Seattle Mystery Bookshop

Another Great Signing!

Thanks, Seattle Mystery, for another terrific signing. Best bookstore for mysteries in the whole wide world.  Great to be here and I'll look forward to coming back soon.  Ha!  You won't be able to keep me away because I live right here in town.  No fair, locking the door, either.  I WILL BE BACK. 

--Jayne Ann Krentz

Edgar Nominations 2008

2008 Edgar Nominees/ winners to be announced Thursday May 1, 2008

Best Novel Nominees

• Christine Falls by Benjamin Black (Henry Holt and Company)
• Priest by Ken Bruen (St. Martin's Minotaur)
• The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)
• Soul Patch by Reed Farrell Coleman (Bleak House Books)
• Down River by John Hart (St. Martin's Minotaur)

Best First Novel by an American

• Missing Witness by Gordon Campbell (HarperCollins - William Morrow)
• In the Woods by Tana French (Penguin Group - Viking)
• Snitch Jacket by Christopher Goffard (The Rookery Press)
• Head Games by Craig McDonald (Bleak House Books)
• Pyres by Derek Nikitas (St. Martin's Minotaur)

Best Paperback Original

• Queenpin by Megan Abbott (Simon & Schuster)
• Blood of Paradise by David Corbett (Random House - Mortalis)
• Cruel Poetry by Vicki Hendricks (Serpent's Tail)
• Robbie's Wife by Russell Hill (Hard Case Crime)
• Who is Conrad Hirst? by Kevin Wignall (Simon & Schuster)

Best Critical/Biographical

• The Triumph of the Thriller: How Cops, Crooks and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction by Patrick Anderson (Random House)
• A Counter-History of Crime Fiction: Supernatural, Gothic, Sensational by Maurizio Ascari (Palgrave Macmillan)
• Deviance in Contemporary Crime Fiction by Christiana Gregoriou (Palgrave Macmillan)
• Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley (The Penguin Press)
• Chester Gould: A Daughter's Biography of the Creator of Dick Tracy by Jean Gould O'Connell (McFarland & Company)

Best Short Story

• “The Catch" - Still Waters by Mark Ammons (Level Best Books)
• "Blue Note" - Chicago Blues by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Bleak House Books)
• "Hardly Knew Her" - Dead Man's Hand by Laura Lippman (Harcourt Trade Publishers)
• "The Golden Gopher" - Los Angeles Noir by Susan Straight (Akashic Books)
• "Uncle" - A Hell of a Woman by Daniel Woodrell (Busted Flush Press)

Best Fact Crime

• The Birthday Party by Stanley Alpert (Penguin Group - G.P. Putnam's Sons)
• Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vincent Bugliosi (W.W. Norton and Company)
• Chasing Justice: My Story of Freeing Myself After Two Decades on Death Row for a Crime I Didn't Commit by Kerry Max Cook (HarperCollins - William Morrow)
• Relentless Pursuit: A True Story of Family, Murder, and the Prosecutor Who Wouldn't Quit by Kevin Flynn (Penguin Group - G.P. Putnam's Sons)
• Sacco & Vanzetti: The Men, The Murders and the Judgment of Mankind by Bruce Watson (Penguin Group - Viking)

Signings and Silk Trains

Hi, I'm Sharon Rowse, signing in live from The Seattle Mystery Bookshop, where I've been doing my first ever signing - for THE SILK TRAIN MURDER, an 1899 tale of murder and mayhem, featuring failed Klondike gold seekers, fan dancers, opium dens and, of course, silk trains.  The folk here are wonderful and I highly recommend this as a way to spend a Saturday afternoon - but then, an afternoon in a bookstore is always well spent.  If I didn't get a chance to meet you, I hope your afternoon was great too.  Check out Chapter One of THE SILK TRAIN MURDER at www.sharonrowse.com.

Sharon Rowse

Independent Mystery Booksellers' Dec. Bestsellers

December Bestsellers for the IMBA

Compiled from reporting member stores of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association For more info, visit http://www.mysterybooksellers.com/

Hardcovers:

1) 'T' IS FOR TRESPASS by Sue Grafton

2) PERSON OF INTEREST by Theresa Schwegel

3) HER ROYAL SPYNESS by Rhys Bowen

4) LORD JOHN AND THE HAND OF DEVILS by Diana Gabaldon

5) THE VENETIAN BETRAYAL by Steve Berry

6) THE DARKEST EVENING by Dean Koontz tied with KISSING CHRISTMAS GOODBYE by M.C. Beaton

8) SPQR XI: UNDER VESUVIUS by John Maddox Roberts tied with KNITTING BONES by Monica Ferris

10) RED MANDARIN DRESS By Qiu Xiaolong

Paperbacks:

1) DUST by Martha Grimes

2) TRAP DOOR by Sarah Graves

3) THE MYSTERY LOVER'S PUZZLE BOOK by Linda Murdock

4) THE TOMB OF ZEUS by Barbara Cleverly

5) REAL MURDERS by Charlaine Harris tied with THE BLADE ITSELF by Marcus Sakey

7) PREACHING TO THE CORPSE by Roberta Islieb

8) MURDER 101 by Maggie Barbieri

9) FIRE TRAP by Earl Emerson

Laurie R. King - Touchstone

Laurie King’s eighteenth novel, Touchstone, is a standalone that might be called a country house political thriller. She has been blogging about Touchstone since it was but a twinkle in her editor’s eye, and this month she is on tour with the book, both in person and virtually.

I regard myself as an honorary resident of the Puget Sound area, since I spent much of my childhood in the Tacoma area. Which I suppose makes Seattle Mystery Books my local bookstore.

Which makes it funny that the strongest link I have with SMB isn’t through one of my mysteries, or even because of a book with my name on the cover. It’s a novel classed as science fiction, by the pseudonymous Leigh Richards. Each year since it was published, Califia’s Daughters has been on the boosktore’s bestseller list. In 2007, its fourth year of publication, it was number six among the paperbacks.

That’s real hand selling. I believe that every person who ventures in the door has the book thrust in their hands. Every customer who asks for a recommendation is given Califia’s Daughters, whether they like sci fi or not. "Here, take this, it’s good for you."

So if you’re one of those hapless customers who went in expecting crime and came out with Califia, sorry about that. Just the bookstore’s way of backing a local girl, I guess.

Laurie R. King

Unintended Consequences

Today, I found out that an e-mail I sent to the writer of a newspaper article has become fairly wide-spread on the internet. While odd, it isn't a bad thing. Just odd.

Last week, The Seattle Times had a story about the closing of another Seattle independent bookshop. M.Coy is north of us, in the higher rent district of the department stores. Many factors go into their closing but I wrote to the author of the piece, Michael Upchurch, about how only the closing of small bookshops gets coverage, not the success of them:

Michael - While I was sorry to read your article in this morning's Times that M.Coy will be closing, I was once again disturbed by the tone. The local media is quick to mark the demise of an independent bookshop and say once again how it is nearly impossible for a small independent to survive. Difficult, sure. But not impossible. When we moved our shop, the Seattle Mystery Bookshop, over the Memorial Day weekend in 2005, we sent out a press release saying how here was a story about a small, independent bookshop that was doing so well that it could move to a larger space after 15 years and no one in the local press paid any attention. Two and a half years later, business is terrific; 2007 was our best year yet, a 6.5% increase in sales over 2006.

Michael Coy is a great bookseller. He was one of my instructors when I was sent to the American Bookseller's Association's Bookseller's School in Portland, years ago. He's a savvy businessman. But the economic forces on his shop - his location in a high-rent area of downtown, his particular landlord, the fact that the shop is a general bookshop - do not automatically translate onto every other independent bookseller.

If you want to know how independent booksellers really are doing, come ask us. Reacting to the closing of one bookshop by saying it is another death-knell of an industry simply isn't fair or correct and can be counterproductive. It can also mislead customers and drive more into the hands of the corporate Big Boxes, encouraging the difficulties that small independents face. Why not do a story about how some independents are doing fine BECAUSE of their customers who WANT to support small businesses? Isn't there a story in that?

Again, I am sad to hear the M.Coy is closing and that another small bookseller is leaving the scene. But I wish the local press, you included, would pay as much attention to those booksellers who are doing well, surviving and succeeding.

Happy New Year. JB Dickey, owner of the Seattle Mystery Bookshop

A couple of days later, I got a reply to my e-mail from the book editor, Mary Ann Gwinn:

Hello: is it okay if we print your estimable letter (below) about the bookstore-closes story in an upcoming Sunday arts section?

Many thanks Mary Ann Gwinn Seattle Times book editor

While flattered that they might have thought my arguments had weight, I sent this reply:

Mary Ann - I didn't write the letter to Michael as a "letter to the editor", so I'm not comfortable letting it be printed for the public. I'd say no.

I would highly recommend that my points be taken further by the Times. There are many small independents who are obviously doing alright. None of us are getting rich, but in this state alone a good story could be done on Auntie's in Spokane, Village in Bellingham, and Queen Anne Books, Magnolia and us here in Seattle to just name a few. Stories are done on bookshops closing. Why aren't there any done on bookshops that stay open?

Well, somehow, my original 'letter' to Michael was posted on the Seattle Times website, though it was not printed in the Sunday paper. From there, it was picked up by Publisher's Lunch and by Shelfaware. Who knows where the ricochets will take it. It really doesn't matter that it was printed except that I don't want this to be about just this bookshop.

For years, at least in Seattle, the local media seems to have only pay attention to an independent bookshop when it closes. Not all do. But by continuing to do stories only about the sad death of an independent and not the throbbing life of the others, the media is perhaps contributing to the problems we all face. If you only report that things are hard for independents and they're sinking like unstable rafts, doesn't this encourage readers, buyers, and customers to continue moving away from independents and into the maws of the Big Box stores? And, as more and more buyers are driven to them and the percentage of their sales of books grows, the publishers are put further and further into their debt - and that means less selection (if the chains don't want it, it doesn't get published), higher prices (the high price of books can, to some degree, be put down to the built-in discounts that chains and price clubs give) and a greater concentration of power over the publishers by fewer outlets. None of that is good for readers, or writers or our shared culture. So my original argument in my e-mail to Michael remains: why doesn't the media pay attention to bookshops that are open for business? Instead of being the chronicler of a problem, why not be an assistant to a solution?

JB

Vampires Rock

That time again--here signing for DARKLING, in which Menolly must go in search of her own inner inner demons and face her sire.  Writing a series from three first-person POVs is challenging, but I love it.  Each sister gets her say, each sister comes to the forefront and has her time in the spotlight.

And this time it's Menolly's turn.  Yes, Darkling is darker than the other books, Menolly walks in shadows, not under the light, and her past is a nightmare.  But now she has the chance to free herself from old memories and fully claim who she is.

I love signing here, even with a foggy brain (thanks to the cold and codeine cough syrup), and it's always a fun ride.  I'll be here again in July for Dragon Wytch--when Camille gets a wild ride from a hot dragon dude.

Thanks guys, and see you soon!

Yasmine Galenorn

What's in a name, anyway?

Lately, NPR has been running ads (and let's please stop refering to public broadcasting, whether TV or radio, as commercial free!) for the 'western thriller 3:10 to Yuma'. My first reaction was "That's a Western, Not a Mystery!" 'Thriller', as a desriptor, is almost solely used with 'crime' or 'mystery' stories, and is nearly interchangeable with 'suspense'. It seemed absurd, like saying something was a 'historical futurism' or something.

Sorta oxymoronic.

But, when you think about it, aren't most Westerns crime stories?

Consider this plot: in a small town, the local cop is faced with an arch-criminal, the man he sent up the river, getting out of prison and coming back for revenge. Already, as he hears the news that his greatest legal triumph - capturing this killer and getting him convicted and off the streets - is due in that day on the train, the man's gunsels are waiting for him. As the cop tries to get help from the town's citizens, the people he saved from this gangster, he's turned down and realizes that he'll have to face this mob's guns on his own.

You can just see the dark shadows, the shine of the automatic's gunsights and the reflections and steam at the trains station - gotta be a film noir classic, right? It is actually High Noon, a sun-drenched Western.

Most Westerns have to do with good guys and bad guys, lawmen and desperados, white hats and black hats. But change the Stetsons for fedoras, Colt Peacemakers for .38 Specials, Winchesters for Tommyguns, stagecoaches for armored cars, dusters for trenchcoats and you've still got the same kind of story. The traveling Federal Marshall of Loren D. Estleman's Westerns is not that different from his Detroit private eye. Both seek justice and have to find it and enforce it on their own.

- The Shoot Out at the OK Coral is a crime story. Gangsters - The Cowboys - try to elbow the local lawmen - the Earps - and gunfire ensues. Which of the two gangs will rule the burg?

- Billy the Kid is a young punk killer who is chased down by a cop - Pat Garrett - who is out to stop his criminal rampage.

- Clint Eastwood's A Fistful of Dollars was based on Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest.

- Wouldn't Bullitt make a great Western? 

- Two Knight Errants spend years looking for a hostage, a young girl captured long ago when a vicious gang knocked over her estate - and while one of them hopes to save her and bring her back to her neighborhood the other thinks the dame's been corrupted beyond salvation and aught to be put down like some alley tramp. During their quest, they'll deal with thieves and meet a man in a bar who says he can tell the two where she is if they pay him some dough. John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter in The Searchers.

So I guess we can't separate the the genres of Western and Thriller and don't need to. Good Guys and Bad Guys, it's all the same thing - just the clothes change, and horse flesh becomes horsepower.

Like they say, you can't judge a book by its cover and you can't judge a genre by it's jeans.

Perfectly Executed

After we put together a two hour 48 Hours prime time broadcast on the Sebastian Burns/Atif Rafay case, we still had so much to say -- and we were compelled to write this book. Perfectly Executed let us write about the details we discovered during years of working on this case -- including new information the investigators didn't even know.  What makes this story so special is the fact that the murders occurred in Peter's hometown of Bellevue.  In fact, Peter's mother called him to report what was the worst crime in Bellevue history.  During the course of our investigation, which stretched out more than four years, we gained exclusive access and interviews to Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns, his parents and sister, friends of the two young men--even Sebastian's co-star in his high school production of Rope, the play that detectives believed may have inspired the two to attempt the perfect murder.  In fact, forensically, there is still no definitive forensic evidence that the boys committed the murders.  If they did it, their crime was "Perfectly Executed."

Peter Van Sant & Jenna Jackson

Dilys nominees

The Dilys award is given out at Left Coast Crime - which will be in Denver this March - and it's the award given to the author whose books were the most fun for bookstores to sell.  It's a fun category, and it leads to all kinds of discussion, since each store is allowed to nominate five different books, and then the results are compiled from that. 

We don't envy those who have to sort through the nominations, but we had our own set of problems with it.  We couldn't always agree, you see. 

Here are our own private lists.  These were in NO WAY easy to come up with; there are just too many good books out there.  We wrote our individual lists in pencil, and there are pages where the paper's quite thin now.  There are suspicious blots, supposedly coffee, over some people's lists.  Nefarious tampering?  Perhaps...perhaps...

Anyway, our lists:

Bill

• Dwayne Swierczynski, The Blonde, St. Martins
• Lee Child, Bad Luck and Trouble, Random House
• Donald Westlake, What's So Funny, Warner
• Martin Limon, Wandering Ghost, Soho
• David Rosenfelt, Play Dead, Warner

Fran

• Lisa Lutz, The Spellman Files, Simon & Schuster
• Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Last Rituals, Warner
• Susan Hill, The Various Haunts of Men, Penguin
• Nicola Griffith, Always, Riverhead
• John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things, Simon & Schuster

Gretchen

• Don Winslow, California Fire and Life, Ballantine
• Matthew Scott Hansen, Shadowkiller, Simon & Schuster
• Kelley Armstrong, Exit Strategy, Bantam
• Joshilyn Jackson, gods in Alabama, Warner
• John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things, Simon & Schuster

Janine

• Lisa Lutz, The Spellman Files, Simon & Schuster
• Lee Child, Bad Luck and Trouble, Random House
• Carol O'Connell, Find Me, Penguin
• Brent Ghelfi, Volk's Game, VHPS
• Dwayne Swierczynski, The Blonde, St. Martins

JB

• Lee Child, Bad Luck and Trouble, Random House
• Greg Rucka, Patriot Acts, Random House
• Nicola Griffith, Always, Riverhead
• Peter Spiegelman, Red Cat, Random House
• Carol O'Connell, Find Me, Penguin

Tammy

• Tim Maleeny, Beating the Babushka, Midnight Ink
• Mike Lawson, The Second Perimeter, Random House
• John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things, Simon & Schuster
• Matthew Scott Hansen, Shadowkiller, Simon & Schuster
• Greg Rucka, Patriot Acts, Random House

So then we had to come up with a shop list, just five titles.  There was much shouting and finger poking, mud slinging and wrestling, much alcohol was consumed and long discourses were held, shady backroom deals were made and broken, and finally we came to this list:

Shop

• Lee Child, Bad Luck and Trouble, Random House
• John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things, Simon & Schuster
• Lisa Lutz, The Spellman Files,  Simon and Schuster
• Nicola Griffith, Always, Riverhead
• Matthew Scott Hansen, Shadowkiller,  Simon & Schuster

So there you have it.  It wasn't easy, but we did have some wonderful times, talking about the books we've read this year. 

Now we have to wait until March to see who wins, but as far as we're concerned, anyone who's read these books is the ultimate winner!