Busking on the streets of Cleveland

I had a really great time at Bouchercon 2012 [‘The World Crime, Mystery and Thriller Convention’], held this year in Cleveland, OHIO, the home of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This year I travelled with my very dear friend, Editor-in-Chief of Shots eZine and award-winning novelist Mike Stotter. My friend, Editor at The Rap Sheet, Jeff Peirce posted a few photos of our adventures here

On the Friday afternoon, in the rain, we passed a bar, and this song was blaring out on the street, and it got my feet tapping. I am ashamed to say I had never heard this song before. The opening riff I thought was from ACDC, then as the vocals came on I thought, no it sounds like John Fogerty of Creedance Clearwater Revival. I just couldn’t stop rocking to the beat. I put my exuberance down to a combination of a lack of sleep and excess caffeine consumption

 Mike Stotter decided to film it.

When I got home, as I couldn’t get that song out of my head, I was amazed to find it was actually by the Hollies – a British band! And considering we were in Cleveland for a crime-fiction convention, the lyrics seemed torn from the pages of a noir story.

"Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress" was a song by the rock and roll group, The Hollies, and released on February 1, 1972 as a single on the Parlophone Records label.

It was released soon after Allan Clarke, who was featured on lead guitar as well as lead vocal had left the group, from their album "Distant Light" (1970). As the group had just left EMI/Parlophone and signed with Polydor, they did not promote the song. However it became a No. 2 hit in the United States, their greatest ever singles success there. It was inspired and in the style of the rock and roll group Creedence Clearwater Revival, and on being reactivated by EMI in Britain a few months later, it reached No. 32.
The song is notable in that it features Clarke playing rhythm guitar, something he rarely did (Clarke came up with the song's signature guitar rhythm that opens the song).

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Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress by the Hollies [1972]

Written by Allan Clarke, Roger Cook, and Roger Greenaway

Saturday night I was downtown

 Working for the FBI

Sitting in a nest of bad men

Whiskey bottles piling high

Bootlegging boozer on the west side

Full of people who are doing wrong

Just about to call up the DA man

When I heard this woman singing a song

A pair of moneybags made me open my eyes

My temperature started to rise
She was a long cool woman in a black dress

Just a 5'9" beautiful 'n' tall Just one look I was a bad mess

'Cause that long cool woman had it all

I saw her heading to the table

Well, a tall walking big black cat Charlie said,

 "I hope that you're able, boy

 'Cause I'm telling you she knows where it's at"

Suddenly we hear the sirens

Everybody started to run

Jumping under doors and tables Well,

I heard somebody shooting a gun

Well, the DA was pumping my left hand

She was holding my right Well, I told her, "Don't get scared

'Cause you're gonna be spared

I'm gonna be forgiven if I wanna spend my living"

With a long cool woman in a black dress

Just a 5'9" beautiful 'n' tall

Just one look I was a bad mess

'Cause that long cool woman had it all

She had it all, she had it all, she had it all She had it all

You got it all, you got it all,

you got it all You got it all, got it all, got it all, got it all

Pretty long cool woman had it all

MORALLY CHALLENGED HEROES

Last Friday I met up with my writing Colleagues Liz Hand, Lou Berney, Chris F Holm and Seth Harwood, in Cleveland for our Bouchercon Panel, a discussion on “Morality in the Crime Fiction Hero / Anti-Hero.” Considering there were three other excellent panels, as well as key-note event with Toastmaster John Connolly in conversation with fellow bestselling novelist Karin Slaughter, we were very surprised at the turnout. It was standing room only, and for those who attended, we wish to thank you. As ‘morality in crime-fiction’ is a very broad and interesting topic, we had far more questions than time’, so I thought it might be fun to publish my notes and questions that we raised, as well as the ones we didn’t have time to debate. These points both those discussed and those not, should provoke thought. This is the pleasure of reading, it engages the mind and makes us think about life and reality, and the prism of crime fiction, an excellent way of viewing matters in an existential light. And we all know it rains on the just and unjust alike.

I would urge you to explore the panelist’s work, though Wallace Stroby emailed me that afternoon, with an apology as he was taken sick and therefore unable to participate. In honour of Clint Eastwood, who played the amoral Dirty Harry, we left Wallace’s chair empty………

Elizabeth Hand In the 1970s, Elizabeth Hand flunked out of college and became involved in the nascent punk scenes in DC and NYC. From 1979 to 1986 she worked at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air & Space Museum, and eventually received a BS in cultural anthropology. She is the author of eleven novels and four collections of short fiction. Her work has received numerous honors, including the Shirley Jackson Award, World Fantasy Award, and Nebula Award, and her novels have been New York Times and Washington Post Notable Books.  A regular contributor to the Washington Post, LA Times, Salon, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, among others, Hand divides her time between the Maine coast and North London.

Her novel Available Dark [2012] is a foray into crime fiction and a sequel to her highly regarded 2007 Novel Generation Loss, which received the inaugural Shirley Jackson Award for best work of psychological suspense.   Both books feature her antihero Cassandra [Cass] Neary who she describes “as your prototypical amoral speedfreak crankhead kleptomaniac murderous rage-filled alcoholic bisexual heavily tattooed American female photographer.” Perfect for our panel on amoral heroes!

Lou Berney is an accomplished writer, teacher, and liar. He is the author of WHIPLASH RIVER (William Morrow, 2012) and GUTSHOT STRAIGHT (William Morrow, 2010). GUTSHOT STRAIGHT was nominated for a Barry Award and named by Booklist as one of the best debut crime novels of the year. Often compared to Elmore Leonard with a dash of Carl Hiaason, his short fiction has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and the Pushcart Prize anthology, and he has written feature screenplays and created TV pilots for, among others, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Focus Features, ABC, and Fox. 

Currently he teaches writing at the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma City University. Berney’s antihero Charles "Shake" Bouchon, is a professional wheel man [aka getaway driver] and is described as “too nice a guy for the life he's led, but not nice enough for any other”

Chris F Holm - was born in Syracuse, New York, the grandson of a cop with a penchant for crime fiction.  It was punk rock and Star Wars, two influences that hold more sway over Holm, than perhaps his wife would like.  But it was books [like many of us] that defined his childhood, from his grandfather’s Wambaugh and Lawrence Sanders paperbacks, to the timeworn pulps picked up secondhand from the library. Apparently, he wrote his first story at the age of six.  It got him sent to the principal’s office and he’d like to think that right then is when he decided to become a writer.

Since then, he’s fared a little better. His stories have appeared in a slew of publications, including Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Beat to a Pulp, and Thuglit.  His novella “The Hitter” was selected to appear in THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2011, edited by Harlan Coben and Otto Penzler. He’s been an Anthony Award nominee, a Derringer Award finalist, and a Spinetingler Award winner.  His Collector novels, DEAD HARVEST [Feb 2012] and THE WRONG GOODBYE [Sept 2012], recast the battle between heaven and hell as Golden Era crime pulp. They feature Sam Thornton a collector of souls from the damned and sends them into eternal misery. So it should have been straightforward to collect the soul of 17-year-old mass murderer Kate MacNeil, but something isn’t right; her soul is too pure. The collection of an innocent soul can throw off the balance of good and evil and spark a chain of events that leads to the end of the world, biblical style – hence the moral / amoral dimension.

Wallace Stroby – I first met Wallace on a late night drinking binge at Bouchercon Las Vegas in 2003, in a bar called ‘The Peppermill’, which was featured in John Ridley’s amoral novel ‘Everyone Smokes in Hell’, and we’ve been bumping into each other at Bouchercons ever since. Stroby is an award-winning journalist and the author of the novels

"Kings of Midnight," "Cold Shot to the Heart," "Gone 'Til November," "The Heartbreak Lounge" and "The Barbed-Wire Kiss.".

A Long Branch, N.J., native, he's a lifelong resident of the Jersey Shore. "The Barbed-Wire Kiss," which The Washington Post called "a scorching first novel ...full of attention to character and memory and, even more, to the neighborhoods of New Jersey," was a finalist for the 2004 Barry Award for Best First Novel.

A graduate of Rutgers University, Stroby was an editor at the Star-Ledger of Newark, Tony Soprano's hometown newspaper, for 13 years. In Stroby’s latest KINGS OF MIDNIGHT, Crissa Stone, the cool-headed professional thief from Stroby's acclaimed COLD SHOT TO THE HEART returns and when reviewed at Kirkus she is described - "Crissa Stone may be crime fiction's best bad girl ever."

Seth Harwood – Boston born but now residing in California, Seth is the author of the Jack Palms novels. In 2005, Seth Harwood began writing his debut novel, Jack Wakes Up. No stranger to the literary scene, Harwood had graduated from the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop just a few years earlier and his short stories had been published in numerous literary magazines and anthologies; getting attention from publishers for Jack Wakes Up, however, proved more difficult. So in July of 2006, Seth recorded a podcast of Jack Wakes Up and posted it on his website, SethHarwood.com, for free download. The podcast was a major hit and the Jack Palms Crime Podcast Series was born. Soon JACK WAKES UP was published by Three Rivers Press Paperback Original [Random House]. Since then he has written This is The Life [Jack Palms #2], Czechmate [Jack Palms #3], Triad Death Match [A Jack Palms Novella], A Long Way from Disney [a short story collection], In Broad Daylight [a Jess Harding FBI thriller]. 

The Jack Palms’ novels feature the eponymous anti-hero, former Hollywood one-hit wonder and ex-drug addict now has cleaned up his act, and is sorting his life out, but aspects of his amoral past still lay in his mind, and Palms is described by some as “half-likeable and half-asshole”. Though it is his 2010 novel Young Junius, that is perhaps his most intriguing, taking the 14 year old Junius Posey, who sets to track down his brother’s killer in a rundown area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Junius ends up a killer, crossing the line but it’s the amorality he’s learned that allows him to sort out the dangers around him.

Seth teachs English and writing at CCSF [City College San Francisco] and Stanford University, and previously at UMass Boston and the University of Iowa.

Q         Would you agree that the basis of the success of the Crime Fiction /  Mystery Genre is the understanding of ‘Morality’, and the restoration of  order? Unlike in life, in the crime novel we have the ability to solve the problem, punish the guilty and restore order, giving the reader a sense of ‘closure’ / catharsis as satisfaction is often absent in the real world, due to the random nature of reality [where the rain falls on the just, as well as the unjust, in equal measure]?

Q         In some crime novels we often have the good guy, who restores the order  but in order to do so, he has a side-kick [to do the dirty work] so the hero keep his uniform white, eg Bubba works with Patrick and Angie in Dennis Lehane’s PI novels, Robert B Parker’s Spencer has Hawk, Harlan Coben’s Myron Bolitar has Win, Bob Crais’ Elvis Cole has Joe Pike, while        some writers allow their ‘heroes / anti-heroes to do their own dirty work. What are your thoughts on this matter, should the hero clean up his own mess, or have a side-kick? And what do you do in your own writing with this dilemma?

Q         Many critics indicated that the Bond villains were very, very bad because James Bond was a deeply amoral character himself, so his enemies had to be even more grotesque, a bit like the Batman villains [as Bruce Wayne was a psychopath] would you agree that when your character / hero / anti-hero is a bad-ass, then his foes have to be even more evil?

         At this point the panel were asked “if you were in deep, deep trouble and need to call upon a fictional character to help you out of a jam, who would you call?” Seth Harwood asked “…but what sort of trouble?” At which I replied “consider it a big bloody problem, so big it would take an imaginary character, a real bad-arse to resolve." The panelists spoke about the character they would call, and the audience voted for a winner, and it was Chris Holm’s nomination of Bruce Wayne / Batman that was voted the biggest bad-arse, and the one they would call if mired in a huge problem, beating Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley, Richard Stark’s Parker and Helen Zahavi's Bella.

       At this point, a giant cockroach fell from the ceiling to much consternation from the audience, luckily the Editor-in-Chief of Shots Magazine, and insect-wrangler managed to stamp on it, before it attacked the panel. This was a good time to open up the panel to the audience, for their questions.

            This left the following questions un-debated, but you might find them of interest and may provoke thought.

Q         When writing a amoral hero[s] / anti-hero[s], how hard it is to ensure the reader retains sufficient sympathy with the character[s] so there is a  willingness to continue to read, on. What writing tactics do you deploy with examples to keep the reader engaged even when the lead has some unpleasant character traits? [eg Elmore Leonard deployed humor, Westlake / Stark deployed violence and an efficiency, sense of purpose in the ruthlessness in Parker, Harris gave Lecter some very insightful dialogue and a scary intelligence, Larsson gave Salander autism linked to her backstory and hi-tech skills, Fleming gave Bond an upperclass  perspective, exotic tastes and locations, etc]

Q         I recall being chilled when I read that Adolf Hitler loved dogs, as he was a huge animal lover, this made him [in my opinion] all the more hideous as a monster, seeing that he was ultimately responsible for the deaths of so many innocent humans, but loved animals, so how important is it that we show the good and bad natures of our characters, antagonists and protagonists as the world is no longer black and white but murky grey?

Q         What about the good guys that appear in the genre, how important is to ensure they have dark sides to their nature, and not totally good-two  shoes types, so there is cross-over to the amoral anti-hero? Or is there legitimacy in have all characters with good and bad, and the hero is the one who is least bad?

Q         What happens when a writer / creator feels perhaps their anti-hero has crossed the line between the fantasy world and become a tool for the mentally unstable in the real world? Does the writer creator have a duty to society to keep the amorality behind a line? [Examples being Stephen King withdrawing RAGE, an early book published under his name   Richard Bachman which allegedly was linked to some school kidnappings  / shootings, Stanley Kubrick withdrawing A CLOCKWORK ORANGE in the UK as it allegedly inspired anti-social gang violence as some youths  copied Alex and the Droogs, now available again following Kubrick’s death, and more recently the BATMAN massacre in Denver], so what responsibility does the writer / creator have when walking the morality line?

As a coda to that question / discussion point, I’d bring out the anecdote / dilemma that British Composer Clint Mansell faced when that Norwegian nutter Anders Behring Breivik admitted in having the score from Darren Aronofsky’s REQUIEM FOR A DREAM [based on a novel by Hubert Selby Jnr] ‘Lux Aeterna’ playing on full volume, and on shuffle-repeat on his IPod as he killed the young people on the Norwegian island.

He said at the trial “In addition, I will put my iPod on max volume as a tool to suppress fear if needed. I might just put Lux Aeterna by Clint Mansell on repeat as it is an incredibly powerful song. The combination of these factors (when added on top of intense training, simulation, superior armour and weaponry) basically turns you into an extremely focused and deadly force, a one-man-army.”

Q         Can you go too far in having amoral heroes in novels or cinema of the extreme, for example has anyone here seen the very disturbing ‘A SERBIAN FILM’? [show of hands please], where the lead character is a male ex-porn actor, basically a decent man, forced into some unspeakable acts and acts of extreme sexual violence. I’m never for agreeing with censorship, but that film disturbed me deeply, and is one that I think crosses the line. Have any of you, lines on your own value and moral system that you would not cross, or is any scared cow fair game?

Q         Is there a response to amorality by subversion? When Austrian Michael Haneke wrote and directed ‘FUNNY GAMES’ in 1997 [which was remade for US audiences a decade later], it was deeply shocking. I found it hard to watch. Haneke in an interview said that his film was in direct response to the laughter he heard from a teenage cinema audience when they viewed some of the random and amoral violence and death in Pulp Fiction. The teenage laughter chilled him, so in response, he made FUNNY GAMES, where the two psychopaths that terrorise and torture [and murder] the couple and their young son, are portrayed as charming, well dressed and their madness / amorality masked by their charm and joyful natures. We see that amorality is not funny, and the camera lingers over the violence and no one laughs.

            Other examples of subversion of morality could be Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, where the cops are corrupt while the mob appear to be the good guys in the neighborhood, or in ‘Mute Witness’ by Robert Fish which became Bullitt, or the Dirty Harry Movies the amoral [fascistic] cops are better than the politicians that should be our protectors - Care to comment about the subversion of morality?

Q         There seems to an issue with regard to the treatment of morality when viewed through the looking glass of different cultures, as some ‘things’ maybe palatable in one culture but not in another. A case in point is the amoral ‘hero’ such as Thomas Harris’ 1999 novel “Hannibal” which was lauded by the British / European critics while on the whole unappreciated in Harris’ native America, and Patricia Highsmith whose work especially the Tom Ripley novels were critically acclaimed in Europe but only after her passing did they become more than cult books in her native America, she even left the US for Norfolk and eventually Switzerland? Would you agree that an amoral hero is more accessible to a European sensibility than an American one?

Q         What fictional characters do you consider really special? And why are so many popular characters amoral with often sociopathic tendencies? Can you pick examples from the book world, as well as comics, films and tell us about the ones you most liked and perhaps influenced you eg -

            Examples being Silence of the Lambs with Clarice Starling, and the Dr Moriarty style villain with Dr Hannibal Lecter, Carol O'Connell's Kathleen Mallory, Larsson’s  Lisabeth Salander, Fleming’s James Bond, Richard Stark’s Parker, Highsmith’s Tom Ripley, David Morrell’s John Rambo and there are many more, not just in books, but comics, films eg Batman, Catwoman, The Joker, The Watchmen, Clint Eastwood’s Spaghetti Westerns, Dirty Harry, Bullitt, The Magnificent Seven, Any Tarantino movie, The Dirty Dozen, et al

            We had a lot of fun, and I do hope you explore the panelists’ work, because they plough    the amoral furrow well, because like in life, it rains on the just and unjust in equal measure.

“It rains on the just and the unjust, alike”

Though personally not religious, there are passages in the Bible that are worth quoting, worth reflecting upon, and sometimes they provide insight, other times they don’t. Whether you recognize the title of this post from Matthew 5:45, or from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen, it doesn't really matter. What that line indicates is that when it comes to morality, the consequences of our actions may or may not have repercussions.

This brings me to discuss the topic of Morality as a theme in crime, mystery and thriller fiction, as an entrée to packing this weekend for my annual trip to Bouchercon [The World Crime and Mystery Convention], which this year is being celebrated in Cleveland Ohio next week. In 2013 it’s being held in Albany NY, then in 2014 in Long Beach CA, and in 2015 it’s in Raleigh NC [where I am heading the Programming for Stacey Cochran]. Bouchercon is the biggest gathering of Crime, Mystery and Thriller readers, writers, reviewers, publishers, editors, bloggers, and enthusiasts in the world. As much as I enjoy my visits to Thrillerfest, Theakston’s Harrogate Crime, Bristol’s Crimefest, and Left Coast Crime [and there are many others], like the new Bloody Scotland – Bouchercon has a special place in my heart. Over the years, I have made many friends at these events, due to my eccentric nature and fascination with the genre.

I recall vividly when I sat at the opening ceremonies at Bouchercon San Francisco in 2010, the moment when the Chair of the convention welcomed us to her home city Rae Helmsworth, and Toastmaster Eddie Muller asked for the lights to be dimmed as he played this montage movie by Serena Bramble –

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Anyway, as Serena’s movie played in the darkened room, I sat mesmerized with at least a thousand fellow enthusiasts of the crime, mystery, thriller genre from all over the world. When the sinister vocals of Donovan’s Hurdy Gurdy Man, came on accompanying the clip from David Fincher’s Zodiac, I looked back at the audience and realized everyone appeared hypnotized. Looking back at all the movies featured by Serena, there was one common theme to them all - they all examined ‘morality’ as a theme that drove the narrative. Then again, ‘morality’ is always the theme when it comes to plotting crime-fiction, as we see the battle fought between the righteous against the evil. In some cases it can be simplistic with the good guys wearing white, and being totally righteous while the bad guys show no redeeming features at all. Though in today’s genre, like that of reality, both good and bad can merge to produce various shades and hues, many grey, some darker than others, and sometimes the good guys are only marginally better than the bad guys, or in a work such as Hannibal by Thomas Harris, it becomes hard to distinguish the good guys from the bad. I have written about Harris’ work many times, as the theme of morality is key to all Harris’s work. I consider that it was Harris’ own Southern Baptist upbringing that made him use morality as the backdrop upon which Dr Lecter views the world, as he indicated to Detective Will Graham in his novel Red Dragon –

"Tell me, Will. Did you enjoy it? Your first murder? Of course you did. And why shouldn't it feel good? It does to God. Why only last week in Texas, he dropped a whole church roof on the heads of 34 of his worshippers, just as they were groveling for him. He wouldn't begrudge you one Journalist."

Getting back to Bouchercon, with up to 2,000 people attending the convention, there are so many panels, events, parties, meetings to attend, as well as clocking in some bar time; that one can get very perplexed with the choices on offer. Panels run multi-tracks, so planning ahead is essential, though due to Bourcheron’s huge appeal, they are all very well attended. I have Moderated and Participated on many Bouchercon Panels, since my first Bouchercon in Las Vegas in 2003. I’ve moderated some amusing ones, such as ‘Alcohol and Crime Fiction’ in Baltimore in 2008 [pictured at top] when I passed around some Gordon’s Gin during the debate. The same year, I also moderated a panel on Book Reviewing where I was hyped by early reads of Stieg Larsson [pictured below with Rae Helmsworth]. In San Francisco I moderated a Book Reviewing Panel, and one on Translated Crime Fiction. I took at break in Indianapolis in 2009 where I attended, but didn't present, though I caught up last year in St Louis where I moderated two panels, one on PI Fiction and one on Translated Crime Fiction, due to my early championing of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Next week, at Bouchercon Cleveland, I’m moderating only one panel but it is the topic that this feature relates to – Morality in the genre’s heroes. The panel is on Friday afternoon, and one of five events running at the 1445 – 1535 time slot. All are excellent panels, as well as a feature discussion between two internationally acclaimed writers.

In a surreal twist of fate, it was indeed John Connolly who helped me formulate some of my ideas about the role morality plays in crime-fiction -

You often cite the differences between so-called Golden Age British crime fiction and the American crime fiction of that same period. Would you care to explain?

Are you trying to cause to trouble? [Laughs]

No. But what I'm alluding to here is that the British crime fiction of the early 20th century was very class-conscious, focusing on the mechanics of upper-class society, whereas U.S. crime fiction focused more on the blue-collar world. What are your thoughts on this difference?

Well, in most panel debates and discussion groups, when this theme is explored, people very rarely argue, as there seems to be this happy consensus about things. I think people are often frightened to offend someone, as if you can't say anything bad about people who write mysteries set in the vicarage, or cat mysteries. I am quite happy to say bad things about some of them, as some are simply awful, just as some hard-boiled mysteries are. ...

In terms of my own reading, I've read [Agatha] Christie as well as [Dorothy L.] Sayers, and they are the kind of things that you pick up in a library when you're younger. They are books about class, but more importantly, they are very conservative. These novels are predicated upon belief in "the system" and "the society" that they are set in. So crime is seen as an aberration to the system, and all it takes is someone with a bow tie, bowler hat and perhaps a fancy mustache to come in and sort it out. The hero cuts out the crime like a surgeon operating on a cancerous nodule that needs removing, restoring order to the perfect world. There are, naturally, exceptions to this, but I'm not sure that even those works were prepared to look into the fact that evil is endemic to society, part of the natural order of things.

That is not the only thing I dislike about the Golden Age "cozy." Christie may have some very good qualities, but carefully crafting characters is not one of them, apart from Miss Marple and perhaps [Hercule] Poirot and the odd guy who turns up in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which was quite interesting. That wasn't her real concern, as she was in fact writing puzzles, and she was writing books that had the ethos that "bad things happen to bad people." People who die in Christie's and Sayers' novels have been asking for it. The classic example is in Sayers' The Nine Tailors, where the guy who dies in that book dies because of divine retribution, and his death is connected to a vision of a God who only punishes bad people. Therefore, there is no need to become emotionally engaged with the people who die in those novels. ... You shouldn't give a damn about them, but perhaps focus on the puzzle that lies in the center of the book.

In the American crime novels of the same period, the situation is completely different. There is an understanding that people suffer due to no fault of their own, particularly with Ross Macdonald, who was a big influence on my own writing. There is not the same "perfect world" setting, particularly with the books that came out of California in the 1920s and 30s. [California back then] was a dreadfully corrupt place. It was a place of immense wealth, and with that came power, and that brought the law, and with that, justice was predicated upon how much money you had. In that environment, you needed someone from the outside to establish order, because the police were not going to do it -- especially if you were poor, or an immigrant. ... I think that [situation] appealed to me, because it brings a great deal of other things into the frame. There is a sense of indignation at the state of the world, and also of compassion; there is recognition that for evil to triumph, as the political philosopher Edmund Burke said, [all that is necessary is] for good men to stand by and do nothing. There was an understanding in that fiction, that you just had to act. In someone like [Dashiell] Hammett -- he went through an almost 180-degree turn in his political and social viewpoint. Hammett was a strike-breaker for the Pinkertons, but towards the end of his life he got jailed for refusing to name names [during America's "communist scare" of the 1950s]. Hammett took it upon himself to act, as he felt that "the order" as it stood was not satisfactory.

Read More from my 2003 interview with John Connolly from January Magazine

If you are interested to see the panel we've assembled, here’s the details –

MORALLY CHALLENGED HEROES

Date: Friday, October 5, 2012
Time: 2:45 p.m. - 3:35 p.m.
Location: Whitehall Room

The panelists are –

Elizabeth Hand In the 1970s, Elizabeth Hand flunked out of college and became involved in the nascent punk scenes in DC and NYC. From 1979 to 1986 she worked at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air & Space Museum, and eventually received a BS in cultural anthropology. She is the author of eleven novels and four collections of short fiction. Her work has received numerous honors, including the Shirley Jackson Award, World Fantasy Award, and Nebula Award, and her novels have been New York Times and Washington Post Notable Books.  A regular contributor to the Washington Post, LA Times, Salon, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, among others, Hand divides her time between the Maine coast and North London.

Her novel Available Dark [2012] is a foray into crime fiction and a sequel to her highly regarded 2007 Novel Generation Loss, which received the inaugural Shirley Jackson Award for best work of psychological suspense.   Both books feature her antihero Cassandra [Cass] Neary who she describes “as your prototypical amoral speedfreak crankhead kleptomaniac murderous rage-filled alcoholic bisexual heavily tattooed American female photographer.” Perfect for our panel on amoral heroes!

Lou Berney is an accomplished writer, teacher, and liar. He is the author of WHIPLASH RIVER (William Morrow, 2012) and GUTSHOT STRAIGHT (William Morrow, 2010). GUTSHOT STRAIGHT was nominated for a Barry Award and named by Booklist as one of the best debut crime novels of the year. Often compared to Elmore Leonard with a dash of Carl Hiaason, his short fiction has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and the Pushcart Prize anthology, and he has written feature screenplays and created TV pilots for, among others, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Focus Features, ABC, and Fox. Currently he teaches writing at the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma City University. Berney’s antihero Charles "Shake" Bouchon, is a professional wheel man [aka getaway driver] and is described as “too nice a guy for the life he's led, but not nice enough for any other”

Chris F Holm - was born in Syracuse, New York, the grandson of a cop with a penchant for crime fiction.  It was punk rock and Star Wars, two influences that hold more sway over Holm, than perhaps his wife would like.  But it was books [like many of us] that defined his childhood, from his grandfather’s Wambaugh and Lawrence Sanders paperbacks, to the timeworn pulps picked up secondhand from the library. Apparently, he wrote his first story at the age of six.  It got him sent to the principal’s office and he’d like to think that right then is when he decided to become a writer.

Since then, he’s fared a little better. His stories have appeared in a slew of publications, including Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Beat to a Pulp, and Thuglit.  His novella “The Hitter” was selected to appear in THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2011, edited by Harlan Coben and Otto Penzler. He’s been an Anthony Award nominee, a Derringer Award finalist, and a Spinetingler Award winner.  His Collector novels, DEAD HARVEST [Feb 2012] and THE WRONG GOODBYE [Sept 2012], recast the battle between heaven and hell as Golden Era crime pulp. They feature Sam Thornton a collector of souls from the damned and sends them into eternal misery. So it should have been straightforward to collect the soul of 17-year-old mass murderer Kate MacNeil, but something isn’t right; her soul is too pure. The collection of an innocent soul can throw off the balance of good and evil and spark a chain of events that leads to the end of the world, biblical style – hence the moral / amoral dimension.

Wallace Stroby – I first met Wallace on a late night drinking binge at Bouchercon Las Vegas in 2003, in a bar called ‘The Peppermill’, which was featured in John Ridley’s amoral novel ‘Everyone Smokes in Hell’, and we’ve been bumping into each other at Bouchercons ever since. Stroby is an award-winning journalist and the author of the novels

"Kings of Midnight," "Cold Shot to the Heart," "Gone 'Til November," "The Heartbreak Lounge" and "The Barbed-Wire Kiss.".

A Long Branch, N.J., native, he's a lifelong resident of the Jersey Shore. "The Barbed-Wire Kiss," which The Washington Post called "a scorching first novel ...full of attention to character and memory and, even more, to the neighborhoods of New Jersey," was a finalist for the 2004 Barry Award for Best First Novel.

A graduate of Rutgers University, Stroby was an editor at the Star-Ledger of Newark, Tony Soprano's hometown newspaper, for 13 years. In Stroby’s latest KINGS OF MIDNIGHT, Crissa Stone, the cool-headed professional thief from Stroby's acclaimed COLD SHOT TO THE HEART returns and when reviewed at Kirkus she is described - "Crissa Stone may be crime fiction's best bad girl ever."

Seth Harwood – Boston born but now residing in California, Seth is the author of the Jack Palms novels. In 2005, Seth Harwood began writing his debut novel, Jack Wakes Up. No stranger to the literary scene, Harwood had graduated from the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop just a few years earlier and his short stories had been published in numerous literary magazines and anthologies; getting attention from publishers for Jack Wakes Up, however, proved more difficult. So in July of 2006, Seth recorded a podcast of Jack Wakes Up and posted it on his website, SethHarwood.com, for free download. The podcast was a major hit and the Jack Palms Crime Podcast Series was born. Soon JACK WAKES UP was published by Three Rivers Press Paperback Original [Random House]. Since then he has written This is The Life [Jack Palms #2], Czechmate [Jack Palms #3], Triad Death Match [A Jack Palms Novella], A Long Way from Disney [a short story collection], In Broad Daylight [a Jess Harding FBI thriller]. The Jack Palms’ novels feature the eponymous anti-hero, former Hollywood one-hit wonder and ex-drug addict now has cleaned up his act, and is sorting his life out, but aspects of his amoral past still lay in his mind, and Palms is described by some as “half-likeable and half-asshole”. Though it is his 2010 novel Young Junius, that is perhaps his most intriguing, taking the 14 year old Junius Posey, who sets to track down his brother’s killer in a rundown area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Junius ends up a killer, crossing the line but it’s the amorality he’s learned that allows him to sort out the dangers around him.

Seth teachs English and writing at CCSF [City College San Francisco] and Stanford University, and previously at UMass Boston and the University of Iowa.

Ali Karim [Moderator] – I’m the Assistant Editor at Shots eZine, a contributing editor at January Magazine & The Rap Sheet and I write for Crimespree magazine, Deadly Pleasures, Strand Magazine, and Mystery Readers International and am an associate member of  The Crime Writers Association [CWA], International Thriller Writers [ITW] and the Private Eye Writers of America [PWA]. I contributed to ‘Dissecting Hannibal Lecter’ ed. Benjamin Szumskyj [McFarland Press] a critical examination of the works of Thomas Harris; The Greenwood Encyclopedia of British Crime Fiction [ed. Barry Forshaw] and the Edgar and Anthony Award nominated ITW 100 Thriller Novels ed David Morrell and Hank Hagner [Oceanview Publishing]. At the Anthony Awards held at Bouchercon St Louis, I was presented with the 2011 David Thompson Memorial Award for Special Services to the Crime and Thriller Genre, and am the programming chair for Bouchercon 2015 in Raleigh, North Carolina headed by Stacey Cochran.

We have some interesting topics on the theme of ‘morality in our heroes’ to discuss and I am sure references will be made of Clarice Starling, and the Dr Moriarty style villain / anti-hero Dr Hannibal Lecter, Carol O'Connell's Kathleen Mallory, Larsson’s  Lisabeth Salander, Fleming’s James Bond, Richard Stark’s Parker, Highsmith’s Tom Ripley, David Morrell’s John Rambo as well as Batman, Watchmen, Clint Eastwood’s Spaghetti Westerns, Dirty Harry, Bullitt, The Magnificent Seven, Tarantino movies, The Dirty Dozen, et al

When considering writing about amoral heroes, what happens when a writer / creator feels perhaps their anti-hero has crossed the line between the fantasy world and become a tool for the mentally unstable in the real world? Does the writer creator have a duty to society to keep the amorality behind a line? [Examples being Stephen King withdrawing RAGE, an early book published under his name Richard Bachman which allegedly was linked to some school kidnappings / shootings, Stanley Kubrick withdrawing A CLOCKWORK ORANGE in the UK as it allegedly inspired anti-social gang violence as some youths copied Alex and the Droogs, now available again on DVD following Kubrick’s death, and more recently the BATMAN massacre in Denver], so what responsibility does the writer / creator have when walking the morality line?

Is there a response to amorality by subversion? When Austrian Michael Haneke

wrote and directed ‘FUNNY GAMES’ in 1997 [which was remade for US audiences a decade later], it was deeply shocking. Many found it hard to watch. Haneke in an interview said that his film was in direct response to the laughter he heard from a teenage cinema audience when they viewed some of the random and amoral violence and death in Pulp Fiction. 

The teenage laughter chilled him, so in response, he made FUNNY GAMES, where the two psychopaths that terrorise and torture [and murder] the couple and their young son, are portrayed as charming, well dressed and their madness / amorality masked by their charm and joyful natures. We see that amorality is not funny, and the camera lingers over the violence and no one laughs. Other examples of subversion of morality are Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, where the cops are corrupt while the mob appear to be the good guys in the neighborhood, or in ‘Mute Witness’ by Robert L. Fish which became Bullitt, or the Dirty Harry Movies where amoral [fascistic] cops are better [or less worse] than the politicians that should be our protectors, even James Bond and Batman are psychopaths, hence why their enemies border on the surreal in terms of evil.

So we hope to see some of you at Bouchercon Cleveland, and if you come to the Morality panel on Friday afternoon, make sure you bring a raincoat as it rains on the righteous as well as disingenuous, in equal measure.

And finally as I titled this article from a line that Alan Moore used from Matthew 5:45 for Watchmen, let’s leave the last laugh to Rorschach, telling an anecdote overlaid upon the murder of The Comedienne -

Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says "Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says "But, doctor...I am Pagliacci."

Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains. Fade to black

2013 The Year of The King

The Wonderful Charles Ardai just made my day, as not only have we Stephen King’s follow-up to The Shining titled Dr Sleep coming in 2013 – but just in my inbox is the cover image for Hard Case Crime’s JOYLAND by Stephen King, and imprint from British Publisher Titan Books also due in 2013

As reported earlier in The Guardian -

The master of horror has announced he will be sticking to print for his new novel, Joyland, so that "folks who want to read it will have to buy the actual book".
The story of a college student who comes to a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, only to confront "the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever", Joyland will be published next June by independent pulp crime press Hard Case Crime.

"I love crime, I love mysteries, and I love ghosts," said King. "That combo made Hard Case Crime the perfect venue for this book, which is one of my favourites. I also loved the paperbacks I grew up with as a kid, and for that reason, we're going to hold off on e-publishing this one for the time being. Joyland will be coming out in paperback, and folks who want to read it will have to buy the actual book."

Hard Case Crime previously published King’s The Colorado Kid, as well as many ‘lost works’ by luminaries of the crime / thriller genre.

Mark your diaries accordingly as King’s Joyland is out in June 2013, which was first mentioned in an interview by Neil Gaiman earlier this year.

Cover of ‘Joyland’ © 2012 Hard Case Crime / Glen Orbik

Meet Me in St. Louis

My final week frantically organizing things before heading off with Mike Stotter and Roger Ellory to Bouchercon 2011 ‘The World Mystery and Crime-Fiction Convention’ – this year’s event is being held in St. Louis Missouri.

I’m moderating two panels, so if you find yourself at Bouchercon, St Louis next weekend, why not find out something about PI Fiction as well as the globalisation of Crime Fiction.

Saturday Sept 17 10:00AM-11:00AM - I’M ALIVE AND ON FIRE

Rumors of the private eye fiction’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
Ali Karim (M), Max Allan Collins, Douglas Corleone, Barbara Fister, Rick Helms, Robert J. Randisi

Saturday Sept 17 11:30AM-12:30PM - FALLS THE SHADOW

Globalization of crime fiction
Ali Karim (M), Mark Billingham, Sara Blaedel, Deon Meyer, Karin Slaughter, Martyn Waites

More information about Bouchercon 2011 can be found here

The Existential Background to Spartan

I enjoy thrillers based around the looking glass world of international espionage especially by scribes who have the credentials of authenticity, and writing ability that reflects the existential aspects of the world they portray. The best debut thriller that has passed my reading table this year is without doubt Matthew Dunn’s Spartan [aka Spycatcher in the US], coming from Orion Imprint Swordfish in the UK managed by editor / author Rowland White, and from executive editor David Highfill at HarperCollins US imprint Wm Morrow.

Many know my obsessive nature when a powerful debut captures my mind. I just have to learn more about it, as it enriches the memory of the work, and enhances my own understanding of the dynamics of storytelling. So I was interested in discovering how Rowland White had discovered Matthew Dunn, as well as finding a little about his own writing. The interesting factor is that Rowland followed up his bestselling Vulcan 607 and Phoenix Squadron with newly released Storm Front, a tale that perhaps provides insight into why Spartan / Spycatcher appealed to him, with its tale of the British SAS on a covert mission into the Middle-East -

In early 1970, the Commanding Officer of 22 SAS flew into the strategically critical Sultanate of Oman on a covert intelligence mission. A Communist rebellion in the South threatened not only the stability of the Arabian Peninsula but more importantly the West’s vital oil routes through the Persian Gulf.

Six months later, following a coup d’etat supported by the British Government, the SAS deployed to Oman to lead a fierce, secret war against the rebels. While, from a remote RAF airbase in the desert, an elite band of British pilots, flying difficult, dangerous missions in Strikemaster jets and Vietnam-era Huey helicopters, were scrambled alongside them in support.

For the British soldiers and airmen, it was to be no easy victory. The enemy were well supplied with weaponry and training from China and the Soviet Union, and despite confronting the largest assault force ever deployed by the SAS, many months later the rebels were still fighting back.

And at dawn on July 19th, 1972, a force of nearly 300 heavily armed, well-trained guerillas attacked the little fishing port of Mirbat without warning. Between them and glory stood a team of just nine SAS men. And the skill of the British fighter pilots. The scene was set for an epic encounter. Their heroism would become SAS legend.

Drawing on extensive interviews with participants from the SAS, the RAF and the Sultan’s Armed Forces, most of whom have never spoken about their involvement before, as well as previously classified documents from both the UK and Oman, Storm Front weaves an unputdownable tale of intrigue, action, daring and astounding bravery in the face of overwhelming odds.

So like an SAS man, I tracked the busy Rowland White down and asked him to let me know how he came across this remarkable debut novel -

Netting Swordfish’s First Catch by Rowland White

In launching the Swordfish list I wanted to publish books that appealed for the same reasons as those that inspired me when I was growing up. I loved to lose myself in adventure, danger and exotic locations in the company of naturalists, spies, explorers and soldiers. On my reading list were authors like Willard Price, Herge, Ian Fleming, Paul Brickhill, Wilbur Smith and Clive Cussler. I wanted a Swordfish book to capture readers’ imaginations in the same way and, in Spartan, ex-MI6 field operative, Matthew Dunn’s explosive debut novel, I’ve got one. Agent Luigi Bonomi told me, when making his submission, that Matthew’s book would be up my street and it was quickly clear that his instinct was on the money. When I first tucked into the manuscript I was immediately struck by the Spartan’s distinctive tone. It was hard-edged and muscular, with a confidence and authority that was unusual. I was gripped by its immediacy and sense of purpose.

The book’s hero, MI6/CIA joint asset, Will Cochrane, inhabits a world in which there can be no room for self-doubt or hesitation; where split second decisions have massive repercussions, but where not making a decision is not an option. And it had a ring of authenticity only an ex-intelligence officer could bring to it. It’s pumped up, larger than life and exhilarating. Like Ian Fleming, Matthew’s drawn on his own experience of the secret world to create a hero who, while grounded in reality, operates on the limits of what’s humanly possible. Like all the best adventure thrillers, there’s escapism and wish fulfillment in there. Will Cochrane’s not quite superhuman, but he’s certainly the next best thing. For the reader, the feeling you’re at Will’s shoulder as he conducts his mission is irresistible. Spartan is stunningly dynamic thriller-writing. But alongside kinetic, widescreen action sequences, there’s also tradecraft. There’s excitement, but also insight.

In Will Cochrane, Matthew Dunn’s drawn a hero who I couldn’t wait to go into battle with again. But I’m lucky, as Matthew’s Publisher I get to do that before anyone else. Matthew recently delivered the manuscript for his second thriller, titled Sentinel, it drops us alongside Will Cochrane off the far eastern coast of Russia aboard a rusting trawler as he prepares to infiltrate, alone, unseen, ashore. Reading on, I felt the biting wind and sleet as Will climbed down a rope net towards the churning ocean and I knew I was in for another brutal, bloody and addictive all-action rollercoaster ride. I look forward to many more of them.

Then I managed to interview Matthew Dunn for The Rap Sheet, though he was a naturally a tad coy talking about his time with MI6 / SiS but did provide me this interesting essay on how he became an instrument for Her Majesties Secret Service -

The Route to SIS by Matthew Dunn

The application process to join MI6 is torturous and probably one of the hardest selection procedures in the world in terms of the success to failure rate. It’s designed to be that way for the simple reason that the job of an MI6 field operative is incomparably tough and mentally challenging. Applicants have to sit numerous timed cognitive tests which get increasingly harder to the point of absurdity, have to lead role-play problem-solving exercises, are interviewed extensively, and have to undergo an incredibly intrusive security vetting investigation that lays bare every aspect of your private life. Potential recruits can fail at any stage but it is in the interviews that the real work is done to establish whether you have what it takes to become a spy.

The interviewers are senior intelligence officers who are trained to spot indecisiveness, mental inferiority, frauds, fantasists, and potential traitors. Anyone with those and other weaknesses are quickly toyed with and spat out of the system. If you avoid that, the interviewers will focus on your strengths to see if they are up to the exacting standards required of an MI6 officer. One of the questions they ask is, “Who do you look up to?” If you answer something like, “JFK and Gandhi” then the interview is over. If you answer, “Nobody” it continues. The reason for this is that if you look up to someone, then you perceive yourself to be beneath that person in some way. MI6 does not want people like that. It wants people who have the absolute conviction of a supreme leader.

That’s not to say that MI6 looks for arrogance in its recruits. Successful applicants never display an overbearing sense of self-worth and self-importance, or contempt for the weak. The job of the spy often requires you to interact with individuals who are vulnerable and those people need compassion and leadership from the field officer. Moreover, MI6 operatives will sacrifice their worth and status in a shot if it means getting the job done. They are patriotic and totally dedicated to their missions. Arrogant people put themselves first; MI6 officers do not.

However, a self-belief that you can do things that others cannot is vital. MI6 spies are given extensive and ongoing training in highly specialized use of guns, military unarmed combat, explosives and other aggressive tradecraft actions. But in the field, the most vital weapon of a spy if his or her mind. MI6 officers can move through hostile environments with the confidence and precision of an ultimate predator. People don’t see them, or if they do they think they are seeing something else. The mind of a spy can take that person into places and situations that most would think impossible to access. And very often that’s done without the deployment of a weapon.

Many people have a natural inclination toward subservience to people they believe to be more experienced than them, but MI6 officers are different. You could be a twenty five year old female MI6 field operative who is running a sixty year old male general. The agent might have led thousands of men into war, but you would be his leader and he would expect that of you because his life is in your hands and you are the expert in intelligence matters. If you display anything other than absolute strength and a command of the situation, then your agent will rightly wonder if he is going to die.

The tiny number of applicants who make it through the selection process to join MI6 have an even tougher mountain to climb once they’re within its ranks. They have to get through a rigorous pass or fail training course, are on probation for two years during which time they can be dismissed, and even after that they must prove their worth in every day of employment as a spy. A field officer who cannot operate at one hundred percent of what is expected of them will not be deployed on a mission because, if he was, at best that mission could fail and at worst the officer and others around him could be killed.

But very few MI6 missions do fail, because MI6 recruits the right kind of people. They are a very rare breed of animal. They are the best intelligence operatives in the world.

Text “Netting Swordfish’s First Catch” © 2011 Rowland White
Text “The Route to SIS” © 2011 Matthew Dunn
Matthew Dunn author photo © 2011 Adam Scourfield
Rowland White author photo © 2006 Ali Karim

Buy Matthew Dunn’s Spartan Here
Buy Matthew Dunn’s Spycatcher Here
Buy Rowland White’s Vulcan 607 Here
Buy Rowland White’s Phoenix Squadron here
Buy Rowland White’s Storm Front Here