Evil at Heart: A sneak preview by Chelsea Cain

Evil at Heart is the new book by Chelsea Cain, due out this September. Here’s a hard and fast summary from the author:

Serial killer Gretchen Lowell is on the loose. Detective Archie Sheridan is in the psych ward, where he’s been for two months. Then bodies start turning up. Is Gretchen killing again? Is there a copycat at large? Naturally, there’s all sorts of gore and intrigue before we find out.

Richard Kunzmann: How is it different from the other two? What lies at its core?

Chelsea Cain: I wanted to explore the celebrity of violence – the way society tends to turn some killers into anti-heroes. So this book follows that natural progression. Gretchen has fans. She’s become a tourist industry for Portland. There are tours of her crime scenes; people wear “Run, Gretchen” t-shirts. She’s a star. Which doesn’t jive at all with the horrors that she’s committed.

Richard Kunzmann: How do you feel you’ve evolved as a writer over these three books?

Chelsea Cain: I’m more confident about just going for it, less inclined to question if That Could Really Happen. I feel more in control of my characters. And I think I’ve gotten better at limiting some of my more obvious narrative quirks.

Richard Kunzmann: Is this the end of the Gretchen Lowell series? What’s next?

Chelsea Cain: I just signed a deal for three more books with St Martin’s Press. But I want Gretchen to fade out a bit as we move forward, so the books become more about Archie Sheridan and Susan Ward. I never really saw the series as being the “Gretchen Lowell series.” To me, Gretchen was just part of Archie’s origin story. The thing that really, really fucked him up.

Chelsea Cain 3: Women and violent crime fiction

Switching off the light and forcing readers to imagine exactly what that is, scratching under their beds, is the height of our art as crime writers. And if an author can do it so seamlessly that readers are convinced they actually read the scenes they imagined in your book, you can open a bottle of Moet. Michael Connelly achieved this in The Poet. To this day, he tells me, he has people commending him on the terrifying paedophile he wrote about, but in actual fact, the character never directly touches a child, nor is he the main bad guy. And yet, that’s how people remember it. Take the movie Event Horizon, when Lawrence Fishburne’s salvage team finally discover the captain’s log of a ship that’s mysteriously reappeared after disappearing seven years ago. The clip is only about ten seconds long, and nothing in it is clear, but every hair on your neck stands up straight.

Similarly, Chelsea Cain’s much talked-about torture scene isn’t actually all there, if you look hard. Instead, we get it in snippets and rags as Archie Sheridan remembers those dreadful moments. And yet it’s the one story that readers remember. So the question is, how far is Chelsea Cain responsible for it, and how much of it comes from the darkest recesses of your own mind?

Richard Kunzmann: At Harrogate you were asked to justify women writers writing violence. And in many interviews you’re asked exactly how sick and twisted you are in real life. It’s almost as if you’re a dirty secret in crime fiction that everyone loves talking about, but no one wants to own up to. Why do you think that is?

Chelsea Cain: Honestly, I don’t think my books are that violent. Isn’t that funny? Because I get that EVERYONE ELSE does. But, with the exception of bad guys, we don’t see any murders. The bad guys are shot quickly in the head. The other murders all take place “off stage” to people we don’t know. We hear about them. We see the aftermath. But we don’t see good people get killed. As for the torture – they’re in flashback, people. You know that Archie is going to be okay. (Fucked-up, pill-addled and nuts, but alive.) The books are graphic, which to me is a different thing than violent. Corpses are described. We see scars and blood and gore and sex. But writing is about description, about unpacking an experience, and I think that getting your spleen carved out by a serial killer deserves as much attention as the layout of a character’s living room. Also, I think if you’re going write about murder, it’s important to make it seem horrible. I have dead teenage girls in Heartsick. We don’t see them murdered, but we see their bodies. And that’s not pretty. To make it anything less than horrific feels irresponsible to me. And to understand what the books are about – the sick romance between Archie and Gretchen – you have to understand that she tortured him and it wasn’t very fun. These characters are really damaged. And to get at that, we have to see a little of what made them that way.

Richard Kunzmann: In a world were CSI and ultra realism has become a benchmark for many readers and TV viewers, how do you reconcile the fact that psychologically and forensically speaking, a character like Gretchen Lowell is even unlikelier than Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter.

Chelsea Cain: First of all, I’m not so sure that CSI is ultra realistic. They make stuff up all the time. They just add in a lot of lingo that makes it SEEM realistic. Gretchen Lowell isn’t realistic at all. Not a bit. In any universe. She’s not even a realistic psychopath. In real life she’d probably be a very successful corporate lawyer and living in Connecticut. I don’t care about that at all. I care about making her a compelling, enchanting, scary and charismatic character in a series that is clearly fiction.

Richard Kunzmann: So your writing is about being convincing, not really about being realistic? How do you as a writer and reader deal with these two forces when you write a novel?

Chelsea Cain: The trick is to find enough that’s true so that the reader will go along with the stuff you make up. I will do a lot of research and then pull out a few tiny things and ignore the rest in service to the story. The story is what is important to me. And if I need to overlook some fact in order to get the characters into the situation I want them in, then I’m completely comfortable with that. And my goal then becomes to figure out how to ignore that fact without distracting readers.

Richard Kunzmann: Are you worried about taking liberties with poetic licence and leaping over gaps in logic?

Chelsea Cain: I worry about readers looking up from the book and saying, “Wait just a fucking minute.” Because then you lose them. Gaps in logic are fine if you can get the reader on board. It’s another universe. Readers know that. They’re willing to forgive a lot, as long as they don’t feel you’re taking advantage of them.

Richard Kunzmann: The violence is maybe not as explicit as in films like Hostel or Saw, but only just. Are you a big fan of horror?

I’m not a fan of torture porn at all. I love cheesy horror movies, and really good horror movies, like The Shining and the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But I’m not a fan of the Saw movies. I know there are probably people reading this thinking that I’m a total hypocrite. Some would put my books firmly in the torture porn category. But here’s my defence. I don’t think that label can even apply to books. The thing about movies is that you can’t get inside anyone’s point of view. You, the viewer, are always, by definition, on the outside looking in. You are a voyeur. That’s what makes it porn. All the torture scenes in Heartsick are from Archie’s point of view. We experience it through him. We are on his side. And I think that transforms the experience into something a tiny bit less seedy and exploitive.

Richard Kunzmann: You’ve admitted in a previous interview that films have played a big roll in your life. Which films stick out as having influenced your work?

Chelsea Cain: My books are more directly influenced by TV shows. Wire in the blood, Law and order: Criminal Intent, Touching Evil. But my head is full of movies and books and TV shows (I am a pop culture sieve), and my characters are all combinations of hundreds of portrayals I’ve seen elsewhere and liked and recycled. The books are often described as cinematic, and I think I tend to construct and portray narrative in a film style rather than literary style. The transitions and props I use are much more movie-ish than book-ish. If a chapter ends with one line, I like to open the next chapter with something that references it, even if we’re now across town, in someone else’s point of view. And everyone is always smoking or drinking coffee or waving pens around – so that they have some props to illustrate how they’re feeling, which is very much an actor’s trick.

Richard Kunzmann: When I first came across Susan Ward, I immediately thought of Kate Winslett’s character in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. She’s also a character that’s a lot more real to me, someone that I might have hung out with most of my life. How did she enter this series, because she’s so different from all the other characters?

Chelsea Cain:It’s the colorful hair. And you have hung out with her. In that hotel bar in Harrogate. (Blush.) Susan was my way into the story. I’ve never been a cop. Or a serial killer. But I have been a quirky features journalist. I know how that works. She was the last character I invented because I needed some authority. Susan acts as the eyes and ears of the readers, because she’s new to all this, she’s sort of figuring it out with us. In my defence, I am not nearly as fucked up as she is. Nor do I share her, um, complicated past. But we do have a similar worldview. We worry about many of the same things. And we have all of the same clothes.

Oh that night at the bar in Harrogate. I have fond memories of us flooring everyone else with a few rounds of tequila. I just couldn’t believe how fresh-faced Chelsea looked the next day when everyone else looked like they’d been through a war. She was ready for the day’s first round of debates, looking fresher than water, but with a glass of burgundy at hand, of course. Only journalists have that fortitude. But it seems Susan Ward and Chelsea Cain have more than a career in common; as a young Chelsea Cain had a secret crush on the task force detectives hunting the Green River Killer, so Susan Ward has fallen hard for the detective she shadows all over town. Archie Sheridan, it seems, is the kind of screwed man women just can’t leave alone. Read Russell Crowe rather than George Clooney.

As the conversation draws to a close, I think of Chuck Palahniuk and Stephen King who have both complained about the creepy fans that pester them at signings. So I wondered what kind of people might be following Chelsea Cain around, now that she’s widely known as a sick and twisted writer. Her answer seems to hit the nail write on the head.

Chelsea Cain: I am amazed at how many young women will come up and tell me how “inspiring” they find Gretchen Lowell. Which I think sort of speaks to the lack of powerful female archetypes in pop culture. Gretchen is a black-hearted serial killer with a sado-masochistic streak a mile long, but she’s in control. And young women respond to that. Which is a tiny bit sad for all of us.

Next up:

Chelsea gives us a few fast facts about Evil at Heart, due out in four months.

Prelude: Chelsea Cain Interview, crime’s sickest author?

Put your ear to the ground and listen to what people are saying about New York Times bestselling author Chelsea Cain, it’ll invariably go like this, “Oh my God, she’s the one who wrote that torture scene.”

That torture scene.

It’s a refrain I heard time and again as I made my way up to the Old Peculiar Crime Writer’s Festival held in Harrogate last July, barely a month after I returned to the United Kingdom from the International Cape Town Bookfair in South Africa. By the time we were seated for dinner in the Jupiter Room of the luxurious Rudding Park Hotel, by invitation of the publishers we share, I was craning my neck to see her at the other end of the table. It’s bullshit, I know, but the first thought that went through my head was, what kind of woman writes “that torture scene?” And what the hell does anyone write in this day of torture porn, which makes such a strong impression?

In other words, how sick and twisted must a person be?

If I expected the female version of Marilyn Manson, I was sorely disappointed. Chelsea Cain – tall, blonde hair, flashing eyes, not an ounce of goth make-up on her porcelain face – had her end of the dinner table in bloody stitches, entertaining them as easily as she offended their sensibilities. She tells a story aloud exactly the way she might write it in a book: macabre punch lines that give Bill Hicks a run for his money, swearing when swearing is fucking necessary, and all of it backed up with the vivaciousness of a movie star. And when they say diamonds are a girl’s best friend, they obviously never met Chelsea Cain. Never before was a person’s character so well complimented by a glass of burgundy.

Ok. So I exaggerate. Hyperbole is how I earn my money.

Me being me, and about ten of us piled into the back of a black cab much much later all of us filled to the gills with red wine, I pop the one question that’s been bugging me all along. And the moment I say it, I realise how god-awful juvenile it sounds.

I say, “So what’s so gory about your books?”

The car goes quiet. No one says a word. They probably don’t know what to say, because it probably sounds like a challenge, one crime writer to another, like it’s a damn duel over the grotesque or something. Then Chelsea picks it all up in that strong Portland accent of hers. “Oh come on, Richard! Are you fucking serious? Get outta here.”

I never was a man for social propriety and timing, which probably comes from all the years spent playing Dungeons & Dragons in my youth. The conversation veers a sharp left as our polite British chaperones scramble to find something else to talk about. There’s a collective sigh of relief when we play along: no blood on the cab seats tonight.

Yet, I felt dissatisfied. I hadn’t got my answer and now, on top of that, people had misunderstood my intentions. So me being me again, I couldn’t let the issue lie. For almost a year I pondered over it, during which time I picked up a copy of Heartsick and Sweetheart. I thought it best that the next time I pop the question, I best be informed.

And, by God, what a torture scene.

If you haven’t already, read my review of Sweetheart.

Sweetheart: A book that’ll have you sweating in more ways than one

“Can you feel that your spleen is gone? Does it hurt?”
“Not any more,” Archie answered.
“I think about that,” Gretchen said dreamily. “Having my hands inside you. You were so warm and sticky. I can still smell you, your blood. Do you remember?”
Archie ran a hand over his face. “I lost consciousness,” he reminded her quietly.
She smiled. “I regret that. I wanted to keep you awake. I wanted you to remember. I’m the only one who’s ever been that far inside you.”

These are exactly the lines I’ve come to expect from Chelsea Cain after meeting her and reading the Gretchen Lowell series a year later: funny, sensual and intense, all at the same time. Chelsea Cain’s books might lack thorough police investigations, and the serial killer they depict does stretch belief, but few other crime writers execute their work with such flair. In fact, if the series wasn’t the parody it is – and I’m talking a hefty touch of Quentin Tarrantino here – showing up all the oh-so serious monsters that litter the crime genre today, Chelsea Cain’s thrillers wouldn’t be as wisecracking good as they are.

Sweetheart follows Heartsick and delves into the aftermath of that obsessive love affair between Detective Archie Sheridan and Gretchen Lowell, the porcelain-skinned serial killer who very nearly tortured him to death. Our detective is finally out of hospital and back home with his wife and daughter. The scars are healing, his trusty sidekick Henry is keeping a close eye on him, and so things should be as rosy as that first flush after hot sex.

Except they’re not.

Archie’s hitting the pills so hard his liver’s about to explode. He can’t look his wife in the eye because he’s too damn busy imagining sadistic sex with Gretchen. As for work … well, all of a sudden a fresh pile of bodies is appearing in Gretchen’s old dumping grounds. Just when we think Archie’s internal world can’t be wound any tighter than the noose he’s pulled around his own neck, Gretchen Lowell escapes from jail and shoots straight for his daughter.

Cain’s timing is on the money, whether it’s comic relief or closing a chapter on a real cliff hanger. Intercutting between the Gretchen Lowell escape and an investigation into the murder of a girl who could potentially finger a sleazy politician for statutory rape, the story keeps us flying downhill at breakneck speed. It’s fast-paced stuff, even if a few plot threads are left hanging, but my appreciation for the book has very little to do with any of that.

Central to the story is the seduction of Archie Sheridan by Gretchen Lowell. Despite the horrible trauma she’s inflicted on him, he can’t stop thinking about her. This is the kind of love story where you know the other person is bad for you, she’ll destroy your soul, but for some reason that’s exactly what you want. In other words, Gretchen is the ultimate succubus.

Layer after layer, Archie is wrapped in the soft velvet of a rapture he knows he won’t survive. Like Pauline Reagé’s O, he realises what’s happening to him, he can see the self-annihilation that lies ahead and yet he goes willingly. The master-slave allusion isn’t an unwitting one, but at times we don’t know who’s who, as Gretchen exposes vulnerabilities of her own. It’s Cain’s sensuous portrayal of this state of mind that is most gripping. As much as this story is a thriller, the taste that remains on your lips long after is not the violence and gore, but forbidden love.

Read this book to the sound of:
Alice Cooper – Poison
Lou Reed – This Magic Moment

Look out for Evil at Heart, the third book in the series, which will be released in September.

Giveaway:
Chelsea has offered to dedicate and sign a hardcover copy of Sweetheart for a giveaway. Leave a comment on the review or series and you’ll be entered into a raffle.

Interview with Chelsea Cain!

Keep your eyes open. I’ll be posting an interview with Chelsea Cain before the close of the week, talking about her books, her writing, and the highly anticipated Evil at Heart.

Check out what others think of the book at Goodreads and Amazon.

Review & Giveaway: Looking Good Dead, Peter James

I don’t easily get creeped out by books these days. Not any more. Not since Stephen King’s It permanently damaged me as a child, when I was reading it under the bedcovers late at night, torch in one jittery hand, twice frightened that my mother would catch me in the forbidden act of reading “that author with evil in his head.”

Did you know, momma, what was in mine?

So it’s been a while that I got the willies from a book, which makes me very glad that I picked up a copy of Peter James’s Looking Good Dead. It’s a brilliant thriller. Here’s why.

Tom Bryce, a regular Joe salesman, is sitting on the train from London to Brighton thinking about his wife and kids. And like anyone who’s ever had a standard class fair, he’s stranded next to a right prick yelling into his mobile phone. So when the guy gets off the train and leaves a CD behind, Tom’s not exactly in the mood to play Good Samaritan.

This is where we all collectively yell, “Why oh why, Tom, did ya have to take the CD home?”

That night our dear friend Tom watches a snuff movie. Then his computer is hacked and before long he’s running scared and fighting for the life of his wife and kids. Never mind his own.

At the same time, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is called out to a gruesome discovery in a field on the same day that he’s got a hot date lined up. But what he finds out there opens up old wounds; his own wife disappeared many years ago, and since then he’s forever been wondering what happened to her and blaming himself.

This is a superb thriller in every sense of the word. Peter James drops us right into the households of every day people. He shows us that they also read the Gruffalo to their kids, watch the Simpsons, and then he tears them to shreds, and we’re left wondering exactly who this bastard is. James also has a great sense of place, constantly feeding us information about Brighton without overpowering us with needless description. In fact, everything about his writing is precise and to the point. He is as efficient a writer as he is a killer of characters, is Mr James.

I wish I could stop with the laurels there, but his research and deep understanding of the Brighton Metropolitan Police shines through, especially in his treatment of cyber crime and modern technologies. Here’s another great detail: I love looking out for how authors tie their novels back to the titles. In Peter James’s case, when the words “Looking Good Dead” are spoken, you don’t know if you want to laugh or slam the book shut and run.

A well-rounded novel this: great characters, great plotting, and a story that could become all too real. I’m going to commit sacrilege in the crime-reading world and say I enjoyed this book more than Michael Connelly’s The Poet.

Just do me a favour: don’t read this under the bedcovers with a torch.

Give Away
I have one signed copy of the new hardback Dead Tomorrow up for grabs. It’ll be released 11 June 2009, so you’ve got until then to share your thoughts on Peter’s writing. The winner will be drawn from a raffle.

Some fast facts about Peter James:
He’s incredibly rich and loves showing off the cars he’s owned while still remaining a genuinely nice guy. He didn’t just get that way through hard work on his many bestselling books, he’s also a successful filmmaker, producing amongst others The Merchant of Venice with Al Pacino.

Read other reviews at Amazon and Goodreads.

Best read to the music of Joe Cocker

Review: A Deadly Trade, Michael Stanley

A week ago I reviewed A Carrion Death, written by Michael Stanley (the pen name of Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip). Not only was it a strong first attempt at a crime novel set in an exotic setting, it was also a sheer act of determination and personal marketing that eventually saw the book break through to the LA Times bestseller.

With A Deadly Trade, they are back and with a vengeance, too. This second book is tighter, leaner and more focused than the first. Michael Stanley is well on his way to establishing himself on the international crime thriller scene.

A man is walking back to his tent one night, at a remote resort deep in the heart o the Okovango Delta, when he’s brutally killed and mutilated. When dawn comes a second body is discovered and a third man is missing. The Botswana police have to fly into the remote area, and our hero Detective Superintendent Kubu Bengu and his new sidekick, Detective Tatwa Mooka, quickly establish that the two murdered individuals, and the prime suspect who was unsuspectingly taken to the airport that same morning, have links to the political turmoil in Zimbabwe and a drug smuggling ring in South Africa.

What is not immediately established is that all the guests at Jackalberry Camp on the night of the murders are very much involved, in one way or another. Though this hints at an Agathie Christie style investigation, there’s plenty of action in store.

Kubu Bengu is his usual likeable self, drinking a steelworks whenever the moment arises, or daintily dipping a Marie biscuit into his tea. And I’m glad to see that Ian McGregor has shed the staccato Scottish accent from the first novel, which was jarring to read. Two new characters stand out as fine examples of well-developed characterisation: Goodluck Tinubu, the well-loved teacher with a dark past, and Moremi Suthani, the eccentric chef with a Kwe bird on his shoulder. Dupie, the camp manager and a former Sealous Scout from Zimbabwe’s civil war past, also rings with authenticity.

The second novel is an improvement on the first, but some of my concerns from the first novel have remained. Our police officers seem extraordinarily happy to discuss the finest particulars of a murder case with just about anyone willing to listen, which doesn’t jive with police procedure. Some chapters grind the story to a virtual halt because Kubu and his friends painstakingly recap events for us. I have to compare this with Peter James’s excellent Looking Good Dead, which I’ve just finished. Detective Roy Grace also frequently recaps, but this is either mentioned as a one liner, especially if he’s filling in others; or, if it’s for the reader’s benefit, sums the entire investigation up in no more than three lines. A bundle of pages is never a good idea. I’ve stepped on that mine myself, plenty of times. There are unnecessary tracks of exposition in two of my novels, Bloody Harvests and Salamander Cotton , of which readers have been far too forgiving.

I particularly enjoyed Kubu’s discovery of Goodluck Tinubu’s history, but I don’t want to give too much away. Suffice it to say, there is true tragedy in his demise as a fallen hero, and Tinubu’s death seems a fitting waste of a human life – perhaps the perfect metaphor for the chaos in his home country, Zimbabwe.

Check out what others thought of A Deadly Trade at Goodreads .

Best music to read by: Miriam Makeba

Review & Giveaway: A Carrion Death, Michael Stanley

Alexander McCall-Smith’s No. 1 Detective Agency introduced us to a delightfully fresh setting for crime stories, namely Botswana. His well-known work, featuring the much-loved Mma Ramotswe is a rollicking string of morality tales imbued with good humour and an African charm uniquely its own. But his stories can be seen as deflecting from the true nature of crime, hankering instead after an Africa that’s more nostalgia than reality.

Not so Michael Stanley’s A Carrion Death.

The novel begins with two game wardens that discover human remains near a waterhole on the edge of the Kalahari. There’s not much left of it, just scraps of hair and bone, most of it devoured by scavengers. At first it’s suspected that the body belongs to a poacher, then a tourist who’d wandered off into the night. But when Senior Superintendent David “Kubu” Bengu of Botswana’s Criminal Investigation Department arrives on the scene, it’s cleverly established that not only was the body purposefully dumped there, persons unknown have conspired to hide the fact that the country’s most powerful corporation, the Botswana Cattle and Mining Company, is somehow involved. Not long after, Detective Kubu is probing into ancient rituals performed at the site by witch doctors, diamond smuggling that works its way around the Kimberly Process, and corruption at the highest level.

And all the while the death toll keeps spinning like a seven aces jackpot.

Kubu surely is the centrepiece of Michael Stanley’s work. His nickname meaning hippopotamus, he’s as huge as he’s smart, as garrulous and easy-going as he’s incisive and determined. While the investigation is quite bloody – there’s a scene where one of the killers breaks a sweat trying to snap a corpse’s arm on the edge of a bath – Kubu’s joyful life seems to counterbalance the brutality.

Unlike the majority of deeply flawed crime fiction detectives out there, Kubu’s greatest vice is food taken with a lovely Chardonnay. He’s so thoroughly normal compared to the genre’s other characters that he comes out looking unusual and refreshing, which is why one can see a good many readers taking a shine to this series.

As a debut novel A Carrion Death holds its own. The fact that it steadily fought its way to the LA Times bestseller list is testament to this. But in places the novel does slow to a snail’s pace before picking up again. Also, there are a number of shifts in time in the first acts, not only changing from past to present tense to explore one sub-plot, but moving backwards and forwards over a six week period, to fill in the gaps around the evil mastermind’s motivations. It all comes together in the last act, but one has to question whether this cross-cutting adds to the novel.

A Carrion Death is a strong beginning to what will no doubt turn out to be a fun series. A Deadly Trade, Michael Stanley’s second novel, has just come out, and will be reviewed later in this blog. Watch out for it.

Read it if you’re looking for a story set in a fabulously rich setting that’s unusual and new. Read it if you are the type of reader who is happy to digest larger sections of back story and character development. And definitely read it, if you’re on the look-out for a crime series that’s a little more light-hearted and warm than the usual stash of noir.

I first met Michael Stanley when two incredibly polite gentlemen approached me to chat about books. Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip immediately gave me the impression that they are genuinely good people with a love for Africa and obviously Botswana. Check out their website here.

Give away!
I have one hardcover of Carrion Death to give away, which I will ask Michael Stanley to sign personally to the winner of a lucky draw that ends 30 May 2009. I’ll also have a further 2 paperback editions to shoot off to avid readers, provided you’re happy with a book in good, rather than excellent condition. All you need to do is post a comment on the review, even share your experiences of the books, and I’ll worry about the postage.

An interview with Michael Stanley will appear soon, with more giveaways!

Short Stories 1: Is it time to rethink short stories?

South Africa’s first anthology of short crime fiction was recently released, to much fanfare. Bad Company, edited by Joanne Hichens, features short fiction by Deon Meyer, Michael Stanley, Margie Orford, Andrew Brown, Mike Nichol, me and many more, and has a great introduction by Lee Child. The publishers, Pan Macmillan, should be commended for sticking out their heads to get the project done, because hardly any of the big-name publishers will touch an anthology these days. Why? Because there’s no money it.

They just don’t sell.

The project put me into a reflective mood about short stories in general. When a week after the launch I could still only find one or two reviews in major media, and I had to admit this is stunning coverage for an anthology, that mood became melancholic. Why, I thought, are short stories so shunned by the broader reading market, and hence publishers, who have to chase this bunch to break even?

One can easily comment, as many authors and publishers no doubt do, on how important short stories are to the industry. We can wax on in great self-righteous furore about how this form deserves more recognition, and how good writers first tested their mettle as short story writers before finding financial success. Or we can be even lamer and quote our high school teachers on the merits of the form: short stories are much loved because they are often highly experimental in nature; they depend on thoroughly inventive plots for their success; short stories are scalpels where novels are often crude cane machetes.

Nice, that. But it still don’t mean they sell.

Can we in the industry pull the blindfold from our eyes for a second, tear the short story from its pedestal, and talk honestly about the form? If short stories are boring – and a lot of them are – I’m not going to read them, okay? What do I care for a format where authors do dry-runs for later works of staggering genius? I’d rather buy the book when they’ve got their shit together, if you don’t mind. If an anthology costs me as much as a paperback and I’m likely to only enjoy ten percent of the stories, doesn’t that mean I’ve shafted myself? Plus, a short story hardly ever gives you the sense that you’ve been taken on an otherworldly trip, does it? So why buy them when its escapism I want?

One thing that draws me to short stories is precisely the fact that they’re such a niche product. You have to hunt for the best ones, even harder than you do for a great book, so when I find a great collection it makes me feel truly special. It’s like the editor has blessed me and only me with that bundle of treasures.

I find it sad that most publishers treat short story anthologies as a necessary evil, rather than the luxury good they really are. If I could have my way, I’d give back to short stories what they thoroughly deserve: luxury branding. Limited signed editions. Hardback. Hell, let’s go all the way and say gold embossed leather. Provided the collection is a good one, of course. People that read short stories are die hard fans, and the anthologies that are great become the stuff of legend. So why attempt a cheap mass market approach on a product that’s unattractive to the masses? Doesn’t make much sense to me.

I’ll take my favourite short story magazine as an example. The Third Alternative or Black Static as it is now called, was started in 1994 by TTA Press, run by the aloof but incredibly astute Andy Cox. Instead of trying to punch out reams of short stories in a hit and run fashion, he set the bar incredibly high and only published short stories that were truly innovative. Wrapping these up in some amazing artwork printed on high quality glossy paper, and adding stellar reviews and commentary by the likes of Peter Tennant, Stephen Folk and more recently Christopher Fowler, the magazine quickly defined itself as a luxury item that’s worth owning. At a time when even the low-cost fanzines on the internet appear and disappear faster than mushrooms in a desert, this magazine has gone from strength to strength. Quality content + Quality marketing = Die hard fans.

Like everything else.

Starting with this blog, I’ll be making the case for short stories, first talking about my favourite authors, then the editors and imprints that have brought them to light, followed by what is hopefully a good suggestion for putting together better anthologies that will sell has hot limited editions.

Review: The Third Person, Steve Mosby

Steve Mosby published his first book at about the same time as me, and at about the same age, around 26. When I read The Third Person, it left me gobsmacked and not a little jealous. If he can keep up the raw energy of his debut, he could develop into a dangerous writer. Very dangerous. I haven’t read anything this dark since Michael Marshal Smith’s Spares.

Jason’s fiancé disappeared four months ago. The police say she left of her own accord, but he knows differently. Perhaps it had something to do with the macabre sites she’d been visiting on the internet; or maybe with his spurious infidelity. When a woman he met on the internet delivers his first solid clue as to what might have happened to his girlfriend, Jason decides to take matters into his own hands and begins to hunt for the murderers, rapists and art collectors who came into contact with Amy. The truth that our protagonist unravels isn’t pleasant, not pleasant at all, mostly because Jason’s story is entirely plausible if you’ve looked into the darker corners of your own soul and the internet.

I’m glad to see that Mosby hasn’t allowed himself to be chucked into a box. This book is part crime fiction, thriller, but there’s a distinctive speculative fiction undercurrent, with a dash of horror and science fiction added to the mix.

The maturity with which Mosby explores the demise of Jason and Amy’s relationship is exemplary. Maybe I think that because I was going through a really bad break up at the time I read it, and I saw my relationship mirrored in the pages, but it was more than that. My copy of the book is full of highlights where sentences capture fresh metaphors, complex emotions, and unique insights into our dark halves. Mosby uses interesting conventions to build a tense novel, and at ever corner there’s a sense of impending personal doom for our protagonist. It reminded me a lot of 8mm with Nicholas Cage; you kinda know this is all going to end terribly, but like our detectives you must have the answer before you can rest.

Every now and again there is some confusion in the logical flow of the unravelling mystery, but this in no way should digress from a superb debut novel. Note to self: Buy more books by this twisted bastard. I mean that as a compliment.

Review: Last Car To Elysian Fields, James Lee Burke

James Lee Burke is arguably one of America’s greatest hardboiled detective authors, and Last Car to Elysian Fields not only does that reputation justice, it strengthens his position as a crime writer with an immense literary range that borders on the poetic.

Detective Dave Robicheaux is asked by Father Jimmie Dolan to join him on a trip into St. James Parish, where he meets the daughter of a musician who disappeared years before. Soon strange links begin to emerge between the musician, a savage attack on Father Jimmie Dolan, a fanatical and conflicted assassin, and the filthily rich whom Dave despises. The detective is drawn into the familiar collection of sordid secrets and escalating violence, as echoes of his own unresolved past begin to affect the direction of his case.

Burke is a masterful storyteller, who weaves an intricate web that hums with tension along its cords. What I appreciate most about his novels is that he doesn’t rely on tedious red herrings and cheap last-minute revelations to keep the thrill going; instead, he provides us with so much information about the people and circumstances that Dave encounters that we must distil the answers at the same pace as Dave Robicheaux. In other words, Burke allows us to be detectives in his novels, not passive viewers waiting for the next corny surprise. This plot line is as solid as his detective, and his Louisiana is as vivid and infectious as feverish dreams. His style remains wonderfully articulate and timeless, and one can only say the Robicheaux series is like a loyal old dog: it’ll never let you down.