Daniel Friedman's RIOT MOST UNCOUTH

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Delighted to introduce Macavity Award-winner Daniel Friedman, fellow novelist and friend. Dan and I, who share the same literary agent, met when his novel, DON'T EVER GROW OLD, featuring the irascible octogenarian Buck Schatz, and my novel, MR. CHURCHILL'S SECRETARY, were both nominated for an Edgar award. Dan was the late Miss Edna's Absolute Favorite Novelist of All Time and I finally scored points with my mother-in-law when I invited Dan to dinner. 

Dan's newest novel is RIOT MOST UNCOUTH, about Romantic poet Lord Byron and his pet bear (yes, that's right) at Cambridge University. It's had wonderful reviews, including a starred one in Publishers Weekly: "Thriller Award–finalist Friedman (Don’t Ever Look Back) succeeds in making his unique blend of humor, crime, and an unusual protagonist work in the first of a new series starring the famous Romantic poet...Besides adroitly placing the major plot twists, Friedman manages to make one of the most obnoxious leads in recent memory oddly endearing and even sympathetic." 

Reds and lovely readers, Here's Dan!

DAN FRIEDMAN: There are some assumptions that are so intrinsic to the very nature of crime fiction that they often go unexamined.  The most basic is this:  There is a crime, and someone will solve it.  For every bad guy, there’s a good guy, and through the methodical practice of diligent investigation, the bad guy’s plan will be unraveled, and he will be exposed so that justice may be rendered unto him.

There are some variations on this concept; there are noir novels in which heroes discover evils so well-established that they can’t be dislodged by something as trifling as the truth -- “down these mean streets a man must walk who is not himself mean,” and all that.  But there are always heroes, and they always manage to get to the bottom of the mystery, even if solving it is ultimately an empty gesture.

But what happens when the good guy isn’t all that good? And what happens when the process by which he endeavors to solve the mystery isn’t especially effective?  And what happens if he lacks the resolve to take a stand against the forces that will align against him when he closes in on the truth?

That’s going to be a pretty weird story.

And that’s what I’m exploring in my new novel, RIOT MOST UNCOUTH.  And, on top of all that other stuff, it’s a mystery novel in which the Romantic poet, Lord Byron, decides to try to solve a series of murders in 1807 Cambridge, England with the assistance of his pet bear.  

It’s not unusual to see a mystery novel with a historical figure at its center; there are novels in which Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway, and the ghost of Dorothy Parker all try their hands at solving mysteries.  But both historical mysteries and mysteries that incorporate famous personalities skew toward the gentler, cozier end of the genre, and RIOT MOST UNCOUTH goes in the other direction.  

The murders are sad and gruesome, and the arrogant, hedonistic protagonist has a personality comprised almost exclusively of flaws.  When he comes face to face with something truly evil, he tries to do the right thing, and that’s his redeeming quality, but he’s not the kind of person who has an easy time figuring out what the right thing is.  Publishers Weekly found him to be “one of the most obnoxious leads in recent memory,” but they still gave the book a starred review.

A lot of research went into this book.  I write short chapters, and this book has 42 of them, but each one of them begins with an epigram drawn from Byron’s poems and letters, so readers can compare my version of the poet to the real thing.

I also learned about an early nineteenth century England that was a lot more squalid and tumultuous than is commonly depicted in popular culture.  When we think of this period, we think of great houses and beautiful clothing and elegant manners, and of stories about love triumphing over rigid protocols and social conventions.  But the reality is very different, and very interesting.

King George III was mentally unfit to rule, which threw government into turmoil.  Industry had displaced agriculture as the primary driver of Britain’s economy, raising the fortunes of a lot of common folks while ruining a lot of landowning elites, who had depended on agricultural revenues to fund their lifestyles.  

London had grown much more dense, and it was almost completely lawless. Even the rich had little protection against crime, because there were no police, and no official apparatus for pursuing and apprehending criminals.  When homes were burglarized, people hired “thief takers” who were generally just crooks who helped the victims pay ransom to get their stuff back.  Local magistrates put bounties on wanted men, hoping private actors would bring them in for trial.  But if there was a crime whose perpetrator was unknown, there was no procedure for figuring out who’d done it.

So when a woman is murdered in a boardinghouse, and nobody knows who has done it, there’s really no better investigative procedure than Byron’s, and his plan is just to get drunk with a bear and then see where the night takes him.

This is a book about writers and butchers; about buckets of Champagne and buckets of blood; about broken hearts and runaway stagecoaches and wine glasses made from human skulls; about the intersection of passion and prudence; about longing and abandonment and guns and knives and teeth and claws. 

It’s different from my Buck Schatz mysteries, and it’s got a very different tone than most historical mysteries, but it’s a cool book, and I’m proud of it, and you should read it.

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: I heartily second that — it's a cool book, I'm proud of my friend Dan, and you should read it. Reds and lovely readers, what do you think of an "unlikable" protagonist. Do you need to adore your protagonist or is there room for flaws? What if the protagonist is as flawed — and obnoxious — as Lord Byron? Please tell us in the comments!

Daniel Friedman on Amazon v. Hachette

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Delighted to introduce Edgar-nominated and Macavity-winning novelist Daniel Friedman (DON'T EVER GET OLD, DON'T EVER LOOK BACK), who's here talking about Amazon, Jeff Bezos, Amazon v. Hachette, and the odds of getting an agent at a -fest or -con.

Take it away, Daniel!

DANIEL FRIEDMAN: When Susan asked me a few weeks ago to write a blog post about the feud between Amazon and Hachette, I was surprised, because I thought for sure that the issue would be resolved before this was posted.  I was wrong.  But a lot has already been written about Amazon and Hachette, so I just want to say this:

People who love books tend to love bookstores.  We love the idea of there being places full of books, staffed by people who love books and like to talk about books.  When you’re an author, you travel around and you meet booksellers, and their passion for literature is inspiring.  And, if you’re a book person, when you walk into a bookstore, you’re home.

I’m just not sure how much that’s going to matter in the long run, and here’s why: If you want to buy a hardcover adult novel that’s not a New York Times Bestseller, most bookstores are going to be selling it for the full retail price of about $25.  Amazon will be selling the hardcover for between $15 and $18, and the e-book for $10-12.  

One thing everyone who works in publishing knows is that Jeff Bezos doesn’t care about books.  He famously decided to become a bookseller not because he loved books or literature, but because he identified books as a product that people would buy online.  

Books are relatively inexpensive, so buying them online doesn’t carry a lot of risk.  You can obtain all the information you need to know to make a purchasing decision for a book without holding or examining the object.  Books are not like an electronic device that people want to handle and play with and compare to other products before buying.  Books are not like clothes that you need to try on before purchasing.  

In other words, Bezos decided to sell books because he saw bookstores as a particularly vulnerable retail category; stores we didn’t really need.  And as horrifying as that is to people who love bookstores, the success of Amazon over the last 20 years, and the collapse of once-beloved music and video stores seem to suggest that the market is moving towards e-books.

Printing and binding and warehousing and shipping and shelving books in a commercial space with air-conditioning and a staff of people who need to buy food and shelter costs a lot of money.  Amazon eliminates all these costs, and efficiency and lower prices tend to win out in the end.

The good news for bookstores is that the shift is going to be slow.  In 2010, Borders had over 500 superstores in the United States, and by the end of 2011, it had zero.  That massive, rapid contraction in bookstore retail space made a lot of room for remaining booksellers to coexist with Amazon for a while.  And a lot of readers are still resistant to reading on screens, even if they spend $500 more on print books every year than they’d spend buying the same books on Kindle.

For authors and publishers, things are moving a little faster.  If you’re a writer whose books are published in hardcover, but don’t get prominent bookstore placement and discounts, and aren’t stocked in discount stores like Target and Costco, e-books are going to be a much larger percentage of your sales than they represent for trade publishing overall.  And if you’re going to break out, you’re going to have to break out on Amazon.  That means that going forward, as bookstore presence matters less and less, the publishers that are going to do best for their authors are the publishers that are most adept at selling e-books.  That means better data, smarter marketing that directly targets readers most likely to be interested in a particular book, and pricing strategies designed to maximize visibility in Amazon’s rankings.  

Hostility to Amazon is counterproductive, unless publishers can find an alternate venue to sell e-books, and ignorance of how Amazon works is detrimental for authors and inexcusable for publishing professionals.  The goal of every publisher’s marketing department should be to know the ins and outs of Amazon better than Hugh Howey.

That doesn’t speak to what’s going on with Hachette right now.  Nobody outside of Amazon and Hachette seems to know exactly what Amazon is demanding, and it’s very likely unreasonable.  I don’t think Hachette should capitulate, and it will likely be better for most authors if Amazon is the entity that ends up backing down.  But authors need to view Amazon as an opportunity, and publishers need to be thinking about how their strategies need to change in a changing marketplace.

One other thing: The CraftFest and AgentFest portions of the ThrillerFest conference just wrapped up.  I think conferences are a great way to meet other writers, and there’s a lot to be learned from the panels and craft discussions.  

However, aspiring authors should not feel they need to attend a conference to pitch agents.  I think a lot of authors believe pitch-sessions at conferences are a way to skip the query-letter stage of the submissions process and get a bunch of full-manuscript requests.  

This isn’t really true; although an agent may tell you to send your manuscript because they are hesitant to reject you to your face, manuscript requests from conferences are less likely to lead to offers of representation than manuscript requests from queries for precisely this reason.  

And if your query letter and first few pages aren’t generating manuscript requests,  it’s likely that there’s some problem with your concept or your prose that will be just as evident to agents who look at your requested manuscript after a conference.

While many authors do meet their agents at conferences, I found my agent by submitting an unsolicited query letter, and I know a lot of other writers who did as well.  I don’t think any aspiring writer should feel they have to spend money to submit to agents, and I don’t think anyone should believe that there are shortcuts in the process.

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Thank you so much, Daniel. You'v given us a perspective that (correct me if I'm wrong) hasn't come up in the Amazon v. Hachette debates.

Reds and lovely readers, what are your thoughts on Amazon? E-books? Hachette? And what do you think about Daniel's thoughts about agents at the various -fests and -cons?

Daniel Friedman is a graduate of the University of Maryland and NYU School of Law. He lives in New York City. His first novel, DON'T EVER GET OLD wasnominated for the Edgar, Thriller, Anthony and Macavity awards, and was  optioned for film by the producers of the "Sherlock Holmes" movies. His second book, DON'T EVER LOOK BACK, was released in 2014. 

I Need A Hero...with a special Longmire Giveaway!

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Today's the day our friend Craig Johnson's latest Walt Longmire mystery, ANY OTHER NAME, hits the stores. Since the A&E series LONGMIRE is coming back for a second season, I assume there are a lot of people out there who've been introduced the Walt Longmire, but I (puts her hipster glasses on) have been crushing on Walt Longmire since Craig's first book, THE COLD DISH, came out ten years ago.

Walt Longmire is an example of the kind of hero I can't resist: fifty-something, laconic, tough-but-sensitive, knows his way around a gun but gets thrown by the women in his life. (People who read me may recognize certain similarities to my own male protagonist.) There are a lot of sigh-worthy heros in crime fiction, but what is it that makes them so? 

I got into an interesting discussion at Murder in Muskego a few years back on this point. I said it was competence - the sense that the hero could Do What Needed To Be Done with a minimum of fuss and bother. Tess Gerritsen opined it was being an alpha male that made the hero irresistable - women want to read about the man all other men defer to. Libby Hellman (IIRC) argued for sensitivity - a man whose emotions the reader can experience.
All of these? Something else? To reach the pinnacle of "Women want him, men want to be him," what qualities does the crime fiction hero need, Reds?

HALLIE EPHRON: Doesn't Take Himself Too Seriously and Has a Sense of Humor... those are my two. And Longmire, boy howdy! Does he qualify on both counts, especially in the novels. Ah, Likes Women... he's that, too.
And NEWS BULLETIN, Craig Johnson is going to be Guest of Honor at this fall's New England Crime Bake -- a wonderful conference for mystery writers and readers (set not in Wyoming but near Boston) which sells out fast... and registration is about to open! He'll on a bunch of panels, get the GOH interview treatment, as well as be on a panel of plot conjurers and we'll get to see how he does it. Registration should be opening later this week.
 
SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: I love the kind of hero Craig Johnson and Julia write, but I'm also up for the deeply flawed protagonist who might not fit those criteria. The male protagonist I'm currently obsessed with is Buck Schatz, introduced in Daniel Friedman's, DON'T EVER GET OLD and now in DON'T EVER LOOK BACK. Buck's 88, moves with the aid of a walker, and has increasing issues with dementia. He's a curmudgeon, but I absolutely adore him. 


 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: And Breaking News number two: the fabulous Craig Johnson is offering--just for today's Jungle Red commenters--THREE COPIES of his new book ANY OTHER NAME! So--just tell us about your heroes..and you're entered!

Here's me with the fab Craig Johnson last time he came to Boston..he's hilarious and tells wonderful stories. (He has a very cool wife, too.)
And Susan, I, too, am in love with Buck Schatz--he's so terrific. And right now I am delighted with Henry Swann, the poetry-reading skip tracer in Charles Salzberg's about to be released SWANN'S LAKE OF DESPAIR. Those familiar with this blog will remember my love of Inspector Morse. So I guess the thread for me in all of my favorite heroes is that they're smart. And wry.

RHYS BOWEN: My kind of hero has to be someone I can identify with. He or she has to have an innate goodness and desire to make things right. I'm a fan of the unlikely hero--Frodo in the Lord of the Rings--a little, insignificant person thrust into a role far beyond him but taking it on anyway. And retaining the self deprecating humor and basic humanity throughout. I think Louise Penny's Gamache is that sort of person. I hope that my heroines have just a tinge of it. 


DEBORAH CROMBIE: All of the above! Competent. Not necessarily outwardly tough, although I adore Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden. Likes women, yes, AND respects them. Sense of humor, check. Not taking themselves too seriously, check. And I love a bit of the eccentric--I haven't read the Buck Schatz books, or Henry Swann (putting on never-ending list) but I love Christopher Fowler's Arthur Bryant and John May.


Oh, and Walt Longmire is okay, too:-)




How about you, dear reader? What attributes do you like to see in your fictional hero-and-heartthrob? Don't forget, we have three copies of Craig Johnson's ANY OTHER NAME to give away!

Critic Oline H. Cogdill on Mystery Reviews — the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Oline H. Cogdill

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: A few months ago, when it was my week on Jungle Reds, I had Macavity-winning novelist Daniel Friedman as a guest. If you recall, Dan's the author of the Macavity-winning Don't Ever Get Old and now the sequel, Don't Ever Look Back. Dan talked about reviews and we all had a lot of opinions on the comments page. 

And so, to continue the conversation, I'm delighted to introduce Raven Award-winning book critic Oline H. Cogdill, one of the mystery and thriller community's most respected professional  reviewers. Her bio speaks for itself:

Oline H. Cogdill reviews mystery fiction for Mystery Scene magazine, the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Publishers Weekly, McClatchy Features Wire and the Associated Press. Her mystery fiction reviews appear in more than 300 newspapers and publication sites worldwide. She blogs twice a week at mysteryscenemag.com. She has received the 2013 Raven Award from the Mystery Writers of America, the 1997 Pettijohn Award from the Sun Sentinel and the 1999 Ellen Nehr Award for Excellence in Mystery Reviewing by the American Crime Writers League. Oline was a judge for three years for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the mystery/thriller category.

And now, today's guest Red, Oline H. Cogdill!

OLINE H. COGDILL: I know that for me journalism was as much of a calling as it was a career. And I feel the same way about reviewing mystery fiction. It’s practically a mission to me to introduce people to exciting crime fiction.

The newspaper industry certainly has changed as has the nature of reviewing. What hasn’t changed for me, though, is the way I approach reviews. It is still a labor of love. I love crime fiction genre -- I have, ever since I was about 10 years old.
I first began reviewing mystery fiction back in 1990 when book sections seemed to have plenty of space for myriad reviews. The past 24 years have brought so many changes—the rise of Amazon reviews, sites such as Goodreads, and so many bloggers it’s impossible to keep track of them all.

I think it comes down to one simple question—who do you trust?

Trustworthy: I don’t trust any review I see on Amazon because too many people have an agenda there. I haven’t made up my mind about Goodreads as I see some people give very thoughtful opinions while others seem to use it as a forum to be nasty. At the same time, I know that several bloggers are quite committed to offering insightful reviews of novels, and those bloggers deserve our attention.

I am a professional critic. I am paid for my reviews by the publications and wire services for which I write.

Who do we review for: I don’t write my reviews for the authors or the publishers.  That my reviews may help an author’s career is a great happenstance. I write reviews for the readers, to help a reader make an informed decision about a book they should buy, read or check out of the library.


Positive vs negative: I don’t shy away from giving negative reviews, but I prefer to give positive ones. That has nothing to do with not wanting to hurt someone’s feelings. It has all to do with me wanting to enjoy myself. If I am choosing a book to review, I may read a chapter or two of 10 or even 20 novels before I decide which one to review. I want to tell readers what they should read, not what they should avoid. That doesn’t mean I shy away from giving a negative review. I have to be honest. 


Oline’s Rules of Reviewing: 

I have some simple rules that I try to follow with each review.

1) Don’t give away any surprises. The less said about a plot, the better. It is infuriating to read a review in which the critic seems to take great delight in spoiling plot points.

2) See beyond the plot. How does this novel work in the author’s series and in terms of the genre.

3) Be fair, be honest, be tough, but don’t take cheap shots. When a reviewer becomes so in love with their own voice, then it’s time to close the book on that career.

4) Never use the phrase “transcend the genre.” I hate this phrase. It is not a compliment, but an insult to the genre. The genre is capable of so much. Crime fiction is the social novel of today, a mirror to our society, our legal system, our way of dealing with societal issues and crime and punishment. I might write that a novel expands the genre or uplifts it. But if you see transcend the genre in one of my reviews, I didn’t put it there.


SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: OK Reds and readers, we have a professional reviewer and mystery maven on hand to answer all of our questions. Do you have a new perspective on reviewing? On professional reviewing? Will you use Oline's rules? Why or why not? Please tell us in the comments! Oline will be dropping in to answer all your questions.