Ready, Set, Summer!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Unlike any other season, there are multiple starting points to “summer.” Because summer, more than any other of the four seasons, is a concept. It’s a verb, a vibe, a change in our lives. The astronomical start of summer is, of course, the solstice on June 21st. The tourism industry start of summer is Memorial Day weekend, when three days off work and school combine with (hopefully) good weather to encourage everyone to take a trip to the shore/coast/lake/mountains.

For any of us who have raised kids or worked in the school system, the next start of summer is the end of the school year. In the snowy Northeast, this is often right around the middle of June. I looked back at my calendars, and it consistently hit between June 13 and June 17 in our town.

But to me, the real start of summer is the beginning of July. In Maine, we’re finally getting warm enough weather to risk going places without an extra layer. I can leave the windows open all night, and I’ve gotten the fans down from the attic. In my family, this week was usually the first week at camp Bishopswood for one of our kids (we usually staggered them over the summer because they didn’t want to be part of a sibling set while there.) And of course for most of us, no matter where we live, the hallmarks of summer occur in July and August: sweet corn and amusement parks, trips to the beach and to the swimming pool, baseball and badminton. 

Reds, when does summer really start for you, and what are its hallmarks?

HALLIE EPHRON: Of course summer starts for me with food. Sweet corn, cherries, and local strawberries! Even though our local corn isn’t ripe for weeks and the cherries are from another coast. The end of the school year (no more bus-driven traffic jams in my town square)! And this year, going to Maine for July 4 to enjoy the fireworks over Casco Bay.

Meanwhile I’m staring at the air conditioner sitting on the floor of my office and figuring out who I’m going to cadge into helping me lift it into the window.

 

LUCY BURDETTE: It’s been the weirdest weather in New England–cool and cloudy. Actually, I am very grateful we don’t have a heat wave! My summer hallmarks, like Hallie’s, are mostly food. Tuna melts, cookouts, corn on the cob, strawberries in our garden, tomatoes!! This year our church has been given the honor of being the grand marshall in the July 4 parade. I think we are marching, and I *hope* the grandchildren will be marching with us. I try not to make too many plans when they visit, because they change and change:).

 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: By the time I left Dallas for London on Midsummer’s Day, I was already over it. We’d had a few weeks of weather bearable enough for grilling, the summer produce was in at the farmer’s market, but you knew the heat was coming, and it did. Followed me to London for the first few days, too, which were truly miserable, but now we have perfect English summer, with temps in the 70s. The British strawberries are everywhere and they are wonderful! Everyone is dining al fresco! I am not going to want to go home, where the rest of summer will just be a heat endurance test.

 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Lucy, I just burst out laughing. I am so ..relieved and reassured. When are the kids coming? We honestly NEVER know, It’s already changed three times, seriously. How  I know summer is here is that our farm shares come, and it is SO great! Snap peas, and super fresh lettuce, and fantastic bread, and all kinds of amazing vegetables–broccolini, and spinach, and corn corn corn. (what do I do with garlic scapes, again?)  And tomatoes! Our SunGolds are on the way..they’re green now, but I know they will be here soon. If the rabbits eat them, I fear for the battle royale…they can have the hosta–just ask them–but our tomatoes are off limits. Ad the perennial question: Will I get into the pool this year?

JENN McKINLAY: Living in AZ, summer starts in mid-May when the temperatures spike into the 100’s (although we got lucky this year and it waited until mid-June). And it’s all about getting the heck outta here! When not on vacation at our summer place in Nova Scotia or beach time in San Diego, we spend time in our pool, waiting for the heat to pass. Summer ends in mid-Oct so we have a ways to go.  

RHYS BOWEN:  I am currently enjoying English summer in the wilds of Cornwall, with extremely spotty internet, hence my absence from Jungle Reds so much recently. We’ve had some glorious days, eating outside, light until ten o’clock. I think that spells summer for me— eating outside. I love picnics. I love sitting on a balmy evening watching lights come on in the valley. Usually summer starts early in California but it’s been a weird year, cooler in CA than in London. When I get home I’ll look forward to farmers markets and fresh fruit.

 

JULIA: How about you, dear readers? What defines the start of summer for you? 

 

Images  by velk1976,  David Mark,  Jill Wellington,  -Rita-👩‍🍳 und 📷 mit ❤,  Engin Akyurt and Walter Bichler, all from Pixabay.

Meg Gardiner brings The HEAT--Heat 2!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Let me just say this. If we are picking teams for the apocalypse, I wanna be on Meg Gardiner’s team. NOT only is she the multi-super-bestselling author of however many terrific thrillers, but she was discovered by Stephen King. But wait there’s more. Past President of Mystery Writers of America. AND a multiple JEOPARDY winner. (Jeopardy!) (Read her whole bio, below. Really, do. There’s more.)

Anyway, and all that would be lovely for the apocalypse team. (Especially if there are games and time to read.)

But the reason I want Meg as my fearless leader is that she is not afraid of anything. Not anything! As is proven by her new book. Let’s just say YOU were asked to undertake the task she was offered. Would you not be terrified?

Not our Meg.

HEAT 2
    By Meg Gardiner

I’m going to tell you a secret. I’ve always wanted to write a heist novel.

I’ve written psychological thrillers. Revenge stories. Innocent-woman-on-the-run novels. Ticking clock thrillers. My UNSUB FBI profiler series.

And I have long hungered to write a big, meaty stick-up story.

Boy, did I ever get my chance.

Heat 2 is the new novel I co-wrote with legendary director Michael Mann. It’s both prequel and sequel to his epic film Heat, which starred Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Val Kilmer, Ashley Judd, and Natalie Portman. Heat is about bank robber Neil McCauley (DeNiro) and the relentless cop who pursues him, Vincent Hanna (Pacino). It’s a cat-and-mouse story that explodes into bone-rattling action, with two protagonists on opposite sides of the law: master thief and LAPD Robbery-Homicide detective. Predator and predator. Hunter and hunter. It’s about their intense conflict but also their rapport, and—after a bank robbery turns downtown Los Angeles into a warzone—their deadly showdown.

It’s my favorite heist movie by a hundred miles.

I knew that Michael had long planned to write further stories from the Heat universe. I knew he was a brilliant and accomplished writer—he wrote the screenplays for Heat, The Insider, Manhunter, Last of the Mohicans, and Ali. He was the executive producer of Miami Vice and Crime Story. A four-time Academy Award nominee. Two-time Emmy award winner.

When he asked me to co-write Heat 2 as a novel, I threw myself at the project like a paratrooper plunging out the open door of an airplane.

Heat 2 opens one day after the end of the film, with a wounded Chris Shiherlis (Kilmer) holed up in Koreatown, half delirious and desperate to escape LA. Vincent Hanna is hunting him. Hours earlier, Hanna killed Neil McCauley—Chris’s brother in arms—under strobing lights at the foot of an LAX runway. Now Hanna is determined to capture or kill Chris, the last survivor of Neil’s crew, before he ghosts out of the city…

The action then shifts back seven years to 1988. Neil, Chris, and their highline crew are taking scores on the West Coast, the US-Mexican border, and Chicago. Hanna, a Chicago homicide detective, is hunting a gang of home invaders run by a magnetic and ruthless leader.

The fallout from McCauley’s scores and Hanna’s pursuit cause unexpected repercussions that drive through the years following Heat. In a parallel narrative, the story moves from the streets of LA to the inner sanctums of rival South American crime syndicates and international criminal enterprises in Southeast Asia.

Heat 2 introduces new characters and new worlds of high-end professional crime, and explores the dangerous workings of international criminal organizations and the risk-drenched lives of the men and women who run them.

It dives into Hanna’s life in Chicago, where, unreconciled with his history—including the loss of a marriage and the effects of his Marine Corps service in Vietnam—he’s following his calling, the pursuit of armed and dangerous men into the dark and wild places. It reveals a younger, dangerous Neil McCauley, who’s very much bonded with other people—not yet the Neil of Heat, who says, “If you’re making moves on the street, have no attachments, allow nothing to be in your life that you cannot walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you spot the heat around the corner.”

It explores how Chris Shiherlis found a brother in Neil, and how he goes on without him.

And it introduces new characters who are aspiring and driven to make their way—and to remake their worlds—by embracing or rejecting the criminal life.

On film and television projects, Michael Mann famously immerses himself into the culture of his subject and gathers detailed first-hand impressions and information. He says he wants to know and feel that culture and the lives of the people in it. He thinks there’s an authenticity discoverable that resonates with audiences as real and true. For Heat, his prep included three months of training for the actors, including firearms on the LA County Sheriff’s shooting ranges with former SAS operators including Andy McNab.

Believe me, his dedication to authenticity persists and imbues this book. I’ve written more than a dozen novels, but have never done more research in my life.

We rode along with two LAPD sergeants late one night, through some of LA’s tougher streets. And we had an illuminating discussion with a retired bank robber who had plenty of wisdom to impart to a novelist who has never done more inside a bank than endorse a check.

The research was all in the service of giving power to the story. It was about immersing readers in what feels like real, lived drama. Though if you want to know about bank tunnel jobs, hit me up.

Heat 2 will of course grab the interest of the film’s fans. It is also a stand-alone thriller. A brand new story. Readers will turn to page one and find themselves immersed in a pulse-pounding novel of escape, survival, pursuit, discovery, revenge, loss, and redemption, across a vivid landscape that spans decades and continents. 

You can pick it up cold. I hope you won’t put it down.


HANK: I loved Heat. I loved it. Such a master class in character and storytelling! And wow, the acting. But to write the prequel/sequel to an icon? SO fantastic. And HEAT 2 comes out August 9!

Two things: Meg will be in THE BACK ROOM this Sunday, so you can hear more about it, and ask her questions yourself in the special Zoom breakout rooms! Register here: www.The-Back-Room.org

(And ohh.. Also on the panel are Shanora WIlliams, Rochelle Weinstein and Megan Miranda! Pretty fabulous.)

But as Meg says: did you see HEAT? Do you have a favorite heist movie? Besides HEAT, I’d pick The Thomas Crown Affair, both versions. And The Usual Suspects. And Point Break. And…let’s see, is Charade the one about the stamp?

How about you, Reds and Readers?  (And YAY Meg, right?)

ABOUT MEG GARDINER

Edgar-winning novelist Meg Gardiner writes thrillers. Fast-paced and full of twists, her books have been called “Hitchcockian” (USA Today) and “nailbiting and moving” (Guardian). They have been bestsellers in the U.S. and internationally and have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Her latest title is Heat 2, co-authored with Michael Mann. The novel is both prequel and sequel to Mann’s 1995 film Heat, with a new story that unfolds before and after the iconic movie. Booklist, in a starred review, calls the novel “Riveting . . . . The best thing about this innovative tale is the way the fully fleshed human stories support and even transcend the often-breathtaking action.”

Gardiner’s UNSUB series features FBI profiler Caitlin Hendrix. UNSUB won the 2018 Barry Award for Best Thriller. The Dark Corners of the Night was bought by Amazon Studios for development as a television series.

The Evan Delaney novels feature a journalist from Santa Barbara, California. Stephen King calls them “simply put, the finest crime-suspense series I’ve come across in the last twenty years.”

China Lake won the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original. Later it was a finalist for NPR’s 100 Best Thrillers Ever.

The Jo Beckett series features a San Francisco forensic psychiatrist. The Dirty Secrets Club was chosen one of the Top Ten thrillers of 2008 by Amazon. The Nightmare Thief, featuring both Jo Beckett and Evan Delaney, won the 2012 Audie Award for Thriller/Suspense audiobook of the year.

Meg’s stand-alone novel The Shadow Tracer was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2013. Phantom Instinct was chosen one of “The Best Books of Summer” by O, the Oprah magazine.

Meg was born in Oklahoma City and raised in Santa Barbara, California. She graduated from Stanford University and Stanford Law School.

She practiced law in Los Angeles and taught in the Writing Program at the University of California Santa Barbara.

In addition to her novels, Meg has published short stories in American and British magazines and the anthologies Echoes of Sherlock Holmes and Deadly Anniversaries. She has contributed essays to the Agatha Award winning How to Write a Mystery: A Handbook from Mystery Writers of America and the Anthony Award winning Books to Die For.

She served as the 2019 and 2020 president of Mystery Writers of America.

Beyond writing, Meg is a three-time Jeopardy! champion and a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. She lives in Austin, Texas.