line poetry or a riff of jazz, and it says it all. It's about existentialism, karma, and sowing and reaping—something made far more obvious in the alternate ending included on the DVD.

As it continues to swelter outside, cool off inside by popping The Ice Harvest into your DVD player and see who makes Santa's naughty list year after year, and the next time you're tempted to say that July in Florida is hot as hell, consider that hell might actually be a lot closer to being trapped in a December ice storm in Wichita Falls.

June 2006
Florida Noir: Tampa Confidential

Bruce Benedict, a fellow crime fiction lover and good friend, recently brought a book over and placed it on the small table in front of me. I was in Joe Muggs at the PC BAM sipping the potent caffeine and caramel elixir he had just concocted with another good friend and fellow writer, Lynn Wallace. Aware that I had recently completed the first book in a new noir series set in Panama City during the 1940s and that I had an anthology titled North Florida Noir coming out this fall, Bruce thought I would be interested in White Shadow, another new Florida noir novel.

He was right.

I'm obsessed with Florida noir, and a friend who would bring a great Florida noir novel like White Shadow to my attention is a good friend indeed (for more about Florida noir, you can go to www.FloridaNoir.com).

Speaking of obsession, Ace Atkins, the author of White Shadow seems nearly as obsessed with Tampa of the 1950s as I am with Panama City of the 1940s. The Alabama native and author of the Nick Travers novels ( Crossroad Blues , Leavin' Trunk Blues , Dark End of the Street , and Dirty South), first became aware of Charlie Wall and the other colorful characters of 1950s Tampa while working for the Tampa Tribune. In fact, Atkins was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for his investigation of the real-life murder of Charlie Wall.

Emerging five years later is a book only an obsessed author could write.

Tampa, Florida, 1955: a city pulsing with Sicilian and Cuban gangsters, smoky clubs, cigar factories, light, voices, and rum. The bludgeoning death of mob boss Charlie Wall sends shock waves rippling through the communities, setting cops and reporters and associates scrambling to discover the truth. The truth is that there are many more surprises to come. As the trail winds through neighborhoods, rich and poor, enmeshing the corrupt and innocent alike, all the way down to the streets of pre-revolutionary Havana, an extraordinary story of revenge, honor, and greed begins to emerge. But that is only the beginning. For Charlie Wall had his secrets, and he guarded them well. And those secrets will have repercussions—possibly destroying a criminal empire and starting a revolution.

Filled with interesting, colorful characters—real and ficticious—from tough, cynical cops to dogged, obsessed reporters (wonder who the latter could be patterned after?) in a humid, cigar smoke-filled world finely wrought through meticulous attention to detail by an author who obviously cares deeply for his characters, their time and place.With writing lush and lyrical, Ace Atkins takes the raw materials of real life and creates a work of art so powerful I feel compelled to compare it, as others have, to James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential and Black Dahlia . White Shadow is a big novel in every sense of the word—sprawling, sweeping, significant. It's a Florida noir tour de force.

Of White Shadow , Atkins recently commented, "I wanted to write something completely new. I wanted to write something with a little more substance, a little more depth."

He's done just that.

Pick up a copy of White Shadow today and enter a world that continues to exist only between its covers, and when you emerge from its time and place grateful for the experience remember to thank not only the author, but Bruce Benedict who's doing his part to spread the word (something he does often and well—both as a bookseller and as a Methodist Minister).

May 2006
Living The Good Life While New Rome Burns

I realize that The Good Life is not shelved in the crime section of any bookstore or library in the country, unless mistakenly, but I justify reviewing here it in two ways:

First, this review column is called Sunshine and Crime, and The Good Life , like everything else, definitely takes place under the sun. So, file this one under sunshine.

Secondly, The Good Life , though not a mystery nor fitting within the broader crime fiction category, nonetheless contains crimes against humanity and crimes committed by and against family. There have been greater crimes against humanity committed in our time than the attacks of 9-11, but none as dramatic or as seared into the American psyche.

Clinging to a semi-precarious existence in TriBeCa, Corrine and Russell Calloway (last seen in Brightness Falls ) have survived a separation and are thoroughly wonderstruck by their young twins whose provenance is nothing less than miraculous, even as they contend with the faded promise of a marriage tinged with suspicion and deceit.

Meanwhile, several miles uptown and perched near the top of the Upper East Side's social register, Luke McGavock has postponed his accumulating of wealth in an attempt to recover the sense of purpose now lacking in a life that often gives him pause—especially with regard to his teenage daughter, whose wanton extravagance bears a horrifying resemblance to her mother's.

But on a September morning, brightness falls horribly from the sky, and people worlds apart suddenly find themselves working side by side at the devastated site of ground zero, feeling lost anywhere else, yet battered still by memory and regret, by fresh disappointment and unimaginable shock. What happens, or should happen, when life stops us in our tracks, or our own choices do? What if both secrets and secret needs, long guarded steadfastly, are finally revealed? What is the good life?

Jay McInerny is a fantastic writer. His command and use of language is masterful, his vocabulary astounding. I haven't heard anyone dispute this. What has come under scrutiny is his story—what he chose to do with the ash-covered canvas painted partially with burning jet fuel and melted steel. This is where I depart with many reviewers—perhaps in no small part because I'm a novelist writing a review, not a reviewer, not a critic.

What story could a novelist tell that wouldn't pale before the backdrop of 9-11? And that's essentially what 9-11 is in this book—a backdrop. It's a very intimate, small, personal story told in the context of an enormous catastrophic event. But regardless of the size of the event, our experiences are nearly always first and last personal. Even our communal experiences are as individuals, as persons having personal experiences not a seamless collective where we all become one—though it may seem so at times.

The Good Life isn't the story of New York or of 9-11, but the story of a few New Yorkers in the aftermath of 9-11.

I agree with Joyce Carol Oates, who says of her faith as a writer, "Through the local or regional, through the individual voices, we work to create art that will speak to others who know nothing of us. In our very obliqueness to one another, an unexpected intimacy is born. The individual voice is the communal voice. The regional voice is the universal voice."

Perhaps part of the problem, suggested by Oates statement, as it relates to the criticism The Good Life has received, is that too many reviewers feel they know the young literary lion and know all too well the events that form the backdrop of his story. They may even feel they know his characters, maybe believe they, as New Yorkers, as intellectuals, as the creators and commentators of culture are those characters. But from the perspective of this novelist way down here in Florida, McInerny's many critics are too close and bring the wrong expectations to The Good Life .

I'm not arguing that The Good Life is an unequivocal success. For me, the ending is abrupt and lacks credible underpinnings and character motivation, but it's a relatively small point. It still gets my wholehearted recommendation. For The Good Life is a good book (perhaps even a great one—only time will tell).

April 2006
Grand Master P

There's no "P" in Stuart M. Kaminsky, but there should be. His mama should've named him Stuart Prolific Kaminsky. In fact, I think I'll start using the term Kaminksy interchangeably with prolific. As in, that new writer is such a budding little Kaminsky or the Kaminskian novelist shows no signs of slowing down. The author of 50 published novels, 5 biographies, 4 textbooks, 40 short stories, and four produced films, Stuart Kaminsky is one of the most prolific mystery writers at work today. He's one of the best, too—a rare writer who maintains quality along with quantity. Being named as Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America for 2006 is a well-deserved honor for a well-respected author who is nothing less than a statesman of the crime writing community.

Kaminksy, who lives in Sarasota with his wife, Enid, and family, is past president of the Mystery Writers of America and has been nominated for six Edgar Allen Poe Awards. He won an Edgar for his novel, A Cold Red Sunrise, which was also awarded the Prix De Roman D'Aventure of France. Prolific (or Kaminskian) in the way few truly good writers are, Kaminsky writes four popular series featuring Lew Fonesca, Abraham Lieberman, Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, and Toby Peters, as well as numerous other stand-alone or TV tie-in series. A former professor at Florida State University, Kaminsky holds a B.S. in Journalism, an M.A. in English from The University of Illinois, and a Ph.D. in Speech from Northwestern University, where he also taught for 16 years. He has been writing full-time since 1994.

Below is an interview I conducted with Grand Master P.

Michael Lister: Congratulations on being the MWA Grand Master. I see it as a well-deserved honor in recognition of your career and your contribution to the genre, but what does it mean to you?

Stuart Kaminksy: I was aware of the Edgars by the time I was 14 years old. I wanted to become a writer. I had inclination and imagination, and I wanted an Edgar. I got that Edgar back in 1989. I knew about the Grand Master Award, but I never considered that I would be getting it. That was beyond my hopes. I'm not sure I deserve it, but I'm certainly happy to have it. The award may mean an increased audience for my books, but it may not. It's not about sales or honors but about being recognized by my peers. It means far more to me than any other recognition I have ever received or probably ever will receive for my work.

ML: What attracted you to a life of crime in the first place?

SK: Radio and paperbacks first attracted me to crime fiction. I read voraciously and eclectically when I was a kid. I read history, biography, science fiction, classics and mysteries. My Complete Sherlock Holmes was filled with my underlining and comments in the margins. But it was Mickey Spillane and dozens of others whose paperbacks were covered by lurid depictions of dangerous women and homely men that stirred my imagination. The only thing my father read was mystery magazines like The Saint, Manhunt, Michael Shane and Ellery Queen. And I read them, too, and was easily hustled into the world of the authors. It was radio shows like The Man Called X, The Adventures of Sam Spade, The Fat Man, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar that I clung to and followed that made me want to create mysteries.

ML: What keeps you writing crime fiction after all these years?

SK: I can't deny the pay check. It affirms my ego and marketability and pays the rent and my daughter's tuition. However, I think that even if I were not paid, I'd still write. The ideas, characters just keep coming, demanding to be put on the page.

ML: When did you first know you wanted to be a writer? When did you first know you were a writer? When did you first feel like a successful writer?

SK: When I was about 12 years old. I knew I was a writer when I saw my first story, which was not a mystery, in print. As to when I first felt like a successful writer, I have two answers. I felt like a successful writer when I knew I was earning enough money to do it full time. In addition to being economically successful, I've been critically successful. Reviews and critics have been very kind to my work. If success is measured by big sales numbers, I have not been a great success. I've never made a best seller list. I've never gotten a blockbuster contract.
ML: Your four ongoing series have amazing diversity. How do you manage it from both a writing and research standpoint? Also, tell me about the impact of place on your protagonists (and their creator).

SK: As I said above, I write ten pages or more every day. I do my research before I start each book and I work from a chapter-by-chapter outline. Sometimes, like today when I had to do research on the ingredients of a cheese blintz (honest), I'll do the research and get back to the writing.
I've lived in Sarasota almost 16 years. Before that I lived in Chicago. Most of my family is still in Chicago and I see them as often as I can. I can experience a sense of place by recalling or experiencing that place (Chicago, Sarasota). Then again, I can recreate a less-than-familiar place (Russia, Hollywood in the 1940's) by time/space exercise of imagination. Where my characters live is a vital part of who they are and how they live and behave. Sarasota is warm and bright. Lew Fonesca, clinically depressive, seeks out and draws himself into dark corners.
Abe Lieberman's Chicago is grey, full of life and death, madness and decency. His Chicago has a history of determination and violence. It can be the quintessential urban jungle. Abe is a master of surviving and bringing a sense of justice to bleak streets and ethnic neighborhoods.

ML: What would you say are the keys to being prolific? (Perhaps you could share with me a little about Enid and her contributions to your life and writing).

SK: The key to being prolific in my case is treating writing like a job, a great job. I have a 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. schedule every day. I check my outline and let my characters take over. They have seldom failed me. I have sometimes failed them.
My wife keeps me honest. Enid is the first reader of my work and is a terrific and determined editor. She is particularly great at letting me know when a character or characters or my plot is not working. I used to fight her on these issues. I've learned that she is invariably right and I've learned to listen to her and make the changes. She has made me a better writer.

ML: How has publishing changed since you first began? What is the state of crime fiction publishing today?

SK: More conglomeration and consolidation leading to larger publishers who wish to treat the writers work as a marketable product. Marginally profitable books doom the author and new authors are less likely to be published. At the same time, this trend by the majors has led to a rise in smaller publishers, some of which, like Soho and Poison Pen, have a well deserved reputation for quality. The problem with small publishers is that there may be so many of them that when they compete with the majors and each other they dilute the market and sales for an author are often very small.
I've been lucky. I've got a solid fan base and a track record.
I think crime fiction publishing is the best it has ever been. There are more wonderful writers now than ever before and new ones keep coming up. I can't keep up with it. My book shelf is lined with mystery novels and non-fiction that I think will be terrific reads when I have time to read them. I do try to read three books a month, but it's not enough. The state of the mystery? Just look at the Times or U.S.A. Today's best seller lists. Crime fiction and fact dominate the market and do so with brilliant writers.

ML: What are your plans for the future?
SK: I'm finishing a new Lieberman novel now. Then I'll write three short stories for anthologies followed by a new CSI:NY and a new Fonesca and Lieberman. I'd like to do a new stand-alone novel and I have ideas for a play and a screenplay. I'd estimate that I have about five years of work flexibly planned out.

March 2006
Some Sea Change; Some Things Don't

Robert B. Parker is one of the main reasons I write detective fiction. In high school, I watched Spenser for Hire, the TV series based on his one-name Boston PI, Spenser. The series led me to the books, the books led me to a love of fiction in general and of detective fiction in particular. I owe Parker, and recently I had the opportunity to tell him.

When I started reading Parker’s Spenser novels in 1988, the series was already about ten strong, and since then he’s added at least one every year. In fact, he writes them faster than his publisher, Putnam, is willing to publish them, so in recent years, he’s been writing other works in addition to the Spenser novels. Among them, a couple of very good westerns, a great book with World War II, baseball, and Jackie Robinson as a backdrop, a series featuring a female PI, and a series featuring former LA cop and now Paradise, Massachusetts Police Chief, Jesse Stone.

Younger and not as evolved as Spenser, Jesse Stone, who battles alcohol and marriage problems in addition to the bad guys, is nonetheless tough, autonomous, and honorable. He’s also a man in the process of self-discovery, which continues in Sea Change ($24.95, Putnum) the fifth entry of the series (following 2003’s Stone Cold).

When a woman’s partially decomposed body washes ashore in Paradise, Massachusetts, police chief Jesse Stone is forced into a case far more difficult than it initially appears. Identifying the woman is just the first step in what proves to be an emotionally charged investigation. Florence Horvath was an attractive, recently divorced heiress from Florida; she also had a penchant for steamy sex and was an enthusiastic participant in a video depicting the same. Somehow the combination of her past and present got her killed, but no one is talking—not the crew of the Lady Jane, the Fort Lauderdale yacht moored in Paradise Harbor; not her very blond, very tan twin sisters, Corliss and Claudia; and not her curiously affectless parents, living out a sterile retirement in a Miami high rise. It’s a world of wealth and depravity. Drugs, pornography, rape and underage sex provide a degrading framework for the murder investigation. Stone gets a valuable assist from Kelly Cruz, a Fort Lauderdale cop, as he traces the backgrounds of victims and suspects, but ultimately, he has to make the case and the arrest, all while tentatively reunited with his ex-wife, Jenn, and approaching the one-year mark of sobriety.

As in Parker’s other works, the murder and investigation merely provide a framework for his characters, giving them something to do while the real investigation into Stone proceeds. Like the Spenser novels, the Stone books are about a man and his journey to becoming a better man, while helping weaker people along the way. This is even more true of Stone than Spenser, since Jesse is younger, more troubled, more vulnerable.

Not a lot changes from one Parker book to another. I don’t mean to suggest that Parker is writing the same book over and over, though even if he were it wouldn’t matter much to me or any of his other faithful fans. I’m saying, some things change, and some things don’t. Sea Change is not a sea change for Parker any more than it is for Stone. In much the way Stone is tweaking the things he can change, the changes Parker makes from book to book are small. The core of this and all of Parker’s books, which, I suspect is what we come back for over and over again, doesn’t change, probably can’t, and maybe shouldn’t.

Though containing a little more plot than his recent works, and even resembling a police procedural from time to time, Parker isn’t read for plot (and there are even more holes than usual in this one). I recommend you read Parker for the stripped-down style that nobody does better, the sharp, often witty dialog, the interesting, evolving characters, and the insights he peppers his prose with like a boxer with a great jab. Most of all, read Parker for the journey of the man at the center of the story, which, whether it’s Spenser or Stone, is finally and inevitably Parker himself.

February 2006
A Spoonful of Humor Helps the Crime Go Down

In the same way a spoonful of sugar helps medicine go down, a healthy dose of humor makes south Florida crime fiction taste like candy. Joining the ranks of writers like Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard, who mix south Florida cocktails with a twist of wit and zaniness, Jim Born and N.M. Kelby make their mark on the mangroves of mysteries set in the lower part of the peninsula.

Whale Season by N.M. Kelby (Crown, $23.00)
Whale Season is a literary murder mystery in the tradition of Tom Robbins, about the quintessentially weird heart of Florida where sunburn is the only thing you can be sure of. Set in Whale Harbor, a town that has no whales, it is the story of Leon Pettit, an RV Salesman who once loved a one-ton alligator, but has a lot of trouble with non lizard-like women. One Christmas Eve, Leon is visited by a man who thinks he's Jesus and claims to be looking for a game of poker. And he’s causing quite a stir. Unlikely couples are breaking up and making up; a luxury mobile home that belonged to a missing elderly couple is won by a down-on-his-luck gambler in an incredible hand of poker; the area’s most well-known and long-forgotten tourist attraction is rising up out of the ground; and a gun no one’s used in years is suddenly in hot demand. In the steamy climes of south Florida, you take your miracles where you can get them—and if that means being led to salvation by a schizophrenic with a rap sheet, so be it.

Less political than Hiaasen, Kelby is every bit as funny, and has a style all her own. In fact, it’s been a while since I’ve read a writer with a more distinct voice. It’s unrelenting and pitch-perfect for the setting, characters, and plot of this fish story. Kelby’s characters are colorful, quirky, and eccentric, yet avoid being caricatures in the negative sense of the word, and there is often wisdom within her wit. She’s the rare combination of clever and kind—both to her characters and her readers. Light, breezey, and easy to read, Whale Season is a whale of a tale that could only be told in south Florida.

Escape Clause by James O. Born (Putnam, $25.95)
In Escape Clause, which follows last year’s Shock Wave, FDLE agent Bill Tasker’s boss is worried about the stress Tasker’s been under, but he has a solution. The governor wants somebody from the outside to take a look into an inmate homicide at Manatee Correctional Prison, and the boss figures he can do the state a favor and give Tasker a break at the same time. Some break. Turns out there’s a whole lot going on at Manatee. The prison captain likes to enforce discipline by fairly unorthodox methods. The psych ward has been known to misplace a mental patient occasionally. A trustee named Luther has far more on his mind than working in the prison library—though the rods holding up the shelves do make very nice shivs. The prison inspector is carrying a number of very uninspector-like secrets. And something very bad is about to happen to Tasker’s next-door neighbor. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, after all.

A Special Agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Jim Born lives the research for his books, and it shows. Before joining FDLE, Born was a Deputy Marshal in Miami and West Palm and spent for years with the Drug Enforcement Administration. His knowledge and experience show in every scene, in every detail of police work. His cops act and talk like cops, his criminals act and talk like criminals. Born’s books have credibility, and even beneath the comedy and wackiness south Florida crime fiction demands and the explosive and suspenseful plotting needed to entertain readers and keep them turning pages, there’s a foundation of verisilimtude that’s missing in many similar works of fiction.

More in the tradition of Elmore Leonard than Carl Hiaasen, Born mixes humor with his crime rather than the other way around. His series regular, Bill Tasker, is an interesting and sympathetic character, easy to like, definitely the “good cop” in an interrogation room routine (or any other situation for that matter). Add to all this Born’s highly readable style, it adds up to a successful crime fiction career for both Born and Tasker. Readers rejoice, criminals beware, there’s a new cop on the Sunshine beat, and he’s gonna be around for a long time to come.

Both Kelby and Born use wit, humor, and the sunstroke craziness south Florida is famous for, and both do so with grace and seeming ease. They are the heir apparents to Hiaasen and Leonard, which is high praise indeed, but you don’t have to take my word for it. Carl Hiaasen said of Kelby, “Kelby is a natural-born storyteller who manages to be very funny and very wise at the same time.” Elmore Leonard said of Born, “Jim Born is the real thing.” I say “ditto” to both.

January 2006
My Top 5 of 2005

Though violent crime seems to have continued its downward trend in our society over the past year, 2005 was a great year for crime fiction. There was more robbery, rape, and homicide, more treachery, betrayal, and infidelity than ever before—and some of it was among the best literature produced (regardless of genre).

Below are my top 5 of 2005. I’m not suggesting they’re the best books published this past year, just that they are the tops in the crime fiction I’ve read. I’m limiting myself to 5, which isn’t easy, but I’m also limiting myself to only those books that have enough crime in them to justify their inclusion in this category.

(Interestingly enough, some of these same titles are showing up on other “Best of 2005” lists, lists in which, unlike me, the author didn’t limit him or herself to crime fiction—including the New York Times and Stephen King’s monthly Entertainment Weekly column. For the record, I formed my list before seeing either of theirs.)

1. Saturday by Ian McEwan (Doubleday, $26.00)
Ian McEwan is one of my favorite writers, and one of the best writers of our time. His previous novel, Atonement, was a powerful, provocative literary page-turner. This year’s Saturday, while a bit slower paced, is just as resonate and even more relevant.

Saturday spans a single day, Saturday, February 15, 2003, the day when hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets of London to protest the Iraq war. It’s a day in the life of Henry Perowne, a London neurosurgeon—a day that begins with Henry witnessing a plane on fire in the pre-dawn sky and ends with a home invasion by street thugs, but is actually a day in the life of our lives and time. It is an entertaining, existential meditation of our post-9/11 world that everyone should read at least once, and I plan to read again soon.

2. No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (Knopf, $24.95)
Cormak McCarthy, the author who has won numerous awards and been proclaimed to be the legitimate heir to both Hemingway and Faulkner, pens his most accessible book to date. No Country for Old Men is the story of three men, one weak, one evil, one decent, but old and unable to do anything about the other two—Llewelyn Moss, Anton Chigurh, and Sheriff Bell respectively. It’s a modern Texas noir tale, written in a spare, unemotional, unsentimental prose appropriate for the setting, the characters, and the subject matter.

3. Crusader’s Cross by James Lee Burke (Simon and Schuster, $25.95)
A new Dave Robicheaux novel is always cause for celebration, something I often scan Amazon checking pub dates for. That his 14th novel is one of his best is just a grace—an unexpected, undeserved, extravagant gift. As usual, the novel is about Louisiana corruption, racial tensions, and the horrors the wealthy inflict on the poor, but it hardly matters. What this, and every Burke book is about, is prose so sensual it drips with the humidity of the bayou and the lush atmosphere and sharp characters it creates, especially Robicheaux himself, the tormented knight errant who is as heroic and human as any crime fiction has to offer.

4. The Colorado Kid by Stephen King (Hardcase, $5.99) / The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly (Little Brown, $25.95)
Fourth place is a tie because I couldn’t pick between these two (even when I asked my wife to place a gun to my head, which she gladly did) and it let’s me include six entries (Top 6 of 2005 just didn’t have the ring I was looking for).
The Colorado Kid is a genre bender from the King of genre. The entire book takes place during one afternoon on an island off the coast of Maine as two old newspapermen, Dave Bowie and Vince Teague, tell their intern, Stephanie McCann, about the decades old death of a man who came to be known as the Colorado Kid. It’s a seemingly impossible mystery, an unsolved that continues to haunt them all these years later.

The book, more novella than novel, is told in the form of a conversation, most of the conversing being done by Dave and Vince. This would be a risky move for lesser writers, but King is a master—and not just of the macabre. What the master of genre books has done is written a mystery novel that’s more a meditation on mystery than a whodunnit. This is King examining the very nature of mystery. It’s a work more serious than it seems, dealing with life and death, the mysterious universe we find ourselves in, and the limits of logic.

Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer demonstrates he’s not just a master of police procedurals, but of legal thrillers, as well. This time out, Connelly gives his series regular, Harry Bosch, a rest in order to introduce Harry’s half-brother, Michael Haller. Michael “Mickey” Haller is a criminal defense attorney in Los Angeles who operates his practice out of the backseat of his Lincoln, which enables him to move from courthouse to courthouse quickly and easily.

The first half of The Lincoln Lawyer reads like a mystery with a legal setting, but by the halfway mark, the book shifts into a legal thriller—whodunnit is no longer an unknown, but how Haller, the hero with feet of clay, is going to handle it is. Both halves are filled with suspenseful twists and turns and the exploration of an interesting character/narrator who is endearing in spite of, or perhaps because of, his many shortcomings.

5. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang by Shane Black (coming soon to DVD)
My 5th pick isn’t a book at all, but a movie, a postmodern noir by the screenwriter of the original Lethal Weapon. It stars Robert Downey, Jr. and Val Kilmer, a would-be actor and a gay detective, investigating a convoluted murder mystery in high style and hilarious fashion. This is one of those movies I looked forward to for a very long time, had to travel 80 miles to watch when it finally made it to my little part of the world, and still loved it from fade in to roll credits—which with that kind of expectations and buildup means it had to be pretty darn good. It also held up well just three weeks later when I went to see it again in Panama City (it was here for like ten minutes). It qualifies for my list because it is well written by an auteur who obviously understands the genre well, and it’s made even more literary by the self-conscious first person narration of Robert Downey, Jr. and the fact that every “chapter” of the film is titled by a work of Raymond Chandler—the father of all of us who write about hard-boiled detectives who walk down mean streets anywhere, but especially in California.