Take you Out---or Take you Home?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Are you a take-me-out-to-the ballgame? Or a take-me-home?

 Got to say, I  love baseball, sitting in the ball park ,with all the hilariously happy (sometimes) people, rooting for your team to win. And that moment, when it's one guy, the pitcher, against one guy, that batter, and everyone focused on the moment when everything could change. And how it's a team sport, and an individual sport, and ah. I love it.

Not so much the spitting (what is there to spit? I have NEVER spit.) Or the rowdy beer-throwing and whatever. And the hitching of pants. I have never hitched my pants.

But I love the families in the bleachers, and the cheering for success, and the sunny days and crackerjacks and hotdogs. Delicious hot dogs. And I don't even generally like beer, but you've gotta have at least a sip at the ball game.

And yes, the Red Sox often break our hearts. But there' s always next year. But this year..it could happen!

So how about you? Take you out to the ballgame? Or take you away it?  And if you were playing, would you want to be the batter when it's the last up of the last inning in a tie game and you could win it all?  I always think the world is divided into the "put-me-in" people and the "no way" people.

And who's your team?

RHYS BOWEN: Giants fan here, Hank. Love my Giants although they have started this season with the worst record since 1980 something. We usually go to spring training in Scottsdale which I find more fun than the real games in a cold and drafty stadium in San Francisco. A friend has season tickets and I snap up the ones she can't use. And they are in the friends and family section so we get to sit with players' families. You can tell the wives by the enormous rocks on their left hands!

Your question about whether I'd want to be that last batter... I know what I'd hate and that would be to be closing pitcher, last game of world series, being handed a one run lead in the ninth. I know, it happened to the Giants once and he blew it.

HALLIE EPHRON: We are blessed here in Boston with Fenway Park and the reliably unreliable Red Sox. I go to about one ball game a season (we're going in a few weeks to see them play the Minnesota Twins) and I love almost everything about it, especially when we win. My husband listens to all the games at home.

I was a terrible baseball player. Afraid of the ball. It's very hard, you know. And I never learned how to use a glove. But in my dreams I'm on second base, bases loaded, two outs in the final inning, Red Sox behind by one, and Big Papi hits a base-clearing homerun.

The worst thing about baseball is when your favorite players retire or go to different teams.

INGRID THOFT: I wouldn’t characterize myself as a baseball fan, but as Hank and Hallie know, when you live in Boston (or it’s your hometown,) you are a Red Sox  fan.  For life.  I’ve been to a handful of games over the years, and what I’ve enjoyed most is the atmosphere at Fenway Park.  A warm night, some snacks, the Green Monster, the traffic rushing by on the Mass Pike, all make for an iconic baseball experience.  Every New Englander should go at least once, if only to soak up the scene.

 I never played baseball or softball growing up, but I lean towards the “put me in, coach!” frame of mind, so I would rather be the last batter up than riding the bench. 

DEBORAH CROMBIE:  I didn't grow up watching baseball or going to games. Which is weird because my dad coached a corporate women's softball team before I was born, but somehow that didn't translate to professional baseball. But my daughter played softball all through elementary school, and we became big Texas Rangers fans. I loved going to the games and following the team. I still watch the games when I have a chance, and I was really rooting for the Rangers to make it to the World Series last year.

I haven't been to a game in years, though, because Rick doesn't like baseball, or any kind of organized sport.

JENN MCKINLAY: I grew up in Newyorkachusetts (i.e. Connecticut) in which baseball is pretty much divided by the Connecticut River. On one side it's all Yankees fans and on the other it's the Red Sox. I spent my middle school and teen years on the Red Sox side and am a member of Red Sox Nation in honor of my grandmother who was one of their most ardent fans. That being said, when the Diamondbacks came to AZ, I was all in. Hub and I had just started dating and his father had season tickets so much of our first year together was spent watching the Diamondbacks, which was a pretty awesome courtship but that could be because of the hotdogs, peanuts, Red Vines, beer, and gourmet popcorn.

Yes, I love the game but my favorite part of baseball is the food. Shocker, I know. "'Cause it's one, two, three strikes you're out at the old ball game!"

LUCY BURDETTE: We spent a couple years living outside Detroit when I was a kid, so we all became mad for the Tigers. When I lived in Gainesville Fl, the closest team was the Braves, but I never did get very attached to them. Now when we're in Connecticut, it's exactly as Jenn described--and we live right on the dividing line for Yankees versus Red Sox fans. I only get interested in baseball when the playoffs and World Series come around. Though I think I could become a Red Sox fan!

Ask me about UCONN women's basketball, however, and I can tell you anything and everything about the players, the coach, the competition...I love watching those girls play!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I married into New England, and so became a Red Sox fan, as one is required to do. (Ross and I have a good friend who grew up outside NYC and is an adamant Yankees fan, despite living in Portland for close to thirty years. It takes real guts to be a Yankees fan in Maine.)

For me, however, the best of baseball is our local AA team, the Portland Sea Dogs. They play in Hadlock Field, a perfect gem where there's not a bad seat to be found (and general seating is less than the price of a movie ticket!) In all the years we've been going, I've never seen or heard any altercation, beer-throwing or loud profanities. Instead, it always seems a festival gathering of Mainers grateful to be out under the blue sky, eating hot dogs and drinking local microbrews from the Shipyard Brew Pen. We've seen some amazing talent play there: Mookie Betts, Clay Buchholz, Dustin Pedroia and Hanley Ramirez all came up from the Sea Dogs. They have fireworks after the game on the 4th of July, and promotions like Dog of the Day (featuring adoptable dogs,) Superhero Day (come in costume,) and Pride Night (to coincide with Portland's Pride Day festivities.)

You can't beat it, which is why we have tickets for a double header this coming Friday!

-->

HANK: Whoo hoo! How about you, Reds readers? Baseball—yes, no? And who’s your team? 

photo credits and thank you to: C. Penier. Yobro,  Onyschenko, David Lee

Jon Land--Romance with a Bullet

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Welcome to thriller-writer extraordinaire Jon Land! I just saw Jon at the Books in the Basin Literary Festival in Odessa, Texas (that's the Permian Basin, in case you were wondering), and how nice it is to have him here on JRW today! Jon is not only a writer whose output I envy, but a super nice guy. And when he guests on Jungle Red he always has something to say that really gives us reason to think. (And I love  his Caitlin Strong books--can't wait to read the new one!

Here's Jon:

ROMANCE WITH A BULLET

    Why isn’t there more romance in thrillers?  Obviously I’m not talking about those titles shelved under the nebulous heading of “romantic suspense.”  No.  I’m talking about thrillers by the likes of Lee Child, Steve Berry, James Rollins, Brad Thor.  Let’s explore.

    I believe it starts with the fact that the majority of thrillers unfold over a very short period of time—a couple weeks, ten days maybe, often even less.  And that’s not long enough to build anything even remotely resembling Scarlet O’Hara and Rhett Butler of Gone With the Wind fame, leaving us mostly with existing relationships that are used as thinly disguised plot points.  A kidnapped wife or lover, an ex-girl friend who turns out to be a femme fatale. 

In the wonderful suburban terror tales by the likes of the great Harlan Coben and equally great Lisa Gardner, the very nature of love, romance and the integrity of the family find themselves in peril, turned on their ear.  Even that, though, often takes a backseat to the maneuvers and mechanizations of some creepy villain who’s pulling all the strings.

    Beyond that, thrillers are defined by the fact that lots, the whole world or at least country, is often at stake.  And, let’s face it, who has time for romance when you’re racing to save millions of people from some despicable villain’s dastardly plot?  It’s a matter of priorities and as far as the kind of books the best and biggest thriller writers are known for, romance doesn’t necessarily make the list. 

Sure, there are exceptions; Ken Follett’s Eye of the Needle, for example.  David Morrell’s Double Image or The Shimmer come to mind too.  With thrillers pacing is everything and normally that pacing doesn’t allow for the development of a relationship.  But just because the vast majority of thrillers lack traditional romance doesn’t at all mean they aren’t romantic.

    Huh?  What did he say?

    Allow me to elaborate.  Great thrillers, like all great books in general, are about emotion, about making us feel something.  If we don’t have a reason to care, we don’t have a reason, really, to read.  And that reason to care doesn’t have to spring from romance per se.  Thrillers, you see, owe their structure to the western motif, the lone hero standing against the evil land baron to defend the frontier. 

These tales were almost never traditional romances, but they were inherently romantic.  And the protagonists of some of our greatest thrillers today define the nature of the romantic hero perfectly.  Lee Child’s wondrous Jack Reacher, for example.  Reacher never stays in a relationship because he’s always on the move.  His romance is with the great expanse that remains America, traveled in his case mostly by buses and hitchhiking.  Reacher doesn’t have to be that way, he wants to be that way because it defines his nature as the quintessential loner hero in love with the anachronistic notion of owning no more than what he can carry.  The lack of possessions is his greatest possession of all.  Heroes like Reacher exist to defend the innocent and stand up against those who would abuse them.  Theirs is a noble quest and that in itself is inherently romantic in the truest sense of the rugged American mythos that birthed the form of the thriller as birthed in the western.

    Well, what about relationships, you ask?  Good question!  And let’s consult no less of an expert than the brilliant literary critic Leslie Fiedler for the answer.  Fiedler authored one of the premier works of literary criticism in his brilliant Love and Death in the American Novel which postulated that the greatest relationships in American literature are have normally been between two men.  Playing off that western motif again, with a little Huck and Jim tossed in for good measure. 

And we can see that same motif on display clearly in modern thrillers as well.  James Fennimore Cooper’s Natty Bumpo and Chingotchgook became Robert Crais’ Elvis Cole and Joe Pike.  Or Robert Parker’s Hawk and Spencer, Harlan Coben’s Myron Bolitar and Win, the great James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcell. 

These relationships span generations, highlighted by the conflicted give and take that somehow strengthens the bond between hero and quasi-sidekick instead of fraying it.  Characters just short of life partners who accept each other warts and all while complementing each other’s strengths as well as flaws perfectly.  Hmmmmm, sounds like romance, doesn’t it?

    Okay, so we’ve got the romantic hero and this whole nature of the bromance.  How about one more?  Jimmy Cagney once famously said, “Never do a scene with a kid or a dog.”  Well, thriller writers are expert at mining both for the kind of emotion normally gleaned from traditional romance.  Think about the movie Taken, maybe the simplest story of all time, simple and yet brilliant:  a father who’ll do anything to save his daughter. 

That’s romantic heroism without being romance, because Liam Neeson’s Brian Mills is fighting for something he loves and nothing more.  Steve Berry recently featured Cotton Malone’s sixteen-year-old son in an entry in that terrific series, while in The Innocent David Baldacci turns assassin Will Robie into a runaway teenage girl’s protector.  James Rollins and Grant Blackwood recently went that one better in The Kill Switch that features not just bookdom’s greatest modern day canine hero, but also scenes from that dog’s POV.  No, it’s not romance but it’s emotive; it makes us feel which is the same thing romance does.

    And that’s the point.  Great books, thrillers and otherwise, make us feel something so we’ll respond on an emotional level.  And emotion is not synonymous with romance.  My female Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong is never going to get with her lover Cort Wesley Masters on a full-time basis, no weddings or babies in their future, because in order to be together they need to be separate.  Theirs is a non-traditional romance based on the limitations they’ve accepted in each other, and the maternal instincts Cort Wesley’s teenage sons bring out in Caitlin is emotional gold in my mind.  It defines a relationship at its strongest when those boys, or themselves, are threatened by violence.

    So let’s finish with an example of me practicing what I preach, specifically a simple father-son scene from STRONG DARKNESS that takes place in the elevator of a New York City building between Cort Wesley and Dylan.

He snatched the card from his father’s grasp and angled it in front of a lens higher up on the panel Cort Wesley had taken for a security camera.  As Dylan held the black access card near it, though, the lens glowed blue and the elevator doors closed.  A moment later, the car was in motion, streaking for a floor that shouldn’t have existed with the two of them as the only passengers.
“Those jeans are too tight,” Cort Wesley said suddenly, not exactly sure why.
    “That’s the way they’re supposed to fit.”
    “Well, son, it looks like you already outgrew them from where I’m standing.”  Cort Wesley stole another glance, in spite of Dylan’s caustic stare.  “I can almost tell the last number you dialed on that throwaway cell phone we grabbed down the street.”
    “Oh, man,” the boy muttered, as the elevator continue to zoom upward, making no other stops.
    “I saw your credit card statement.  How is it they cost so much when there’s so little to them?”
    “They don’t cost that much, dad.”
    “That’s because you’re not paying.”
    Dylan gave his father a long look, as if sizing him up.  “You look naked.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “You’re not carrying a gun.”


    Now I’d like to hear what YOU think!   How about coming up with your favorite example of a relationship packed with feeling and emotion, but not necessarily romance?  I’ve got a bunch in mind already, so let’s compare notes.



DEBS:  Great excerpt, great question!!! REDS and readers, how about some examples? I'm with Jon--I can think of some great ones right off the bat!

And if you want to know more about the new Caitlin Strong book, here's a peek:

1883:  Texas Ranger William Ray Strong teams up with Judge Roy Bean to track down the Old West’s first serial killer who’s stitching a trail of death along the railroad lines slicing their way through Texas.

The Present:  Fifth Generation Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong finds herself pursuing another serial killer whose methods are eerily similar to the one pursued by her great-grandfather almost a century-and-a-half before.  But that’s just the beginning of the problems confronting Caitlin in her biggest and most dangerous adventure yet, starting off when the son of her reformed outlaw boy friend Cort Wesley Masters is nearly beaten to death while at college.

The trail of that attack at Brown University leads all the way back to Texas and a Chinese high-tech company recently awarded the contract to build the nation’s Fifth Generation wireless network.  Li Zhen, a rare self-made man in China and the company’s founder, counts that as the greatest achievement of his career.  But it’s an achievement that hides the true motivations behind a rise fueled by events dating back to the time of Caitlin’s great-grandfather.  Because the same era that spawned a serial killer who has impossibly resurfaced today also hides the secrets behind Li’s thirst for nothing less than China’s total domination of the United States.

His fiendishly clever plan is backed by all-powerful elements of the Chinese underworld that will stop at nothing to insure its success.  Up against an army at Li’s disposal, Caitlin and Cort Wesley blaze a violent trail across country and continent in search of secrets hidden in the past, but it’s a secret from the present that holds the means to stop their adversary’s plot in its tracks, even as a climactic battle dawns with nothing less than the fate of the U.S. at stake.   Because there’s a darkness coming, and only Caitlin Strong can find the light before it’s too late.



 





   

JON LAND: STRONG VENGEANCE

DEBORAH CROMBIE: A big welcome here at Jungle Red to Jon Land! For our THRILLER FORTNIGHT, we've had two authors with male protagonists this week. Now Jon is going to give us a different twist.  I love the premise of this book, and I love that Jon's heroine, Caitlin Strong, is a Texas Ranger. Here's a little set-up for Jon's new Caitlin Strong novel, STRONG VENGEANCE:

 1818:  In the Gulf waters off the Texas coast, the pirate Jean Lafitte and his partner Jim Bowie launch an attack on the Mother Mary, a slave ship carrying an invaluable treasure.

The Present:  Fifth-generation Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong finds herself investigating the murder of an oil rig crew that had found the long-lost wreckage of the Mother Mary.  But the crew also uncovered something else beneath the surface of the sea—something connected to a devastating attack about to be launched on the United States by a mad American-born cleric who has recruited an army of homegrown terrorists.

With the stakes higher and evil darker than any she has encountered before, Caitlin races to find the connection between the treasure pilfered centuries before and the deadly secret hidden on the bottom of the ocean today.  This as she struggles to raise the teenage sons of her imprisoned lover Cort Wesley Masters who secures his release just in time to join the fight by her side.

But shadows and subterfuge abound, starting with Teofilo Braga, a waste management baron hiding secrets born of his own past that are somehow linked to the threats America is facing.  Caitlin’s desperate path plunges her deep into that past and an unsolved mass murder committed near the island refuge of Lafitte himself.

Caitlin’s only chance to defeat the terrorists lies in first solving that 30-year-old mystery.  In the end, only the strongest of vengeance can win the day, Caitlin and Cort Wesley standing with guns ready to save the country from the greatest threat it has ever faced.

Now, Jon tells us why he chose a female protagonist for his thrillers.

CAITLIN STRONG: ACTION HERO!

          Female action hero.  For many thriller fans, that’s an oxymoron.  And you can’t really blame them.  A woman capable of mixing it up with the likes of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher?  Come on, no way, right?

            Wrong.  Caitlin Strong, who returns this month in Strong Vengeance, is a Texas Ranger capable of mixing it up with just about everyone.  Her past three adventures have pitted her against a villainous Haliburton-like company responsible for torturing her husband (Strong Enough to Die), a renegade Mexican colonel about to launch a guerilla war against the U.S. (Strong Justice), and a radical right-wing militia intent on starting a second civil war (Strong at the Break).  Now in Strong Vengeance she’s up against homegrown Islamic terrorists planning to wipe out the United States as we know it.   Those plotlines may seem more fit for Steve Berry’s Cotton Malone, James Rollins’ Sigma Force, Brad Thor’s Scott Harvath, or Vince Flynn’s wonderful Mitch Rapp.  Only difference is they’re men . . . and not Texas Rangers either.

            See, it comes down to credibility.  Building a believable female action hero starts with a foundation the audience will buy into and the Texas Rangers form the perfect basis for that.  These lawmen (and now lawwomen!) have been legends for nearly two centuries now, coming to exemplify the lone hero so vital to the development of American fiction in general.  The Rangers’ exploits have reached a mythic, virtually iconic level and they remain to this day symbols of standing up for what’s right no matter the odds.  Which describes Caitlin dead solid perfect.

            Of course, some will say that casting female Caitlin in the all-male Texas Rangers strains credibility in its own right.  So I made her not just a Ranger, but a fifth generation Ranger with her forbears all being veritable legends in this exclusive community.  That helps lead to her being accepted but, ultimately, she has no problem proving herself against bad guys every bit the equal of those run down by Caitlin’s father Jim and her grandfather Earl Strong.  That’s why I decided to frame all the Strong books by featuring them in subplots set in the past that inevitably turn out to be connected to what and who Caitlin’s pursuing in the present.  In Strong Vengeance, for example, Caitlin has to solve the thirty-year-old mass murder of five college students, a case her legendary father and grandfather never solved, in order to stop those homegrown terrorists from wreaking havoc on the nation.  And there must be something about her as a female action hero that’s resonating, because here’s some breaking news:  Sony has just optioned the first book in the series (Strong Enough to Die) in order to build a television series around Caitlin!  Hey, we’ve still got a long way to go but at least she—and I—have a shot (no pun intended!).

            Stephen King once said “it’s not the tale, it’s the telling.”  Well, for me it’s not the gender, it’s the person.  And Caitlin Strong can stand toe-to-toe with any of her contemporaries, even though that doesn’t necessarily mean eye-to-eye.

         

So what do you think, readers?  Can a male author effectively write a female hero?  Do you think terrorism is overdone as a theme or does the "homegrown" angle here make it different enough to be of interest?  And I'd like to know what you think makes a great thriller and would love to hear some of your favorites and why.

Jon Land is the bestselling author of thirty thrillers, most recently the Caitlin Strong series that includes Strong Enough to Die, Strong Justice, and Strong at the Break.  The next entry, Strong Vengeance, will be available just in time for ThrillerFest.  He’s also bringing back his longtime action hero Blaine McCracken in Pandora’s Temple for Open Road Media in November and this past year published his first ever nonfiction book, Betrayal. Betrayal is currently being developed as a television series by Fox for Denis Leery and Jon just inked a deal with Sony to bring Caitlin Strong to the small screen as well.  He lives in Providence, Rhode Island and can be found on the Web at jonlandbooks.com. 

DEBS: Jon will be stopping in to respond to your questions and comments, AND he's very kindly offered to give three copies of STRONG VENGEANCE to lucky readers who comment, so get your names in the hat!