McConfidential: Bill Crider

Bill Crider is a prolific writer and blogger from Texas, which so often leads the way...

Rafe: Tell me a bit about your current series.

Bill: My most recent book is Murder in Four Parts, the latest in the Sheriff Dan Rhodes series. It came out from St. Martin’s back in February. Rhodes is the sheriff of a fictional Texas county in the present day, so the books aren’t westerns. Bookstores occasionally shelve them in the western section, though. After all, any book about a Texas sheriff must be a western, right? In the current book, Rhodes is investigating the murder of the director of a barbershop chorus, among other things.

Rafe: Which authors have had the strongest influence on your writing?

Bill: It’s probably impossible to answer this one. I’ve read too many books and admired too many writers to know who’s been my biggest influence. Certainly Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Ross MacDonald were writers I wanted to emulate, though most of my books are very little like theirs. Even my private-eye novels are different, for the most part. Harry Whittington is a paperback writer I admire for a lot of reasons, but my books aren’t like his, either, but he was certainly an influence. Mickey Spillane’s another one, and, you guessed it, my books are nothing at all like his.

Rafe: What are your five favourite novels that aren’t normally considered crime fiction?

Bill: These change from time to time, but here goes:
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
City – Clifford Simak

Rafe: Who is your favourite contemporary crime fiction author?

Bill: Joe R. Lansdale. I’m really looking forward to Vanilla Ride, his new one.

Rafe: What book/s are you reading at present?

Bill: Doubled in Diamonds by Victor Canning, and Edenville Owls by Robert B. Parker.

Rafe: What project are you currently working on?

Bill: Absolutely nothing. I have a proposal with St. Martin’s for a Sheriff Rhodes novel called The Wild Hog Murders, but no word so far. Given the current market, it may well be that the good sheriff has reached the end of his career. It that happens, I can’t complain. He’s had a great run, and maybe it’s time for me to do more reading and movie-watching and less fiction writing.

Rafe: I hope that doesn’t happen, Bill, and that Sheriff Rhodes rides again, but I think your attitude is great. He certainly has had an excellent run, and it must be very satisfying to be able to look back on that. What advice would you give new authors, either those who are still seeking or publisher, or those new to the business?

Bill: My favorite piece of advice to new writers, and I can’t remember who said it or what the circumstances were, is “Quit, if you can.” Selling books these days is harder than cracking walnuts with a pillow. Well, at least for me. If you can’t quit, then you might try dogged persistence. It sometimes pays off. I think going to conventions, talking to writers, meeting editors, and having fun can also help. Especially the having fun part. Even if you never sell a book, you have some immediate pleasure and something to look back on later.

Rafe: Catch-22 keeps coming up as a McConfidential favourite. It’s a personal record for me, because I’ve started it four times and never finished it. Please tell me what I’m missing!

Bill: Many years ago when I was doing my student teaching as a college undergrad, one of the students in my 11-th grade class loved to read war novels. One day he came up to me at the end of the class I’d just taught and handed me the paperback of Catch-22. He said, “I thought this was a war book, but it’s not. You want to read it?” I said I did and took the book. Having read reviews of it, I knew what the kid meant when he said it wasn’t a war book, so I wasn’t surprised at what I found. I loved the dark humor, the crazy characters, and the essential truth of the whole thing. I’ve read it many times since then, and it still cracks me up. I think about it often when I’m watching the news or reading about politics. You’re probably not missing anything. It’s the right book for me, but I’m sure it’s not for everybody. Zillions of people love Dan Brown’s books or Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. Some people like war books. Different strokes, as we used to say long ago.

Rafe: I don’t ask this question of many authors, but I know you’re a short story fan, so here goes: what are your favourite five shorts in any genre?

Bill: These change from day to day, like my favorite novels, but here goes:
Desertion – Clifford Simak
A Christmas Memory – Truman Capote
The Marching Morons – C. M. Kornbluth
Red Wind – Raymond Chandler
The Night they Missed the Horror Show – Joe R. Lansdale

Rafe: Finally, I wonder if you could tell me a bit about the crime and western genres? I don’t read many westerns, but even so I’ve noticed definite areas of overlap and some obvious similarities.

Bill: One thing you’ve probably noticed is that most westerns are crime novels. All the ones I’ve written are. Some westerns are even straightforward mystery novels, as are most of the ones I’ve done. I think the western’s a lot like the private-eye novel, with the loner who sets things right, who lives by a code, who helps those who can’t help themselves. You can trace the ancestry of the western hero and the P.I. right back from Philip Marlowe to Natty Bumppo to Lancelot or Galahad. If you read Robert B. Parker’s westerns, which some call “Spenser with a Six-Gun”, you can see plenty of overlaps. Elmore Leonard’s City Primeval is sub-titled, “High Noon in Detroit”. It’s a western in modern dress. My Sheriff Rhodes books have a lot in common with westerns, too, besides the place they sometimes get shelved. Sometimes I think the main difference between a western and a crime novel is the setting.

To find out more about Bill, I recommend both his website and blog:
www.billcrider.com and Bill Crider's Popular Culture Magazine, www.billcrider.blogspot.com.

Patti Abbott's Forgotten Books: The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka

The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka by Josef Škvorecký

“Mournful Demeanour” – what a title, if only I’d thought of that first...Josef Škvorecký is a contemporary Czech writer and publisher who spent two years as a slave labourer to the Nazis in the Second World War, and fled to Canada following the Soviet invasion of his country in 1968. He is best known for his numerous literary works, but The Mournful Demeanour is the first of a trilogy of books with the melancholy Lieutenant Boruvka as the protagonist. It was followed by The End of Lieutenant Boruvka in 1975, and The Return of Lieutenant Boruvka in 1981. At the time of writing, the latter – set in Canada – is the only one still in print, along with a short story collection entitled Sins for Father Knox (1988), which features Boruvka in two of the ten tales. The Mournful Demeanour was first published in Czechoslovakia in 1966 and first translated into English in 1973. It contains twelve short stories which are fiendishly clever mysteries and offer a fascinating insight into Communist Czechoslovakia prior to the Soviet invasion.

Boruvka is an officer in the Prague police, a kind-hearted family man who shares his creator’s love for jazz music. The first tale, The Supernatural Powers of Lieutenant Boruvka, is one of the best short stories I’ve ever read in any genre. There are plenty of other outstanding offerings in the volume, and Škvorecký has a particular talent for complementing his fine stories with unusual and interesting titles: Death on Needlepoint, Aristotelian Logic, and Crime in a Girls’ High School to name but three. Don’t be fooled into thinking these are cosy mysteries, however. As one might expect from an author who suffered so much himself, there is a very grim edge to the anthology, albeit it tempered by the great depth of feeling Boruvka conceals behind his world-weary, soft-spoken mien. The collection is almost unique in my experience in that it contains some ingenious plotting and puzzles, as well as many of the qualities for which literary – as opposed to popular – fiction is so frequently praised. Enthralling and bittersweet at the same time.

THE LOVERS by John Connolly

The Lovers by John Connolly, published by Hodder & Stoughton, July 2009

Parker is working in a bar in Portland, having been deprived of his P.I.'s license. He uses his enforced retirement to begin a different kind of investigation: an examination of his own past and an inquiry into the death of his father, who took his own life after apparently shooting dead two unarmed teenagers, a search that will eventually lead to revelations about Parker's own parentage.

Meanwhile, a troubled young woman is running from an unseen threat, one that already seems to have taken the life of her boyfriend, and a journalist-turned-writer named Mickey Wallace is conducting an investigation of his own into Charlie Parker in the hope of writing a non-fiction book about his exploits.

And haunting the shadows, as they have done throughout Parker's life, are two figures: a man and a woman, the lovers of the title, who appear to have only one purpose, and that is to bring an end to his existence . . .

McConfidential: Donna Moore

Donna Moore is the broad from Badsville, AKA Glasgow, although she isn't scary at all.

Rafe: Tell me a bit about your latest novel.

Donna: My latest (and, in fact, only!) novel is called Go to Helena Handbasket. It’s a crime fiction spoof that takes a whole load of crime fiction clichés and stuffs them all into one book – the cynical PI who suffers no ill effects from being beaten, stabbed and shot; the heroine who goes down into the basement without torch or gun just because a gravelly voiced stranger rings her up; the pathologist who’s altogether too fond of dead bodies; the divorced alcoholic cop; the serial killer with a ‘signature’; and...errr...recipes and cats. I hope it comes across as affectionate, because that’s how it was meant.

Rafe: Which authors have had the strongest influence on your writing?

Donna: Enid Blyton and Raymond Chandler. Enid Blyton was a big influence in my childhood. In fact, she very nearly got me arrested at the age of 7. My best friend Lydia and I used to love the Famous Five books. We would pretend to be the characters (I was George, Lydia was Anne). One day we stalked the new vicar of the small village we lived in - just because his jaw was covered in stubble and that's what all the villains in Enid Blyton looked like. And as for Chandler, well, I just love his writing. “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.” Perfect.

Rafe: What are your five favourite novels that aren’t normally considered crime fiction?

Donna: You’re a cruel man – this one’s really tough. I’ve got three that aren’t normally considered crime novels but sort of are, and another two that aren’t considered crime novels and aren’t – is that OK?

First of all, Magnus Mills’ Restraint of Beasts. Tam and Ritchie are a pair of lazy buggers who erect fences for a living. They are overseen by an unnamed foreman, who’s the narrator of the book. He has a thankless task, since Tam and Ritchie can’t go five minutes without a cigarette break. He also has the anally retentive boss, Donald, to contend with. Donald likes all the fences to be perfectly straight. And I mean perfectly. The trio are sent down to England (from Scotland) to do a job. There, they build fences and smoke fags, while staying in a scabby caravan. They also have to contend with the rather sinister Hall Brothers – butchers and fencers. There are crimes in this book. Big crimes. But they’re related in such a matter of fact way that you sort of glide past them. Restraint of Beasts puts the ‘dead’ into ‘deadpan’. It’s surreal yet down to earth, full of impending doom and full of fun. It’s just plain odd and totally brilliant. The Guardian said “If you only read one black comedy about fatal-accident-prone high-tensile-fence erectors, make it this one.”

Next, Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. Becky Sharp is a brilliant femme fatale. She uses her feminine wiles to great effect in order to obtain money and power, engages in war profiteering, dallies with her best friend’s husband, borrows money without paying it back (including from her loyal servant who becomes bankrupt because of it), lies, cheats, steals, deceives, and is not above prostituting herself for a quick buck. She’s completely amoral, cold as ice, and manipulative as hell. I love her.

Thirdly, Alan Bissett’s The Incredible Adam Spark. Adam and his sister Jude live in Falkirk. Adam is 18, has learning difficulties, works in a fast food restaurant, and he thinks he’s acquired the powers of a superhero after receiving a bash on the head. Now he has the problem of deciding whether to use his powers for good or evil – save a child or beat up his sister’s girlfriend. Decisions, decisions. It’s a look at good and evil, told in a totally original voice (and Falkirk dialect) by a character who’s part childish innocent and part violent thug.

So those are my non-crime crime favourites. As for books which have no crime element at all, it’s tough to narrow it down to two, so I shall just pluck two random favourites. First of all, Sempe and Goscinny’s (co-inventors of Asterix the Gaul) Le Petit Micolas about a nine year old French schoolboy and his pals. Very sweet and very funny. Secondly, Robert Graves’ I, Claudius. What can I say? I am entertained by mad Roman Emperors. Thinking about it – there’s plenty of murders in that one, so we can class it as crime fiction, right?


Rafe: Who is your favourite contemporary crime fiction author?

Donna: This is even harder than the previous question. One? One, Rafe? What sort of cruel, heartless person are you? I’m going to ignore the ‘is’ and pretend you wrote ‘are’. Daniel Woodrell, Joe Lansdale, Ken Bruen, Declan Burke, Al Guthrie, Kevin Wignall, Charles Willeford, Barbara Seranella, Megan Abbott, Reed Farrel Coleman, Charlie Williams, Steve Mosby, Ray Banks, Eddie Muller...I could go on.

Rafe: What book are you reading at present?

Donna: Sergio Bizzio’s Rage from the wonderful Bitter Lemon Press. It’s set in Argentina and is a slightly erotic thriller about a guy who commits a crime and hides out in the attic of the mansion where his girlfriend is a maid. I understand Guillermo del Toro is currently making a film based on the book.

Rafe: What project are you currently working on?

Donna: I’ve just finished writing a caper set in Glasgow. It’s called Old Dogs and it’s about two elderly ex-hookers turned con artists who concoct a plan to steal two jewel-encrusted gold dogs from a museum. Unfortunately, there are other parties interested in the dogs, not to mention an Australian hitman after the old ladies. It may never see the light of day, but it was great fun to write.

Rafe: Enid Blyton and Raymond Chandler. What a combination! I wonder how Chandler would have felt about that given his disdain for Christie and Sayers...Which is your favourite Chandler novel and why?

Donna: Another tough one – you don’t like to make things easy, do you? I think it would have to be Farewell, My Lovely because of Moose Malloy. A close second The Big Sleep – the Sternwoods are great, and I love the plot (despite the unexplained murder!). I also have a soft spot for The High Window...oh, it’s no good – I love them all.

Rafe: Yes, I recently reread The High Window and was pleasantly surprised how good it was. Now I’m going to show how cruel I really am: pick one of those contemporary crime fiction authors, and, the one book of theirs you would take to a desert island with you.

Donna: I used to like you, Rafe. It would be The Mammoth Book of Novels by Daniel Woodrell, Joe Lansdale, Ken Bruen...etc. So there.

OK, if forced at gunpoint, it would probably be Daniel Woodrell’s Winter's Bone. And the reason, well, here’s how it begins:

"Ree Dolly stood at break of deay on her cold front steps and smelled coming flurries and saw meat. Meat hung from trees across the creek. The carcasses hung pale of flesh with a fatty gleam from low limbs of saplings in the side yards. Three halt haggard houses formed a kneeling rank on the far creekside and each had two or more skinned torsos dangling by rope from sagged limbs, venison left to the weather for two nights and three days so the early blossoming of decay might round the flavour, sweeten that meat to the bone.

Snow clouds had replaced the horizon, capped the valley darkly, and chafing wind blew so the hung meat twirled from jigging branches. Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks reddening as if smacked and smacked again.She stood tall in combat boots, scarce at the waist but plenty through the arms and shoulders, a body made for loping after needs."

I love that - all my senses are set to tingling. He’s an amazing writer and his books are full of beautiful descriptions, wonderful characters. Winter's Bone is touching, heartbreaking and ferocious, with a sly sense of humour. There, I hope you’re happy now.

Rafe: I'm getting there. You mentioned a Scottish crime fiction blog in a couple of emails. As an ethnic Scot I naturally expect to be allowed to contribute! Tell me and my readers a bit (or a lot) more about the blog.

Donna: Well, goodness me. If your maiden aunt twice removed once visited Peebles for 5 minutes, I reserve the right to put you on the list. Consider it done. The address is http://www.bigbeatfrombadsville.blogspot.com/ The aim is primarily to cover Scottish crime fiction – books set in Scotland, Scottish authors, authors who just happen to live here – and will cover news, reviews, interviews etc. But I will also talk about random nonsense and anything which takes my fancy, so I’m not going to be strict about it. I’m having fun with it, and that’s the main thing.

Rafe: Old Dogs sounds great, and I certainly hope it does see the light of day. What comes next?

Donna: Thanks, me too. I’ve just started another caper, about a man who gets involved in a heist to clear out the entire contents of a house and things go downhill from there. And I’m also trying my hand at something a little bit darker, about two guys from different areas of Glasgow whose lives intersect at various points. I love reading dark books, but every time I write something that starts out dark, it turns into Arsenic and Old Lace.

Find out more about Donna at the Big Beat from Badsville: www.bigbeatfrombadsville.blogspot.com.

Patti Abbott's Forgotten Books: The Night of the Generals

The Night of the Generals by Hans Hellmut Kirst

It probably seems strange to choose, as a ‘forgotten’ book, one that is not only still in print as a mass market paperback, but was also made into a very successful film. The Night of the Generals was released in 1967, five years after the novel was first published (in German), with Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif in the lead roles. O’Toole had recently appeared as T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia and played his part to perfection alongside an all-star supporting cast which included the likes of Christopher Plummer and Harry Andrews. Forty years on, however, the novel behind the film is largely forgotten, and only kept in print by Cassell Military Paperbacks; Cassell produce some excellent books, but their line is almost exclusively military history and biography. Kirst himself was a Second World War veteran who wrote both war and crime fiction, the former illustrating how the Nazi influence had corrupted the traditions of the Wehrmacht, and the latter concerning a detective in 1960s Munich.

Despite being set during the Second World War, The Night of the Generals is very definitely crime fiction, a clever murder mystery presented in the style of a police procedural. It shares some similarities with Nelson Demille’s The General’s Daughter, but is larger in concept – concerning a series of crimes committed over fourteen years – and faster paced, beginning with the protagonist – Major Grau – and the Polish police at the first crime scene, in Warsaw in 1942. A witness gives evidence as to the uniform of the killer, from which Grau is able to identify the suspect as one of three German generals in the city. Two years later, in Paris, Grau and the same three generals are reunited by the murder of a second woman. It’s impossible to reveal more of the plot (which differs from the film) without spoiling the end, suffice to say that a third murder occurs in Dresden, in East Germany, in 1956. The film is good, but as is so often the case, the book is better. A really tense, gripping mystery, full of surprises.

The Architect of Murder #19: The Sherlock Holmes Journal

Roger Johnson had some kind words for The Architect of Murder - and this blog - in the latest issue of The Sherlock Holmes Journal:


Rafe McGregor’s intimate knowledge of South Africa and of military history is evident in his first novel, The Architect of Murder, and in his earlier novellas and short stories. Gyles Brandreth praises him as “the architect of murderously good fiction”. Rafe lives in Yorkshire and somehow finds time to write a genuinely worthwhile weblog at www.rafemcgregor.blogspot.com.

Brenda's Sherlockian Bulletin: Re-Reading Holmes Revisited

Holmes and Watson are included in Newsweek's remonstrance to re-read certain books:


Now, Read it Again
Like old friends and favorite haunts, some books reward revisiting.
David Gates

Above the table on which I'm now writing hangs an old framed print showing Mr. Pickwick's street-smart servant, Sam Weller, prophetically pointing out to his chubby little master — in tights, gaiters, and spectacles — a vast, teeming mob of tiny figures: the characters Charles Dickens was to create in the novels to come after The Pickwick Papers. I still haven't identified all of them, but I see Fagin and the Artful Dodger from Oliver Twist, Little Nell and her grandfather from The Old Curiosity Shop, the sanctimonious Mr. Pecksniff from Martin Chuzzlewit, the choleric Major Bagstock from Dombey and Son, and Bob Cratchit from A Christmas Carol carrying Tiny Tim. Ah, and that must be the mad old dealer in secondhand clothes from David Copperfield. His name, in what appears to be an odd self-tribute, is Charley —Dickens names another madman in that same novel Mr. Dick — but I remember him best, as you will if you've read the book, for his greeting to young David: "Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you want? Oh, my lungs and liver, what do you want? Oh, goroo, goroo!" It's because I can't get enough of characters like these that half my Dickens paperbacks now have their covers held on with duct tape.

The other day I went to the bookstore and laid in a couple of newly published volumes I've been eager to read — Samuel Beckett's letters and Blake Bailey's biography of John Cheever — but I'll be spending most of this summer revisiting all of Dickens yet again. (So far I've gone through Chuzzlewit, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, and Little Dorrit; next up, Oliver Twist.) This time I've got an excuse — I'm teaching a Dickens course in the fall — but I've never considered that I needed one. Most of the "joys of rereading" pieces you come across tuck in an obligatory apology for indulging in the "childish" pleasure — this is a bad thing? — of "obsessive" repetition. You often hear a distinction made between strictly literary rereading, the kind of close study scholars and writers undertake, and the "comfort" reading relegated to the beach, the bathroom, and the bedroom. But is there really such a sharp line between the respectably energizing and the shamefully narcotizing? I'd never put Dracula on a syllabus, or read myself to sleep with Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable. (Though some people might find it a sovereign cure for insomnia.) Still, I suspect that the most widely reread writers in English have been Dickens, Shakespeare, and Jane Austen — hardly a month goes by without my revisiting one of them — who combine the sleepy-time comforts of story and character with all the challenge and complexity, the inexhaustible newness, that anyone could ask for. I've taught them all in the classroom, while in the bedroom their books have slipped from my hands as their stories shaded into my dreams.

In a recent New York Times op-ed in defense of rereading, Verlyn Klinkenborg lists some of his old favorites — he turns out to be a Dickens hound too — and concludes: "This is not a canon. This is a refuge." And in an even more recent New Yorker piece, Roger Angell refers to "a sweet dab of guilt attached to rereading. We really should be into something new, for we need to know all about credit-default swaps and Darwin and steroids and the rest, but not just now, please." Most of us, though, have our own musical canon — or why do they sell so many iPods? — and no one feels guilty about listening to, say, Talking Heads' Once in a Lifetime just once in a lifetime. My own list of perennial rereads ranges from Jim Bouton's Ball Four and Galen Rowell's In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods — about a K2 expedition that entertainingly falls apart over the climbing team's acrimonies — to John Dean's Watergate memoir Blind Ambition and Brendan Gill's magazine memoir Here at the New Yorker, to Humphrey House's biography of Ezra Pound, A Serious Character, and Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. This is beyond a refuge. It's a world, with continent after continent, each as densely populated with heroes, villains, and oddballs as that Dickens print on my wall. They give me a circle of friends and acquaintances far wider, and in some cases far deeper, than I — or anyone — could have in what we're pleased to call the real world.

In W. H. Auden's essay The Guilty Vicarage — collected in The Dyer's Hand, which I've kept on my night table for years — he analyzes his self-confessed "addiction" to whodunits: "I suspect that the typical reader of detective stories is, like myself, a person who suffers from a sense of sin." I share Auden's fondness for Sherlock Holmes and G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown, but his reading habits could hardly be more different from mine. "I forget the story as soon as I have finished it, and have no wish to read it again. If, as sometimes happens, I start reading one and find after a few pages that I have read it before, I cannot go on." I've reread all the Sherlock Holmes stories, and many of the Father Browns, more times than I could count, and I seldom have fewer than a half dozen of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries there on the night table next to The Dyer's Hand. In fact, I never travel overnight without one or two in my bag. And, as far as I can tell, without a sense of sin.

Lovers of these stories — can we not call them addicts? — often note that part of their appeal lies in their comfortingly familiar atmospheres: Holmes and Watson's rooms on Baker Street, with the "gasogene" (whatever that is) and the Persian slipper filled with pipe tobacco, or Wolfe's townhouse on West 35th, with its kitchen on the first floor and its plant rooms on the roof. But the real draw is the people: the arrogantly rational Holmes (whose impenetrable reserve compensates for God knows what); the stolid yet insecure Watson; the petulant, sedentary, impossibly erudite Wolfe — a fellow rereader, whose office is lined with favorite books — and his Watson, the hyperkinetic, never-insecure Archie Goodwin, wielder of one of the most engaging first-person narrative voices in all of fiction. And don't forget the villains. Not just the recurring archenemies — Dr. Moriarty and Arnold Zeck (Wolfe's Moriarty) — but such wonderfully nasty specimens as the fraudulent "solar priest" exposed by Father Brown in The Eye of Apollo, or the drab middle-aged lady in Stout's A Right to Die who turns out to be a murderous racist. I've just spoiled two endings, by the way, but they were spoiled for me years ago without diminishing my pleasure a bit.


Read the rest of the article here.


Brenda Rossini