Fiction Review

Yesterday, this year’s Bouchercon Anthony Award committee announced the 2019 Anthony Award nominees. If you’re looking for these books, check out the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com

Congratulations to all of the nominees!

ANTHONY AWARD NOMINATIONS
Best Novel 
Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown and Company)
November Road by Lou Berney (William Morrow)
Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier (Minotaur Books)
Sunburn by Laura Lippman (William Morrow)
Blackout by Alex Segura (Polis Books)

Best First Novel
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Doubleday)
Broken Places by Tracy Clark (Kensington)
Dodging and Burning by John Copenhaver (Pegasus Books)
What Doesn’t Kill You by Aimee Hix (Midnight Ink)
Bearskin by James A. McLaughlin (Ecco)

Best Paperback Original Novel 
Hollywood Ending by Kellye Garrett (Midnight Ink)
If I Die Tonight by Alison Gaylin (William Morrow Paperbacks)
Hiroshima Boy by Naomi Hirahara (Prospect Park Books)
Under a Dark Sky by Lori Rader-Day (William Morrow Paperbacks)
A Stone’s Throw by James W. Ziskin (Seventh Street Books)

Best Short Story 
“The Grass Beneath My Feet” by S.A. Cosby, in Tough (blogazine, August 20, 2018)
“Bug Appétit” by Barb Goffman, in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (November/December 2018)
“Cold Beer No Flies” by Greg Herren, in Florida Happens (Three Rooms Press
“English 398: Fiction Workshop” by Art Taylor, in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (July/August 2018)
“The Best Laid Plans” by Holly West, in Florida Happens (Three Rooms Press)

Best Critical or Non-Fiction Work 
Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession by Alice Bolin (William Morrow Paperbacks)
Mastering Plot Twists: How To Use Suspense, Targeted Storytelling Strategies, and Structure To Captivate Your Readers by Jane K. Cleland (Writer’s Digest Books)
Pulp According to David Goodis by Jay A. Gertzman (Down & Out Books)
Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s by Leslie S. Klinger (Pegasus Books)
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara (HarperCollins)
The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World by Sarah Weinman (Ecco)

Bouchercon 2019 — “Denim, Diamonds, and Death” — will present this year’s Anthony® Awards in five categories at the 50th annual Bouchercon® World Mystery Convention to be held in Dallas, October 31 to November 3. The Anthony Awards will be voted on by attendees at the convention and presented on Saturday, November 2.

The Anthony® Award is named for the late Anthony Boucher (rhymes with “voucher”), a well-known California writer and critic who wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times Book Review, and also helped found Mystery Writers of America. First presented in 1986, the Anthony Awards are among the most prestigious and coveted literary awards. Bouchercon®, the World Mystery Convention founded in 1970, is a nonprofit, all-volunteer organization celebrating the mystery genre. It is the largest annual meeting in the world for readers, writers, fans, publishers, editors, agents, booksellers, and other lovers of crime fiction.

There was a time when Kevin Hearne lived in the Valley. He started writing his Iron Druid series, and, in fact, celebrated the release of his fourth book, Tricked, at Rula Bula, an Irish pub in Tempe. The Poisoned Pen staff was there to take care of the book sales. Why do I mention that? In the video below, Hearne says it’s good to be back in the area because he could make a stop at Rula Bula. The party was “Atticus & Oberon’s Sausage Fest.”

Kevin Hearne has moved on. He and Delilah Dawson were recently at the Pen with the second book in their Pell series, No Country for Old Gnomes. The series has been described as a combination of Monty Python and Terry Pratchett. You can order a signed copy through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2HjwJx5

Here’s a description of No Country for Old Gnomes.

Go big or go gnome. The New York Times bestselling authors of Kill the Farm Boy welcome you to the world of Pell, the irreverent fantasy universe that recalls Monty Python and Terry Pratchett.

War is coming, and it’s gonna be Pell.

On one side stand the gnomes: smol, cheerful, possessing tidy cardigans and no taste for cruelty.

On the other side sit the halflings, proudly astride their war alpacas, carrying bags of grenades and hungry for a fight. And pretty much anything else.

It takes only one halfling bomb and Offi Numminen’s world is turned upside down—or downside up, really, since he lives in a hole in the ground. His goth cardigans and aggressive melancholy set him apart from the other gnomes, as does his decision to fight back against their halfling oppressors. Suddenly Offi is the leader of a band of lovable misfits and outcasts—from a gryphon who would literally kill for omelets to a young dwarf herbalist who is better with bees than with his cudgel to an assertive and cheerful teen witch with a beard as long as her book of curses—all on a journey to the Toot Towers to confront the dastardly villain intent on tearing Pell asunder. These adventurers never fit in anywhere else, but as they become friends, fight mermaids, and get really angry at this one raccoon, they learn that there’s nothing more heroic than being yourself.

In No Country for Old Gnomes, Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne lovingly tweak the tropes of fantasy and fairy tales. Here you’ll find goofy jokes and whimsical puns, but you’ll also find a diverse, feminist, and lighthearted approach to fantasy that will bring a smile to your face and many fine cheeses to your plate.

*****

If you’re a fan, I think you’ll want to watch the video featuring Kevin Hearne and Delilah Dawson.

You might have missed Jeffery Deaver’s appearance at The Poisoned Pen, but that doesn’t mean you have to miss the debut of his new series featuring Colter Shaw. The Never Game is the current Hot Book of the Week at The Poisoned Pen. You can order a signed copy through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/30e1laZ

Here’s the description of The Never Game.

From the bestselling and award-winning master of suspense, the first novel in a thrilling new series, introducing Colter Shaw.

“You have been abandoned.”

A young woman has gone missing in Silicon Valley and her father has hired Colter Shaw to find her. The son of a survivalist family, Shaw is an expert tracker. Now he makes a living as a “reward seeker,” traveling the country to help police solve crimes and private citizens locate missing persons. But what seems a simple investigation quickly thrusts him into the dark heart of America’s tech hub and the cutthroat billion-dollar video-gaming industry. 

“Escape if you can.”

When another victim is kidnapped, the clues point to one video game with a troubled past–The Whispering Man. In that game, the player has to survive after being abandoned in an inhospitable setting with five random objects. Is a madman bringing the game to life?

“Or die with dignity.”

Shaw finds himself caught in a cat-and-mouse game, risking his own life to save the victims even as he pursues the kidnapper across both Silicon Valley and the dark ‘net. Encountering eccentric game designers, trigger-happy gamers and ruthless tech titans, he soon learns that he isn’t the only one on the hunt: someone is on his trail and closing fast.

The Never Game proves once more why “Deaver is a genius when it comes to manipulation and deception” (Associated Press).

*****

Piqued your interest? You can read more about The Never Game in a book review by The Real Book Spy. https://bit.ly/2Q3kbwx

DESERT NIGHTS, RISING STARS FELLOWSHIPS | DEADLINE JUNE 15, 2019

The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing is proud to announce full and partial fellowships for individuals to teach at the 2020 Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference at Arizona State University. By presenting alongside nationally recognized faculty, fellowships provide valuable opportunities to develop professional networks, increase profiles, and advance careers. Applications are relatively easy and consist of a session proposal, statement of merit, and supporting materials. Writers of all genres and any level of experience are encouraged to apply. The deadline for applications is May 30, 2019. Read the full guidelines, meet past fellows, and become a fellow today at https://piper.asu.edu/fellowships.

Hilary Davidson kicks off a new series, and Laird Barron discusses his second Isaiah Coleridge novel when Patrick Millikin interviews them at The Poisoned Pen. Davidson’s thriller is One Small Sacrifice, and Barron’s is crime novel is Black Mountain. You can order signed copies of both books through the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com

Here’s the description of Hilary Davidson’s One Small Sacrifice.

An apparent suicide. A mysterious disappearance. Did one man get away with murder—twice?

NYPD detective Sheryn Sterling has had her eye on Alex Traynor ever since his friend Cori fell to her death under suspicious circumstances a year ago. Cori’s death was ruled a suicide, but Sheryn thinks Alex—a wartime photojournalist suffering from PTSD—got away with murder.

When Alex’s fiancée, Emily, a talented and beloved local doctor, suddenly goes missing, Sheryn suspects that Alex is again at the center of a sticky case. Sheryn dislikes loose ends, and Cori’s death had way too many of them.

But as Sheryn starts pulling at the threads in this web, her whole theory unravels. Everyone involved remembers the night Cori died differently—and the truth about her death could be the key to solving Emily’s disappearance.

*****

And, here’s the summary of Laird Barron’s Black Mountain.

Ex-mob enforcer Isaiah Coledrige has hung out a shingle as a private eye in New York’s Hudson Valley, and in his newest case, a seemingly simple murder investigation leads him to the most terrifying enemy he has ever faced

When a small-time criminal named Harold Lee turns up in the Ashokan reservoir–sans a heartbeat, head, or hands–the local Mafia capo hires Isaiah Coleridge to look into the matter. The Mob likes crime, but only the crime it controls…and as it turns out, Lee is the second independent contractor to meet a bad end on the business side of a serrated knife. One such death can be overlooked. Two makes a man wonder.

A guy in Harold Lee’s business would make his fair share of enemies, and it seems a likely case of pure revenge. But as Coledrige turns over more stones, he finds himself dragged into something deeper and more insidious than he could have imagined, in a labyrinthine case spanning decades. At the center are an heiress moonlighting as a cabaret dancer, a powerful corporation with high-placed connections, and a serial killer who may have been honing his skills since the Vietnam War…

*****

If you haven’t been to a Poisoned Pen event, you might think the discussions are all about the authors’ most recent books. You couldn’t be more wrong. Check out this conversation.

The current Hot Book of the Week at The Poisoned Pen is Jeffrey Fleishman’s My Detective. You can order a signed copy of it through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2E1BIAH

With that title, I’m sure you’re curious about My Detective. Here’s the summary.

Los Angeles is booming. Money is pouring in. Buildings are going up. But someone is killing architects.

Detective Sam Carver journeys through sins scattered across the City of Angels, where hipsters, homeless, immigrants, producers, politicians, movie stars, and cops collide in mysterious ways. Every move Carver makes is anticipated by the killer, Dylan Cross. She has hacked his computer and knows his diaries and secrets. She sees in him a kindred and damaged spirit, a man who can understand her crimes, heal her scars, and love her. Dylan is reclaiming herself from a past of brutal injustices inflicted by a world of misogyny and power. Detective Carver is dealing with his own troubled history — an elusive and violent father.

My Detective is a story of obsession set against vengeance and prayers of forgiveness in a city that is as cruel as it is fantastical. It captures modern Los Angeles in real time, an eerie glide through the imagination, where winds gust high above the San Gabriel Mountains and neighborhoods stretch toward the ocean like the flash and tremor of a dream. The novel speaks to our sense of beauty in a new century and the demons we rouse when we dare to create a new metropolis.

It’s time for Cozycon 2019 at The Poisoned Pen. On Saturday, May 11 from 2-4 PM, five cozy authors will discuss and sign their books for customers. You can find the calendar event here. https://bit.ly/2Hb2UP9

And, if you can’t make it on Saturday, you can certainly check the Web Store for the authors’ books. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

We hope you can join us, though, to welcome these authors.

Paige Shelton, author of The Loch Ness Papers.

Jenn McKinlay, author of Dying for Devil’s Food.

Jessica Ellicott, author of Murder Flies the Coop.

Jill Orr, author of The Bad Break.

Jane Willan, The Hour of Death.

It’s always a fun time when cozy mystery writers get together. You’re going to want to try to be at The Poisoned Pen on Saturday.

Chris Pavone, author of the bestseller The Expats, brings Kate Moore back in his latest thriller, The Paris Diversion. Pavone will be at The Poisoned Pen on Monday, May 13 at 7 PM, joined by Jeffery Deaver who will discuss The Never Game. Signed books by both authors are available through the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com

Here’s the summary of The Paris Diversion.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Expats. Kate Moore is back in a pulse-pounding thriller to discover that a massive terror attack across Paris is not what it seems ““ and that it involves her family

American expat Kate Moore drops her kids at the international school, makes her rounds of chores, and meets her husband Dexter at their regular café: a leisurely start to a normal day, St-Germain-des-Prés.

Across the Seine, tech CEO Hunter Forsyth stands on his balcony, wondering why his police escort just departed, and frustrated that his cell service has cut out; Hunter has important calls to make, not all of them technically legal.

And on the nearby rue de Rivoli, Mahmoud Khalid climbs out of an electrician’s van and elbows his way into the crowded courtyard of the world’s largest museum. He sets down his metal briefcase, and removes his windbreaker.

That’s when people start to scream.

Everyone has big plans for the day. Dexter is going to make a small fortune, finally digging himself out of a deep financial hole, via an extremely risky investment. Hunter is going to make a huge fortune, with a major corporate acquisition that will send his company’s stock soaring. Kate has less ambitious plans: preparations for tonight’s dinner party—one of those homemaker obligations she still hasn’t embraced, even after a half-decade of this life—and an uneventful workday at the Paris Substation, the clandestine cadre of operatives that she’s been running, not entirely successfully, increasingly convinced that every day could be the last of her career. But every day is also a fresh chance to prove her own relevance, never more so than during today’s momentous events.

And Mahmoud? He is planning to die today. And he won’t be the only one.

*****

Here’s one more hint about The Paris Diversion.

Today, R.G. Belsky, author of Below the Fold, has a post about flawed characters as heroes. Belsky’s Clare Carlson mysteries, including Below the Fold, are available through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2H9dztY

Here’s the summary of Below the Fold.

When the murder of a “nobody” triggers an avalanche.

Every human life is supposed to be important. Everyone should matter. But that’s not the case in the cutthroat TV news-rating world where Clare Carlson works. Sex, money, and power sell. Only murder victims of the right social strata are considered worth covering. Not the murder of a “nobody.” 

So, when the battered body of a homeless woman named Dora Gayle is found on the streets of New York City, her murder barely gets a mention in the media. But Clare—a TV news director who still has a reporter’s instincts—decides to dig deeper into the seemingly meaningless death. She uncovers mysterious links between Gayle and a number of wealthy and influential figures. There is a prominent female defense attorney; a scandal-ridden ex-congressman; a decorated NYPD detective; and—most shocking of all—a wealthy media mogul who owns the TV station where Clare works. Soon there are more murders, more victims, more questions. As the bodies pile up, Clare realizes that her job, her career, and maybe even her life are at stake as she chases after her biggest story ever.

*****

Before Belsky’s post, here’s a little bit of information about him. R.G. Belsky is a longtime journalist and a crime fiction author in New York City. Belsky has worked as a top editor at the New York Post, the New York Daily News, Star magazine and NBC News. He has also published 12 mystery novels, including his current Clare Carlson series ““ about a woman TV journalist.

Thank you, R.G., for talking about flawed characters.

*****

WHY WE LOVE FLAWED CHARACTERS

By R.G. Belsky

Clare Carlson, the main character in my new mystery BELOW THE FOLD, has a lot of wonderful qualities: She’s smart, funny, tough and a highly-successful journalist who’s risen to the job of news director at a major New York City TV station.

But there’s also a few not-so-great things about Clare. Okay, maybe more than a few, especially in her personal life. Which is pretty much of a train wreck after three failed marriages, a number of ill-advised romances and a decision she made in college more than 20 years ago which still haunts her to this day.

One reader said of her after she made her first appearance in my Yesterday’s News during 2018: “I’m not sure I like Clare. Not the character, the person. At times I’m angry with her, other times I’m cheering. A few times I simply wanted to pull her to pull her aside and give her a good talking to. That’s a good thing. It shows her real self on the pages.”

Which is why I love writing about her.

But then I’ve enjoyed reading about flawed characters created by plenty of other authors over the years too.

Let’s face it: Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch is not the perfect guy, not the perfect police officer. He bends rules, he crosses the line a lot and his personal life is frequently in turmoil. Same thing with Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder; Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone; Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski and – maybe most of all – Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. Go back and read the Marlowe books sometime. Sure, Philip Marlowe is the greatest detective character ever in mystery fiction – but he’s definitely no choir boy.

Then there’s maybe the most dysfunctional protagonists in recent mystery history: the scheming husband and wife in the unreliably-narrated bestseller Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Maybe we didn’t exactly love Nick and Amy Dunne in that book. But we sure were damn fascinated by them and that turned the book into a blockbuster phenomenon.

Even my favorite TV detective character of all time, Jim Rockford from The Rockford Files back in the “˜70s, was lovable because of all his flaws on the show – which really set him apart from the other detectives on the screen back then. Rockford was always making bad decisions, always being friends with the wrong people , always in trouble with the cops. “On my best day, I’m barely legal,” he says to one person who questions his professional ethics on a case.

I was on a panel with Reed Farrel Coleman, who writes the Jesse Stone series now created by the late Robert B. Parker, where we talked about the importance of writing flawed characters like that in our mystery novels.

Coleman said that the toughest part of writing Jesse Stone was you had to make sure he wasn’t too perfect. I mean Tom Selleck plays him on TV, so you immediately think of that when you read the books. Jesse is good-looking, honest, tough – almost perfect, right? Well, Coleman explained, that’s why it was important to give Jesse flaws – his drinking, his failed marriages and his injury which cut short a promising baseball career and prevented him from making it to the major leagues.

That’s what I try to do with my Clare Carlson character too.

In the new book, BELOW THE FOLD, she has an exchange with her best female friend which I think captures that pretty well.

“You have a strange set of priorities,” the woman friend says after Clare explains how she broke up with a guy because she didn’t like his TV watching choices – and that was a real priority to her.

 “Hey, they work for me,” Clare responds.

“How do they work? You’re a forty-something year old woman who’s been divorced three times and have no man in your life right now.”

“Okay, I didn’t say they worked well….”

One early review of the book, from the MenReadingBooks blog, described Clare this way:

“On one level, its hard to pull for Clare because of her personal self-inflicted issues, but on the other hand, she is such a dogged reporter that each lead, no matter how small, is met with our approval that we can’t help but hope she wins.”

No, Clare Carlson is not perfect.

But then none of us are either.

Which is probably why we love our mystery heroes to be the same way.

Twelve years. It took Kris Frieswick twelve years to write her debut novel, The Ghost Manuscript. So, if you’re interested, snatch it up now from the Web Store. Who knows how soon there will be a second one? https://bit.ly/2VhV1QU

Here’s the summary of The Ghost Manuscript.

Rare book authenticator Carys Jones wanted nothing more than to be left alone to pursue her obsession with ancient manuscripts. But when her biggest client is committed to an asylum, he gives Carys an offer she cannot refuse. In exchange for his entire library of priceless, Dark Age manuscripts, Carys must track the clues hidden in a previously unknown journal, clues that lead to a tomb that could rewrite the history of Western civilization.

But there are people who would do anything to stop Carys from finding what she seeks—for reasons both noble and evil. The hunt takes Carys to places she never thought she’d go, physically and emotionally; first to Wales, her estranged father’s homeland, then to bed with Dafydd, a mysterious Welshman who agrees to help her with the search, and finally, deep inside her own psyche, when the monk who wrote the journal 1,500 years ago appears and assists her in her search.

*****

Even better, here’s the conversation between Kris Frieswick and Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen.