Tower of Song: Travels with Thomas H Cook

Well, my friends are gone and my hair is grey

I ache in the places where I used to play

And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on

I'm just paying my rent every day in the Tower of Song

Leonard Cohen

A book arrived in the post at my office on Friday that made me gasp with joy; even though it is ultimately a melancholic lament; a reflection upon sadness. But perhaps most interestingly it is an examination of what it means to traverse a reality, a planetary landscape that is as random, as it is dangerous. It also reminds us what it means to be human when monsters surround us [many of whom hide among us, well disguised], and observations of the places [on this planet] that haunt us. But it is a work that is ultimately uplifting; for the human condition is a complex one, where the extremes are troubling and where our existential thoughts can become real.

Melancholia is one of many characteristics of what it means to be human. As an emotional state of mind, Melancholia often lays dormant, awaiting a trigger or triggers. It is often a by-product of our thinking – ‘existential’ but it can be transformed into ‘the real’ by external as well internal forces [and dangerous lines of thought, or inquiry].

I am often reminded of the words [and music] of Leonard Cohen, who I turn to when my own mind turns melancholic, reflective.

Though melancholia as a state of mind has to be handled carefully, as it has legitimate purpose; for those who can manage the dark feelings that confront us from time to time. For those who understand Melancholia and can wrangle these feelings and gain strength from these existential thoughts.

Leonard Cohen’s ‘Anthem’ alludes to this, particularly with this line -

“There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in”

If you cannot tame feelings of melancholia that many of us get from time to time, there can be danger, as melancholia can alter our thinking, and brain chemistry leading us mentally into some dark places.

Incidentally, Cohen’s ‘Anthem’ was truncated and adopted [with permission] by the award-winning [and fellow Canadian] mystery writer, Louise Penny for the title of one of her Inspector Armand Gamache mysteries. It was Headline Publishing of Great Britain that first brought Penny’s mystery novels into print, with ‘Still Life’ being first showcased at the Canadian Embassy in London where many of us from the CWA gathered to celebrate its publication in 2005. Louise’s debut was a runner-up in the Crime Writers Association’s 2004 Debut Dagger Competition.

Many of us were deeply saddened last year to hear of the passing of her devoted husband Michael. Many of us had gotten to know this gentle Paediatrician over the years, as he often accompanied Louise to many events and cheered away when her talent was acknowledged by her peers [when her work gained award recognition]. To many of us, Louise and Michael, were one person, but in two bodies. The loss of a partner on the human mind is a hard thing to bear, and the management of grief and melancholia a task that takes effort and resolve; avoiding what writer John Irving once referred to as ‘the allure of the open windows’, from his 1981 novel The Hotel New Hampshire, which was filmed in 1984 by Tony Richardson.

A few colleagues [and friends] have my business address, so on occasion I receive reading material mailed to me at work. When that happens, it’s usually an item that is either ‘urgent’ or ‘important’. Anyone who has been sent on a ‘time management’ or a ‘getting things done’ course will know the importance of being able to discriminate between these two existential states.

Last week was a tough but an enjoyable one. I arrived back in the office Friday, weary and looking forward to the weekend for a break. Despite having a number of pressing books awaiting my time; as well as a page count [in my own writing] that sits like a petulant child waiting for attention; something extraordinary arrived Friday morning in the mail that made me gasp.

My colleague Dan passed a parcel to me as he sifted through the incoming correspondence. I opened the package without thinking. When I saw the book it contained, I let out a ‘whoop!’ much to the amusement of Dan and my fellow colleagues. From the corner of my eye, I could see the good natured smiles and chuckles from my team. My colleagues understand my love affair with books, and the written word; in fact sometimes my passion for dark literature and film spill out into my day-job.

As I held the book in my hand, I realised I held a physical manifestation of the existential thoughts captured by one of the greatest exponents of mystery writing; now ripped from his mind, and held onto paper for others to absorb. It was a book I had thought a great deal about for some time now, as well as pondering about the life of its writer, and his own journeys; some which provoke deep and at times troubling thoughts.

I am talking about Thomas H Cook, one of the most literate of crime writers and an enigma in his own right.

I have to thank Publisher, Editor, Writer, Raconteur Otto Penzler, as well as George Easter and Larry Gandle of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine for first introducing me to the work of Thomas H Cook; a writer who has challenged my way of thinking, as well as providing me insights into the dark side of human nature, while entertaining me with narratives that remain in my mind, like shards of jagged glass.

It was during my first Bouchercon, back in 2003 when I first met Otto, Larry and George. As bibliophiles we always exchange notes on our reading. Otto, George and Larry were surprised that I had never read the work of Thomas H Cook. In fact their surprise indicated to me [that as well read as I consider myself], something was missing, something lacking, something I had overlooked.

Thomas Cook has been published sporadically in Great Britain; back then he was with the Orion Publishing Group. Anyway, I corrected this omission in my reading by devouring as many Thomas Cook novels that I could lay my hands on, and ordering from the US any work not available in the UK. 

Over the years Tom’s path and mine have crossed either in London, Harrogate or at an annual US Bouchercon event; for the insight his imagination [coupled to his narrative ability] have brought to me has been very important. The novels of Thomas H Cook have made me ponder about human nature [especially its darker side], as well as providing me outstanding entertainment.

I have reviewed his work many times, as his fiction has deeply affected me so much so it is always a highlight when we meet up, and we talk. A particular time that is retained fondly in my memory is the lunch Tom and I shared with David Morrell and Larry Gandle during 2009’s Bouchercon Indianapolis. It was good to break bread and suck back a beer with very dear and old friends who share the pleasures of Crime and Thriller Literature. David Morrell is a literature professor, while Tom Cook also has a distinguished academic background in literature; while Larry Gandle and I are both Scientists and in our free time are Assistant Editors at Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine and Shots Magazine respectively – but all four of us are very good friends so when we meet up – it’s like we were never apart.

The main topic over lunch was the runaway success of Stieg Larsson’s ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’, as Tom, Larry and David were amused at my championing this work from the get-go; though there was also a blanket of melancholia over the lunch. We knew of some recent troubling news from David Morrell. I am always in awe of David’s ability to manage unimaginable adversity; and then to have to confront heart-breaking adversity again; holding strong for the family takes inner resolve, stoicism – and for some, this means we have to write, in order to manage our thinking.

With writers, sometimes you can detect the frame of mind that they were in [at the time of writing a specific novel]. With David Morrell, his mind sometimes reflects and examines the melancholia in the lives of his fictional protagonists. David [like many writers when faced with deep adversity] threw himself into writing; fictionalizing the adventures of the Victorian writer Thomas De Quincey, in a stunning sequence of historic thrillers, which started with the award-winning Murder as a Fine Art. The third instalment in the series Ruler of the Night has just been released. David admitted to me that the Thomas De Quincey historical thrillers came to him during that dark period in 2009; though it would not be until 2014 during Bouchercon Long Beach that ‘Murder as a Fine Art’ would be awarded the 2014 Sue Feder Historical Mystery Award [as presented by Janet Rudolph of Mystery Readers International].

I am reminded of some words from British writer Graham Greene that helps explain why some of us are compelled to write.

“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.”

Anyway, as ever I digress.

I was delighted when Quercus Publishing was set up, as the hands of Anthony Cheetham and Otto Penzler were evident in this niche publishing house’s inception. One of their first publications was Thomas H Cook’s Red Leaves, which was awarded the 2006 MWA Edgar Award, as well as Nominated for the CWA Gold Dagger. I have reviewed Tom’s work many times, as have far more lucid and qualified literary commentators. Though one factor that always haunts me is why Thomas H Cook’s work is not Stephen King in terms of sales; sure his mantelpiece is congested with many literary awards, from around the world, and is known and read avidly by the key critics of the Crime and Mystery Genre; so sure he sells well – but in my opinion, he should be selling in the volumes of someone like Stephen King. My reasoning is that he is the most literary of writers that have traversed my reading table; and he can tell a fine story, one that makes you think, ponder about our situation – the human condition.

The theme of Thomas H Cook being one of the treasures on the Crime and Mystery Genre, but a secret [of sorts], became the pivot in my 2009 feature interview at Linda Richards’ January Magazine [with a fine edit by Jeff Pierce] –

Ali : And you’ve become quite prolific since. So why -- despite your having received awards and critical acclaim -- do you remain a secret to many readers?

Tom : I truly don’t know the answer to that question, but the experience can be very disheartening, let me tell you. I think many readers just want a fast read. Which is fine. They have that right. But I don’t write fast reads. I think mystery readers in particular are quite demarcated in their reading habits. People who read puzzle mysteries don’t read thrillers, and people who read thrillers don’t read puzzle novels, and so on down thorough several subgenres. I write a combination mystery-mainstream novel, and that is a big problem, I think, in that mainstream readers very often never give mysteries a chance. I fall through a lot of cracks, and so far, despite wonderful reviews over a period of 20 years, I am still one of the best-known unknown writers out there.

Oddly enough, I have absolutely broken through in France and Japan, and seem close to doing it in England. The U.S., however, has not yet fallen under my spell. But I’m still working on it.

Ali : It just isn’t fair. I mean, some of my all-time favorite novels have come from your pen. Something’s not right here.

Tom : I couldn’t agree more, of course. And I am trying very hard to write the best books of my career at this point in my life. I may not always succeed, but I am always trying to deliver a very strong story, one that delivers in the writing, the story itself, and what lingers once the story has been put down, that strange, haunting aftermath.

Ali : Might the problem be that some readers classify you as a “literary writer”?

Tom : I am a literary writer in the sense that the writing really matters to me, and I try to do it well. But I am, more than anything, simply a storyteller, and for that reason I try not to abandon the story to my prose. I want each to serve the other, and yes, that makes me literary in that sense. That said, I would never write a novel in which the main character is a cigarette butt floating in a urinal, or a novel about a number, say eight, or a novel about a family so freakishly repellant that I wouldn’t spend dinner with such people, much less the time it takes to read 500 pages.

Read the Full Interview Here

Tom’s work often features in my best annual ‘reads of the year’, such as his remarkable novel Sandrine’s Case which was published in 2013 by Otto Penzler’s Mysterious Press and by Anthony Cheetham’s Head of Zeus in Great Britain.

I wrote at the time –

Cook constructs his narrative like a courtroom drama, but this novel offers a much more compelling tale about what actually led to the death of Sandrine, a woman as enigmatic as the ancient history she taught and brooded upon. Cook deftly explores the question of what we truly know about the people we love -- and, in reflection, what we truly know about ourselves. This novel was published in Britain as Sandrine (Head of Zeus).

Read more Here, and you may be amused to see that my review of this remarkable novel, has my thoughts regarding Stephen King’s Joyland just above it. As book reviewers, we do what we can to support writers that help our thinking, our insights into the world we find ourselves in. I am not ashamed to state that I have felt my eyes moisten at the end of some of Tom Cook’s novels; such has been the emotional impact his narrative skills and stories have brought to bear on this reader.

I know Facebook gets much maligned as a time-waster; but I have to temper that comment, that for many writers who work on a keyboard all day; it provides a break from the swirl of our thoughts as well as a quick way of keeping in touch with people [especially when they are scattered globally]. I had grown fond of Thomas Cook’s presence on FB as he had been putting up photographs of his travels, with his beloved wife Susan and daughter Justine. I have been fascinated by travel and what it does to our mind, and understanding of others, so I enjoyed seeing Tom Cook’s photographs. My annual trips to Bouchercon have allowed me to traverse North America over the years, and with purpose – my fascination with Crime, Mystery and Thriller fiction.

A specific series of photos from Tom’s FB page haunted me – they were images of ‘The saddest places on Earth’. Like the magnetism of viewing a car crash, I found the photographs intriguing as well as provoking deep thought. During some correspondence with Tom, he indicated that he was considering publishing a book featuring his travels to these sad places; regions on our planet that today are solemn reminders of the dark side of humanity and our plight here.

Then I heard the tragic news in 2014 that Susan Terner passed away, leaving Tom and Justine alone. He wrote an eloquent and heart breaking lament and celebration at the time about his wife, which I have pasted the opening -

Justine and I would ask that you remember Susan fondly as one who danced on table tops in Paris, Madrid and New York City; who belted songs and directed actors on the stages of Cape Cod; who put every conceivable thing in a plastic bag; who never saw a hammock or a cat she didn’t love; who claimed to have only 30 pairs of shoes when she actually had 147 and who, when confronted with that fact, declared that the additional 117 pairs in her collection didn’t “count” because they were inexpensive; who staunchly held to her non-belief through all her pain and anguish; who edited manuscripts so superbly her method is taught in master classes; who incessantly corrected everyone’s grammar, and once told a doctor to stop touching the bottom of his shoes; whose true vocation, as I often reminded her, would have been to be the Third Grade Teacher of the World.

So let’s move these recollections of mine to December 2016.

It was during the Peter James Christmas Lunch, hosted by The Ivy, in London that I found myself seated next to Alice Greary; a publicist who works with my very dear friends Tony Mulliken and Sophie Ransom. Over lunch, Alice and I got talking and she remarked that she really enjoyed my 2009 interview with Thomas Cook at January Magazine and found it most useful in researching a book and author she was working on. I asked which Author? Which she replied ‘Tom Cook’, and then told me about a non-fiction book by Thomas Cook that Quercus Publishing were going to release in 2017. 

The book was titled Tragic Shores : A Memoir of Dark Travel. The penny dropped, and I realised that it was indeed the book that Tom had alluded to with the photos he posted on Facebook, detailing some of the world’s saddest places. Poor Alice witnessed the heights that my enthusiasm can scale, for when I get excited, I can become quite a sight. I pleaded with Alice, that when the first review copies are available I implored her to send me a copy.

Now we’re in January 2017.

The book arrived last Friday, and was inside the package that made me yelp and gasp amusing my colleagues; and the same book that I alluded to at the opening of this article.

I called Alice immediately to thank her. I asked her that I had assumed that Tom’s book on the ‘Saddest Places on Earth’ would have some illustrated pages from Tom’s Photos. Alice confirmed that indeed, there will be photographic plates in the finished book; but they were not present in the Galley-Proof. She kindly emailed me the photos, which I have permission to re-print a few here.

I also contacted Tom who currently resides in Los Angeles and he too granted me permission to reproduce any of his photos I wished; including the one that opens this article - of his beloved Susan and himself in a Tropical forest.  

Alice also sent me this synopsis of Tragic Shores : A Memoir of Dark Travel

'I have come to thank dark places for the light they bring to life.'

Thomas Cook has always been drawn to dark places, for the powerful emotions they evoke and for what we can learn from them. These lessons are often unexpected and sometimes profoundly intimate, but they are never straightforward.

With his wife and daughter, Cook travels across the globe in search of darkness - from Lourdes to Ghana, from San Francisco to Verdun, from the monumental, mechanised horror of Auschwitz to the intimate personal grief of a shrine to dead infants in Kamukura, Japan. Along the way he reflects on what these sites may teach us, not only about human history, but about our own personal histories.

During the course of a lifetime of traveling to some of earth's most tragic shores, from the leper colony on Molokai to ground zero at Hiroshima, he finds not darkness alone, but a light that can illuminate the darkness within each of us. Written in vivid prose, this is at once a personal memoir of exploration (both external and internal), and a strangely heartening look at the radiance that may be found at the very heart of darkness.

Melancholia manifests itself in many shapes and forms, and one way of managing this state from becoming high anxiety, is [quoting Graham Greene] to write. In the hands of Thomas H Cook, rarely has a feeling of Melancholia been as insightful as to our condition; our humanity – and all from his mastery of the darkest edges of literature, Crime and Mystery Fiction.

I look forward to re-entering the thoughts and emotions that Thomas Cook’s narratives provide; but this time, it’s his first non-fiction work, a travelogue of sorts that appears as insightful and as thought-provoking as his fiction.

So to close this feature, I leave you with a cover version of Leonard Cohen’s The Tower of Song, by the Jesus and Mary Chain which not only provides the title for these thoughts of mine, about one of the finest of Crime and Mystery Writers.

You will be hearing from me again, as I will be reviewing this long anticipated work by Tom Cook, who has also kindly agreed to be interviewed by me again.

Until then, we’ve made sure that the Shots Bookstore has copies of Tragic Shores : A Memoir of Dark Travel by Thomas H Cook available for pre-order [release date 6^th April 2017] – Here

Well, my friends are gone and my hair is grey

I ache in the places where I used to play

And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on

I'm just paying my rent every day in the Tower of Song

Leonard Cohen

Click Here, for the comprehensive 2009 interview with Tom Cook from January Magazine, that Alice Geary found on the Damp Floor of the Internet that Tom and I recorded during Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival.

I hope you found this article of interest, and piqued your interest in the work of Thomas H Cook, David Morrell and Louise Penny.

Ali Karim

London, England, January 2017

Addendum:

The only issue I see with regard to British Publication of this highly anticipated first non-fiction work by Thomas Cook, is that in the UK, the name Thomas Cook is synonymous with the nation’s most well-known travel agency; so some who purchase Tragic Shores : A Memoir of Dark Travel maybe a tad confused with this poignant travelogue; but will be ultimately rewarded by writing of the highest order; even if this volume is not what they anticipated by the Thomas Cook slogan “Don’t just book it, Thomas Cook it!”.

Photos from Ali Karim, Thomas H Cook and Quercus Publishing reprinted with permission 

“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