Lesson One Responses.docx

Write to Pitch Assignment Responses and see email Jan 16.docx

I began writing about books for the New York Times in late 2023 and officially began my tenure as the horror fiction columnist for the New York Times Book Review in January on 2024. I love that gig with all my heart, but it often makes me miss something else I love with all my heart: crime fiction. Sure, I’m still reading crime (and noir, thrillers, mystery suspense, true crime, etc), but I’m not writing about what I read, and writing about what I read is what I’ve always done. Solution? Start a column to talk about crime fiction. The perfect place? CrimeReads, a place that has supported me from the start. Yeah, I’m happy to be here. Let’s talk about some new books. Johnny Careless by Kevin Wade (Celadon Books) Kevin Wade has had a great career as a screenwriter, television writer, and producer. All of that, however, came to a screeching halt when the writers’ and actors’ strikes hit in 2023. Locked in and with not much to do, Wade wrote a novel. Johnny Careless, Wade’s first novel, is a fun, fast-paced narrative written by a “debut” author who brings to the table decades of accumulated knowledge and a deep understanding of pacing, structure, and dialogue. Police Chief Jeep Mullane used to work as a cop in New York City, but after a very personal case broke him while also earning him a NYPD detective’s shield, Jeep opted to return home to Long Island’s North Shore to run a small new local police department. The North Shore is home, but while Jeep settles in relatively quickly, the things he ignored in the past and the big differences between hardworking people like himself, the son of a cop, and the wealthy families that populate the area start rubbing him the wrong way and making his work a little harder. When Jeep gets a call about the body of a drowned man who turns out to be one of his best childhood friends, Johnny Chambliss, his new role as the law in town clashes with his past. Johnny, nicknamed Johnny Careless by his coaches, grew up rich. Jeep didn’t. Back then, that meant feeling like an outsider and knowing Johnny and him would have different paths in life. Now, the difference means a lot more. As Jeep navigates his grief and tries to get to the bottom of Johnny’s death, he is also forced to deal with the wounds of his recent past, Johnny’s secretive family and overbearing father, Johnny’s own past, corrupt local politicians, and a gang of car thieves. This novel is always moving forward at breakneck speed. Short chapters–many of them carried mostly by dialogue–and Wade’s lean prose make this a quick read. There are two narratives at play here, and they both move well. The first, which occupies center stage and delivers the biggest emotional punches, is happening now as Jeep investigates his friend’s death. The second, which provides context and helps with character development, follows Jeep and Johnny back at the end of their high school days when they played lacrosse together. Unfortunately, the chapters from the past end up revealing too much and giving away all of the pieces of the puzzle. There are a few tropes here that might have worked better on television, including things like Latinx bad guys with tattooed tears and a cop talking about how good cops are and how rough the gig is. Despite those flaws, Johnny Carless is an impressive debut from a voice that sounds like a veteran because it comes from a veteran who knows how to tell a story. The Note by Alafair Burke (Knopf) Alafair Burke consistently delivers, so I went into The Note, her latest, with high expectation. Burke met all of them and then kept going, delivering what is arguably her best novel to date. May Hanover is one of those people who likes to follow the rules. To a fault. Most of it comes from growing up the daughter of a first-generation Chinese single mother who understood that education and discipline were the way to a better future and had very high expectations. But May isn’t perfect. A video of her yelling at someone on the subway went viral. It destroyed her life for a while. Now May is engaged, teaching law, and on her way to a couple of days with old friends in a rented house in the Hamptons. Lauren and Kelsey have experienced things like what happened to May–scandals also altered their lives forever–so their bond is deep despite their bumpy past. While out for drinks, the three friends have a bad experience with a parking spot that leads to a prank that goes horribly wrong and quickly becomes an investigation that threatens to expose the three friends to the world once again. The Note is a complex, shifting, and very timely procedural. Burke has always excelled at those, so this comes as no surprise. However, the intricate way in which Burke examines female friendship and the lingering impact of trauma after it has been amplified by social media make this a remarkable novel. Also, the plot is still delivering surprises in the last few pages, which is saying a lot. Burke is a master of suspense, which is great, but what is astonishing about her is that she somehow keeps getting better. None of This is True by Lisa Jewell (Atria) As someone who pays the bills writing a mix of horror and crime, I’m fully aware of the differences between those genres as well as of all the ways in which they share the same dark heart. The work of Lisa Jewell–murky, twisted–has always appealed to me because it brings in enough human darkness to be horror while remaining firmly entrenched in a crime. None of This is True, now out in paperback, is Jewell at the top of her game. Josie Fair is in a pub with her much older husband celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. At the same pub and doing the same thing–also for her forty-fifth birthday–is Alix Summer, a famous podcaster. When the two cross paths, the encounter is a funny “I found my birthday twin” story for Alix, but it has a much deeper meaning for Josie. When the two women run into each other again, Josie talks to Alix about an idea she had while listening to her podcast, which she has been obsessed with since meeting Alix at the pub on their birthday night. Josie wants to change her life, and Alix could tell her story. Alix agrees, but when she and Josie start working together, she realizes Josie might not be who she says she is. A story about lies that also delves deep into topics like pedophilia, alcoholism, and grooming, None of This is True is a dark spiral of tension that gets weirder and creepier as it goes. Josie’s unhealthy obsession with Alix and the way she wedges herself into the podcaster’s life is only the start, and everything leading up to is even worse. There is a lot to like in this novel, but besides the great dialogue, twists, and master class in tension, one of the most interesting elements of the narrative is the snippets of a true crime Netflix documentary that readers “see” by reading audio from the podcast as well as interviews done after with people who knew Josie and Alix. To say more would be to give away too much, so I’ll end it there. There are many reasons why Jewell sells so many books, and all of them are in full display here. View the full article

Cornell Woolrich was a worker. He produced a large amount on the printed page in a relatively short window of time. He wrote, by my count, twenty-seven novels and countless short stories in various genres, which were later compiled in numerous collections. The books and stories were a natural source for the movies, as their plots neatly fit the mold of three-act screenwriting: conflict, deeper conflict, and resolution. There were forty-three (!) feature films made from his books and short stories, which ultimately made him a very wealthy man, an unusual outcome for a writer who toiled in the pulps. The most famous of the films mined from the Woolrich library is probably, and deservedly, Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), adapted from the Woolrich short story “It Had to Be Murder.” There were other very good ones: The Leopard Man (directed by Jacques Tourneur, 1943); The Chase (directed by Arthur Ripley, 1946); the underrated I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes (directed by William Nigh, 1948); and The Window (directed by Ted Tetzlaff, 1949). Street of Chance (1942), a passable picture directed by Jack Hively and starring Burgess Meredith and noir mainstay Clair Trevor, was adapted from The Black Curtain, the book you hold in your hands. There were Woolrich-inspired films by Indian and Japanese directors, and one from Italian Giallo/horror/Eurocrime practitioner Umberto Lenzi (Seven Blood-Stained Orchids, 1972). Rainer Werner Fassbinder directed Martha (1974); Francois Truffaut directed The Bride Wore Black (1968) and Mississippi Mermaid (1969). For a Hitchcock acolyte, Truffaut made surprisingly dull suspense films, but it should be noted, if it’s to your taste, that The Bride Wore Black’s premise inspired Quentin Tarentino’s Kill Bill. My favorite Woolrich movie adaptation is Robert Siodmak’s Phantom Lady (1944), a delirious high-water mark of film noir. What of the books? Woolrich started his writing career with Fitgerald-inspired, Jazz Age novels that were sold in numbers and well received. This sent him out to Hollywood for a shot at screenwriting. The Depression ended the market for Roaring Twenties lit and Woolrich turned to mystery/suspense fiction. He was prolific from 1940–1960, so prolific that he was compelled to publish under other names (my hardback edition of Phantom Lady, under Collier’s Front Page Mysteries imprint, carries the pseudonym William Irish on its spine). The Black Curtain was the second of Woolrich’s six novels with “Black” in the title, which is a tipoff to the darkness of the work. Can Woolrich be described as a noir novelist? He was among them, though I don’t think he (or anyone else) invented the form. Noir rose up simultaneously, perhaps unconsciously, amongst other arts. It’s there in German Expressionist films and design, it’s in Edward Hopper paintings, in jazz music (through association), in literature. Though Boris Ingster’s The Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) is usually credited as the first film noir, mainly because of its expressionistic nightmare sequence, I’d put Fritz Lang’s M (1931) in the running as well. The point being, there were no “firsts” in noir. The Black Curtain was published in 1941, before anyone knew what noir “was” (it took the French to put a label on it, years later). Yet, deliberate or not, Woolrich wrote in a style that was very precise in conveying anxiety, fear, claustrophobia, and the inevitability of fate, elements that were to become the emotional core of the genre and would be conveyed by film directors with visual style in a distinct blend of lighting and effects. In Woolrich’s later books, there is evidence that he was being influenced by the visual signposts of film noir (venetian blind shadows, etc.), but at this stage in his career, perhaps inadvertently, he was creating something new. Even as early as The Black Curtain, he equated fractured illumination with impending violence, as in the “blades of light” that divided a space or the way light “knifed” its way into a room. From The Black Curtain: Townsend stood there by the tree, watching her down the leafy alley. Now the disks of sunlight didn’t gently alternate down on her; they streaked in one continuous, blurred line like a striped tiger pelt, she was running so fast. At times in The Black Curtain, one can sense that Woolrich was writing in a fever, manifested in his staccato prose. The rhythm maintains the anxiety and works to great effect: The door seemed to explode with impacts. It made the light bulbs jitter in the ceiling. It made a pottery thing on table sing out with the vibration, carried to it along the floor and up the table legs. It was an earthquake of an attempted forcible entry. It was violence in its most ravening form. It was the night gone hydrophobic at their threshold. It was disaster. It was the end. Much has been made of Woolrich’s tortured life and how it spills onto the pages, like blood from a freshly opened wound, of his work. There are some facts backed up by interviews of his friends and editors: He was an odd-looking man, pale and small. He had one brief marriage that fell apart and thereafter lived in low-grade residences with his mother in New York City. He rarely left his apartments and was probably agoraphobic (fear of the marketplace, from the Greek). He suffered from thanatophobia (fear of death, from the Greek, just saying). He was an alcoholic. When his mother passed away, his life spiraled downward and his health rapidly declined. Towards the end, one of his legs was amputated due to gangrene left unattended. He died with nearly a million dollars in the bank (from the movie money, a fortune in 1968), which he willed to Columbia University for a scholarship fund for writing students in honor of his mother. Did any of these things make their way into his fiction? Probably, in the same way that a writer’s psyche always makes its way into the fiction. As for his rumored queer life and his infamous sailor suit, much as been made of it, and I’m not sure why. It’s never been proven, nor has it been confirmed that his marriage was never consummated. His private life was his, and for me it has no relevance to his work. I’m content to read the books and not overanalyze the man behind them. Woolrich’s output was, frankly, uneven. But when the author was creatively locked in, his books and short stories were terrific. The Black Curtain is a crackling good mystery/suspense novel. I’m pleased to own this new edition for my collection. I think you will be, too. George Pelecanos Silver Spring, MD May 2024 View the full article

When I sat down to write a synopsis for my newest novel, Saint of the Narrows Street, I described it as “a kitchen-sink crime drama set across eighteen years in southern Brooklyn.” I’m not sure when I first heard the terms “kitchen-sink drama” and “kitchen-sink realism,” but I was attracted to that sort of storytelling before I had a name or label for it. Even as a kid, the sorts of stories that drew me in could be perceived as the constraint-ridden domain of plays, working-class tales set in cramped kitchens and living rooms and grimy bars where trapped characters, experiencing one sort of crisis or another, holed up away from the world. When I discovered that there was a whole genre devoted to stories like that, of course it appealed to me. Even better was the fact that the genre intersected with noir in interesting ways. Typically, like noir, when folks talk about kitchen-sink realism or kitchen-sink dramas, they’re talking about a very specific place and era—in this case, it’s a British movement that spanned the late 1950s and the 1960s. As with noir, the impact of the genre reverberates through the latter half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first with many works that might be perceived as “neo kitchen-sink.” The classic school of kitchen-sink realism dealt with “the sordid aspects of domestic reality” and was rooted in a sort of social realism that was revolutionary and controversial at the time. The characters—often poor, struggling, and living in industrial areas—confronted taboo subjects (adultery, pre-marital sex, abortion, sexual orientation, and crime) that were previously off-limits in such frank ways in fiction and on stages and screens. Key features included the heavy accents these characters, often from Northern England, spoke in and the slang they employed. Robert Hamer’s film It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), based on a 1945 novel by Arthur La Bern and starring Googie Withers, Jack Warner, and John McCallum, is often thought of as a precursor of the genre. It was a film that had a big impact on me when I watched it and one that I’ve mentioned often as key influence on Saint of the Narrows Street. Even the tagline could double as a tagline for my book: “The secrets of a street you know.” It Always Rains on Sunday looks and feels like a film noir in many ways, but it’s much more a slice-of-life, working class drama, one where escaped convict Tommy Swann (McCallum) hides out in the home of his now-married ex-fiancée Rose (Withers). It’s a story rooted in desperation, yearning, and regret. 1956 is often used as the marker for the beginning of the kitchen-sink realism movement. That was the year that John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger premiered and, as writer Alan Sillitoe (also an exemplar of the kitchen-sink movement) put it, Osborne “didn’t contribute to British theatre, he set off a landmine and blew most of it up.” Look Back in Anger is set in a claustrophobic, one-room flat in the English Midlands and focuses on a disillusioned young man with working-class roots named Jimmy Porter and his upper-middle-class wife, Alison. The harsh realism of the play—its consideration of class especially—made it the preeminent example of kitchen-sink drama in theatre and helped spawn the “Angry Young Men” movement, a group of mostly working and middle-class playwrights, novelists, and filmmakers disillusioned with traditional British society. The film adaptation of Look Back in Anger, made in 1958 and released in 1959, starred Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, and Mary Ure and was directed by Tony Richardson—I encountered the film several years ago thanks to the Criterion Channel, which sent me deeper down this rabbit hole. Other classic examples within the genre include John Braine’s 1957 novel Room at the Top (adapted into a film in 1959 by Jack Clayton); Shelagh Delaney’s 1958 play A Taste of Honey (adapted into a film by Richardson in 1961); Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (the novel came out in 1958, the film adaptation by Karel Reisz in 1960) and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (the short story was published in 1959, Richardson’s film adaptation was released in 1962); David Storey’s 1960 novel This Sporting Life (adapted into a film in 1963 by Lindsay Anderson); Keith Waterhouse’s Billy Liar from 1959 and John Schlesinger’s 1963 adaptation of it; Nell Dunn’s Up the Junction (1963 novel, 1965 Ken Loach BBC TV adaptation, 1968 film adaptation by Peter Collinson) and Poor Cow (1967 novel, adapted into a film the same year by Loach); and Barry Hines’s 1968 novel A Kestrel for a Knave, adapted into a classic film by Loach in 1969 simply called Kes. Kes was likely my (unknowing) introduction to the genre—I watched the film almost twenty years ago after hearing Willy Vlautin recommend it and read the book soon after. This is, by no means, an exhaustive list of examples of kitchen-sink realism—these are simply the works I’ve engaged with that have had some major impact on me and on the creation of Saint of the Narrows Street. It’s important to note that the films listed also serve as examples of the British New Wave movement, inspired by the French New Wave, which portrayed the lives of the urban proletariat. The influence of the kitchen-sink school impacted my decision to keep the action of Saint of the Narrows Street largely focused to the cramped apartments and kitchens and dining rooms of its characters and to the dive bars they inhabit. I’ve always been interested in telling character and place-driven stories, and kitchen-sink realism has been a model for that. I love that you can often feel a place without seeing a ton of it—the place comes through the characters. And keeping things small creates tension and helps me break away from formulaic storytelling devices. In the 1960s and 1970s, television plays became the domain of kitchen-sink realism. Mike Leigh’s BBC slice-of-life dramas made a mark on me, in particular. I first encountered these early Leigh efforts about nine years ago, prompted in that direction by Louis C.K.’s Horace and Pete (itself a sort of kitchen-sink crime drama). It is difficult, at this point, to discuss C.K. for obvious reasons, and I’ve been able to largely disentangle myself from much of his output, but the influence of Horace and Pete looms large, especially as a gateway to Leigh’s BBC work. Though I’d seen and loved many of Leigh’s later films by that point, it was an interview with C.K. where I heard him discuss Abigail’s Party that sent me down this particular road. I tracked down DVDs of Leigh’s BBC work where I could. A couple of years ago, an excellent retrospective appeared on the Criterion Channel called “Mike Leigh at the BBC” (still available as of the writing of this piece), finally giving me access to everything I’d wanted to see, identifying Leigh as “the great humanist of British cinema,” and highlighting the way these small kitchen-sink dramas “sharpened his distinctive voice and famously improvisatory process,” rooted in strong and indelible characters. Leigh’s bittersweet humor, his empathy, and his critiques of class and social structures opened up new ways of seeing and thinking about the world of working-class southern Brooklyn in the 1980s and ’90s that I was writing about. Character-driven American films of the 1970s like The Last Picture Show and Five Easy Pieces that changed my life and perspective as a young viewer have a direct correlation to the influence of kitchen-sink realism, as does the work of one of my greatest artistic heroes, John Sayles (see Return of the Secaucus 7, for one example). I also see links to the work of Paddy Chayefsky and John Cassavetes, both lodestars for me. In attempting to portray the ugly realities of working-class lives and sympathizing with the poor and distressed, these creators helped give shape to my version of end-of-the century Brooklyn, as well. Since kitchen-sink realism is rooted in a kind of social realism, it’s also interesting to draw lines to key works by Émile Zola, François Mauriac, and Theodore Dreiser that inspired me and are cut from the same cloth. Mauriac’s Thérèse Desqueyroux was a huge influence, as were Zola’s Thérèse Raquin and Dreiser’s An American Tragedy (and George Stevens’s adaptation of it, A Place in the Sun, one of my ten favorite films), all of which center crimes or attempted crimes. The throughline between kitchen-sink realism and noir or noir-adjacent works is desperation. Noir is, after all, tragedy. Kitchen-sink dramas also home in on tragedies both small and profound. Violence—emotional, spiritual, and physical—hums steadily under the surface in works of kitchen-sink realism, which is why it dovetails so nicely with noir and with social realism to provide an examination of dysfunction within families and society. What happens when people—often already living on the ropes for a variety of reasons—reach the edge of sanity, have taken all they’re willing to take? The leap from boiling point to breaking point isn’t far. That’s what happens to Risa, the central character in my book, a good woman married to a bad man, who winds up paying in blood for a necessary decision made in the heat of the moment. I should say that, ultimately, my work borrows tenets from the kitchen-sink movement but pushes it forward in my own direction through a blend of melancholy noir melodrama, neighborhood mythology, and dark humor. Whether or not my work qualifies as kitchen-sink realism or not is a question for readers, but there’s no doubt it’s a major strain of DNA in Saint of the Narrows Street, providing me with so much inspiration for the characters and conflicts and textures of the world of the story. *** View the full article

I spent many decades in journalism, most of that time for Newsday on Long Island. I covered criminal trials, town beats, and spent several years on the newspaper’s acclaimed Investigations Team. For most of those years working as a reporter, and later an editor, my goal was to find a crime with enough layers and details that would enable me to write a true-crime book. Like so many journalists, I found In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote, to be a masterpiece of this genre. Could I find something that could even come close to this book? I found what I was looking for in the 1980s with the murder of Roy Radin, a Southampton, N.Y., businessman who went to Hollywood to produce a movie, got in with a group of cocaine dealers, and was brutally murdered. I covered the Los Angeles Police Department’s investigation into the crime, which led me to another murder in Okeechobee, Florida, and I later covered the trial of the defendants who had murdered Radin. This produced my first book Bad Company: Drugs, Hollywood and the Cotton Club Murder. At the criminal trial in Los Angeles, I met the Vanity Fair writer, Dominick Dunne. He graciously gave me a wonderful blurb for the book. The reporting of the book took me to Los Angeles; into the mansion of fabled movie producer Robert Evans; and to Florida, where one of the defendants in Radin’s murder was a suspect in the execution-style murder of her husband. I was very proud of the book, and hoped, with a lot of research, I could find another true-crime story that would help me continue with this genre. Nonfiction research is hard, and very time consuming. All that work had to be accomplished while I was working full time at Newsday. I wasn’t sure it was possible. Over the subsequent years, I managed to publish two more nonfiction books, neither in the true-crime genre. Then I found an actual murder to write about – but the idea was to take it, with all its gruesome details, and see if I could turn it into a work of fiction. In late September 1954, on the first night of the World Series between the New York Giants and the Cleveland Indians, a woman from Lindenhurst, a small village on the South Shore of Long Island, entered a dive joint called the Alcove. She was alone, and had walked from her nearby home. As a historical footnote, that first game in the Series featured “The Catch,” with Willy Mays running down a deep ball to the warning track and catching it. The next morning, her body was found in a field north of Lindenhurst. She had been brutally murdered and left to bleed to death by her attacker. Three decades later, in the mid-1980s, I was working the court beat for Newsday in Riverhead, Long Island. One day while waiting for court to begin, an elderly man named Rudolph Hoff was brought into the courtroom in handcuffs and, to everyone’s surprise who was sitting there, he was charged with the 1954 Lindenhurst murder. It was said to be the oldest cold case in New York State when the arrest was made. Fascinated, I covered the trial every day. On the most shocking day of testimony, Hoff’s ex-wife took the stand. She told a story on the night of the murder that left spectators in the courtroom speechless. She told the jury she was awakened that night by water running in the bathroom. She opened the bathroom door – and confronted her husband washing blood off his clothes and arms. He ordered her to take the bloody clothes to the basement and wash them. She did as she was told. Except for one thing: she took the bloody belt, put it in a jar, and buried it in the backyard. Thirty years later, a detective dug it up. Her testimony, and the physical proof, sent Hoff away to an upstate prison for life. He later died in prison. Before he was shipped upstate, I interviewed Hoff in prison. He, of course, said he was innocent. During the course of that interview, he went off on a tangent that, at the time, I didn’t follow. He kept talking about a man named Richard Hauptmann. He said Hauptmann had been framed for a murder he didn’t commit and executed by the State of New Jersey. Hoff compared himself to Hauptmann as being railroaded by prosecutors. He went on to say his mother was a close friend of Hauptmann’s widow. Research showed me that Hauptmann was the German immigrant convicted and executed for the kidnapping and murder of the toddler son of Charles Lindbergh, who was taken from the Lindbergh mansion in New Jersey in 1932 on a night when the house was fully occupied. Somehow, the kidnapper knew when the toddler was put to bed, and which room on the second floor was the nursery. I read a number of books about the case, many of which raised serious questions about the evidence against Hauptmann. Some writers said Hauptmann could not have committed the crime, and they went on to say the state framed Hauptmann in an effort to appease Lindbergh, an American hero. At some point, as I searched around for another book to write, the idea came to me that there was not enough material for a true-crime book on the Hoff case. There was enough for a long magazine article, which I wrote for Newsday. But a book? I didn’t see how I could pull that off. There were simply too many unanswered questions. Thus, the idea of fiction: take an actual case, one with many mysterious elements, and tell the story around the character of a fictional detective who had suffered greatly in World War II and came home from a prisoner of war camp in Asia to assume the job as police chief in Lindenhurst. With fiction, I could answer questions never answered in the trial: why was the case not solved in 1954; what was the background of the murderer; did the murderer and his victim know each other? Fiction explores truth in a different way. I wanted to see if I could do it, and, at the same time, fully develop the character of the small-town detective who suffers from war-related issues and doesn’t have the skill sets to solve a grisly murder. To help him, I created the character of Doc, an Austrian born physician who suffers from his own Holocaust-related horror. Could they work together to solve this crime – and take the investigation wherever it might lead? Thus was born The Ruins. After four decades in journalism and nonfiction, moving up to fiction was extraordinarily challenging. In journalism, you explain things; in fiction, explanations bog down the story flow. I had to – literally – change the way I saw stories unfold. I think it worked. My hope is to be able to continue with this detective with a sequel. Fiction has now become my way of telling a true story. *** View the full article

What does it take for a woman to be monstrous? The protagonist of my latest novel, a literary horror called Old Soul, probably ticks a few of the boxes. She’s a predator, for a start. A woman-of-many-aliases who moves across centuries and continents, sacrificing people she meets in exchange for immortality. She doesn’t age and remains about forty years old. She’s determined to cling to life, even if others must pay in blood, and anyone who gets in her way ends up grievously injured or dead. Nothing else matters to her. Not family, which she abandoned long, long ago. Not human connections or belonging. In her brutal, stubborn will to survive for as long as possible, she’s solipsistic in the extreme. All her focus and drive have narrowed down to this one thing. Grit. Tenacity. Determination. There aren’t many female monsters in the horror genre, but the few there are seem to have these qualities in common. From Annie Wilkes in Misery, forcing captive novelist Paul Sheldon re-write his book for her, to Pearl in Ti West’s X Trilogy, savage and unhinged in the pursuit of stardom. When they don’t get their way, they violently lash out, and as much as I wince as the sledgehammer or pitchfork splatters blood, there’s an uneasy recognition, too. They exteriorize the parts of us we keep choked down inside—the screaming, life’s unfair, tantrum-throwing parts, suppressed in order to function in society. And in the colder, more calculating monstrous women, I catch queasy glimpses of myself as well. In Under The Skin’s Isserley, endlessly driving the highways of Scotland, picking up hitch hikers to be castrated and penned-up before being slaughtered for meat. In Audition’s Asami, waiting patiently by the telephone for days, planning and biding her time before enacting her exquisite torture against the ‘casting director.’ It impresses me, I admit. The bloody-minded resilience. The sheer ferocity of will by which they get things done. But a woman rarely gets away with her monstrousness for long, for another thing these antagonists have in common is they tend to be killed off in the final act. It’s a tidy, moral narrative closure. Her crimes are punished by death and the world now safe from her malignancy. Yet, despite this, Annie Wilkes and Carrie White et al live on powerfully and vividly in the audience’s memory as the surviving characters fade away. They were the stars of the show. They refused to be cast aside or marginalized. They grabbed the reigns of the central plot and steered. And so I created a monstrous woman to steer the central plot of Old Soul. Though I didn’t think at first I had much in common with her, this woman of such unequivocal evil, during the eight years of writing the book, I slowly came to recognise how much of myself I was channelling into her creation. How much my main character’s calling, which is her own solitary and predatory existence, was a dark and distorting mirror held up to my own calling: the solitary writing of books. Because determined— perhaps deludedly and ludicrously so—to write, not an ordinary novel, but a great novel, I prioritized writing above all things: family, friendships, nights out, weekends away, traveling abroad (unless for well-planned research trips). And when I did partake in some recreational activity it was with a secret (though perhaps not undetectable) reluctance. Dragging myself away from my writing desk for any length of time was a wrench. My life was centered around my resolve to finish the book. It’s shameful to admit to this turning away from other people, from life. I was thirty-six when I started Old Soul, and forty-four when I finished. At some point during the eight years of writing I probably crossed the point of no return regarding having children—my own biological children, that is. And though I’ve never particularly wanted to be a mother, there’s something alarming about deviating from the path that the vast majority of people take. Especially if not wanting to divert any time and resources away from the novel I was monomaniacally writing (the great novel) had anything to do with it. There’s a stigma around a woman who doesn’t have children. A perception of—what? Selfishness? Tragedy? Failure? Whatever it is, it’s persistent and pervasive and impossible not to internalize to some extent. Art monster is a contentious term and the suggested binary between great artist and decent human being, or great artist and mother, has been rightly disputed. But false binaries aside, I’ve always quite liked it. It captures the guilty tug-of-war between my own self-centered ambitions and the obligations and duty of care I owe to others. It captures how monstrous I sometimes feel in the choices I’ve made (though would a bona fide monster experience such pangs?). And how monstrous I feel in what can’t be chosen, such as aging. Is it any coincidence that I created a monstrous woman when I was entering my forties? Departing from beauty standards that are really only youth? It’s very gendered, this feeling of being deviant and wrong, and it fuelled Old Soul. My monstrous woman’s transgressions are a horrifying exaggeration of my own far lesser transgressions. But, unlike me, she’s not ashamed. There’s something I admire, even covet, about her certainty in her choices and lack of repentance for her sins. She wouldn’t feel bad about forgetting to reply to an email or a text, or any failure to be accommodating and people pleasing, or respond to some request with anything but amenable good cheer. She just rampages across the pages of the book I’ve written, obstinately refusing to die. Death is something that happens to other people, not her. Did she make the right choices in the end – breaking away from love and human connection to live on and on and on? Did I, in my partial turning away from other people, from life, to write novels? There’s an existential question at the heart of Old Soul, about what constitutes a meaningful life. I’m not sure it can ever be answered. But my central character was my way of exploring it, though it was never something I set out to do. A monstrous woman is not unproblematic. But in the horror genre, where most monsters are male and the female characters tormented victims or plucky, resourceful Final Girls, I’m glad that we have a few. As far as feminism’s concerned, it’s an odd thing to applaud. But perhaps it’s more about what a female monster represents: the explosive rejection of the societal pressures to be uncomplaining and compliant with all the emotional and domestic labour that women are expected to do. A fuck you to being well-liked and attractive, undemanding and self-sacrificing, and conforming to all the other limiting and inhibiting desirable traits. I don’t see a monstrous woman as aspirational in any way. Their toxic behavior and sociopathy aren’t to be emulated. But as much as I recoil when Baby Jane Hudson serves her sister that dead parakeet, or The Ring’s Sadako crawls out of the staticky TV screen towards her latest victim, I recognize that in their monstrousness they are very, very human, and admit a shiver of delight at their gleeful subversion of all we’re told women should be. *** View the full article

For cleansing one’s mind and reconnecting with nature, there’s nothing like a calming walk in the pastoral splendor of the English countryside. Normally, it’s a safe and carefree experience—unless you’re in one of my Walk Through England mysteries. In that case, watch out! Danger can lurk behind every tree, around every bend, and even in the warm confines of a country pub. If you’re thinking of joining a group walk in England, here are some tips to ensure you won’t end up on a slab beneath the local medical examiner’s magnifying glass: Always check your boots. Walking boots are large and sturdy enough to hide an array of unpleasant surprises if you step into them without looking inside first. Why would you look into your boots, you ask? You won’t be asking again if you encounter a deadly adder ready to bite. (Adders’ venom is generally not fatal, but do you want to take that chance?) Other “surprises” can include poison-tipped tacks or vicious scorpions. (I hope I’m not giving would-be murderers any ideas!) Don’t stand near the edge of a cliff. This is good advice to heed pretty much all the time, even if there’s no murderer lurking nearby. A very popular English walk is along the “Seven Sisters” chalk cliffs in Sussex, particularly those that overlook the landmark lighthouse at Beachy Head. These cliffs soar more than 500 feet above the rocky shores below, so it’s no surprise that hundreds of people have lost their lives falling off the cliffs through the years, many of them suicides. Were some murders? It wouldn’t be surprising. If you do find your walking path getting uncomfortably close to the edge of a cliff, especially if you’re walking with someone who dislikes you, stay as far from the edge as possible, and make sure no one is walking behind you. If there’s a thick fog that blocks your vision, stop immediately! Don’t move again until it clears, either partially or fully, and when you can, move as far inland as possible. Watch what you drink. One of the pleasures of walking in the English countryside, as I’ve mentioned, is the local pub. Typically, it’s a warm, thatch-roofed building filled with cozy nooks, a roaring fire, one or two sleeping hounds, and a tempting line-up of ale taps along the bar featuring the best of locally-brewed spirits. But never let that freshly-drawn pint of beer out of your sight! Pubs can easily become boisterous, rowdy places with a lot of activity (including dart-throwing; the combination of deadly, sharp projectiles and inebriated throwers can be deadly). Pub chaos makes it easy for a murderer to slip something nasty into your drink without being seen, where it immediately dissolves among the bubbles and foam. The stairway can be treacherous. Britain’s castles are some of its most popular attractions. Who doesn’t relish seeing how famous kings and queens, whom today would be living in the utmost luxury, used to sleep in cold, stony cells, with no indoor plumbing, thermostat-controlled heating, or WiFi? And that’s not the half of it. Many castles have steep stone staircases and turret balconies, many without banisters and exposed to the elements. Refer back to my warning about avoiding paths near a cliffside: these are not locales you want to frequent if you’re a potential murder victim—especially if wet weather (a British staple) makes the stone surfaces slippery. Never wear red. Sometimes it’s perfectly acceptable to wear red. If you’re dressing as the devil on Halloween, for example, or you’re marching in a Communist parade. But on a walking trail? Not smart. England’s trails and footpaths frequently cross private land, which often includes farms. Where there are farms, there are cows, and where there are cows, there are usually horn-equipped bulls. Bulls get angered at the color red (ever see a matador’s cape at a bullfight?) and will charge without hesitation. If you’re entering a field or pasture in which there’s a bull, you are usually notified by a posted sign saying something like “Caution: Bull in Field”. That’s your cue to remove your red rain slicker and stash it in your backpack. (If one of your walking companions takes that occasion to mention how good you look in red, don’t think twice. Avoid that person like the plague.) Maybe you’re a-mazed. Another popular attraction in England are its garden mazes. These twisty corridors lined by tall hedges can be a diverting challenge (tip: always walk to the right—place your right hand on the hedge as you enter and keep it consistently touching throughout your journey). What makes garden mazes particularly challenging is that, unless you’re a star basketball player, you’re probably not tall enough to see the center of the maze (your goal). That also means you can’t be seen, as neither can that person sneaking up behind you with a stone, ready to cosh in your head. The solution? Either avoid garden mazes entirely, or walk with three or four others, preferably people you trust. There are other things you may encounter on a British trail, and all of them have the potential to be used in nefarious ways by a resourceful killer. Therefore, be careful when encountering kissing gates, cattle grids, wall and fence stiles, river and creek crossings, and even statues (large ones can be toppled over to crush you). The thing is, how can you tell if a killer is nearby? That leads me to my last tip: Know your walking partners. When on walking holidays, most of us go with close friends or family members. Presumably, we’d have an idea of whether they want to do us in long before we agree to take a long walk in the countryside with them. It’s not unusual, however, to join a walking group of complete strangers. In such cases, be sure your walk has been arranged by a reputable firm, and you are being led by a qualified guide. It is the guide’s job not only to lead you along the trail safely and securely, but to be on watch for any signs of trouble. In addition, get to know your fellow walkers. Walking together gives you plenty of time to get to know one another, and uncover any murderous intent. After reading this, you might now consider walking in the English countryside as appealing as walking through a minefield. That was not my intent! Most people make it through an English walk not only unscathed, but anxious to return and do it again. Even as I write this, I picture myself joyfully ambling along a trail, relishing the steady movement of my arms and legs, anticipating the view around the next bend… Wait. What was that sound behind me? *** View the full article

Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * William Boyle, Saint of the Narrows Street (Soho) “Boyle structures the sprawling tale like a Greek tragedy, mining potent themes of legacy and class with such force and empathy that readers may come to think of him as the Balzac of Brooklyn. It’s a stunning achievement.” –Publishers Weekly Kate Alice Marshall, A Killing Cold (Flatiron) “Terrific―and terrifying. . . This delicious setup is promisingly sinister. . . Marshall’s chilling new novel pushes all the right buttons when it comes to inexorable suspense and psychological frights.” –Kirkus Ava Barry, Shoot the Moon (Pegasus) “Well-paced and features a psychologically complex cast of characters. Barry captures her protagonist’s history of trauma, loss, and addiction in ways that help this mystery ring true.” –Library Journal Stephen Spotswood, Dead in the Frame (Doubleday) “Spotswood’s newest title takes on another closed-door mystery to great effect. He balances the tension, the red herrings, and the clues well, and fans of the series will be in for a treat. Mystery readers in general would do well to place this series on their TBR lists to enjoy the twists and turns that make these titles a joy to read.” –Library Journal Virginia Feito, Victorian Psycho (Liveright) “A twisted, bloodthirsty governess celebrates Christmas with her new employers. Where ironic horror and horrific irony meet, this unbridled madhouse of a novel dazzles like a bloody jewel.” –Kirkus Reviews Cornell Woolrich, The Black Curtain (American Mystery Classics) “Tense in mood and exciting in event.” –New York Times Jonathan Kellerman, Open Season (Ballantine) “The story moves quickly and smoothly, with vivid descriptions . . . A treat for fans of crime fiction. Delaware and Sturgis are a durable duo.” –Kirkus Reviews Suzanne Nelson, The Librarians of Lisbon (Zando) “Based on real historical figures, this captivating novel will keep readers on the edge of their seats while it explores themes of bravery, friendship, and sacrifice.” –Booklist Joshua Moehling, A Long Time Gone (Poisoned Pen Press) “The third in Moehling’s Ben Packard series is far and away the best…It’s amazing how Moehling keeps all these narrative balls in the air, but even more amazing is how they eventually come together. For those who love classic mysteries, police procedurals, and family drama.” –First Clue Reviews Olivia Wolfgang-Smith, Mutual Trust (Bloomsbury) “Wolfgang-Smith explores tensions in the private lives of three queer misfits turned business titans in her stunning latest . . . Wolfgang-Smith’s sharp, sardonic narration brilliantly brings to life both the Gilded Age and her unforgettable protagonists. It’s a virtuosic performance.” –Publishers Weekly View the full article

Hey, it’s a long winter for some of us! And so we start to dream of places like Fiji, that charmed South Pacific Isle, 1,300 miles from New Zealand, an archipelago of over 330 islands, about only a hundred are permanently inhabited. About three-quarters of the 920,000 Fijians live on the island of Viti Levu’s coasts, mostly in the capital city of Suva. Surely, it’s an idyll of peace and calm with no crime at all for us to write about? Turns out there’s some…. Nilima Rao’s A Disappearance in Fiji (2023) is set in 1914 . Sergeant Akal Singh would rather be anywhere than this tropical paradise – or, as he calls it, ‘this godforsaken island’. After a promising start to his police career in Hong Kong, Akal has been sent to the far-flung colony of Fiji as punishment for a humiliating professional mistake. Lonely and embarrassed, he dreams of solving a big case, thereby redeeming himself and gaining permission to leave. Otherwise, he fears he will be stuck in Fiji for ever. Then an indentured Indian woman goes missing from a sugarcane plantation and Fiji’s newspapers scream ‘kidnapping’ and Singh has his big case to crack. Nilima Rao is a Fijian Indian Australian and A Disappearance in Fiji is her first novel but there will apparently be more of Akal Singh in the future. A Shipwreck in Fiji is published in June 2025 – set in 1915 with a purported sighting of a German ship approaching Fiji as World War One comes to the South Pacific. Sergeant Akal Singh, based in Suva, is sent to visit the neighbouring island of Ovalau to investigate the sightings. B.M. Allsopp is the author of the five-book Fiji Islands Mysteries series. She’s an Australian who lived in the South Pacific islands for fourteen years, including four in Fiji where she worked at the University of the South Pacific in Suva. The series features DI Joe Horseman – a washed-up rugby hero (rugby is a BIG sport in Fiji BTW) and detective and Detective Sergeant Susie Singh (just to note that between 1879 and 1916, when Fiji was a British colony Indians were brought to Fiji as indentured laborers to work on Fiji’s sugar plantations). In the first book in the series Death on Paradise Island (2016) Horseman and Singh discover a young maid’s corpse snagged on the reef. In Death by Tradition (2018) an anti-mining activist is murdered at Tanoa in Fiji’s remote highlands where an ancient crime that still haunts the present. Next, in Death Beyond the Limit (2020) a corpse, or at least bits of one, are fished out of a shark’s gut. The question for Horseman and Singh is was the victim dead when the shark snacked on him? In Death Sentence (2021) there’s riots in Suva over the early release of a hated local killer. Horseman and Singh have the unenviable and unpopular job of protecting the man from the mob. And finally, in Death Off Camera (2023) death strikes the contestants in a reality TV game show being filmed in Fiji. All-in-all Allsopp Fiji Islands Mysteries series is a great way to get into the geography and society of Fiji, its capital Suva particularly, and some good crime writing too. Bang up to date is Lucy Clarke’s The Castaways (2021). Two sisters from London (Lori and Erin) are scheduled to fly to the remote island of Limaji in the Fijian archipelago. But things go awry quickly – next to the wreck of a plane, a stranger paces. Another sharpens a knife, scoring a list of the dead onto a palm tree. Others watch from the shadows of a campfire – all with untold stories, and closely-guarded secrets. The Castaways was recently filmed with UK TV star Sheridan Smith as a five-part thriller Paramount+. Joseph C Veramu is a Fijian writer and his 1994 novel Moving Through the Streets captures the colloquial street slang and attitudes of young working-class Suva brilliantly. The action is quick as the novel follows a group of teenagers in an urban environment rife with criminal temptation and opportunity. Veramu is a lecturer at the University of the South Pacific whose work has included studying young people’s lives in Solevu on Fiji’s Malolo Island. He comes originally from the relatively poor and tough area of Raiwaqa in Suva. And finally…. As usual something a bit different Sugar (2024) is an ethnographic novel written by two Australian-based researchers: political analyst Edward Narain and medical anthropologist Tarryn Phillips that draws on their respective research and lived experience. Narain is descended from Indian indentured labourers. Sugar follows the lives of three main characters in the lead up and aftermath of the cyclone: Hannah a naïve but well-intentioned Australian health volunteer, Rishika a jaded, Indo-Fijian, amateur historian, and Isikeli a troubled Fijian (iTaukei) teen caring for his diabetic grandmother. These three live very different lives, shaped by gender, class/caste and ethnic differences. Isikeli is one of the “coconut boys”, disenfranchised youth who collect and sell coconuts. By night, he is a petty criminal. Rishika’s husband was murdered as Cyclone Dorothy swept through the island causing chaos. Isikeli is accused of murder and the others must help him prove his innocence. A murder mystery on several levels but also a study of the damage the legacy of indentured labour and the sugar industry cultivated in Fiji still does – massively high rates of diabetes for a start, but also displacement, crime, inter-ethnic strife. The novel tells the stories of indentured labourers and the rise of the great industry of sugar propelled by vast profits and empire as the world’s sweet tooth demands more. Sugar is a book about crimes, about Fiji and about its people that is well worth reading if you know little of the country and what shaped its history and society. View the full article

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