Seattle Mystery Bookshop

Author Interview: Carola Dunn

Saturday December 14^th at Noon – Carola Dunn signs Heirs of the Body

1. Where did you get the idea for Heirs Of The Body?

Always in search of good titles, I came across the phrase Heirs of the Body and decided it would work well for a story about inheritance in the peerage, where legitimacy and primogeniture rule. At that point, I realized that I had never given Lord Dalrymple an heir. Perfect!

The present (1927) Viscount Dalrymple is Daisy's second cousin. He inherited the title and estate unexpectedly, because Daisy's brother was killed in WWI. Not brought up to the position (previously a schoolteacher), he didn't give a moment's thought to the question of his successor until the approach of his fiftieth birthday.

When would-be heirs gather for the birthday celebration at Daisy's childhood home, mayhem is bound to ensue.

2. Do you have a favorite character in your Daisy Dalrymple series? And why.

Besides Daisy herself, two of my favourites are her stepdaughter, Belinda, and her Indian friend Sakari Prasad. They're both lively characters who are a lot of fun to write about.

While writing Heirs of the Body, I found Geraldine, Lady Dalrymple, developing into a much more complex and nicer person than she was in Damsel in Distress. It always amazes me how characters I've created take on lives of their own.

Daisy's mother, the Dowager Viscountess, remains a thorn in Daisy's flesh but is always entertaining to write.

3. Out of all the books you have written do you have a favorite or a least favorite? And why?

No, I don't pick favourites among my children ;-)

4. Is there any historical period you have always wanted to write about but haven’t yet?

Egypt in the 13th century and the Byzantine Empire in C 11th. They'd take an awful lot of research, though.

5. Has anyone in your family or circle of friends ever given you an idea for a story?

In a way. My sister lives near Cotehele, in Cornwall, and the first time she took me to see it I knew immediately that I wanted to set a book there. I used it in both a Regency, Smugglers' Summer, and Daisy's Mistletoe and Murder. In both, the setting is extremely important to the story.

6. What are you reading right now?

I've been reading Tarquin Hall's Indian mysteries, and also his Salaam, Brick Lane, the fascinating story of the year he spent in London's East End after returning from several years in India.

7. When you read, do you read one book at a time or several at once?

I never read more than one novel at a time. Sometimes I'll have a nonfiction book going along with a novel.

8. Do you cheat when you read? (cheating meaning you read the end of the book before you naturally get there).

With a new author, I sometimes look to make sure the ending isn't too depressing: If I want to be depressed, I just have to read the news. Rereading mysteries, I often can't remember whodunnit and I look so that I can enjoy following the way the plot is worked out.

9. What is your guilty pleasure reading?

The funnies. Every day without fail. They're consolation for the rest of the newspaper!

10. Any final words?

Not yet. I hope to last a few more years.

Don't forget to reserve your book today!

A Toast to Rex Stout By Lawrence Block

Last night my Frequent Companion and I attended the annual Black Orchid Banquet of the Wolfe Pack, an international organization of Rex Stout devotees. I had the honor of presenting the annual toast to the man himself. As I (Lawrence Block) mentioned on Facebook, my remarks constitute the only faintly interesting piece I've written in a while, so I'll record them here:

All the books in the canon which we unite to honor bear on their covers the name of their ostensible author. It seems straightforward enough, this name, but I submit that it is itself a work of artifice.

Consider its component parts. The first name is Latinate, and literally means King. The last name is English, rooted in the Anglo-Saxon, and suggests thickness.

A regal personage then, and corpulent in the bargain. Who can that be but the man himself?

But let us look a bit further, at that middle name that does not appear on the book covers. Todhunter. Tod, surely, derives from the German Todt, meaning Death. What is a Todhunter, then, but a seeker into death, an investigator and solver of murders?

How gracious of this gentleman to lend his remarkably apt name to Archie Goodwin’s transcriptions of Nero Wolfe’s cases. By so doing, he allows Archie to fictionalize the cases, and this illusion that he’s made them up allows all sorts of liberties that libel laws would otherwise preclude.

One could almost argue that, without the shield provided by this fellow’s name, the books we love could not exist. Ladies, gentlemen, please join me in toasting the man whose name—if not his work—is indispensable. I give you Rex Todhunter Stout!

Jayne Ann Krentz

1. Where did you get the idea for River Road?

I grew up in what is now the Northern California Wine Country. Back then it was pretty much apples, pears and cows. Pretty amazing what a lot of folks with a lot of money and a yen to see their names on wine labels can do to the countryside.

Not all bad.  Not all good.  Just Different.  But some things never change -- small towns are still filled with secrets.

2. You have written so many books over the years, do you have a favorite?

My favorite book is always the book I'm working on at the moment.  I never look back.  Once the story is told, it's done and I'm ready for a new one.

3. Do you have a book or a character you regret ever got published?

Oh, sure.  But you learn from every book.  The thing about writing is that it's a self-taught craft.

4. Is there any type of book or plot line you refuse to write?

I never do books that feature kids as victims of serious crimes.  I can't go there in my head.

 5. Is there a book/author that has influenced your writing or you as a writer?

Nancy Drew.

6. What are you reading right now?

I'm reading Gregg Hurwitz's TELL NO LIES.

7. What is your guilty pleasure reading?

Reading is never a guilty pleasure.

It's either a pleasure or it's not, in which case I close the book and pick up another one.

8. Do you have a bad book habit? Dog earring pages, writing in the margins, cheating (reading the ending before you get there) or some other bad habit?

I always read the ending before I get there.

Life is too short to spend any time reading books that end badly.

9. Any final words?

Looking forward to signing RIVER ROAD at Seattle Mystery Bookshop on Tuesday, Jan. 7!!! 

(SMB Here: Don't forget to reserve your copy! Click on the cover art above, to go to our website!)

Siger - rhymes with tiger

Why is it each time I head back to Seattle Mystery Bookshop I feel as if I’m coming home? I mean I’m a native Pittsburgher, from Steeler not Seahawk country, now living on a Greek island, and yet there I am each year, looking forward to Pioneer Square, the potentially damp chill in the air, the Pioneer Square Hotel with the look and feel of the town’s gold-rush days—or being Seattle more likely its coffee-rush days.  I wish I knew why; I wish I had answers to a lot of whys. Perhaps that’s why I buy another of SMB’s “?” hats every time I’m there.  The bookshop just draws me in and makes me want to be part of it.  And I wear the hat proudly on Mykonos where “?” succinctly sums up just about everything happening in Greece these days. I think that if I keep wearing the hat and keep my mouth shut I may soon be regarded as the Chauncey Gardner of Mykonos, if not Greece. Thank you JB, Adele, and Fran for always making me feel I’m home, and yet never asking me to take out the garbage.  By the way, JB, mind if I call you “Mom?”

Jeffrey Siger

 

Marianne Harden - WARNING, I BRAKE FOR ALL ANIMALS.’

Who hasn’t had an animal they identified with, or described someone else by the traits of one? So I thought it would be fun to show four characters from MALICIOUS MISCHIEF as the animals I believe they would most identify with. I hope you’ll agree. ~Marianne Harden

RYLIE KEYES: The heroine of MALICIOUS MISCHIEF, 1^st in the Rylie Keyes romantic mystery series, is a budding PI. Rylie is also rather unlucky in love and somewhat flaky in the job department. But heart, she has lots. She laughs. She shares hilarious adventures with her sidekick Solo, and she’s playful. So much cuteness in one redheaded package, you’ll see. So I perceive Rylie as a kitten. No one controls a kitten. By their sweetness, they push their love on us. We take it, gladly. We can’t help it. They’re just that cute.

SOLOSOLO NAMULAU’ULU: Awed and anxious over a troubled world, Solo is a Samoan circus-bike riding wannabe. Sadly, the downpour of not living up to his mother’s career expectations swamps him, but you won’t know it. He’s so funny. He’s so kind. Of course, his great size amazes people. They can’t fathom why he rejected the NFL. “It’s professional football, man! What’s wrong with you?” Nevertheless, their irritation doesn’t faze Solo. He still feels the sharp claws of guilt after hurting a quarterback during a high school game. No, this gentle giant never wants to harm again. So to my mind, Solo is a placid humpback whale.

DETECTIVE THAD TALON: You won’t be able to doubt the depth of his feelings for Rylie, but you’ll know he’s hiding something. Everyone has secrets and his are big ones. He walks a road of mystery because he must. But he’ll take steps, anyway, to win your trust, and even use the quiet melody of his charming Scottish accent to rope you in. It is, of course, important for some people to lie wait and watch—and hunt. So I see Talon as an eagle, even his name supports this belief.

OFFICER ZACH O’NEIL: I wish I could tell you how much Zach grieves killing a man in the line of duty. And now, a hush of his own life has fallen upon him. Still his eyes of friendship never leave Rylie’s face, yet there is something besides buddy-love in that gaze. Rylie knows it. Rylie shares it; the safety of someone trustworthy demands no less. Thus, these two will face Zach’s troubles together, just as they tackled together the complexities of their childhoods. And somewhere along the way, they’ll confront their true feelings for each other—one way or other. So for the big brother he was to Rylie in their youth, and for the tortured guardian his is to her now, Zach is a German shepherd.

Marianne loves making people laugh. True, she should probably spend time on an analyst's couch, but she’d rather spill loads of fun into her books. She’s rarely at a loss for words, which is wicked cool for a writer. And it would be poppycock to say she didn't laze away her wonder years dreaming of far-off places.

Over the years, she’s traversed the insanely fun back roads of Australia and New Zealand, trekked the wildly exotic landscapes of Asia and Africa, soaked up the blistering Caribbean sun, survived bitter Arctic cold to witness the Northern Lights, and lost a wee bit of her heart to the awesomeness of Europe.

Her goals in life are simple: do more good than harm and someday master the do-not-mess-with-me look. She roosts in Washington State with her husband and two children.

MALICIOUS MISCHIEF is her debut mystery. Still curious, please stop by: http//www.marianneharden.com

Nicola Griffith on Hild

This is the novel that I've been aiming for my whole life. I didn't really understand that until early last year when I wrote my memoir.

I've been preparing for this book, researching it physically, since I was a child, when the family would holiday in Filey and Hunmanby and Scarborough.

In my teens I'd take day trips to Robin Hood's Bay. In my early twenties, I was living in Hull, a depressed (and depressing) industrialised city on the river Humber (the southern boundry line of Deira, which became part of Northumbrian). For a holiday, my partner and I went north up the coast, to Whitby.

The first thing I saw at Whitby was the ruined abbey on the north cliff. I didn't wait to unpack but climbed the hundred and ninety-nine steps with my gear on my back. It's difficult to describe how I felt when I first stepped across the threshold of the ruined abbey. It was a though the history of the place punched up through the turf and flooded me. It was like swallowing the world. I knew my life had changed, I just didn't know how.

After that, every year, sometimes twice a year, I visited Whitby. I walked the coastline. I roamed the moors. I spent hours at the abbey. I started picking up brochures and leaflets and imagining how it might have been long, long ago. Even after I moved to the US, I would come back once a year.

On one visit to England, I picked up a battered 1959 Pelican paperback edition of Trevelyan's A Shortened History of England. I started reading it on the plane on the way back to Atlanta (where I lived until 1995). I read about the Synod of Whitby and, frankly, don't remember the rest of the flight. This, I thought, this Synod, was a pivot point in English history.

Two or three years later, I stumbled across Frank Stenton's Anglo-Saxon England. And I was off. For the last ten years I've been groping my way through ever more modern scholarship. I've been reading bilingual versions of Old English and Old Welsh poetry, absorbing the latest translations of Isidore's Etymologies, thumbing through translations of Bede, thinking, thinking, thinking. Dreaming in the rich rolling rhythms of another time and place. This is the most exciting project I've ever embarked upon. It's changing my world.

Thank-you Nicola for letting SMB republish your blog post! To read more of Nicola's blog, click here or for a blog dedicated to Hild, click here.

4 perfect things about Seattle Mystery Bookshop

Blue-skies, red-hot personal shopping advisors, well-curated stock, and blood on the floor! 

 Sometimes an author gets lucky! This lucky girl got invited to do a meet-and-greet at Seattle Mystery Bookshop on October 5, 2013 to promote The Devil's Interval, and it was delightful. There are good bookstores, so-so-bookstores and then there are places like Seattle Mystery Bookshop which do things just right. 

 

What "things" do they do? Many, but here's my Top Four:

1. Arrange for the Emerald City to clear up the rain and gin up perfectly blue skies on a Saturday. As we all suspected, God (however you envision him or her) is a bookseller. Thanks for the blue skies and Divine Weather. 

2. I'd heard that the folks at Seattle Mystery Bookshop are personal advisors -- maybe on all topics, from how to de-skunk your dog to how to keep souffles from falling, but here's the terrific advice they gave me on one very relevant topic: I told 'em some of my favorite writers and books and within just a few minutes they'd assembled an irresistible stack of titles to reflect my taste and introduce me to new writers as well. 

3. We picky readers browse through shelves quickly -- trying to limit profligacy by going -- no, no, nope, not that one. That is IMPOSSIBLE to do at Seattle Mystery Bookshop. The collection is so well-curated, that instead I found myself going -- yes, yes, yes -- sounding exactly like Molly Bloom. Bad for the pocketbook, excellent for the home library. 

4. It's a mystery bookstore! Of course there should be blood on the floor. And there is -- although it seems miraculously to have been preserved so that it stays red rather than turning that unfortunate rust color. 

 

Thank you, Seattle Mystery Bookshop for inviting me. And just in case you're interested in mysteries set in San Francisco, that take you from high-society San Francisco to Death Row, with lots of jazz in-between, stop by Seattle Mystery Bookshop to pick up a copy of The Devil's Interval. I signed stock while I was there, and since the book is going into its second printing this month, Seattle Mystery Bookshop will have some of the last of the first editions. So, heads-up collectors! As for the book -- well, it's got to be good, it's included in the Seattle Mystery Bookshop shelves. more info on my author website: www.lindaleepeterson.com

Linda

Fun Times!

Loved my visit to this great store - and Seattle cultural institution. Lots of two-footed Chet and Bernie fans, and a couple of four-footers, including a marketing manager named Daisy Mae, and Eddie, past Friend of the Month winner on Chet's Facebook page. It's been so nice to meet all these readers on the tour for The Sound and the Furry. Thank you, SMB!

Spencer Quinn

From Caitlin

As the only child of two PhDs in English literature, I grew up surrounded by walls of books. Growing up, I read and read and read, and started writing short stories at a young age. I always dreamed of writing a book and getting it published, but it seemed like such a lofty dream, and I didn't even really know where to start.

So, instead, I focused on something that was also tough, but that I enjoyed and came more easily, and that was to hone my skills as an investigative reporter and feature writer for newspapers. I continued to write fiction on the side, surprised to find myself pulled along by my characters, and scribbling in a notebook at 2 A.M.

Eventually, I learned how to meld those two worlds into narrative non-fiction, the craft of writing true stories using fiction techniques, which I initially wrote for the newspaper and now teach in San Diego. But as the newshole shrunk, so did the editors' encouragement for in-depth storytelling.

It took me 15 years of rejections to get my first book published, and it wasn't even the first book I wrote. I spent 17 years writing and rewriting my first book, Naked Addiction, a crime novel set in two San Diego beach communities, before it was published. Every time I felt like I wanted to give up, I saw another positive sign that told me to stick with it.

After getting Poisoned Love published, I developed a plan for the future. I took a risk and quit my full-time newspaper job, leaving behind my paid health benefits, holiday and sick pay, and 401-K match, to follow my dream of becoming a full-time author. I proceeded to juggle several book projects at a time over the next six years, producing books at a rate of about one a year (and some in four to six months).

When I finally hit the New York Times bestseller list in 2011 with My Life, Deleted, I knew I couldn't quit. And even though the last few years have been tough with the recession and the publishing world going through a transition, I have hung in there and tried to adapt. I felt my determination (or stubbornness) was rewarded this year with my first invitation to participate in the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, where our panel was televised live by C-Span. Still reaching for new heights, I had my first out-of-state signing at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop last week (Thank you, SMB!), and I'm about to have my first international signing at the library on Salt Spring Island tonight.

Today, I've now got nine books under my belt, the latest of which are Lost Girls, and I'll Take Care of You, which will be released in January 2014. And although I live contract to contract and piece together my living with half a dozen side gigs as a teacher, book doctor, speaker and consultant, I'm far happier than I was at the paper and I'm proud to hold the primary job title of "author."

I see other authors who seem to have reached the next level after 18 books or so, others who have reached it much sooner, and many others who have given up before they got there. For now anyway, I am hanging in there and trying to inspire others to stay on the path and follow their dream. Writing and publishing isn't for the meek or those who don't feel they MUST pursue it. It's for those of us who can't think of anything else that they would rather do.

Catlin Rother

(you can also find her on Facebook or Twitter at @caitlinrother)

Leslie Budewitz Shares a Secret

Can I just tell you something, just between us?

This – this – is one of the thrills of my life.

Standing in a bookstore, surrounded by stacks of books?

Yes. This. Standing in Seattle Mystery Bookshop, with stacks of my book: Death al Dente, first in the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries.

This morning, I started counting. I needed all my fingers and most of my toes to figure out when I started writing mysteries. Along the way, there have been many adventures, half a dozen or so published short stories, and a published nonfiction book for writers, Books, Crooks & Counselors: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law & Courtroom Procedure (Quill Driver Books, 2011).

Oh, and an Agatha Award for Best Nonfiction. Another thrill, no question.

But is there any writer aiming for publication who doesn’t envision that first bookstore signing? Her name on the schedule, on the website, on a placard outside? And that stack of books, on a table, waiting for her?

Seattle Mystery Bookshop was a haunt of mine in the last year or two before I left Seattle and moved back to my native Montana. When Mr. Right and I visit the city, we go pay homage. (We also go to Emerald City Guitars. We have an egalitarian marriage.) SMB is just what a mystery bookshop ought to be: tucked on a sidehill in the earliest surviving section of town, with windows full of posters for books, and inside? Oh, inside. Shelves and shelves and tables and shelves and nooks and crannies and shelves of books.

And people who love them and know them all, backwards and forwards.

And that table and chair, waiting for the writers who come to sign.

Thank you, SMB. Thank you, readers, who let me talk to you about my book and took it home with you. I hope it gave you a few hours of enjoyment, of pleasure in discovering a mysterious little corner of Northwest Montana.

Because it gives me a thrill to share it with you.

Leslie

Where everybody knows your name

I think probably the most stressful thing about being on a book tour (besides leaving your iPhone charger in the hotel room in San Francisco, and then housekeeping there tells you to just borrow one from housekeeping at the next hotel, but then the hotel in Portland says no, they don't give them out because they get stolen, and then so when you get to Seattle you're nearly out of juice...) is being worried that the stores don't actually know who the hell you are, you're just Author #425 for the year, or whatever, and you stumble in and sign and then stumble out again into the blinding light of an uncaring publishing universe.

But here I am at SMB where not only do they have my new book on sale (COUNTDOWN CITY, in which Det. Henry Palace is solving a missing-person case three months before the world ends), but they also have my previous novel (THE LAST POLICEMAN, in which Palace is solving a murder, eight months before the world ends), and my mystery novel for kids, THE SECRET LIFE OF MS. FINKLEMAN. So they know who I am, they know my books, and I've actually had the sublime pleasure of watching Fran here hand-sell a dozen or more copies of my books. With friends like this, who needs a working phone?

Ben

And here's Ben winning and being presented with the 2013 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original

 

No Reading Required

Greetings from Seattle Mystery Bookshop! I've spent the last hour here greeting friends and customers and generally enjoying the hustle and bustle while I sign copies of my mystery, ETERNALLY 21, the first in the Mrs. Frugalicious mystery series.

As I sit here listening to Fran and Amber give fantastic suggestions to customers about books they've not only read, but by authors they know personally, I'm once again reminded how much Indie booksellers rock Particularly, compared to a story a friend told me last week about a visit to her local chain bookstore (which will go unnamed) She asked the clerk for a good book to read.

The answer: "I don't know. I don't read."

"At all?" my friend asked.

Afraid not.

Shouldn't that question should have been on the application, well ahead of Do You Have a Criminal Record?

Vive La indy bookstores!

Linda Joffe Hull

MURDER, NORTH TO SOUTH

I set my last novel, Bonereapers, in Norway. Norwegian winters are long and dark and bitter and there seems to be a gloomy streak in the national temperament that inclines people to thoughts of death. The brooding landscapes, the aura of ancient stones and ghosts of the past strike a deep psychological chord and add a special sense of horror to the crime of murder. Ironically, the homicide rates in Scandinavia are among the lowest on the planet. Perhaps it’s the rarity of murder that makes crime fiction so popular. A pool of blood oozing across a field of pure white snow is more shocking than a blood-drenched body sprawled in a filth-strewn alley.   

Far to the south in sunny Greece, the murder rate is climbing fast. Foreigners are being beaten and stabbed to death on an almost daily basis. Violence against women and the elderly has risen sharply and the police seem unable to stop the rash of brutal muggings and robberies.

My most recent book, “Her Boyfriend’s Bones,” takes place on the Aegean island of Samos, which has become a chokepoint for refugees fleeing wars in the Middle East and Africa. Smugglers can transport their human cargo across the narrow Mycale Strait from Turkey in less than an hour, but the passage is treacherous. Many die in the attempt and the Samians, left to cope with the bodies washing up on their beaches and the horde of survivors who must be fed and housed, feel increasingly resentful. The Greek debt crisis and burgeoning unemployment have stoked fear and xenophobia. Corruption is rampant and bitterness bred during the military junta of the late ‘60s makes the island fertile ground for murder. 

My sleuth Dinah Pelerin has seen murder both north and south.  Trust her when she says that blood spilled on a gleaming white beach is no less horrifying that blood on a field of snow. 

 

Jeanne Matthews

For more information about Jeanne’s books, visit her website www.jeannematthews.com

Platitudes and other Drugs for Depression

Life is what you make it.  That used to be my favorite platitude and it meant nothing--now, as I approach my dotage, it has a horrible ring of truth.  Why horrible?  Because it means I have to quit blaming and start doing/acting.

Oh, boy, the woman is in a philosophical mood.  Not really, just face-to-face with what only I can change.  If I'm in the pits it's up to me to climb out.  Now that's bad news.  Blame was always so useful, together with duvet diving (pulling the covers over my head and trying to sleep my way out of "not being happy.")

No more.  If I duvet dive in future it has to be because a) I'm tired or b)I'm cold.  Otherwise it's chin up and get the hell on with it, Cameron.

Today has been good for me.  Being with my friends at Seattle Mystery Bookshop has to help--they don't care what color sneakers I turn up in or if my socks are inside out.  But it helped that I found my lines to live by.  Not a platitude but true, meaningful lines:  Happiness is not the destination, it's the journey.

I'll leave all my mates on the journey with that thought--and the news that I'm just finishing COLD, Introducing Alex Duggins, my reluctant but budding sleuth in a new (and I hope enduring) mystery series set in Folly-on-Weir in the English Cotswold Hills--with the occasional sidetrip to London or other places of fascination.

Loving and leaving you for now--but happy:)

Stella

 

 

J.R. Rain Giving Out Kisses!

Bestselling author and world-class flirt, J.R. Rain, is a puckering fool down here at Seattle Mystery Bookshop. What had started as a simple booksigning has turned into...something else entirely. The signings have given away to a "kiss fest," as J.R. Rain referred to it (between smooches, of course). Hurry down and get in line where the kisses are free, even if the books aren't.

The Perfect Bus Book

The idea for the Arabella Beaumont series sprang from an ongoing annoyance of mine. Frequently, I find myself leaving for the bus stop in the morning, with my coat on, ready to go...and nothing to read. This may sound odd, coming from a woman with over 2,000 books in her personal library, but it can’t be just any book, you see. A traveling book has to be lightweight, in both senses of the word, and small enough to fit into a pocket. It must be engaging in a way that won’t distract me too much from the business of getting onto the precise bus which will take me to my destination. (I am not a multi-tasker.) It should also be cheap, and a paperback, so that I won’t feel bad if the pages get a bit crumpled in transit.

I have a few books like this, but I’ve read them already. And they’re getting harder to find these days. (I should have mentioned that I’m also very picky. My books of choice must be well-written, with interesting characters and a plot of some kind. And I ‘mutht be amuthed,’ though I theldom am, these days; amusing books seem to be out of fashion. So, in the end, I had to write my own. It’s not perfect; the dimensions are 8 ¼” x 5 ½” rather than 7”x 4 ¼,” and it’s not as cheap as I’d imagined. I was envisioning my 1959 copy of The Manchurian Candidate, which cost $1.50 new. Probably not too realistic nowadays. But in all other respects, Death and the Courtesan is exactly what I’ve been looking for – good for up to 10 bus trips to and from work. And of course, it’s a paperback.

There is just one problem: I’ve already read it.

Pamela Christie

The Return of Walter, Easy and Mouse

Walter Mosley was in yesterday to sign copies of his new Easy Rawlins, Little Green. Set in the 60s with an appropriately psychedelic dust jacket. Here's an interview with Walter about his return to the neighborhoods in which he grew up, and to Easy's world.
Signed and dated 1st Printings still available, $25.95

The Innocence Game

It's a beautiful day in Seattle. I'm visting the city's premier bookstore to promote my latest stand-alone, THE INNOCENCE GAME. It's about three grad students at Northwestern who, as part of a class assignment, reopen a death penalty case the Chicago PD would prefer remain undisturbed. Quick tip for would-be gumshoes: if you're investigating cops (especially Chicago cops) you suspect might be framing people for murder, be careful you don't wind up getting framed yourself.

On a serious note, there are pieces of this novel that are taken from real-life capital cases I've worked as a journalist. Check out the case of Odell Barnes on-line. He was executed by the state of Texas in 2000 and has his own Wikipedia page. If you read about Odell and read INNOCENCE, you'll see the connection...and wonder if, in real life, Texas didn't execute an innocent man.

Hope you get a chance to check out my latest and visit me as

Michael Harvey