Best Crime Fiction Awards — Who Needs Them?

Dick Francis, most Edgars

During the last 30 days or so, it has been award time in the crime fiction world.  Not the winners, but the nominees.  There are dozens and dozens of organizations wanting to give crime writers their due, not only for best novel of the year but also in many sub-categories — best first novel, best paperback original, best short story, etc. — all vital to the genre.  Many of the most coveted awards will be announced this fall as the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) holds its annual convention — Bouchercon.

Should we care?  These are difficult times for everyone who reads, writes, reviews and publishes crime books. Even the professional organizations are struggling to find ways to acknowledge and honor contributors while the dramatic changes in e-book and self (independent) publishing have complicated the way they have been doing so since they began doing business. Anybody can publish a book.  And sometimes, it seems, everyone is.  To be fair and inclusive is nearly impossible. Some, MWA for example, have adjusted submission criteria.  Others have added categories. In any event, awards no matter what shape they may take, will likely remain part of many readers’ vetting process.

Laura Lippman, picking up the prizes

Paying attention to formal accolades is not the only way to find good books, particularly if you are interested in establishment-challenging sub-genre books and break-out-of-the-box, emerging writers. However, most of the library-going and book-buying public are traditional readers.  They are looking for something new or different to read with some assurance they are not too far out of their comfort zone. Browsing a list of award winners isn’t a bad place to start.

I’ve picked five professional crime-writing related organizations that have been honoring writers with awards since (at least) the year 2,000.  Some have been doing so longer. To contemplate who, among contemporary crime writers, might be considered best of the best, I checked the following award histories to see who won the “best novel” award more than once.  Here are the results:

MWA (The Edgar)*

Historically, Dick Francis picked up the most Edgars with three.  James Lee Burke won two prior to 2000. In this century, John Hart and T. Jefferson Parker have picked up two, Hart for successive novels.

John Hart, up and coming

Mystery Readers International (Macavity)

Michael Connelly, Nancy Pickard and Peter Lovesey have each won two since the first award was given in1987.

Deadly Pleasures magazine (Barry)

Michael Connelly and Laura Lippman have each garnered two.

Private Eye Writers of America (PWA) (Shamus)*

From the birth of the Shamus in 1982, Sue Grafton has been honored with the award three times, Max Allan Collins and Bill Pronzini twice.  Also, since 2000 Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman have picked up two.

MWA (The Anthony)*

Michael Connelly has received four Anthonys.  Louise Penny, Sue Grafton and Laura Lippman have been awarded the prize three times. S, J. Rozan and William Kent Krueger have each won twice.

Other Notes 

In 2008, Laura Lippman won three of the five top awards for What The Dead Know.  In 2011, John Hart also received three of the five major prizes with The Last Child. The Edgar for Best Novel of 2013 was announced at ceremonies in New York earlier this year.  Dennis Lehane picked it up for Live By Night.

Click here for the complete list of 21^st century “best novel" winners from the above organizations.

*To clarify, MWA has two awards, the Edgar determined by the organization and the Anthony determined by a vote of the membership.  To qualify for PWA’s Shamus, the novel must feature a P.I who is paid for his or her work.

The Alfred Hitchcock Primaries — We Want Your Vote

While researching the previous post, I came across several articles and blogs that rated the “top” five or ten movies directed by Alfred Hitchcock.  The legendary director created more than 50 films, and the various (and often very different) lists by more and less scholarly folks than I, generated a lot of heat.  I found myself talking to my computer screen: “How in the world could you even consider blankety blank in any top five?  Or why isn’t such and such on the list?

Ah hah!  In a shameless attempt to bump up my blog readership after a short, but unavoidable absence, I’m not only setting up a list, but also planning a poll.  I need your help. Because 50 films are too many for most interactive polls, the first step is a primary to determine a narrower list of deserving nominees.

What I’d like my film-lover friends and their friends to do is provide me with the names of the five best  (or favorite) Alfred Hitchcock films in no particular order, no repeats. Just five. No more. No less.  Early voting is encouraged.

The top ten nominees will appear in the poll. 

Send your list of five to Ron@ronaldtierney.com.  I promise not to use or sell your address to anyone. 

Should you choose to follow my blog by email, you may do so by using the block near the top of the right column.

Film Pairings — Espionage Light, Some Early Hitchcock

Espionage is in the air.  I suspect the folks hanging around Hollywood are in a spirited development mood as they work on surveillance and spy stories to pick up on the national, if not international mood — not that there aren’t some classics in the archives.  An evening not so long ago I revisited some Hitchcock films made before he packed his British bags and headed for the colonies, where in my amateur assessment, he did most of his best films.

However in Secret Agent (1936) and The Lady Vanishes (1938) we clearly see what made Hitchcock Hitchcock — suspense pleasantly undermined by humor or humor slightly spiced by suspense. 

In Secret Agent, we have mostly a Noel Coward-styled, bantering dialogue with super actors John Gielgud and Madeleine Carroll as well as scene-stealing Peter Lorre and a surprisingly dashing Robert Young.  The film was based on stories by W. Somerset Maugham, one of the most popular novelists of the day and often credited with being one of the masters of the spy novel, along with Graham Greene and Eric Ambler.

A couple of things jumped out at me while watching Secret Agent.  I had just seen Gielgud in a 1994 episode of the “Alleyn Mysteries” a few days earlier. He played an elderly gentleman, which of course he was.  But he seemed almost elderly in 1936 as well.  That means he had to have been 35 when he was born. The second shock was how beautiful and talented Madeleine Carroll was.  Where had she been all my life? I don’t remember her from my teen years watching all those late night movies on the hulking Zenith TV from the springy discomfort of the Hide-A-Bed in the living room after everyone else went to sleep. The third surprise was a handsome, debonair Robert Young. This was an actor as far from Jim Anderson in “Father Knows Best” or “Dr. Marcus Welby,” as could be.  It was easy to see Hitchcock locking on to an actor who promised to be Cary Grant. 

In the film, Gielgud and Carroll are hired to find and dispose of a German agent out to harm the allies. And they have psychopath Lorre to “help” them. It’s a wonder we won the war.

The Lady Vanishes is cut from the same cloth as Secret Agent and perhaps both, in terms of style, owe a great deal to The Thin Man, a popular American film that preceded both of them by a couple of years.  A little silliness, some outright slapstick and a flirtatious duel between Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave, reminiscent of Nick and Nora.  Maybe this similarity merely reflects the style of the times.

Dame May Whitty steals the show, for me, as the lady in the title.  It takes a few minutes, more than it should, I think, for the story to take off. Once they get out of the hotel and onto the train, it’s a great ride. And we pick up more early evidence of Hitchcock’s fascination with cool blondes and fast trains. The film was based on the novel, The Wheel Spins, by Ethyl Lina White, a popular British crime writer of the era.

An accompaniment to the evening? Gin and tonic, possibly with a slice of cucumber. Hide your smart phones. Get comfy in your upholstered chairs and give in to espionage with twists of Brit wit and whimsy.  This is late 1939, remember.  Not a lot of blood and car chases.

Film Pairings — James Bond and Jack Reacher, Peas In Separate Pods

There’s never a shortage of superheroes.  At the moment The Lone Ranger and the zillionth portrayal of Superman, are dazzling or disappointing filmgoers.

However, we home-alone viewers with Netflix accounts are not necessarily “trending.”  We are catching up. The local theaters are no longer showing the two films I highlight here.  They are Skyfall, the latest of many James Bond films and Jack Reacher, the first of what is likely to be a new franchise searching for iconic status and profits.  They are about smart, tough guys who save the world or, in Reacher’s case, a tank of a man who cleans up a piece of a smaller domain.  The main characters in each are human though impervious to death. In both cases their near superpower comic-book feats take an immense suspension of disbelief.  Yet we do suspend it even if the Reacher character, designed by his creator at a towering, and intimidating 6’5, 250pounds,” is played by the diminutive Tom Cruise.  We want to believe.

When I was in my teens I read all of the 12 slim volumes of Ian Fleming’s 007 adventures.  I was mesmerized.  This was before I saw any of the movies.  I probably would have cast (as I learned that Fleming preferred as well) the sophisticated David Niven before the earthier Sean Connery, though it didn’t take long for me to buy into the Scotsman. I was disappointed to learn that he and Bond had separated after seven films, but quickly accepted Roger Moore who, in many ways for me, better captured the original, light-hearted spirit of the character.  I thought Pierce Brosnan split the difference and did so very well. So too have I, an avid cinema fan, accepted and welcomed Daniel Craig, though it seems we’ve almost come full circle — the most solemn of the lot.  He seems old and grumpy (I can identify with that), not the original, carefree Bond. This is also in keeping with the way we are seeing American superheroes these days, wit buried under stone.

Craig’s two Bonds, like it or not, have changed the Bond franchise. To drive the point home in Skyfall, with appropriate symbolism, the elegant Aston Martin is blown up on a dystopian landscape not disappearing out of the frame on a scenic highway along the French Riviera as it should.  This Bond is weary, sullen, craggy, yet demands your attention. He seems, perhaps — his superhuman feats aside — too human.  There’s not an ounce of a Devil-May-Care martini in his veins.

For Jack Reacher, maybe it would have been too easy to cast someone like Ryan Gosling as Reacher, the character inhabiting the best selling 17-book series by Lee Child.   Or maybe Channing Tatum.  Seriously. For me Tom Cruise is a sort of journeyman leading man.  And a case could be made that physicality aside, this was a perfect role for him.  Not a lot of nuance here to worry about.  As we expect from both films it is about right and wrong, good and evil.  We root for our heroes to win so we can go to bed believing the world is safe for the few minutes it takes to go off into our own dreamland.  These two heroes are not cut from the same cloth, however.

Bond, however rebellious at times, works for the bureaucracy in service to what we must presume or at least hope to be a larger good.  After all, he pretty much saves the world in each adventure.  Not so, Reacher.  There’s a line in the movie, which I don’t have precisely; but the gist is our hero doesn’t believe in the law or justice.  He believes in what is right.  Right is what is right in his world and the story may be written so we, in our secret vigilante hearts, agree and root for the three-in-one protagonist — judge, jury and executioner.  We do so with, I hope, a little caution from our better selves.

The director and cinematographer do a good job conveying Reacher’s worldview if it can be described so broadly.  Bond is filmed against incredible, wide-sweeping landscapes. It’s a big world with lots of moving parts.   In Reacher the camera is completely focused on Cruise.  He is constantly, slowly, importantly entering a room with music and lingering camera angles that emphasize his self-assured domination of the small world around him.  It is all immediate and personal.  It is all about him.  He is standing tall.  That seems to be all that matters.

Both films provide a couple of hours of worthwhile escape from our less eventful daily lives.  Jack Reacher is not complex as a movie or character.  The upside of that is the film is finely plotted and clearly told. Robert Duvall makes a cameo, as does Werner Herzog. Also on screen is the talented Richard Jenkins, who is clearly under utilized here.   Of the two, Bond is not only richer cinematically (also more than twice the budget), but also treats us to a cast of acting legends.  In addition to Daniel Craig, we have Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Javier Bardem and Albert Finney.

For the evening viewing of Bond, a martini is appropriate of course, if for no other reason than a tribute to an earlier era.  For Reacher, maybe a Pabst to reflect a film and a lead actor, both delivering the goods in an efficient and timely manner.

Film Pairings — Ripped From The Headlines

Edward Snowden, Benedict Arnold or Paul Revere?

These films are so fresh, they haven’t been made yet.  But the plots are so cinematically fat, they will be made.  The first is the Edward Snowden Affair. A young man (think Justin Timberlake) brazenly reveals state secrets, packs up five laptops and finds his way to Hong Kong.  The problem is that while there are those who believe he is Benedict Arnold, others believe he is Paul Revere.  Both government officials and the established press found happiness together as they demonized young Mr. Snowden without telling us how he did “great wrong” to his country. 

Meanwhile, one has the notion that our national security is being run by Wile E. Coyote and we are being informed about it by dinner party journalists like Charlie Rose who seemed more concerned that Snowden was a college drop-out than the possibility that Snowden’s motives, however illegal, might possibly be honorable.  Politicians, many of whom I have supported, are standing in line, not to tell us what the hell is going on, but that Snowden is public enemy number one.  During the pile on, one prominent official said that Snowden’s decision not to go a country friendly to the U.S. is somehow proof of his villainy. Right.  A man charged with one count of theft AND two counts of espionage is going to hide out in Banff?  Or maybe Cancun? And really, is the country of Ecuador, his stated destination, trying to bring us down? 

It’s quite likely Snowden is in over his head.  How could he not be? In fact, that’s the real danger.  But the college drop-out — for a good or an evil we cannot possibly know yet — has already shown us that private, global corporations are trusted with secrets the American public knows nothing about.  He retrieved the secrets out of a system set up for maximum security, avoided capture and appears to be on his way to protected exile. 

The drama is set against a monumental, Bondesque background.  We even have a Dr. No with comic dictator Vladimir Putin, the super macho Stalin wannabe.  Throw in a pinch of Cuba.  And China — all of China, including spy-film friendly Hong Kong.

The second film is about journalist Michael Hastings, who wrote a story for Rolling Stone that tripped up super hero General Stanley McChrystal.  Unfortunately, we know how Hastings and the story ends — a high-speed fiery crash in L.A. at 4:30 a.m. not too long after he sent the following e-mail to cohorts and a blind-copy to an old friend:

Subject: FBI Investigation, re: NSA

Hey (redacted names) -- the Feds are interviewing my "close friends and associates." Perhaps if the authorities arrive "BuzzFeed GQ," er HQ, may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our newsgathering practices or related journalism issues.

Also: I'm onto a big story, and need to go off the rada(r) for a bit.

All the best, and hope to see you all soon.

Michael

Hastings was not universally appreciated.  New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan countered her own paper’s unflattering obituary, offering a partial defense of his take-no-prisoners approach to a story.

… he was a fearless disturber of the peace who believed not in playing along with those in power, but in radical truth–telling.

Michael Hastings:  Did He Know Too Much?

The L.A. Times has suggested that Hastings was working on a story about another popular general, and still another embarrassment to the administration — this time David Petraeus.  Was this the big story?

Both generals were deeply involved in the fight against terrorists and no doubt had considerable access to and influence on Intelligence, including what the U.S. is doing.

Set against the constant news about the gathering of meta data on everyone who uses a computer or phone, alleged spying of foreign governments and whatever else might be on Snowden’s laptops, Hastings story already has more depth than most crime or spy movies.  (From personal tragedy — his fiancée was killed in an ambush while riding with a convoy in Iraq as she returned from a teaching gig — to great success in book publishing.) His star, however controversial, was on the rise.

His last email is a key to the story.  Some might see it as paranoid and make the argument that his excessive speed was a reaction to an erroneous perception of persecution.  Those less trusting of folks like the LAPD and the FBI might think someone other than the 33-year-old Hastings, himself, held the smoking gun.  He was an experienced war correspondent.  If he was paranoid, there might be good reason.

Probably the most disturbing element in the story to surface so far is that a video exists of Hastings’ Mercedes speeding through an intersection moments before the crash.  Apparently someone happened to be recording that particular L.A.  Intersection at 4:30 that particular morning, capturing the lone speeder, actually the only thing moving at all.  The point of the video seems to be that for as long as 34 seconds after Hastings went out of the frame, there were no cars in his wake.  No one was chasing him is the conclusion we are supposed to draw. Or should we? Why was this guy there?  And what was he videotaping in the dead of night?  His presence to dot the “i”, so to speak, is more disturbing than if there was no one to prove he wasn’t being chased.  And these days, chasing is passé.  If someone engineered Hastings’ dramatic death, one would expect use of more sophisticated technology.

According to reports, the FBI said they were not investigating Hastings.  The LAPD, who investigated the crash, said there was no evidence of foul play.

But back to the movies.  We are faced with Smiley’s people and the hall of mirrors.  Certainly this is the stuff of conspiracy.  But we have to admit that the timing of events and all these connections, and the desperate huffing and puffing of our celebrity senators create a fascinating if not frightening premise for drama.

As you create your own movie and choose your own the villains and heroes, you might want to sit back with a whiskey on the rocks and consider such things as Booz Allen being hired by our government to run our security systems and companies such as Black Water, a private military company, to handle what we don’t want our own military to do, or perhaps know about.  And given the damning rush to judgment against Snowden by the media, we might want to rethink the notion of journalists as “media watchdogs,” but rather “hello kitties.”  Hastings, no matter how he died, remained a watch dog. The story on Snowden is still unfolding.

The Ultimate Independent Bookstore — Happy 60th Birthday

When I was in high school I discovered the Beats — Corso, Ginsberg and a whole slew of writers and poets that were unlike any I had read in literature class. In fact, these writers who were obviously treading on the established views of everything, weren’t even mentioned in the classroom. However, because of a smart, brave and progressive librarian — thank you Ms. Cohen wherever you are — I found them.

Coney Island of the Mind, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, more than any other book, set my mind on fire. So years later, many years, when I learned that St. Martin’s Press was going to publish my first novel, The Stone Veil, I was thrilled. But for some reason I hadn’t grasped the notion that I had actually become a writer. The New York Times gave the first book a short, but generally favorable review and that too made me feel good. Borders had my books on the shelves in my hometown and I was even nominated for a prize. But the feeling of legitimacy didn’t arrive until I found a copy of my third novel, Eclipse of the Heart, in the downstairs mystery section of City Lights Bookstore in the Italian San Francisco neighborhood of North Beach.

Though I was never to be on the cutting edge of much of anything, let alone literature, I had long admired those who were. And those who were riding that sharp edge had roots in that specific bookstore. Perhaps even more important to me was the fact that City Lights published Ginsberg’s Howl and fought against attempts to ban it all the way up to the Supreme Court where the bookstore’s fight helped preserve freedom of the press for all of us.

City Lights is still publishing books others might consider too controversial or not commercial enough for mass distribution. The second floor is dedicated entirely to poetry. The main floor shelves are full of fine, timeless literature from around the world. There is also a section of limited distribution, hand-made independent magazines and collections of prose and poems. Down a narrow stairway, into the cellar, are mysteries and science fiction as well as the best picks of books on a wide range of subjects.

The North Beach bookstore is a San Francisco historic landmark, anchoring a neighborhood full of historic landmarks. It should be designated a national treasure.While most of the City Lights authors — Rexroth, Burroughs, Bukowski, Shepard and Bowles to name a few — are gone, the poet and painter Ferlinghetti, born in 1919, can still be seen bicycling on Columbus and Grant.

(first posted June 29, 2011)

261 Columbus Avenue (415) 362-8193 www.citylights.com

Commercial Four

Young Luke Lindstrom was an all-star high school basketball player. So were his brothers. But something strange was happening. One brother committed suicide, another suffered a near fatal accident. When the third met his death, Shanahan knew there was more going on than a string of bad luck. Even though the last thing Shanahan wanted to do was work for a heroin addict, there was something likable about Luke and something absolutely weird happening to his family.

"Tierney fleshes out his characters well, with the curmudgeonly Shanahan at the fore. The author has a knack for the cleverly turned phrase and deft imagery." — The Indianapolis Star

Tierney writes with great skill and compassion. Five Stars — Deadly Pleasures

Interesting people, a solid mystery, and poignantly loopy domestic complications. — Kirkus Reviews

Life Death & Fog Books, has been established to bring the first four Shanahan novels to paperback and a variety of e-book formats. After more than 10 years, friends of Deets can now conveniently catch up with the early days of the aging PI's career. Paperback editions are from Amazon as well as Barnes & Noble. E-books are available for Kindle and Nook. 

Book Notes — Perilous Times

When the military showed up for the Congressional Sexual Assault hearings in Washington, I nearly fell out of my chair.  This is hard to do because I have a considerable center of gravity these days.  But there it was: they were there to give evidence that after decades of failure to control assault crimes, after their proven inequity and ineffectiveness to protect victims, mostly women, from reprisal for even making a complaint and having self-serving resolution handed down by the male commanding officer, the military wanted to conduct business as usual.  There they were.  The military, a wall —  seriously a wall, half a dozen deep — of full-dress uniformed male officers, each wearing a comedy of medals on their chests that would make the most fanciful Pope blush.  What they seemed to be saying is that “they will look after the little lady.”

Last month, an eight-man panel began work on a new GOP federal anti-abortion bill for the U.S. House.

Also, last month, a jury in Texas found a man who shot an escort “not guilty of murder” because he had understood she was to perform more than a lap dance for what he paid and therefore she was in possession of property that belonged to him. He shot her. His action was determined legal. 

Few of us are unaware of what many of our Republican representatives have said about rape, even the biological consequences of rape — one goofy, nearly obscene comment after another.  Their understanding of science hasn’t reached rudimentary. Their understanding of the human condition is mind-numbingly nil. Yet they make laws that have to do with the survival of the species.

Also, I understand how two thoughtful, well-intentioned people can have seriously conflicting opinions on important issues.  But the discussion of such subjects as Roe vs. Wade is owed informed debate as well as a sense of perspective  — historic and personal. 

This is where Perilous Times comes in.  The full title includes the sub heading An Inside Look at Abortion Before — And After — Roe vs Wade.  The author is journalist Fran Moreland Johns who also wrote about important end-of-life issues in Dying Unafraid.   The perspective, or perhaps context, necessary to understand the issue, relates directly to the historic social domination by men and the roles society expected women to play — for the most part — essentially as property.  This is a political, therefore politically correctable, condition that was addressed by the top court, but as Johns points out, the details of interpretation were continually corrupted, usually by state legislatures, to deny women as much control over their own bodies as they could by slipping restrictions into a midnight amendment.

Johns tells real stories in a fair-minded minded manner.  She recreates the time before there were alternatives to “back-alley” butchers.  You’ll meet all sorts of folks along the way, none a stock character.  Quite possibly the girl who lived down the street when you were a kid scooted into the back seat of an old Buick late one morning, and was returned that afternoon all bundled up, missing only a couple of days of school — if things went well. The court decision went a long way to end the quiet and dangerous desperation.

But the news tells us everyday, this story is not over.  For example, Planned Parenthood, an organization that does far more to prevent unwanted pregnancies and create healthy families than the loudest of the anti-choice brigades, is under constant, massive attack from well-funded, highly passionate fundamentalist groups.  One would think the arguments they propose would stem from a debate about when life begins. That’s a damned good question, for which no current answer satisfies all the messy philosophy and science the question unearths.  However, the underlying fundamentalist message isn’t about what they say it is: It is not about life.  If so there would be greater emphasis on adoption and family planning. Instead, the incessant Roe v Wade challenge is to reestablish “traditional” male head of household status and relegate the wife-mother as someone who belongs to him as God’s will would have it — and if they have their way — as U.S. law will demand it.

John’s new book puts the past U.S. chapters in perspective and provides an important perspective on what is happening now, here and elsewhere.

Commercial Three

The naked lady wasn't your average floater. She was the wife of an Indiana senator and half of Washington's Golden Couple. Within hours of finding her body in a canal, police arrest a young Latino boxer believed to be her lover. He has the motive, means and opportunity. Another dead body later — along with some answers that seem too pat for the P.I. — Shanahan dives into the dirty side of politics, the dark side of passion, and the hideous secrets the killer is desperate to hide.

"Tierney's 'Deets' Shanahan series offers characters of depth and sensuality, and well-placed swipes of razor-sharp humor." — Publishers Weekly starred review

"A series packed with new angles and delights." — Booklist

"Keeps the reader intrigued with (Shanahan's) cogent observations of human nature and his interaction with police officers, his mistress and the various other characters Tierney draws so well." — Indianapolis Star

Life Death & Fog Books, has been established to bring the first four Shanahan novels to paperback and a variety of e-book formats. After more than 10 years, friends of Deets can now conveniently catch up with the early days of the aging PI's career. Paperback editions are from Amazon as well as Barnes & Noble. E-books are available for Kindle and Nook.  Available Here.

Note:  Writers, much like parents, aren’t supposed to have favorites.  But I must confess that among the early Shanahans, this is my favorite.  Reviewers and the people at Goodreads seem to share the feeling. There is Indianapolis history here as well as a mystery about as tightly told as I could tell it. Older readers will recognize a time and a place, much of it having slipped away. Younger readers can view a city that lies just beneath today’s surface.