Craig McDonald's writing career had already included awards for his journalism before he turned his talents to writing fiction. His debut novel, Head Games, featuring widowed crime writer Hector Lassiter—who also happens to be best friend to Ernest Hemingway—was nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, Gumshoe and Crimespree Magazine awards. Craig has also penned several nonfiction books of interviews with major crime writers and contributed to the New York Times nonfiction bestseller, Secrets of the Code.
Craig followed up his fiction debut with three (soon to be four) installments in the Lassiter series, but his latest release out this month is a standalone thriller, El Gavilan. The novel centers on the rape and murder of a Mexican-American woman that triggers a brutal chain of events and pits Police Chief Tell Lyon, a former California Border Patrol commander, against conservative hard-line Sheriff Able Hawk.
Craig's Bookmas offering is titled "Holmes for the Holidays":
We have a crime fiction Christmas tradition that started about three years ago after introducing our girls to the brilliant Granada Sherlock Holmes adaptations starring the late, great Jeremy Brett -- the actor the McDonald clan regards as The One True Holmes.
Some time in the run up to each Christmas, between all those re-viewings of Rankin-Bass, stop-motion chestnuts (Rudolph, The Year Without A Santa Claus and the like), we make a little room for a very particular Sherlock Holmes episode.
"The Blue Carbuncle," is one of two episodes with Brett that function as Christmas episodes (the other, "The Cardboard Box," comes at the tail end of the series; "Carbuncle" comes during the first season, when Brett is in finest form as The Great Detective).
"Carbuncle" is saturated in Dickensian and O. Henry Christmas touches: the Christmas goose actually moves to the center of the plot . . . A kindly old book collector parts with cherished volumes to buy gifts . . . The interactions of the principle recurring characters are among the most poignant.
Jeremy Brett's Holmes made quite an impact on our daughters, particularly our eldest, who has become quite the Sherlock fan and who is given to tenting her fingers in distinctly Brettish fashion from time-to-time.
We often drop back in to re-watch a Holmes episode here and there throughout the year, but Yule-time viewings of "The Blue Carbuncle" are a Christmas staple.
Favorite Charity:
The Ohio SPCA
P.O. Box 546
Grove City, OH 43123
(740) 420-2984
According to the Ohio SPCA: "Our emergency medical funds have been depleted. Your donation is needed now more than ever." Click here to donate.
© 2011 Craig McDonald, author of El Gavilan
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