mystery

What The Hell is The Matter With Some Publishers?

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deathtookpubI am the first to admit, I don’t understand the publishing industry. I don’t get the way they will publish a title, it does quite well, so they publish the next, and then stop. And not only do they stop, they refuse to publish either of the first two in paperback, which means the audience is minute. Hardcover books are expensive for most people to buy, they depend on a new title being available in 12 months in paperback. That’s why so many are behind one book in a series–they’ve paperback pocketbooks.

So, one particular publisher has a habit of doing this, from my personal experience, and it inflames my soap box soul. For anonymity sake, let’s call it, um, St. Paul’s Publishing House. They buy mediocre, to superb mystery novels, pay the authors a pittance, publish the least amount of copies possible and still make a profit, and in many cases, drop the author as fast as they signed him or her.

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An Embarrassment of Corpses–Best 100 Mysteries of All Time.

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embarrassmentMy greatest book selling acknowledgement came when Mr. Alan Beechey, author of one of my most favorite books ever, bestowed a town the name Plumley in his second book starring Oliver Swithin. After selling my page flicking fingers to the bone and making his first book An Embarrassment of Corpses named ‘most collectible’ by a now defunct hypermodern book collecting newsletter, and sending the book into a second printing (yes, I believe I single handedly am responsible, ha ha), Mr. Beechey and I became good friends. I named a ferret after his hero, another ferret provided a photo-shoot at a signing, and  I’ve enjoyed Mr. Beechey’s sterling wit ever since.

Rather than write my usual tedious and torturous (for me, I can barely remember what day it is, let alone plots) review of the title, I am reprinting my interview with the fresh faced Beechey, from a decade plus ago. It will provide the plot and hopefully a soupcon of humor.

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The Deadly Percheron-Best 100 Mysteries of All Time

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The Deadly Percheron—John Franklin Bardin–1946–IP

I no longer am a bookseller, but that didn’t stop me from selling The Deadly Percheron when it was rereleased some years back. I was in my friend’s store, The Black Orchid, and when customers came in without a definite direction in genre or author, I naturally tried to sway them to a favorite title. When another bookseller first tipped me to this title, I wasn’t convinced to read it. It sounded, well, bizarre, to put it mildly. After finally giving in, and after finishing it in record time, I started looking for a first edition to acquire–the benchmark of quality for me.

Jacob Blunt visits a psychiatrist, George Matthews, with a tale of woes about ‘leprechauns’ who are paying him to do odd things, such as, whistle at Carnegie Hall and give money away. The stories alone can’t convince Dr. Matthews his patient is certifiably insane but the hibiscus flower Blunt wears in his hair just might. That and the fact that since he met Blunt, Matthews has been experiencing his own brand of questionable events. When Blunt is suspected of murder, the psychiatrist steps in to help the man he has come to, if not believe, then at least suspect is being used by others for unknown purposes.

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Edgar Award Nominees Are Announced

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Mystery Writers of America have announced this years nominees for the fantastic Edgar A. Poe Award. I’m familiar with Lehane, Mosley, Atkins, and maybe a few more, but their recent books haven’t been read by me. There was a time, long long ago, when I had read everything nominated, and if I hadn’t, I would … Read more

The Maltese Falcon–Best 100 Mysteries of All Time

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The Maltese Falcon—Dashiell Hammett–1930–in print

This book is such a given, I thought I’d already wrote my little piece on it–but no! Anyone who hasn’t heard of the book must be living in a sad place. If you’ve not read it, only heard of it, you are living in a grey place. If you’ve only seen the film, and not read the book, your world is overcast. Only if you’ve read the book can you claim to be of the living, IMHO. Ok, naturally that’s going a bit far. The Maltese Falcon is so pleasurable a read, and yet so influential in style, character, genre, that it’s taken for granted. I’ve reread it a couple of times, something unheard of for me, and each time is as satisfying as the last.

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Why Masculine Pen Names?

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A friend of mine gave me a recent article revealing that women are still using male pen names, or initials to disguise the very fact they are women. The statistics show that men will invariably ignore anything that hints at a feminine hand, whereas women will read either sex. The publishing industry does nothing to encourage women to fight the trend, either. They ask or even demand that a science fiction or hard boiled suspense author write under initials or a male pseudonym. They claim they want to gain every reader, and if a man picks up a book in a typically masculine genre with a woman’s name on the cover, they are likely to put it right back down again, and who wants to lose a sale this way? Female authors wanting desperately to be published will give in to the pressure and the cycle continues. We all know the historical pen names–The Bronte sisters; George Sand–I couldn’t remember her real name if I tried;  Isak Dinesen–author of Out of Africa; E. Hinton is really Susan Eloise Hinton-surprise, she authored The Outsiders, a classic about teen boys that her publisher felt would never be accepted if her sex was known; and a more recent fraud, J. K. Rowling–if she used her real first name, her publishers contended, would a 12 year old boy have picked up the book? We’ll never know.

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Remembrances of Bookstores Past

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Myles Friedman’s excellent post about the lack of bookshops reminded me of all those wonderful bookstores I had the luck to visit during my years living in New York City. I took them for granted. It never occurred to me back then that bookstores were about to become extinct. If I happened by one, I’d go in. Simple as that. I seemed to find them easily, or they found me. I don’t remember the exact location of the original Murder Ink bookstore, but I do remember it was tiny, on a side street, and terribly intimidating. The only impression I remember was the owner wasn’t all that friendly. Apparently, that characteristic spread to many others who followed in the first Murder Ink’s footsteps. (The person I encountered was apparently the second owner, the original had already sold by the time I entered–20 or so years later, after many various booksellers, including myself, it closed. No, I wasn’t responsible for it going, ha. (maybe the last owner’s contempt of the genre he was selling had something to do with it–“After 10 years of owning Murder Ink, I was sick of mysteries, having felt as if I’d read every possible permutation of perfect crimes and brilliant, but flawed, detectives.”)

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Interviewing Dead Writers

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I’m struggling to find questions for those authors who are among the living, partially because I am woefully behind in reading current mystery writers’ work. It does take a modicum of knowledge regarding a detective series, or suspense novel which one can only really get from spending time trundling across the internet for tidbits, or cracking open and reading through a book. What I do

Erle Stanley Gardner who spent much of his time, alone, in the desert with not one, but three secretaries–all sisters.

have, is a ridiculous amount of dead authors books under my belt. It occurred to me that I have questions for many of those whose work lives on, long past their creators expiration dates. For example, Rex Stout. The man created an iconic character out of…? Did Mr. Stout dream up Nero Wolfe, the agoraphobic, beer swilling, orchid loving, gourmand after a indigestible meal? His cohort, Archie Godwin is more  typical of the genre, while Wolfe is decidedly a unique voice. Stout wrote other things before embarking on his best selling series. How and when did this inspiration hit him? I would think that a publisher being pitched the idea of Wolfe would have been skeptical at the very least. To Erle Stanley Gardner, the mastermind behind Perry Mason, I’d want to know why he couldn’t put pen to paper. He dictated his books to his, ‘secretary’.

A young Rex before the odd beard.

Quotations because he eventually married that secretary, finally, after the wife passed on. I’d also like to know how much or little real law is used within the books. When reading a Gardner, I’m struck by how Mason either eludes laws, or just plain breaks them and gets away with it. If, as a former lawyer, Gardner’s writing what he knows, did he circumvent the law while practicing?

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