In Reference to Murder

In With the New

Someone on a news group I subscribe to was asking about a list of debut authors for 2009. Since there's been a host of awards and "best of" lists lately geared toward more-established writers, it's a good idea to single out all the new talented kids on the block. Although there isn't one single list of debut crime fiction authors of which I'm aware, a good starting place is the roster of 68 submissions in the Edgar Award category for Best First Novel. Many of these titles have already generated quite a bit of buzz, but others aren't as well known. When heading out to your local bookstore this season to buy book gifts for everyone on your shopping list (naturally), don't forget to check out this list of first novels by the up-and-comers.

Murder on the Cliffs

Joanna Challis lives and writes in a colonial house with wrap-around verandas and an English garden in Queensland, Australia, surrounded by family, old paintings, and anything fleur-de-lys. She is the author of several romantic suspense novels (Silverthorn was a finalist for the Romance Writers of Australia's 2004 Romantic Book of the Year) but has recently turned to mystery with Murder on the Cliffs, the first in a new series featuring a young Daphne du Maurier. She's currently on a blog tour and took the time to answer some questions.

IRTM:  You live in Queensland, Australia, and Murder on the Cliffs is set around Cornwall in the United Kingdom, which is pretty far apart, roughly 17,000 kilometers or 9,000 nautical miles. Did that make it difficult for you to pin down details about the setting and environs for the book?

JC:  It makes travel a necessity. I love Europe, its history and scenery so trips over there have always been part of my life.  If I can't travel, then I re-live it through journals, photos, books and the internet is an invaluable tool when one can't travel in person.

IRTM:  How did you get the idea of using a young 21-year-old Daphne du Maurier as a protagonist? Somehow, I'm guessing it wasn't the author's novella The Birds that inspired you, or you would have written a horror novel instead. Perhaps more Rebecca?

JC:  Rebecca exactly! It's my all-time favorite novel and combines those elements I love the most: history, mystery and a touch of romance. I love the setting too...an old mansion full of secrets by the sea...

IRTM:  Your previous novels were mostly in the romance vein, and in fact you were a finalist for the Romance Writers of Australia Ruby Award 2004 with your novel Silverthorn. Although Murder on the Cliffs has some romance included, it's branching off more into the romantic suspense line. Are you edging more towards the mystery genre these days in your writing?

JC:  Yes. Silverthorn had the history-romance-mystery mix, the Daphne du Maurier series will have the mystery-history-romance mix (stronger mystery theme). I am trying to keep the overall atmosphere like du Maurier portrayed in Rebecca and each of the Daphne mysteries will inspire her later novels. For the romance side, we have Daphne's love interest (her future husband in real life) featuring and progressing in each book.

IRTM:  Thus far, your books have all been historicals. Is this the subgenre you're most comfortable with, and are there any plans for switching back and forth with contemporary settings at some point?

JC:  I love historicals. All my favorite books are set in some kind of historical era, though I do enjoy modern mysteries too. As for contemporary settings, I am writing one book on the side, something that's been niggling at me for a few years. It's based on a true story--hopefully my agent can find a home for it one day.

IRTM:  Do you find there's more research involved with historical settings than you might otherwise have with contemporary plots? And as side note to that question, did you read a lot of biographical material on du Maurier in order to flesh out her character in your book?

JC:  There's definitely more research involved for any historical setting and even more so when using a real life person. I did a great deal of research with Daphne (there are so many differing accounts) that in the end I prefer to use her own words from her book Myself When Young. It shows the young Daphne up until the publication of her first book and marriage to her husband (that is the time period I am using with the Daphne mystery series).

IRTM:  The Australian and British (and American too) flavors of the English language can be quite different at times, with sentence construction, vocabulary, spellings, etc. Does it get a bit confusing at times when you're in the middle of putting the words down to keep the dialect consistent?

JC: Sometimes. I realized I turned in book #2 to my publisher with the English / Australian spelling and quickly changed it. As my heritage is Welsh, I grew up reading predominantly British authors and at school we used British textbook material. I believe my voice is more British-English as a result.

IRTM: You're working on the second book in the Daphne du Maurier series. Is there a release date for that and are there other installments lined up for the future?

JC: Peril at Somner House will come out in 2010. No official month yet but I suspect later in the year. Presently, I am upon the third Daphne mystery and if the series goes well, I have plenty more mysteries for Daphne to solve.

IRTM:  And last but not least, is vegemite really a food?

JC:  Vegemite is my friend. I take it with me when I travel...I think it's a food -- lots of salt and plenty of B vitamins. It's one of those things you grow up with and can never shake.

Joanna Challis is giving away a signed copy of her book, Murder on the Cliffs, to one blog tour visitor. Go to Joanna's book tour page, enter your name, e-mail address, and this PIN, 6931, for your chance to win. Entries from "In Reference to Murder" will be accepted until 12:00 Noon (PT) tomorrow. No purchase is required to enter or to win. The winner (first name only) will be announced on Joanna's book tour page next week.

There's Something About Edgar

As the bicentennial commemorations of Edgar Allan Poe's death continue, the Baltimore Museum of Art opened a new exhibit on Sunday, "Edgar Allan Poe: A Baltimore Icon."  The exhibition includes five drawings, nearly three dozen prints and more than 40 illustrated books from the BMA's own collection, supplemented with loans from the Art Institute of Chicago, Dedalus Foundation, The Johns Hopkins University Libraries, and Enoch Pratt Free Libraries. One piece is the Henri Matisse preliminary graphite drawing from 1982 which paid homage to Poe, shown at left, above.

Other works include Edouard Manet's lithographs depicting scenes from the poem "The Raven," like this one, "Open Here I Flung the Shutter (The Window)." BMA Director Doreen Bolger noted that "The French artists were as much drawn to Poe’s personality as his writing. They saw him as a kindred spirit; a visionary who explored a frightening side of life with subjects who had unbalanced minds. Poe captured people’s deepest fears—both of what they feared about themselves and what they feared about others. He wrote for those of us who still look under our beds before we sleep."

A Little Lamb Lost

In the subgenre of amateur detectives, there seem to be no boundaries regarding a protagonist's vocation. Some tend to stretch credulity to its limits, but others, such as social work, provide the potential for a depth of material to mine. There haven't been many social worker sleuths in crime fiction, Irene Marcuse's Anita Servi series and Tom Schreck's Duffy Dombrowski, being two examples.

One of the most recent is the June debut novel by Margaret Fenton, Little Lamb Lost. From the "write what you know" school, Fenton, herself a child and family therapist, is married to a software developer in Birmingham, Alabama. In Little Lamb Lost, social worker Claire Conover gets drawn into a murder case after a child she recommended be returned to his reformed drug-addict mother is killed, allegedly by the mother. After the Department of Human Services and the press get wind of Claire's involvement, she tries to uncover the truth behind the boy's death and prove the mother innocent. Aided by a computer geek (and potential love interest -- see note above about the author's hubby), she pursues answers through the streets of Birmingham, identifying the child's child-abusing step-grandfather, a drug addict son of a rich area family and two boyfriends of the mother as potential suspects.

Fenton casts Conover as a sympathetic heroine, who honestly believes she can make a different in the world, despite the depressing life stories she's faced with on a daily basis and the troubled reality of the foster care system. Birmingham, Alabama, is also not a typical setting for a crime novel, with more opportunities for a fresh take on setting and sense of place. Publishers Weekly said in a review that "With her fine ear for regional speech, Fenton may do for Birmingham what Margaret Maron has done for rural North Carolina." (Speaking of Maron, the Women of Mystery are giving away a copy of her latest book, Sand Sharks. Click here.)

One interesting side note: Fenton has Anne George (who died in 2001) to thank for become a published author. As Fenton note, the pair "were on our way to a Sisters in Crime meeting one night and I was babbling on about Laura Lippman’s first book and how much I liked it when she said, 'Margaret, I don’t know why someone who loves mysteries as much as you do doesn’t try to write one.' I didn’t have a good answer for that. So the next day I started thinking about it. I am an LCSW and worked with child welfare for many years, so that seemed a good place to start."

Fenton is working on a sequel to the novel, titled Little Girl Gone, in what promises to become a new series.

Remembering Raymond

Today would have been the 121st birthday of Raymond Thornton Chandler (if modern technology allowed for longer human lifespans, as may soon be the case). Fortunately, Chandler's work and legacy lives on well after his death in 1959.

Five of Chandler's classic novels featuring private eye Philip Marlowe were reissued in April of this year by Hamish Hamilton in hardcover, with forwards by contemporary crime fiction authors:  The High Window with an intro by Mark Billingham; The Long Goodbye introduced by Jeffery Deaver; Farewell, My Lovely, intro by Colin Dexter; The Lady in the Lake, intro by Jonathan Kellerman; The Little Sister with an intro by Val McDermid, and The Big Sleep, introduced by Ian Rankin.

You can celebrate Chandler's birthday by reading these or any one of the tributes that have been penned through the years, such as 2007's The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved by Judith Freeman or Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe - Centennial Celebration, a collection of new Philip Marlowe storied crafted by several modern authors, issued on the 100th anniversary of Chandler's birth in 1988. There's also a new hardcover biography coming out in September by John Anderson, to be published by Penguin. 

There have been many film, radio and TV adaptations of Chandler work, most recently in TV series format with Powers Booth as Marlowe on HBO in 1983 and 1986, and on BBC Radio/Audiobooks with Ed Bishop in the title role beginning in 1999 (the latest of which was released after Bishop's death in June of this year).

If you happen to be in California, you can check out one of the Raymond Chandler tours mentioned in Janet Rudolph's blog recently, if not today, then later this year: October 17th for the Raymond Chandler's Bay City tour or October 24th for Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles. 

You might prefer to remember Chandler in his own words, as several works have done: Raymond Chandler Speaking (University of California Press, 1997); The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (HarperPerennial reprint edition 2007); or Philip Marlow's Guide to Life, edited by Marty Asher (Knopf 2005). A couple of tidbits from the first book above:

"At school I displayed no marked literary ability. My first poem was composed at the age of nineteen, on a Sunday, in the bathroom, and was published in Chambers' Journal. I am fortunate in not possessing a copy. I had, to be frank, the qualifications to become a pretty good second-rate poet, but that means nothing because I have the mind to become a pretty second-rate anything and without much effort."

"When I was eighteen years old, my mother and my rich but dominating Irish uncle decided that I should take a Civil Service examination. . .I wanted to be a writer, but I knew my Irish uncle would not stand for that, so I thought perhaps that the easy hours in the Civil Service might let me do that on the side. I passed third in a group of about six hundred. I went to the Admiralty, but I found the atmosphere to stultifying that after six months I resigned. This was a bombshell; perhaps no one had ever done it before. My Irish uncle was livid with rage. So I holed up in Bloomsbury, lived on next to nothing, and wrote for a highbrow weekly review and also for the Westminster Gazette, perhaps the best evening newspaper the world ever saw. But at the best I made only a very bare living."

For a good summary and bibliography of Chandler and his work, check out the Thrilling Detective site.

Have Some Boston Scream Pie

In addition to writing short stories, articles, and essays, husband and wife co-authors Rosemary and Larry Mild author a mystery series set in a small Maryland village featuring Paco LeSoto, a dapper retired Baltimore detective, and Molly Mesta, a witty housekeeper and cook whose cleverness, skewed language and culinary skills are matched only by her girth. The pair hit it off well enough in the first book of the series, Locks & Cream Cheese, that they got married in the second installment, Hot Grudge Sunday.

In the third novel featuring Paco and Molly, Boston Scream Pie, high school student Caitlin Neuman is plagued by a series of bizarre nightmares from a car accident which claimed both her parents and twin sister years earlier. Convinced there is more to the nightmares than she knows, Caitlin seeks out Paco and Molly's help, leading the duo to uncover a trail of unsolved deaths surrounding the former husbands of newlywed Delylah Boston, and a case of mistaken identity buried deep in the past. When another Boston family member dies under suspicious circumstances, the clues point to murder, leaving Paco and Molly to wonder whether they've uncovered a long-hidden secret, or stirred up a recipe for disaster.

The Milds are on a book blog tour starting this week and agreed to stop by In Reference to Murder for an interview:

Q: In a recent blog posting, Larry mentioned he enjoys adventure novels that give him a taste of foreign lands and cultures, and Rosemary chose a novel set in India (The Life of Pi) as a favorite book. Since you are both well-traveled and also divide your time between Maryland and Hawaii, what made you decide to set your Paco/Molly series in Maryland (although the second book was set out west)?

LARRY: There were three reasons for choosing Maryland. First, I believed that a coastal setting was integral to the Marche House manor. Second, the Chesapeake Bay is home base, and we could expect more publicity for a Severna Park homie. Third, we know the region really well—well enough to sprinkle sufficient real locations to give validity to the made-up Black Rain Corners. However, this does not mean we have neglected our world travels. They have found their way into many of our short stories, including Hawaii and Asia.

ROSEMARY: The Maryland climate works especially well for Boston Scream Pie.  

Q: Where did the idea for Molly's language-twisting "Molly-props" (a play on the word malapropism) come from? Anyone we know?  (I really loved "defecation of character.")

ROSEMARY: The original Molly (not her real name) was my psychoanalyst father’s housekeeper and gourmet cook. My father kept a list of all her clever sayings. She was a born snoop, who knew the secrets of every family member and friend. Her snooping skills have translated well to our novels and prove to be of great help to Paco. In Locks and Cream Cheese, she overwaters all the plants (leaving white rings) and overfeeds Dr. Avi Kepple’s golden retriever, who lunches on filet mignon and scalloped potatoes. All of this is true to the real-life Molly. Both she and my father have passed away, but we’re delighted to have immortalized them.

Q: I read that Larry claims to be more devious than Molly, so he conjures up the plots for the books and Molly conjures up characters and scenes. Is this true and just how does that process work?

LARRY: Close, but no cigar. I do conjure up the plots, but only after we’ve hashed over the details for some time during long walks on a nearby trail, while swimming, etc. I also write the first draft, setting skeletal requirements for scenes and characters in doing so. Then Rosemary brushes color and a sense of place into the scenes and breathes life into the characters, giving them appearance, personality, reactions, needs, and cravings. It is a serial process of handing the developing manuscript back and forth.   

ROSEMARY: Then we roll up our sleeves and “negotiate!” Right now we’re tussling over a short story set in Cambodia, where I’m in love with my lavish detail and Larry isn’t.

Q: Speaking of characters, twins play an important role in this book, not to give anything away of course, but we know early in the book that the young teenager Caitlin is an orphaned twin. Are their twins in your family who inspired you to make them part of the plot?

LARRY: I’ve looked under the family tree and could not dig up any twins among the roots. The credits for wrapping twins around the plot are twofold. A childhood favorite, Alexander Dumas, wrote of one twin feeling the sword point pain of the second twin’s wound in The Corsican Brothers. Also, I’m nuts about Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, where the theme of misplaced twins comes up more than chance would have it.   

ROSEMARY: During one of our winters in Honolulu, I met a delightful woman in my Jazzercise class, who turned out to be both a nurse and a twin. She agreed to read our Boston Scream Pie manuscript, and gave us valuable advice.

Q: You recently appeared at the 2009 Malice Domestic conference on a panel titled "Cozy and Loving It: A Send-up to a Beloved Genre." But Boston Scream Pie doesn't neatly fall into the category of what many mystery fans think of as a "cozy."  How did you feel about appearing on a panel with that title and are you concerned about the "cozy" label for your novels? (I actually prefer "detective fiction" since it fits almost all crime fiction with a few exceptions.)

LARRY: Agatha Christie leads the parade in the traditional mystery genre, where a lone sleuth singles out a villain from a closed and isolated number of highly probable suspects, using clue and alibi reduction and logical deduction. The genre now includes whodunit, howdunit, and whydunit. It is my belief that the term “cozy” applies to traditional mysteries that abstain from gratuitous blood and gore as well as explicit sex. Boston Scream Pie is a whodunit devoid of these so-called evils. In addition, we’ve kept the “traditional” pledge to satisfy and revolve all questions raised in the story. There, innocent after all!

ROSEMARY: We felt fine appearing on the “Cozies” panel. Today there are what I call “crossovers” in many mysteries. Boston Scream Pie includes a dark side, which gives it muscle and depth and is absolutely essential for certain characters. 

Q: The early reviews for Boston Scream Pie are good and Suspense Magazine even added you to their recommended reading list. Hopefully this bodes well for another installment in the series. Are there any plans for that in the works? Or perhaps a new series set in Hawaii?

LARRY:  We feel that Paco and Molly have aged well, but a fourth book might be a burden to their retiring years. However, with the plethora of accumulated Mollyprops, we might fashion a short story or two. We do have other projects. First, there is the finished—still unpublished—novel, Cry ‘Ohana, A Young Hawaiian’s Search for His Family. It’s been around for a while, mainly because of its epic length (470 pages). ‘Ohana means family in the Hawaiian language. While its theme explores the wonderful multicultural nature of Oahu, the story is full of suspense, adventure, murder, despair, and romance.  It’s the novel Rosemary and I cut our teeth on. Second, there’s Death Goes Postal, A Dan and Rivka Sherman Murder Mystery. It traces printing artifacts from the time of Gutenberg to the present in a series of vignettes. Murder, kidnapping, and suspense accompany the search for the artifact cache. Third, we have a repertoire of short stories (dozens even), some already published. Our soft-boiled detective series (four Slim O. Wittz stories) will appear in the e-zine Mysterical-E, beginning in Fall 2009.

ROSEMARY: I also write nonfiction. Right now I’m working on my second edition of Miriam’s Gift: A Mother’s Blessings—Then and Now, my memoir of our daughter killed in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Eventually, I’ll publish a collection of my personal essays. One of my favorites is “Arigato” in Chicken Soup for the Coffee Lover’s Soul, about our visit to an unusual Starbucks in Kanazawa, Japan.  

Q: Since my hubster is an audio/radio engineer, I have to ask Larry if he's considered a thriller using any of his technical expertise as fodder, or if any of his experiences as an electrical/radio engineer have played a helpful role in your novels to date?

LARRY: Sure, I’ve considered thrillers, but none are in the works as yet. However, technology has worked its way into several of our short stories. “Assault and Battery” focuses on an all-electric car. “Art by the Numbers” depends upon an encrypted elevator. “Artificial Affection” is all about a loving computer with erotic needs. “Dream Channels” involves His and Hers remotes. There are others, too. 

Q: So, Rosemary -- any plans on trying out for Jeopardy again? 

ROSEMARY: Sigh . . . Probably not. We watch the show every night. I can do beautifully and horribly in a single half-hour. I suppose I could try the on-line test again. On-line the humiliation is so much less public.

Rosemary and Larry Mild are giving away a signed copy of their book, Boston Scream Pie, to one lucky tour visitor. Go to their book tour page, enter your name, e-mail address, and this PIN, 3901, for your chance to win. Entries from In Reference to Murder will be accepted until 12:00 Noon (PT) tomorrow. No purchase is required to enter or to win. The winner (first name only) will be announced on their book tour page next week.

A House of Ghosts

Debut novelist Larry Kaplan is author of the recently-released House of Ghosts, featuring Detective Joe Henderson, the modern incarnation of Philip Marlowe -- hard boiled, hard drinking, hard loving, and cynical, offering wry observations of life in the age of Starbucks.

The tale begins in the summer of 2000 when Preston Swedge, an alcoholic recluse and World War II veteran, has died in Westfield, New Jersey. At his estate sale, retired local police detective Henderson discovers a 1944 diary describing a rogue attempt by a Jewish-American pilot named Paul Rothstein to drop his bombs on Auschwitz's killing complex where nearly 300,000 captives were about to be murdered. Henderson's curiosity launches him on a crusade for the truth and a shocking revelation when he tracks down the last living witness who can solve the mystery of why the raid never happened.

Author Kaplan comes from a more unusual background to pen such a novel, especially as a debut. Many crime fiction authors today began as journalists, lawyers, law enforcement personnel, or forensic investigators, but Kaplan is...a dentist.

IRTM:  I'm sure a lot of folks wonder why you weren't tempted to stay "closer to home," thematically, with your first novel, say a forensic dentist or anything medical, but as it turns out, the inspiration for this novel is drawn from your own family, isn't it?

LK: My late mother-in-law was deported from Hungary to Auschwitz in July 1944 and saw American bombers fly directly over the camp and fly into the distance. Her story played a large part in my writing House of Ghosts, searching for the reasons why the United States chose not to stop the killing in the Nazi’s largest European murder center when it had the means to do so. In the first number of drafts, and the total number was thirteen, the main protagonist actually was a dentist and that character was myself. I was boring!! The story was boring. Could I have written the part as a booze sloshing, pill popping, skirt chasing, chain smoking Dr. Larry? I suppose I could have. Would it have been believable? I doubt it. Does the mystery reader really want plot points concerning second bicuspids and bleeding gums interspersed with Charles Lindbergh and the America First isolationist movement? I don’t think so.

I replaced myself with Detective Lieutenant Joe Henderson and invented Alenia Gilbert, an ex-Russian stripper, big chested and blonde, to give Joe someone to bounce the history aspect of the story off. Without Alenia, House of Ghosts becomes a history book, not a mystery.

You have to admit that booze and big-chested blondes trump bicuspids and gums everyday.

IRTM: Apparently this book started out as a nonfiction work. At what point did you decide to turn it into a novel instead?

LK: My initial thought was to write a non-fiction book about the crews that flew on missions to bomb the I.G. Farben synthetic oil and rubber plant 4 miles from the Auschwitz complex. I wanted to cover what they thought they were flying over and what they discussed when returning to their bases. The research was tedious and difficult. Pilots and crews either were deceased or didn’t want to talk. Then it was pointed out that I had DDS after my name, not a PhD in history. Without credentials, I’d never get it published. It was at that point, I decided to form an amalgam (There! I got a dental term in!) of the social history of the United States prior to Pearl Harbor and the military history after.

IRTM: Were you able to track down and interview any WWII pilots who flew with the Allied forces in and around the German concentration camps?

LK: I developed a relationship with a retired Air Force general who during WWII flew a B-17 from Italy in the 15th Air Force. Based in Foggia, his group, the 2nd Heavy Bombardment, flew missions to Germany, France, and Poland. The Poland runs took him over the death camp. At first he was hesitant to talk to me. Over a period of months he opened up and confirmed my suspicions. He stated in no uncertain terms, that contrary to the accepted version of not knowing what they were flying over, the massive complex with the crematoria stacks blowing smoke and ash into the sky wasn’t an amusement park and everyone knew it. He gave me the name of another pilot who refused my calls and returned my written letters. One man’s testimony does not make a book.

IRTM: In a recent broadcast interview, you said you also included a couple of patients in this book (from NYU), or at least characters based on those patients. How did that come about?

LK: Joe Henderson’s friends Kopel and Naomi Weinstein were patients of mine for over twenty years. Both have passed away. They were delightful people who loved dogs. Joe’s black Labrador Roxy is in actuality my Lab and as an aside, she put a paw print to the waiver allowing me to use her real name. I took Roxy to their apartment where Naomi made a fuss over her. The Weinsteins met as freshman at NYU in 1938. They graduated in December 1942, and Kopel was immediately drafted. They married and Naomi followed her soldier boy to Ft. Knox, Kentucky where Kopel spent the remainder of the war in supply and requisition. Naomi took a job as a civilian on the post. Her service related story generated a major plot point that I’ll get back to in a moment.

Talking to the Weinsteins was as good as taking a time-machine back to 1938. Their descriptions of campus life and the Jewish student’s response or, better said, lack of response to the news coming over the radio from Europe was astounding. Their stories put me right in the Student Union riding out that devastating hurricane Paul Rothstein, Sarah Greenbaum, and Dave Schwartz experienced.

Now back to Naomi and Ft. Knox. She related how she had to endure the verbal tirades of a very anti-Semitic southern sergeant. In her secretarial position she typed orders. Waiting for the best moment to spring her revenge, she arranged for the “bastard” as she called him to be shipped to the Burma Theater of operations, the farthest point on the earth from Ft. Knox and the deadliest. The odds of the racist surviving were between slim and none.

In House of Ghosts, Jake Rothstein has members of the Jewish action group placed in the U.S. Army command headquarters that ultimately enables Paul to be in position to attempt a bomb run on Auschwitz.

My logic was if a civilian clerk like Naomi could maneuver personnel, why couldn’t an organized effort.

The Weinsteins were a treasure trove of information and I miss them very much.

IRTM: Is there any particular inspiration or model for your protagonist, ex-cop Joe Henderson? Is there a little Joe Henderson lurking in Larry Kaplan?

LK: Joe is a hobo’s stew cobbled together from bits and pieces of Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade. But, I suppose Joe gets his wise ass attitude from his creator.

IRTM: You're on your second publisher with this book, isn't that right? Is there an unusual story behind that situation?

LK: There is an interesting story, but you’ll have to wait. Someday I’ll work it into a plot of a future Joe Henderson mystery.

IRTM: It took you 10 years to write this first book but now you're working on a prequel. Do you think it will be another 10 years for that one, too, or will the pro hopefully be a little easier (and swifter) this time around?

LK: Gene Killers, number two in the Joe Henderson series, is on target for winter release 2010. This novel tackles the bio-tech industry and the FDA’s incompetence. When a genetically engineered drug about to receive FDA approval goes bad, it threatens to destroy the company, its investors and puts the United States and China on the precipice of war.

IRTM: You're a self-proclaimed history nut, mostly concerning the period right before World War II through shortly after the end of the War. Are you planning different historical mysteries down the road at some point?

LK: Yes. I am a history junkie. Been to re-hab and even did the Twelve Steps to break the addiction to the History and Military Channels, but had a recidivist rate of 100%.

All kidding aside, I am doing the research for a novel that opens in the waning days of WWII in a Russian surrounded Berlin and culminates in Washington, D.C. in the year 2012. The history, as in House of Ghosts, is hard fact, the conclusions are the author’s.

Thanks for the opportunity to appear on the virtual tour.

Larry Kaplan is giving away a signed copy of his book, House of Ghosts, to one tour visitor. Go to Larry's Book Tour page, enter your name, e-mail address, and this PIN, 7666, for your chance to win. Entries from this blog site will be accepted until 12:00 Noon (PT) tomorrow. No purchase is required to enter or to win. The winner (first name only) will be announced on Larry's book tour page next week.

Let's Play Russian Roulette

Austin Camacho is the author of five novels in the private eye Hannibal Jones series. In this latest installment, released just this week, the Washington D.C. professional troubleshooter is forced to take a case against his will when someone he loves is threatened if he doesn't cooperate. Camacho is currently on a blog tour and stopped by In Reference to Murder today to say a word or two.

Hi! Austin S. Camacho here, BV Lawson was kind enough to allow me to announce here that my new novel, Russian Roulette has finally arrived in bookstores. This is the fifth book in the Hannibal Jones mystery series, and it has a corkscrew plot that may just outdo its predecessor, Blood and Bone.

I decided to tell you all about it myself, in this little video which was shot in the Borders Express in Springfield Mall, VA:

In addition to being a writer, Austin is also a public affairs specialist for the Department of Defense. America's military people know him because for more than a decade his radio and television news reports were transmitted to them daily on the American Forces Network.

Riddle Me This

If you enjoy author Q&A's like I do, here are three recent interviews with three very different author perspectives:

Crimespree featured Andrew Grant (Lee Child's brother) currently on tour for his debut novel Even. He says "Every decision relating to Even was based on what I like to read. My plan was simple - to put in lots of the things that I enjoy in thrillers, and none of the things that I don’t."

In give-and-take with Anthony Neil Smith, editor of Plots With Guns and author of his latest novel, Hotdoggin', Smith said "I write about the stuff that scares me. I write about stuff that goes farther than I would in my own life, because those are the things that get under my skin the most."

And Carolyn Hart held forth over at the Mysterious People blog, revealing that "I’ve visited the locales of all the books written since Death on Demand. Once I set a book partly in the Philippines which I have never visited and a woman who grew up there asked me how many years I’d spent in the islands and I knew my library research had been successful."

In Another Place and Time

Two articles about setting and crime fiction recently caught my attention. In the first, from the Scotsman, reporter Jim Gilchrist looks at how the city of Edinburgh (where Arthur Conan Doyle was born 150 years ago this month) shaped the author's life and work. The article focuses on how surgeon Joseph Bell, one of Doyle's Edinburgh University mentors, served as the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, and how that tie will be celebrated this Friday at the Royal College of Surgeons. Speakers at the event will include historian and Holmes expert Owen Dudley Edwards and Doyle biographer Andrew Lycett.

But as Edwards points out, it was more than Edinburgh's academic life that got under Doyle's skin:

"The city exists on two levels, with a lower class or criminal world and a bourgeois world, and of course Doyle, being from an Irish Catholic background, was between the two of them; his people were respectable but with his father's drinking they suddenly became not respectable. That comes over in some of the Holmes and other stories quite a lot, switching from one class to another – take The Man With the Twisted Lip. They're set in London, but you can see he's still thinking about Edinburgh."

The second article is set some 3710 miles (5970 kilometers) away in Chicago, Illinois, where the Chicago Tribune reveals that a twist of fate had novelist Michael Connelly's protagonist Harry Bosch become an LAPD character instead of serving his fictional life with the Chicago PD, or as the article states,

"It would've been the Dan Ryan, not the 405, across which Bosch's car streaked as he pursued some murderous thug. It would've been a fussy bureaucrat in Chicago, not L.A., with whom the headstrong Bosch tangled." 

Whither the twist? After one of Connelly's journalism stories was a finalist for a Pulitzer, he received calls from the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. But since the Times was the first to offer him a job, he headed West.

By the way, for fans of both Michael Connelly and George Pelecanos, the duo will appear together in Chicago on May 27, at 12:30 p.m., at a Borders store, and later at 7:30 p.m. at a B&N store in Skokie (details on the link above).