Hallie recommends... summer crime

HALLIE EPHRON: It's REDS ON WRITING week again... and I get to lead off.

A few months ago, just after I turned in the first draft of You'll Never Know, Dear (I'm deep into revising it now), I got a auspiciously timed request from the Boston Globe to put together a list of crime novels for summer reading. Reading other people's books is a great way NOT to obsess about the hot mess that you just turned in.

Since I no longer write a regular book review column, this required some quick research and reaching out to publishers for books. In the course of about six weeks I powered through about thirty books to find summer reads to recommend. The photo shows the tip of the iceberg.

Here's my list. There's something for everyone in here...
 

“Charcoal Joe’’ Walter Mosley (Doubleday)

Flush with cash but bereft of his main squeeze, Easy Rawlins is on the prowl again as he tries to keep a young black physics prodigy from going down for murder and ends up hip-deep in ill-gotten gains.

“Collecting the Dead’’ Spencer Kope (Minotaur)

A heart-thumping yarn from a real-life crime analyst, this features an FBI tracker with preternatural ability to “see the hidden.” He hunts down a serial killer who leaves a frowny face near each of his victims.

“Guilty Minds” by Joseph Finder (Dutton)

Nick Heller, the quintessential PI with a heart of gold, debunks scurrilous lies about the Supreme Court’s chief justice, then tries to rescue the woman who made those claims. Suspenseful, surprising, and humane.

“The Murder of Mary Russell: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes’’ Laurie R. King (Bantam)

The very title stirs dread in the hearts of fans of Sherlock Holmes’s young wife in this pastiche series. Mrs. Hudson stars (her nefarious past catches up with her), and she manages to surprise Holmes.

“Murder on the Quai’’ Cara Black (Soho)

The Berlin wall is crumbling, and in a series prequel, Parisian medical student Aimêe Leduc finds her mêtier, detecting. She investigates the murders of old men and tries to find her mother, a reputed terrorist.

“Orphan X” by Greg Hurwitz (Minotaur)

In this perfect fix for paranoid adrenaline junkies, an orphan (a perverted version of young King Arthur) is recruited and trained as a professional assassin for the government. Soon he’s surrounded by assassins.

 “The Second Life of Nick Mason’’ Steve Hamilton (Putnam)

After serving five years of a 25-year term in maximum security, Nick strikes a Faustian bargain with a criminal mastermind. He’s out of prison, living in luxury, falling in love, but dancing to the devil’s tune.

 “Wilde Lake’’ Laura Lippman (Morrow)

Family secrets rain down like a plague of locusts on “Lu” Brant, Maryland’s first woman state’s attorney. The young widow and mother of twins prosecutes a case that strikes close to home, threatening to taint her revered father’s reputation.

“Where All the Light Tends” to Go by David Joy (Putnam)

The son of a man who places a pocket bible on the chest of every person he murders realizes he’s in danger of becoming his father. This deeply noir finalist for the Edgar Award best first novel is set in Appalachia.

“You Will Know Me” by Megan Abbott (Hachette)

Overcoming a freak accident that mutilated her foot, Devon Knox becomes a gymnastics prodigy. Her parents double down to protect her when her coach is murdered. Abbott is brilliant at dissecting the power of adolescent girls.

BONUS: Here are two more that they wouldn't allow me to pick because of the obvious conflict of interest, the REDS own:

“Crowned and Dangerous” by Rhys Bowen (Berkeley)

Lady Georgie is about to elope with Darcy! Throwing caution to the wind, nothing can deter… until the news that her future father-in-law has been arrested for murder.

 

“Air Time” by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge)

Back in print! TV reporter Charlotte McNally enters the world of high fashion, only to discover that the purses are fake but the danger is real. She goes undercover to bring the couture counterfeiters to justice and struggles to answer a life-changing question from a certain handsome professor.

What are you reading this summer?

The Writers Who Made Us

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I was very saddened last week to read of the death of British crime writer Reginald Hill. Many of you may have known Hill from the television adaptation of his Dalziel and Pascoe novels. But while the adaptations were entertaining (loved Warren Clark and Colin Buchanan as Dalziel and Pascoe), those who haven't actually read Hill's novels have missed out on one of the great literary lights of our generation. (I chose this older photo as I thought the sly twinkle was so expressive of Hill's writing.)

Hill's novels are literate, witty, and complex. His prose could make me catch my breath in delight--and envy. And even after twenty years of writing detective fiction, he could twist me around his little finger with a plot. There are not many writers who are such masters of misdirection that they could leave me smacking my forehead at the reveal and saying, "Of course that's what happened! It was there all along and I just didn't see it." And I, slow-poke that I am, cannot help but be awed by a man who wrote more than fifty novels in his career, starting with the Dalziel and Pascoe novel A Clubbable Woman in 1970.

When I'm asked what writers influenced me, Hill has always been, along with PD James, at the top of the list. (Not that I think I've ever come close to writing as well as either of them, but they inspired me to try.)

Contemplating this, I began to think about my fellow Reds, and to wonder what writers made you sit up and say, "Oh, I want to do that. I MUST do that, no matter what it takes!"

We all write crime, but our books are so very different, so I'm guessing that our literary heroes and heroines are different, too.

Hallie, Jan, Rosemary, Hank, Rhys, Julia, Lucy--who inspired you to pick up your pen, glue yourself to your keyboard, stay up until the wee hours (or get up in them) to fan that spark that would one day become a novel?

And here's a dare--keep it to two, if you can!

RHYS BOWEN: Oh Deb--Reginald Hill was one of my idols too. His novel On Beulah Height was one of the best mysteries I have ever read. I hold it up as the standard to which I aspire. Apart from the ladies of the golden age the person who most inspired me to write mystery was Tony Hillerman. When I discovered his books I was blown away. I was used to polite English drawing rooms as the background for mystery. Here were books that took me to a strange and exotic place, that gave me insights into a new culture and were terrific stories too. I wanted to write books with that incredible sense of place.

Oh, and I have to add that I had published a couple of mysteries when I read a book called Dreaming of the Bones, by a certain Deborah Crombie, and that blew me away too. So Deb, you have been a role model as well!

HALLIE EPHRON: Well, I have to add Reginald Hill to my TBR list. My lodestars are two, and they're not mystery writers: Lucy Maud Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott. Authors, of course, of Anne of Green Gables and Little Women, respectively, and creators of two great female character who were smart, mouthy, not so beautiful, and wanted to write, Anne Shirley and Jo March.

Cheating now - the first mystery I love Love LOVED was P. D. James's An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. Cordelia Gray is the character I'm always striving to write. And the first mystery with a plot I couldn't stop raveling and unraveling was Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent.

JAN BROGAN: Well, Presumed Innocent was definitely the mystery that most inspired me and I'll read anything Scott Turow writes. The two books that influenced me most as a child, though, were Celia Garth by Gwen Bristow, like Hallie, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Those were the books that made me want to be a writer.

LUCY BURDETTE: Keeping it to two writers is really, really, really hard. I had no awareness as a kid that I would become a writer, but I was a huge reader. One of my favorite authors was Carol Ryrie Brink, who wrote CADDIE WOODLAWN and the most fabulous and probably underrated THE PINK MOTEL. Do you remember that one? A mysterious and run down pink motel in Florida is left to a father, who brings his family to the motel to get it ready for sale. Instead, the kids get drawn into the whimsical characters who come stay in the little cottages and in the end, manage to persuade their parents to hold onto the place. Charming and mysterious with great characters.

I would have to say EB White for my second pick. His characters are wonderful too--funny and endearing and each one different from the other. Listening to CHARLOTTE'S WEB and THE TRUMPET OF THE SWAN kept my family from coming to fisticuffs on long car rides. If I could only be one third the writer that he was! And if I could cheat and add more, I would (Kenneth Grahame, Nancy Drew mysteries...you get the picture!)

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN : Oh, kind of difficult! But really thinking about this...TH White's ONCE AND FUTURE KING was life-changing for me. I bet I still think about that book once a week.. For how a story can mean more than just the story, you know?

Also, okay pushing now, but they're similar I can't choose..Edward Eager and Jane Langton's magical adventure stories.. As for mysteries..Josephine Tey's DAUGHTER OF TIME.

ROSEMARY HARRIS: I never had that one, galvanizing moment that made me go Yowza! That's what I want to do! And I rarely read a book and think I want to try to do that. I was a big fan of the Alfred Hitchcock movies - for plot and mysterious doings - and the PBS Mystery series, mostly the Peter Wimsey series. And my books couldn't be further away from them in style and tone!

If there's someone I wish I could write like - present company excluded - it would be Carl Hiassen. He can tell a story with humor, smarts, and a bit of a social conscience.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: As some of you may remember, once I conceived of the notion of being a writer, I tried my hand at science fiction. My greatest inspiration (and still one of my favorite writers) was Lois McMaster Bujold. She blithely tosses together every genre imaginable in her books: high fantasy, theology and philosophy, mystery, romance, comedy of manners, hard science fiction, American and European history - and she makes it work, in what appears to be an effortless style.

Once I decided to attempt crime fiction, my two role models became Margaret Maron and Archer Mayor. Both of them write regional mysteries with authenticity and perfect attention to detail. Margaret's books leave me feeling as if I've taken a trip to North Carolina beside a clear-eyed but sympathetic native. And after reading one of Archer's books, I always feel as if I could drive blindfolded through the part of Vermont in which he sets his story. In addition, they have three-dimensional, fully human characters that I care deeply about.

Okay, I may as well go whole hog and add one more: I wish I wrote prose like Steve Hamilton: spare, literate, poetical. I'm never going to get there, but it's a good goal to keep in front of my eyes.

DEBS: How fascinating! Turns out I was at least partly wrong about our influences being different because we write such different sorts of books.

Rhys, On Beulah Height is my favorite Hill novel, too! (And thanks for the mention of Dreaming of the Bones. I'm more than flattered to be thought of in such company...)

Hallie, I loved Little Women but liked Little Men better, when Jo was grown up and in charge of her own life. I didn't read Anne of Green Gables until I was in my twenties, and I adored the books.

Sayers, PD James, and Josephine Tey, of course. But Hank, I LOVED The Once and Future King by TH White. I went through a period in my teens where I read everything Arthurian I could get my hands on, but nothing ever compared. And Julia, I love Lois McMaster Bujold, too. I even got to do a first read of one of her manuscripts once.

BUT! I cringe to say I've never read Scott Turow. Or Caddie Woodlawn. And I am entranced by the description of The Pink Motel. And I should add Carl Hiassen, and how could I not have read Archer Mayor? And I'm behind on Margaret Maron's wonderful books....

More books going on my TBR list, obviously. And so many books I'd like to reread. I think I should have "So many books, so little time," tattooed on my forehead.

But isn't it lovely that we never run out of things we want to read, or writers who make us want to be better?

JR readers, would you have matched the writer to the books? And should we give prizes to those of us who actually stuck to two?

And the winners are...

Bouquets! Fire works! Champagne toasts to this week's winners of Edgar and Agatha awards! These books are the creme de la creme, and we congratulate the winners!

(Links are to interviews with many of the winners in the annals of Jungle Red.)

2011 Agatha Award winners, announced just last night:

Best Novel - Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny (winning for the 4th time!)

Best Nonfiction - Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks by John Curran

Best Children's/Young Adult - The Other Side of Dark by Sarah Smith

Best First Mystery Novel - The Long Quiche Goodbye by Avery Aames

Best Short Story - "So Much in Common" by Mary Jane Maffini, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - Sept./Oct. 2010

Poirot Award: Janet Rudolph of Mystery Readers' International

And the 2011 Edgar awards, announced earlier this week, went to:

Best novel: The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton

Best fact crime: Scoreboard, Baby: A Story of College Football, Crime and Complicity by Ken Armstrong & Nick Perry

Best Juvenile: The Buddy Files: The Case of the Lost Boy by Dori Hillestad Butler

Best young adult: The Interrogation of Gabriel James by Charlie Price

The Mary Higgins Clark award: The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths

Raven Awards: Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore (Chicago, IL); Once Upon a Crime Bookstore (Minneapolis, MN)

Were you there? Have you read these? Share your thoughts...

Raven winner: ONCE UPON A CRIME

HALLIE: Jungle Red is happy to congratulate Once Upon a Crime! Owners Pat Frovarp and Gary Shulze are being honored tonight(!) with the Raven Award by Mystery Writers of America at the Edgar Awards banquet .

We're so delighted to have Pat and Gary visiting today.

I had the great good fortune of visiting their delightful Minneapolis store when one of my first novels came out, and I was charmed Pat an Gary who, with their warmth a generosity, made me feel so welcome.

It's that same spirit that has been bringing readers back to the store, year after year, to buy more books.

Pat, Gary, do you two have different tastes in books? Do you think women readers prefer to read different kinds of books than men?

PAT & GARY: We like a lot of the same books. We have loads of regular customers, mostly women, who love cozies, and we have racks and end caps with the new cozies. Plus there are women whose tastes run, like ours, to the more hardboiled stuff, too. Lee Child's best audience is women; the same with John Sandford. Hunks as protagonists.

We do have a few customers who refuse to read women mystery writers. Sometimes we want to pass off someone with initials and see how they feel. Remember when J. A. Jance went as JA because she couldn't get published? Alex Kava sells really well to men and women - most everyone think she's a man.

And we have a ton of regular women readers who only want to read women writers. Guess it's because they want to support women because women had such a hard time breaking into the genre.

HALLIE: Sounds like you really know your customers.

PAT & GARY: We have so many loyal customers who keep coming back. Our formula seems to work. We recognize people by name. We try to be accommodating and and pay attention to the customers. People can come here and find an entire author's back list. People recommend us - every day we have people who show up and say, "I finally got here!"

We have a reading group and our local chapter of SinC. We've got a pretty good chapter her. We give discounts to encourage people to shop here.

HALLIE: What sells best at Once Upon a Crime?

PAT & GARY: Local authors in hard cover. Paperback cozies outsell anything.

HALLIE: Do you agree on the books you love?

PAT & GARY: Sometimes. When we do, we sell the crap out of them. The majority of our sales are hand sells.

Right now we're recommending Steve Hamilton's The Lock Artist which just got nominated for the Edgar. It kind of transcends typical crime thrillers. Part coming of age story, nice romance in it with a kid, really good characters, and some nice arcane information about safe cracking in it. The protagonist is mute, which is tough to pull off.

Another is a book just out from Poison Pen, Big Wheat, set in 1919 Dakotas during the threshing harvest, after the war and right before the dust bowl. It's got marvelous information about the mechanics of steam and threshing which I thought would be so boring. I probably sell two or three a day. It helps that he's local.

Pat really loved a thriller, Learning to Swim by Sara J. Henry. It's about a woman who lives near Vancouver on a ferry going to an island she sees someone throwing a child off the deck of the ferry and without thinking she jumps in and saves the child and keeps the child. And she starts snooping around and finds odd things going on.

HALLIE: Writing those down and putting them in my TBR list!

I know the store is a "labor of love," but you guys took that to extremes by getting married in the store.

PAT & GARY: We got married in the store. The oncology chaplain at Methodist Hospital where Gary spent months when he had leukemia came and married us. It was us and seven people who happened to find out that we were getting married. (On top of that, it was the day the bridge collapsed and people just couldn't get there.)

HALLIE: I know that was on the FIFTH anniversary of your buying the store. A 'cozy' wedding sounds just right for Once Upon a Crime.