In Reference to Murder

Another Sad Farewell

Another independent bookstore is closing its doors, as Stacey's, an 85-year-old store in San Francisco, joins the ranks of indies shuttered in the past year or so. Mystery author Cara Black posted in Dorothy-L that she has "the bittersweet honor of launching my new book Murder in the Latin Quarter at their last ever event. Ingrid Nystrom, Stacey's mystery maven, has run the brownbag lunchtime mystery author talks on Wednesdays for years. No doubt many folks here know her." You can catch Cara's reading at Stacey's today from 12:30 to 1:30 PT.

And Another One Bites the Dust

The Las Vegas Sun reported on yet another bookstore victim of the tanking economy. Cheesecake and Crime in Henderson, Nevada, which will close February 28. Although owners Pam and Lendall Mains started off their business 14 months ago by using all their savings and retirement cash to build the 2,300-square-foot space and generated an e-mail list of about 1,800 customers, they can no longer keep the store afloat. Even a last-ditch "bail-out" e-mail, asking for $100 donations to help save the store wasn't enough.

"We're not a big business," Pam said. "We had no big perks. No redecorating my office for a million dollars. None of that fun stuff." Local marketing rep and fan Bernice Davidson added, "The economy is putting her out of business because people are just afraid to spend money." Davidson attended her final book club meeting Monday night, but she's hesitant to say "final," and like the Mains, no doubt, is still hoping some financial angel will intercede.

The store will keep its web site for the time being so they can do special events.

Art Imitates Life or Vice Versa?

A popular French thriller writer on trial over illegal weapons sales to Angola admitted to receiving 300,000 euros from arms dealers, although he said he "only played a marginal role in the operation."  Paul-Loup Sulitzer is one of 42 people charged in the case of $790 million in arms sales to Angola during the country's civil war, which ended in 2002.

European actor Daniel Hoevels almost died on stage when he stabbed himself with what turned out to be a real knife. His character was supposed to be committing suicide, which came a few inches away from being true. The police investigation is apparently pointing more to a foul-up than foul play. Viennese police say they're not probing the possibility of attempted murder, even though press reports had speculated a "jealous rival" could have had a hand in Hoevels' injury.

The Murder Business

How are indie mystery bookstores faring in this train wreck of an economy and its holiday shopping season?

• Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont, PA, says store profits are down 1%. "It's not that sales are down," owner Mary Alice Gorman said. "It's that expenses have gone up—garbage removal, shipping, utilities, you name it." Gorman is "guardedly optimistic" about the holiday season, due in part to steady purchases of gift certificates and the hoped-for substantial traffic the day after Christmas due to the fact that every gift certificate redeemed that day comes with a free paperback. The store's top sellers right now are P.D. James's The Private Patient and Anne Perry's A Christmas Grace, as well as The Fallingwater Cookbook: Elsie Henderson's Recipes & Memories by Suzanne Martinson (Oakmont is only an hour away from the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house turned museum).
• At "M" Is for Mystery in San Mateo, CA, sales were down 12% through the end of November. To entice holiday shoppers, they're offering a 20% discount on most unsigned books. Orders over $100 receive an additional 10%, even though the store normally doesn't discount. One bright spot is brisk business with reproductions of early Agatha Christie novels that replicate the type, format and covers of first editions from the Christie family archive. Also, the store hosts 15-20 authors events per month which helps with over 50% of the books it sells which are shipped to customers in some 40 states and 15 foreign countries, almost all of which are signed books, owner Ed Kaufman noted. 
• At Booked for Murder in Madison, WI, owner Sara Barnes cut back on inventory, encouraging customers to place special orders. Sales this year are down by about a third, but Barnes remains optimistic. "I have high hopes for a successful holiday season, based on the practical, old-fashioned appeal of books as gifts that can be treasured, saved, shared," she said. "With such uncertainty all around us, it's nice to be able to give something non-ephemeral." (Hat tip to Shelf Awareness.)

In digital news, there are a couple of notes:

• Penguin Group US has launched Penguin 2.0, designed to offer a range of new digital and print-based products and services and enable readers to customize the publisher's content in new ways (i.e., adding personal dedication pages to books and allowing readers to access Penguin content from their iPhones and other web-enabled mobile devices).
• Barnes & Noble, which has resisted entering the digital book content world, signaled a bit of change by moving longtime executive Mike Ferrari into the new position of director of digital content. B&N has already began selling digital magazines on the their website.
  
  

And one wistful note about the state of book buying and reading in the U.S. from Dave Rosenthal of the Baltimore Sun's book blog who compared it to Europe during a recent visit to Paris. "I was most struck by the rich culture of reading. We stayed in the Latin Quarter, home of the Sorbonne, and there was a bookstore on almost every block....It was a joy to see so many stores devoted to reading—and so many people poring over the shelves. How did we lose that here in the United States?"

Crimes Are Us

From the true crime department, come some recent interesting stories of note:

The New York Times reported on how internet attacks are becoming more potent. They singled out distributed denial of service (D.D.O.S) attacks, routinely used during political and military conflicts such as in Estonia in 2007 during a political fight with Russia, and in the Georgian-Russian war last summer. Such attacks are also being used in blackmail schemes and political conflicts, as well as for general malicious mischief.

DNA is now being used to assist in solving property crimes. Once reserved mostly for violent cases such as rape and murder, genetic testing is now much cheaper and faster than when the technology was new. The evidence can include almost any biological material left at a crime scene: saliva taken from food, skin cells from the steering wheel of a stolen car, drops of blood from a thief who got cut on a window pane.

The Washington Post profiled David R. Fowler, Maryland's chief medical examiner, whose lab is one of the busiest in the country with more than 4,000 autopsies conducted annually. Fowler said he is amused at the public perception fueled by the 6 o'clock news. "They always say,'The body has been sent to the medical examiner to determine the exact cause of death.'"  Some cases are obvious -- gunshot and stab wounds, for example -- but more often pathologists must call on their experience and their 13 years of medical training, consult with police and peers, and then make what is essentially a judgment call. And they must do so with the expectation that they'll have to defend it in court.

This year, the Supreme Court will tackle a DNA issue involving a convict seeking new tests he thinks could exonerate him, in a case pitting the administration of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin against a Republican-appointed judge. Some in law enforcement fear that federal courts could be flooded with lawsuits if the Supreme Court upheld April's appeals court ruling in the convict's case. "A blanket right to post-conviction DNA testing would be a dangerous prospect," said Chris Asplen, former director of the National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence and a former prosecutor. He said any Supreme Court ruling should be limited and "highly qualified." 

A New Lease on Life

In this day and age of economic madness, it seems almost hard to believe that anyone would be crazy enough to take on an independent bookstore. But Kirk Pasich and Pam Woods, who are "big book lovers," did just that by buying the Mystery Bookstore in Los Angeles. They recently celebrated their new ownership with a day-long open house and visits by four mystery authors, Ona Russell, Dorothy Howell, Larry Karp and Katharine Neville.

Woods, who describes herself as "a recovering lawyer," said that "We love the idea of continuing an independent book store with ties to our local community, where we live and our children have grown up and are growing up." Los Angeles without a mystery bookstore would be unthinkable, Woods added, but she and Pasich plan to define "mystery bookstore" widely. "We have a wide range of mysteries, but also feature children's books, pop-up books, suspense, action and thriller books and a wide range of fiction that might fall outside of the mystery label but for some mystery elements."

Law & Disorder

Now that it's all over except for the proverbial shouting, the first day of the post-election season lands with a thud back into reality. It was known all along, of course, that whichever candidate from the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign ended up the eventual winner was going to face extraordinarily tough economic times.

With every possible special-interest group crying out in varying degrees of financial pain, it's easy to overlook how the trickle-down effect will have an impact on local governments, including law enforcement. Recent news articles have written about budget cuts facing the NYPD, where Mayor Bloomberg abruptly canceled the new class of police officers, or in Palm Bay where police may stop respond to certain types of lower-degree crimes, or in Des Moines, where a popular program that matches officers and neighborhood leaders to fight crime before it festers may have to be axed. Since crime rates tend to increase when economic times are bad and unemployment is higher, it's ironic that cuts in police forces come when the need for officers is most critical.

Meanwhile, Law and Order, now starting its 19th season, is hopeful it can beat the record of legendary TV show Gunsmoke, which lasted for 20 seasons. L&O Star Sam Waterston said, "The only reason for me to care about whether this how lasts or not is the absurd goal of beating 'Gunsmoke,' and that's too much fun as an idea to want it to be defeated by the fact that there's a temporary dip in the ratings here and there."

It's too bad life can't imitate art and have a small staff of detectives and attorneys wrap up crimes in under and hour--maybe then we wouldn't need as many police officers. But then, with the millions of dollars a typical TV episode costs times 22 episodes on average per year, that would pay for a lot of protection.

The Rich Get Richer...

...and the poor "little" bookstores get poorer, it seems, at least if a new publishing trend becomes pervasive. JB Dickey, owner of the Seattle Mystery Bookshop, posted on the store's blog the other day about a publisher which sent notices to the effect they would "offer" one of their bestselling mystery authors for book signings to shops that could guarantee 100 pre-sold copies of the author's new hardcover by January 17th.

Of course, the news was doubly painful to Dickey, since he helped launch the author's career and has hosted her for each book launch since, but the bottom line is, in Dickey's words, "to meet this level, every other shop - independent mystery or not...will have to cannibalize the sales of other shops to meet the artificially set minimum. For us to reach the 100 book level, we'd have to steal customers from all the other shops trying to meet the 100. That's undemocratic. That's bush-league and we won't play the game."

We're in tough economic times, sure, and just about every component of the book publishing industry is going to feel the pinch, but Dickey comes up with some alternative marketing strategies that would be more a win-win for everyone and give all booksellers the same opportunity to get identically signed copies without giving one shop the advantage:

• Send the author to the bindery to sign all copies
• Bring the author to the publicity office to sign all ordered copies
• Send them to one shop and have other shops send their stock to that one shop to act as a signing depot. 

I'm sure that the publisher and author in question have the very best intentions, and although this may have sounded like a good revenue-booster, sometimes these restrictive and exclusive ploys can have a way of coming back to haunt you in the end. In the words of that famous philosopher Rodney King, "Can't we all just get along?"

You Say Po-TAY-to, I say Po-TAH-to

Crime Beat from South Africa is devoting several weeks of columns to a discussion of the "crime fiction" vs. "thriller" debate when it comes to labeling the genre. In the first installment, it's pointed out that the term "crime fiction" may be less appealing to readers as crime becomes a more intrusive and very real element in society. Therefore, it's thought, just rebrand the books as thrillers and folks who are turned off by the word "crime" will beat a path to the bookseller door.

That might be something that doesn't necessarily translate globally and may be more localized, as in this case, to areas like southern Africa where crime fiction sales have been on the decline (even as true crime statistics have been on the rise). In the second article, however, it's noted that in the UK, crime and thriller fiction has seen a 70% increase since 2001 and new startups like Black Star Crime obviously have no compunction whatsoever about using the term "crime." But even as one executive with publisher Umuzi (an imprint of Random House South Africa) feels there is growing unease about the term "crime fiction" (oooh, that word), Umuzi publisher Annari van der Merwe is more cautious. "Thriller frightens me off more than crime novel," she says. "Maybe it is the result of my association of the word with movies that frighten me to the point where I can’t bear watching them."

"Noir" usually seems to have less schizophrenia in its labeling (even if schizophrenia itself would be welcome as a plotline), although some may have difficulties separating "noir" from the "mere hard-boiled." Fordham University professor Leonard Cassuto's new book, Hard-Boiled Sentimentality, probably helps muddy the waters there, as despite its title, it purports to be an intellectual history of noir fiction and goes so far as to make a case for a connection between crime fiction and 19th century sentimental novels.

Po-TAY-TAH-To, anyone?

Speaking of noir, who knew that Chief Justice John G. Roberts was a writer of the genre? The DC Dictra recently pointed out that the start of a dissent written by Chief Justice Roberts could be read quite nicely, thank you, as the start of a noir story, to wit:

North Philly, May 4, 2001. Officer Sean Devlin, Narcotics Strike Force, was working the morning shift. Undercover surveillance. The neighborhood? Tough as a three-dollar steak. Devlin knew. Five years on the beat, nine months with the Strike Force. He’d made fifteen, maybe twenty drug busts in the neighborhood.

Devlin spotted him: a lone man in the corner. Another approached. Quick exchange of words. Cash handed over; small objects handed back. Each man then quickly on his own way. Devlin knew the guy wasn’t buying bus tokens. He radioed a description and Officer Stein picked up the buyer. Sure enough: Three bags of crack in the guy’s pocket. Head downtown and book him. Just another day at the office.

Coming soon to the NYT Bestseller list? It's not entirely without precedent -- Herbert Brown, elected to the New York Supreme Court in 1986, has published a couple of novels and plays.

In a State

The Massachusetts House of Representatives passed a bill naming Moby Dick the state's official "epic novel," which was actually a compromise after some lawmakers questioned Rep. Christopher Speranzo's proposal to so dub Herman Melville's 1851 classic, given the state's diverse literary history. (Cory Atkins, a Concord representative, was appalled by the choice, indicating that her district has "more authors per square mile than any other. What about Louisa May Alcott? What about Hawthorne? How am I going to face my constituents?")

So I got to wondering what choices could be made for official state crime fiction novels. How about In the Electric Mist With the Confederate Dead by James Lee Burke for Louisiana (or almost anything else in the Dave Robicheaux series, for that matter)? Terror Town by Stuart Kaminsky for Illinois? The Deep Blue Goodbye by John D. MacDonald for Florida? Baltimore Blues by Laura Lippman for Maryland? The Maltese Falcon for California?

Any nominees for your state?