CRIME IN THE LAND OF THE KIWI AND THE PUKEKO

Craig Sisterson, staunch supporter of New Zealand-written crime fiction, has posted a wonderfully tempting plea on his website, KiwiCrime.

He asks, "Why don't Kiwi readers buy (more) Kiwi crime fiction?" -- and goes on to say that he would love to get your feedback and thoughts on his post.  It is quite a commentary in itself, with links to an article he wrote for Book Notes on possible reasons for the historic lack of support for locally-written crime fiction, as well as to excellent recent articles by Mark Broatch and Philip Matthews that elaborate on some of those points.

There are comments aplenty already, from authors as well as readers. Add to them, as you will, but in the meantime, enjoy.

Review of A FURNACE AFLOAT

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Bruce Mahalski, a fan of books about true maritime ordeals, has sent in a noteworthy review of a noteworthy book:  A Furnace Afloat by Joe Jackson.

On the morning of Thursday, May 3rd, 1866, the clipper ship Hornet, was struggling through the doldrums a thousand miles west of the Galapagos Islands when an accident in the hold ignited a barrel of varnish. Soon the whole ship, whose cargo included 20,000 gallons of kerosene, was engulfed in flame. The crew and their two passengers, Samuel and Henry Ferguson – the sons of a wealthy East Coast merchant banker – escaped into the three ship’s boats with only ten days of food and twelve gallons of water to support the 31 men.

After more than 40 days adrift the fourteen starving dehydrated men on the sole surviving boat were about to start drawing straws when they reached Hawaii after an epic journey across the liquid desert of the North Pacific. They had survived the ocean, the heat, starvation, illness, madness and near mutiny. A young writer who called himself Mark Twain was on hand to bear testament to their ordeal in the newspapers of the day.

Mr Jackson has written a rich and compelling narrative which ranks right up there with the very best accounts of shipwreck survival literature. Meticulously researched, written and presented the story draws comparison with other extreme open boat odysseys such at Captain Bligh’s epic 1789 voyage after the Bounty mutiny (3618 miles in 41 days) and the survivors of the Essex, two of whose boats travelled over 4500 miles in 95 days in 1820 after their ship was sunk by a whale.

Without firsthand experience is all but impossible to imagine the suffering endured by the survivors but Jackson does make you feel like you are right there in the boat. You can almost smell the salt and hear the tubercular rattle of Samuel Ferguson’s failing lungs and the whispers of the crew as they plan the details of his death and consumption.

Bruce concludes by saying that A Furnace Afloat is a gripping highly readable story for anyone interested in the human condition.

KILLER YEAR

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It's a neat idea. Thirteen bestselling thriller and crime writers adopted a group of promising new writers, and mentored them.  Then they chose thirteen of the best short stories that emerged from this nurturing, and St Martin's published them as a book.

A fascinating introduction by writer M.J. Rose explains the background, with an outline of the depressing publishing scene of 2007 (she must have had a conniption fit as it evolved over 2008 etc.).  Very pertinently, she says, "With margins low, distribution costs rocketing, limited or no marketing budgets for all but the top 15 percent of titles, and little major media interest in all but the biggest authors, book sales drop a little more every year and fewer and fewer authors can live off their fiction efforts."  Even those biggest authors are feeling the pinch, she elaborates, and nowadays find their job "is as much about selling as it is about writing." 

Because of the pressure, promising debut writers are being left further and further behind. So, in the fall of 2004, a bunch of kindhearted veterans decided to do something about it.  At Bouchercon, the big mystery and suspense book conference, they formed a club called International Thriller Writers (not international enough to be interested in New Zealand, alas), to create a supportive community.  ITW offered to mentor a selection of newbies, and so "the Class of '07" resulted, along with this book.

In most cases, each new writer's story is introduced by an established writer, who lauds it in hyperbolic terms.  Again, a neat idea.  James Rollins recommends the "razor-sharp prose" of Brett Battles's "Perfect Gentleman" and Lee Child writes that J.T. Ellison's "Prodigal Me" is "a classic short, with a great payoff twist in the final paragraphs."

Tess Gerritson calls Patry Francis ("The Only Word I Know in Spanish") "a writer worth my absolute attention."  Jeffery Deaver says that Jason Pinter ("The Point Guard") "is a terrific young talent."  And so forth and so on.

The participating writers worked hard to make this idea a success.  Promotion included a Killer Year blog and a website (now defunct).  A chapbook was created and mass mailed to a slew of independent bookstores, and Killer Year panels were set up at various book conferences.  This book, as well as the concept, got major press coverage.  Many radio interviews were made, and feature articles were published.

Having read all this, I delved into the stories themselves with lively interest, as in the past the genre thrived on new voices, and there is no reason to believe the rule does not still hold.  Though a couple of the stories got the "what the hell was that about?" reaction from me, and a couple more were too predictable, the collection passed an entertaining few hours.  Jeffery Deaver would make a great critic -- Jason Pinter's story is absolutely stunning.  Others that stand out are "Slice of Pie" by Bill Cameron, "One Serving of Bad Luck" by Sean Chercover, "The Only Word I Know in Spanish" by Patry Francis, and "The Crime of My Life" by Gregg Olsen.

But what did it do for the writers?  As I said, the Killer Year website is down.  The exercise was successful enough to be repeated for a couple of years, but there were no follow-up books.  I have to confess that the debut authors' names are unfamiliar to me -- despite the best of intentions, Jeffery Deaver and Lee Child have no competitors here, though I notice that all the participants I googled have their own websites, and are as assiduous as ever in promoting their work. One at least has taken advantage of the kindle service, and has a long extract available free.

Everyone has done his or her best.  That nothing tremendous has come out of it yet is indeed a commentary on the current parlous publishing scene.  But I feel faith that at least one of these writers will become a Name, in the end.

E-BOOK BUZZ FROM THE FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR

Publishers Lunch features a gossipy and interesting report on the Frankfurt Book Fair, which is bustling and busy, with major deals being struck, helped along by glorious weather.

One comment caught my eye, reminding me of my recent note that kindle sales were catching up with hardback sales, or even overtaking them, even with very recently launched books.  Google's Tom Turvey questioned four publishing executives on the transition to e-reading, and CEO of HarperCollins, Brian Murray agreed that there has been "a sea change in the past few months," where hardcover sales of bestsellers are lagging behind ebook sales.

Questioned on the niggly problem of ebook royalties, he thought that "25 percent is fair and appropriate right now" for the author's cut, and he doesn't "see anything on the horizon that makes me think that's going to change."

The really startling comment came from Bloomsbury executive Evan Schnittman, who added, "the real royalty rates are much higher" once you factor in unearned advances.

E-book royalties don't count against the original advance, even if the ebooks are outselling the print edition?  That's news to me.

NAVAL SURGEONS' JOURNALS REVEAL PERIL OF LIFE AT SEA

Blood letting, blistering, and burying to the neck in sand were some of the treatments used ­ with varying degrees of success ­ by surgeons of Britain’s Royal Navy to treat patients from the late 1700s to the late 1800s, as government records released Friday show.

Britain’s National Archives has cataloged and made available to the public journals and diaries from surgeons who served on ships and in shore installations from 1793 to 1880. The archive represents “probably the most significant collection of records for the study of health and medicine at sea for the 19th century,” said Bruno Pappalardo, naval records specialist at the National Archives.

Rum was the treatment of choice aboard HMS Arab during a voyage to the West Indies in 1799 and 1800. A surgeon writes that “application of rum” to the area of a scorpion or centipede bite helps prevent paralysis. The same surgeon mixed rum with oil to treat a tarantula bite.
Aboard HMS Princess Royal in 1801, tobacco was thought to have curative properties. A man who had fallen overboard and was submerged for 12 minutes was brought back aboard the Princess Royal with the appearance of a corpse, surgeon Ben Lara wrote. The victim was dried and warmed by hot water bottles and then tobacco smoke was pumped into his lungs through a tube. After almost an hour of treatment, a pulse was detected and the man lived, according to the journal....

Read more.

PROFIT-MAKING LIBRARIES?

Is it possible for a public library to make money? 

When I was a child, my mother helped out at a private library that definitely was aimed at making a profit, albeit a small one.  It was sited in a small suburban shopfront, and was stocked with popular paperbacks, mostly romances.  The mainly elderly female clientele hired books for a small fee, and were given an even smaller refund when the book was returned, which was a deposit on the fee for the next book taken out.  It didn't last long as a commercial venture, disappearing when a branch of the public library was set up in the same shopping centre, attracting the public with free book loans and a much wider range of literature.

I witnessed a similar venture being set up in another town, about thirty years later, also in a small shopping centre with no public library branch.  The speculator hired the venue, bought in many boxes of magazines and pulp romances, and set up shop.  Her system was a little different.  You bought the book, just as in any other secondhand bookshop, and when you returned the book, you were given a slip that served as a deposit on the next book you "bought."

I think the shop lasted about five months.  This time, the public library was not a factor.  What felled this venture was the quality of the offering.  If you want to look something up, or borrow a book on some esoteric topic, you don't go to a little profitmaking library, because it is so highly unlikely to hold the book you need. 

It is an accepted fact that a public library is a recipient of public funds, not an earner.  In New Zealand, there are various methods of helping out the budget, such as interloan fees, reserve fees, late return fees, and borrowing fees for CDs, DVDs, and bestsellers.  But these don't even start to get the balance sheet into the black.

Yet, David Streitfield reports in the New York Times that a private company in Maryland, called Library Systems & Services, has taken over public libraries in ailing cities in California, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas, growing into the country's fifth-largest library system.

Their aim is to make a profit themselves, while at the same time removing a financial burden from the city.  The question is, how are they going to do it?

The librarians, for obvious reasons, are worried.  The company asserts that libraries are often creaky antiquated organizations with inefficient service.  "Our" librarians are going to be made to work, they aver -- which presumably means that the era of the librarian who becomes so interested in your research project that s/he devotes thought and time to providing active help is over.  There just won't be time for that kind of thing.   There are also dire suspicions that they are going to "clean out" under-used material. 

Patrons are even more alarmed, to the extent of writing petitions.  Publicly owned libraries are a cornerstone of democracy, they say.   Whether they will succeed in fighting the juggernaut remains to be seen.

CRISIS: One Central Bank Governor & the Global Financial Collapse

"I told those assembled that we thought the crisis had caused the biggest destruction of global wealth -- albeit some unrealised -- in human history."

-- Alan Bollard, Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, remembering a speech made at a summit, 27 February 2009.

New Zealand is a small country -- so small that membership of the great G-20 Group is impossible, and during G-20 summits our political and economic leaders are dependent on Australia for the to-and-fro of the state of the financial world. It was not impossible, however, for the Governor of our Reserve Bank to observe the unfolding of the near total collapse of the world economy, as Alan Bollard confides in this 203-page account of what he experienced during that tsunami time in modern history.

There was a Launch.  I went to it.  It was in the museum of the Reserve Bank, complete with interactive displays. 

The invitation said "business attire.'

I wore the nearest approximation thereof in my wardrobe, and have never seen more Suits at once in my life.  For a person who knows nothing about economic science (and wouldn't even know the difference between the Reserve Bank and the Treasury) it could have been intimidating.  I enjoyed myself mightily, however -- which was not a guarantee of understanding the book, believe me.  Nevertheless, I bought it.  And coaxed the Governor into signing it.

And I found it unput-down-able.  It is an amazing book, making headlines that were terrifying and unsettling at the time comprehensible now.  It is also remarkably intimate.  Co-writer Sarah Gaitanos, orchestrator of the book ("There's a fascinating book in there," she informed the Governor after switching off the digital recorder), is a gifted oral historian who encouraged Alan Bollard to relax and "speak" in his most confiding, most humanly understandable, voice.  Reading it, I found it surprisingly easy to identify with this remote figure, and see the crisis in a different way.

Because of this unexpected empathy, not just does the reader learn about the horrifying hour-to-hour unfolding of the economic crisis, but is given a historic insight into the daily life of one of the front-seat observers.  Thus, we are given the most unusual privilege of knowing that Alan Bollard sneaked away from a particularly taxing summit in Auckland -- to watch cricket.

"I admit to an ulterior motive," he confesses.  "Back in Wellington I headed for the stadium where I was just in time to catch the end of the New Zealand 20:20 cricket game against India."  New Zealand (he says "we") "improbably won off the last ball of the match."

He freely goes on to say that it "was a great emotional release."

Would Greenspan or Summers be as candid?

Somehow, I doubt it.  This book is unique.  American readers, I highly recommend that you buy this book and take advantage of a unique peephole into recent history.  The book was published by Auckland University Press:

HANIF KUREISHI WINS PINTER LITERARY PRIZE

The BBC reports that a novelist -- Hanif Kureishi -- has been awarded the prize that was set up in honor of a playwright -- Harold Pinter.  The award, worth one thousand pounds, is given to a British writer who casts an "unflinching, unswerving" gaze upon the world.

Pinter's widow, Lady Antonia Fraser, helped judge the prize, and commended the winner because he "courageously and irreverently speaks the truth about life in our multicultural world, beyond any platitudes of political correctness."

Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho will receive the international writer of courage prize, which is awarded to writers persecuted for their beliefs.

PARADOX and INCEPTION

Yesterday, we went to a movie -- INCEPTION -- amazing!  Highly recommended.  The effects are mind-bending, as is the plot.  You will come away thinking deeply about reality, and what it is.

Somewhat appropriately, a friend sent me one of those internet posts that go around the world and past many uncomprehending computers -- but which in this case also called in one's sense of reality.

First, it introduced a new word. Paraprosdokian  It is so new, it is not in any dictionaries.  But it is in Wikipedia.  It is easier for me if I think of it as "paradoxian."

Anyway, here is an extract to the post, which will make you think about how follow-up sentences can surprise -- by their sheer paradoxicality ...

A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax

� I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.

� Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

� I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.

And isn't my illustration of a pencil-gun appropriate?  The pencil is mightier than the gun, as they say.

It's an artwork another friend gave me.

TRUE CRIME

I recently received an interesting email from a fan of True Crime stories.  This was Todd Jensen, who wrote:


Hi Joan,


I recently discovered your blog. Considering that I work with forensiccolleges.net I spend a lot of time on the Internet browsing blogs, and I must say that yours has caught my attention. Coincidentally, we recently published an article entitled (10 Books About Real World Crimes) that I believe would draw considerable interest from your readers. If you are interested in sharing with them, then feel free to do so. Here's the link for your convenience:  TEN BOOKS ABOUT TRUE CRIMES.



It is certainly a fascinating topic.  I feel as if true crime books would develop quite a fan base if they were easier to catalogue and sell.  I have published one myself -- In the Wake of Madness, the truly bloodcurdling story of a whaling captain who was also a serial killer.  The descriptions of the slow and brutal murder of one of his crew -- written by other members of the crew, who stood by helplessly and watched -- were particularly terrible.  As I said to my editor at the time, I used to wake up from heart-pounding nightmares while I was researching and writing the yarn. When I looked for it in bookshops, though, once it had left the "new books" table, it was very hard to find, slotted in a bottom shelf in the nonfiction area.  It's the same in libraries -- there is no easy category for true crime.  The obvious answer is to have a special true crime section immediately following mystery novels.


Todd's site has a list of favorite true crime books, to which a friend -- also a fan of the much neglected genre -- would add Ben MacIntyre's The Napoleon of Crime: the Life and Times of Adam Worth, the Real Moriarty.  (Moriarty, for those of you who are too young to know, was the nemesis of Sherlock Holmes -- until Arthur Conan Doyle resusciated the hero, in response to public outcry.)


My own addition would be Eric Ambler's The Ability to Kill, a collection of yarns that range from rousing and interesting accounts of such classic villains as Jack the Ripper and Burke & Hare, to more modern candidates for notoriety, James Hanratty and Finch & Tregoff.