Cheryl Crane, IMITATION OF DEATH: Hollywood Mystery

Cheryl Crane is almost a distraction from her own books. Daughter of classic actress Lana Turner and actor-restaurateur Josef Stephen Crane, she and her mother also endured a murder trial that took over the news for a long time.

But Crane's writing is pure traditional mystery work, and a satisfying read. IMITATION OF DEATH is the second in her series featuring Hollywood Realtor Nikki Harper, whose famous actress mother can be quite a distraction from both real estate sales and accidental amateur sleuthing. Harper is sensible, savvy, and manages to keep an affectionate partnership with her mother, through all the complications of a job that takes her into the homes of the very wealthy, and her detective efforts that also take her to homes of blue-collar immigrant workers. Of course, there are also the complications that come with her mother Victoria, and Victoria's devoted assistants, like the loyal and handsome Amondo, who just may be more than an ordinary bodyguard. When murder takes place in the adjoining back yard (during a party, of course!), Nikki can't help getting drawn in to protect people she cares about:

By the time Amondo returned with a pair of shoes for Nikki (Bruno Magli vintage black flats, which went fabulously with her sweats and tee) the police had arrived in full force. The alley was full: black-and-white Beverly Hills precinct cars, two ambulances, and several unmarked police cars. Nikki sent Amondo back to the house to retrieve her cell phone and take her dogs out while she remained to answer the police officers' questions ... without giving up any information on Jorge. She needed to talk to him, first. Better yet, she needed to see him. But first, she had to deal with this mess.

Standing up for the Mexican Americans who are essential members of her mother's household, investigating an apparent frame job, and dodging danger, Nikki is an alluring protagonist whose sense of fashion, sense of humor, and sense of what's gone awry are all finely tuned.

And best of all, this series is maturing into a delicious portrait of healthy mother–daughter dynamics, in spite of the crime fiction atmosphere. I enjoy the deftly sketched moments like this one: "Nikki sighed, not quite comfortable with the emotion she heard in her mother's voice. It seemed as if she'd spent half her life trying to get Victoria's attention, but that spotlight, when she found it, was always too intense." Most of the time, these thoughtful asides fit quite nicely with the well-plotted crime-solving that Nikki pursues -- and the friendly affections that Crane portrays serve as a good counterweight to the grim reality of untimely death and racial profiling that Nikki witnesses.

As with Crane's first Nikki Harper novel, The Bad Always Die Twice, I picked up the book because I couldn't resist seeing what Crane would reveal about "her" Hollywood. And then, I just plain fell for the good-hearted characters and the clever twists of plot. Here's an enjoyable book for the bedside table that won't send you into the dark front rooms with a flashlight to check the locks -- but may send you to the kitchen to fix a modest midnight snack, so you can stay up and enjoy a few more chapters. At least, that's how it works at my house -- and at Nikki's!

Calendar Alert: Guest Posts and Author Event

October is just a few rainstorms away, and the mountain foliage is gorgeous here in Vermont. There's a lot to celebrate. Here at the blog, two guest authors next week enliven the stream:

*Monday October 1, Donna Fletcher Crow, on "a sense of place" in writing mysteries.
*Friday October 5, Carole Shmurak, on academic sleuths.

Both are intriguing, and I'm excited to share them. A reminder to guests: If you put your e-mail into the sign-up slot, you'll automatically get each post from the blog, landing in your e-mail. Great way to stay current ...

Also coming up in October: Yours truly will commute to the Brattleboro Literary Festival (Oct. 12-14) while the Boss holds the fort. I've got great companions for the weekend: http://vermontbookshelf.blogspot.com

From Oct. 13 to Oct. 20, we're celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Dilys Award by reviewing a batch of award winners -- this is given by IMBA, the Independent Mystery Booksellers Assocation, each year to the book that the members have most enjoyed selling. We're especially honoring S.J. Rozan's book Ghost Hero this year, and we'll be giving away two signed copies of the book at our event for Archer Mayor on Oct. 20.

Yes, on October 20 at 2 pm, Kingdom Books welcomes Archer Mayor and his 23rd Joe Gunther book, PARADISE CITY (watch for the review as we get a bit close to the date). Please mark your calendar -- we'd love to have you join us.

Julia Keller, A KILLING IN THE HILLS: West Virginia Crime Fiction, Top Notch

When the front cover of a book has a blurb from Scott Turow, who can resist looking inside it? And when it starts as solidly as Julia Keller's first work of crime fiction, A KILLING IN THE HILLS, I'm glad to get lost in the pages. Last but not least, I love the cover -- my one visit to West Virginia convinced me it was nothing at all like my home state of Vermont, but the cover might as well be painted from a view near my own ridge.

So much for the starters. The good news is, every chapter of A KILLING IN THE HILLS is active, paced for taut suspense, highly believable, and worth the read. My only quarrel with the book was its last page, which I thought was too soft for a book this crisp and fierce and good. Small quarrel.

Bell Elkins, divorced with a teenaged daughter, holds the job of prosecutor in Acker's Gap, West Virginia. Like most small towns along the coasts of America (and increasingly, the heartland towns are getting the same thing), Acker's Gap is facing drug problems that stun the law enforcement professionals, attract the teens, and feed the wallets of the crude and manipulative. Bell's been aggressively working against the organized drug marketers that are overrunning her region -- struggling to cut off the dealers, and never even close to who's behind the many arms of evil.

The drawback, for this driven and tough-minded professional, is that she's spending so many hours at her job that her own daughter finds it easy to feel neglected by a mom who puts her job first. As the book opens, Carla's playing with her food at the diner where she's supposed to meet her mother -- who is, of course, late again. And the killing this teen witnesses is so sickening and shocking, it almost knocks her back onto her mother's side of things. Almost.

Meanwhile, the killer is having a blast.

Chill was flying high. He felt like he did after sex: nerved up, wound tight, polished to a high gloss. Some men got sleepy. Not Chill. He got antsy.

He'd just killed three people. And gotten away clean. ... Nobody touched him. Nobody ever would.

Unexpectedly, an unrelated case puts Bell into danger as she follows up on depositions, trying to decide whether to charge a mentally handicapped young man with murder in the death of his playmate. On her way back down a mountainside of hairpin turns, nursing her Explorer carefully along the narrow road, she reaches the most challenging curve and slows for it:

Without moving her head, her eyes flicked up to check the rearview mirror. Her heart gave a panicky lurch.

There was now a car right behind her. What the h---? she thought. She checked the mirror again. No mistake. The car wasn't slowing down. It seemed, in fact, to be speeding up. And it was right on track to smash into the back of the Explorer, just as Bell's momentum slung her into the nastiest curve on the mountain.

The gap between Bell and her daughter will plunge both of them into even more danger, as the novel deepens, always sustaining its powerful pace.

Julia Keller won a Pulitzer Prize during her journalism career, for a three-part series that she wrote for the Chicago Tribune. Although A KILLING IN THE HILLS is her first mystery, her narrative skills and sense of pace are already well developed. This book goes on the re-read shelf, to be savored again; I'm looking forward to Keller's future books, too. Check her website (pretty basic, so far) at http://www.juliakeller.net.

John Knauf, THE ROPEWALK: Suspense in a Maine Winter

There is no place quite as empty as a school over vacation  -- especially when you believe you are the only one in the building. History teacher Egan Drummond, divorced and accustomed to being alone, chooses to stay in an old rope factory-turned-boarding school on the Maine coast during the bitter weather of Christmas break, to push forward in the research that he thinks will finally make his name in his field.

But all too soon, Drummond finds he is sharing the building with another teacher, Margaret, and her strange young daughter. And Margaret insists there is at least one more person on hand as well, tracking the night-time corridors and trying to get into her living quarters.

Skeptical but willing to play the resourceful man on scene, Drummond attempts to find out what's going on -- and swiftly discovers he is way over his head, historically, mythologically, and in terms of courageous and heroic expectations. (Flag for those whose interests focus on Native American history and beliefs: THE ROPEWALK includes a generous amount of material involving the Abenaki.)

This is an author-published book of nearly 500 pages, and I suspect a mainstream publisher would have cut it by 25 percent. The plot would have moved faster, and the tension perhaps would have held at a higher pitch. Yet the book is highly suspenseful as it is, and after two readings (hey, I couldn't decide about it ... it happens), I think the length does the job well: The tale is tautly spun, the character reactions as realistic as they are disturbing, and the paranormal complications all too believable, considering the dark aspects of local history and prehistory that Drummund investigates.

In spite of the term "investigates," this is far from a detection novel -- the dark force can't be said to be criminal, although it is powerful and frightening. If I kept a Stephen King collection, I'd shelve THE ROPEWALK on the next shelf.

The book has already picked up an Honorable Mention from the New England Book Festival and another at the New York Book Festival, and if paranormal horror in a highly credible northern New England setting is your niche, find a copy (or two: one to hold in pristine condition, the other to re-read, thumb back and forth in, ponder, as I did with mine). As with many other author-published efforts, THE ROPEWALK leaves me with double strands of curiosity: wondering what would have become of it had the author persisted with a formal publisher and top-notch editor; and wondering what the next novel from Connecticut author and esssayist John Knauf will be like. I'll certainly want to read it.

Laurie R. King, GARMENT OF SHADOWS: A Morroccan Adventure

GARMENT OF SHADOWS is the 12th in the series that Laurie R. King offers featuring Sherlock Holmes and his late-in-life wife Mary Russell. The book is a good read as an adventure, with voices that alternate between Russell -- King's principal protagonist -- and Holmes. Evoking the postwar feel of 1924 (with a second war yet to materialize), it takes place entirely in the "exotic" atmosphere of Morocco. At the time, the mountains and deserts and bustling cities of the relatively small Islamic nation were being contested for possession as a colony by both France and Spain (which is just across the Straits of Gibraltar from Morocco). In King's deft hands, the roles of tribal (native Moroccan; Berber and other) conflict are also painted into the picture, with leaders whose descent from the prophet Mohammed could be documented and recognized.

For series readers, the plot follows smoothly from Russell and Holmes's adventures in Palestine, and brings back some compelling characters, as well as the international intrigue that often brushes against the famous detective's life because of his brother Mycroft's service to England. And the opening premise of the book is intriguing: Russell has suffered a severe head injury and doesn't even know her name, let alone her role with the world's most famous detective. Her path toward reconnecting with Holmes is fraught with peril, and she doesn't have any idea why she's being threatened. But she knows, in the way that physical training remains in the body, how to protect herself with hurled missiles, deftly twisted knives, and quick lies.

I think the book is best read as a political adventure, and the abundance of recent novels featuring this time period (crime fiction from Charles Todd and Jacqueline Winspear; postwar recovery novels by Pat Barker) prepares many readers to enter the narrative with perspective and excitement. Descriptions of Moroccan locales abound, including charming ones of marketplaces as Russell attempts to find her way and her memories:

I came to a more lively quarter with open shops. Men sat in some, all wearing the same calf-length, rough-spun robes but occasionally layered with a heavier burnoose. They wore a variety of head-coverings: Some had loosely wrapped lengths of cloth, others wore snug turbans that revealed the crowns of their heads and a single thin plait, some had the rigid caps called tarboosh or fez. The women picking over displays of onions and greens were for the most part veiled, although some went freely bare-faced. They all haggled: over the cost of lemons, the measure of olives, the quality of tin cups. Colourful displays of garments and tools spilt onto the street.

But Russell-without-memories soon questions her own automatic actions of self-preservation: "First an acrobat, now a pick-pocket. Had I escaped from some traveling circus?"

I found the story enjoyable, and the complications and twists to be startling, with a denouement that takes argument over motivations through several layers of complexity and doubt. There's no question that this is a dandy adventure in a little-known country, and fun to read. Readers may also enjoy (as I do!) the many photos that King provides of Morocco within her blog and website, and especially her Pinterest board: http://www.laurierking.com.

On the other hand, there are two aspects I expected that aren't really in this book. One is the Holmes persona and themes; it would be hard to find any moment in the story that could raise a spirited argument among today's Baker Street Irregulars, for instance, because there is almost nothing that connects to the Sherlock Holmes of A. Conan Doyle's stories. Holmes in fact pursues almost no detection, and what Russell does is mostly dependent on secondary characters who show her what she needs to know or discover. It seems a pity to have abandoned the intrigue of detection, for the sake of the political maneuverings that add up to the "garment of shadows" of the title.

The second gap is the more serious for me, and will probably keep the book off my "keep this to re-read" shelf: There is very little depth of character to Russell here, and her struggles that King has portrayed so well in other titles of the series -- around being a woman in a man's world, defending her academic training, being a Jewish woman in a period of blatant anti-Semitism, working out the issues of a May-November marriage -- have vanished. The story remains on the surface, a travelogue with risks and escapes, rarely with inner conflict and certainly without character growth.

I know Laurie R. King can build more compelling books than this one; I hope her next, which is also in this series, will dip more deeply and give us more of the worthwhile struggle that takes a story into our own layers of inner questions and blossoming strengths.

Party! Party! And Free Books!!!

Kingdom Books is excited to join other members of IMBA, the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association, in celebrating Mystery Week this year, as well as honoring crime fiction author S.J.Rozan and her award-winning book GHOST HERO, and reminding you about the Dilys award -- IMBA's annual recognition of which book its members have most enjoyed selling in the past year. Naturally, Ghost Hero won a Dilys?

For a review of Ghost Hero, click here: http://kingdombks.blogspot.com/2012/02/chinatown-mysteries-s-j-rozan-henry.html

Party details: Kingdom Books will celebrate Mystery Week with IMBA during Oct. 13-20, with reviews on our blog (kingdombks.blogspot.com) each day that focus on S. J. Rozan's books and those of other Dilys-awarded authors. Tour week will climax on Saturday Oct. 20 with an author event here at 2 pm with Vermont author Archer Mayor (and his new book PARADISE CITY), at which there will be a drawing for two books: one of Archer's, and one by S. J. Rozan. If you're coming to Vermont, please let us know so we can save you a seat! KingdomBks@gmail.com and 802-751-8374.

Karen McCullough, Mystery Author, Mutiple Genres

It's a pleasure to welcome Karen McCullough as guest author here today. We share authorship in Stacy Juba's amazing authors' anthology 25 Years in the Rear View Mirror -- and I was excited to discover the wide range of books Karen writes. It works well for her, and she's willing to talk about how the genres blend in her writing life.

Writing Across Genres

I’ve been writing for almost thirty years now and I’ve been published for twenty of those. I write mystery, romantic suspense, paranormal, fantasy, romance, and science fiction. Frequently I combine several genres in the same book. 

Nearly all my books are described with more than a single genre label. A GIFT FOR MURDER is mystery with romantic elements, while A QUESTION OF FIRE is romantic suspense and WIZARD’S BRIDGE is romantic fantasy.  I recently outdid myself for crossing genres with my original ebook, MAGIC, MURDER AND MICROCIRCUITS, which (I swear!) has elements of mystery, fantasy, suspense, adventure, romance, and possibly science fiction.

It’s fun to let my imagination take me wherever it wants to go, but it’s not a great strategy for career success.

Most people who build a following do so by writing a series of similar books or at least books in the same genre. Think Stephen King, Janet Evanovich, J.K. Rowling, etc.  (Some are even accused of writing the same book over and over, but that’s a different blog post.) Most authors find success only when they are known for doing a particular kind of book or series. Not necessarily the same book, but similar to each other in some important ways. Publishers and fans expect it.

So I knew that writing so many different sorts of books would practically guarantee I’d never go far in the publishing world. And yet I’ve done it anyway.

I had to.  

 

I don’t know if I have a short attention span or get bored easily, but I find it drains me to do two books in a row in the same genre.  I keep wanting to do something new and different with each new story I start. I need a new challenge, a fresh direction.

It’s not like I’ve ever made a decision to write in multiple genres. It’s just worked out that way. I can only write the stories my creative brain comes up with. Apparently I have a wide-ranging imagination, and one that refuses to be contained in the same box time after time. 

When it came down to making a choice between writing what needed to be written and writing what might give me a chance for a more successful career, I chose the path of writing what I had to write. 

Karen McCullough is the author of more than a dozen published novels in the mystery, romantic suspense, and fantasy genres and has won numerous awards, including an Eppie Award for fantasy. Her short fiction has appeared in several anthologies and small press publications in the fantasy, science fiction, and romance genres. Karen McCullough invites you to visit her website at http://www.kmccullough.com and her blog at http://www.kmccullough.com/kblog.

SPECIAL TREAT: Pick up a free copy of the anthology 25 Years in the Rear View Mirror with this link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/212151 At checkout, type this code: KP74F. Many thanks to editor Stacy Juba for making this available!

Now in Softcover: THE INNOCENT, from Taylor Stevens

I recommend the technologically sophisticated, globally based thrillers by Taylor Stevens pretty often: The Informationist, and The Innocent. Both feature Vanessa Michael Munroe, a consultant whose past gives her invaluable insight that adds to her tech-savvy corporate analyses of terrible situations. The first is set in Africa, and the second in Argentina.

So here's a quick heads-up: The Informationist just came out a couple of weeks ago in softcover. I'll put the cover art here, in case you're browsing a real shelf of books. Crown Publishing/Ballantine sent us a copy; now we've got the usual book-lover dilemma: keep it on our own shelf next to the hardcover, or ... put it in the shop and let someone else have a chance to read it?

YA Mystery/Speculative Fiction: DON'T TURN AROUND, by Michell Gagnon

Michelle Gagnon's thrillers -- The Tunnels, Boneyard, The Gatekeeper, and Kidnap and Ransom -- come with blurbs from well-known writers at the top of the thriller trade, like Harlan Coben and Jeffrey Deaver. With DON'T TURN AROUND she's brought out a "young adult" thriller, with high-tension plot, compelling characters, and a techno motif that gives us a heroine and hero from that mysterious group we love to imagine: the top teenaged hackers.

When 16-year-old Noa Torson wakes up in a strange bed, her chest aching from a mysterious operation,  and an IV dangling from her arm, instead of her trademark jade bracelet, she snaps into action far sooner than anyone around her expects, and in a matter of minutes, she's on the run. But from whom? And what's been done to her body -- and why?

From a background completely different from Noa's street-life self-taught hacker existence, Peter Gregory, wealthy but distressed teen, has only known Noa through the wall of online anonymity. But he knows enough to respect her, and to believe her, even though the story she's engaging him in is scary, powerful, and increasingly dangerous.

The guy scanned the room, eyes glancing off Noa. Had they hesitated before continuing on to the girl behing the counter?

Michelle Gagnon

Maybe she was being paranoid, but it felt like a weird tense energy had overtaken the room. Like something really, really bad was about to happen.

This is the fiction you've been waiting for if you picked up the YA medical thriller Virals from Kathy Reichs but regretted the lack of daring science and Internet stuff in it; or the one you realized might get written after you got a look into We Are Anonymous, the (presumably) nonfiction book that explores the world of hackers. Underneath all that, it's a girl-and-boy suspense thriller with plenty of chase scenes and risk.

Amaze the teen in your life: Give a copy of DON'T TURN AROUND. She or he will be totally amazed that you get this kind of thing.

Oh yeah -- make time to read it yourself, before you give it away. If you've ever savored a medical thriller, a fierce work of speculative fiction, something by Michael Crichton, or (admit it) Jules Verne or Madeleine L'Engle, DON'T TURN AROUND may delight you. I like it -- and I absolutely endorse the cover art, which to me feels like Psycho updated.

One last note: Is a thriller a mystery? After you read this one, let me know how it's shaped your opinion.

Fantastic Event -- Thank You, Carla Neggers!

Every seat was filled for today's author event with Carla Neggers, and an hour of listening flew past, as she offered stories of her writing life (starting by climbing a tree with a pad and pencil -- there were others here who'd started the same way!), her expert sources (from a whiskey pro to a detective to a friend willing to phone the U.S. Marshalls), and her varied series of romantic suspense (and one new series, the Swift River one, that's  romance but not exactly suspense -- more like "puzzles" to unravel).

Although we sold right out of copies of her new title, HERON'S COVE, and its predecessor, Saint's Gate, we'll be restocking. And we still have some copies of Whisper and of Mist. 

And I can hardly wait for two new books from this author, coming soon: the third in the current series, titled Declan's Cross, and a promised e-novella that will be a prequel to all three.

Donna Leon, BEASTLY THINGS: Italy and Animal Cruelty (Another Short Mention)

You'll need a strong stomach for BEASTLY THINGS, this year's offering in the Commissario Guido Brunetti series from Donna Leon. It's not the murder that's so upsetting this time -- and there are plenty of warmly interesting scenes with Signora Elettra at the "office" and Guido's reassuringly sane family at home.

But the murder is rooted in the wholesale animal butchering necessary to feed an omnivorous city, Venice, and the details are powerful. When Brunetti takes along his sidekick Vianello to see what had worried the victim of the crime, they're unprepared for the horror inside the slaughterhouse.

Vianello broke first. He pushed past Brunetti, no longer concerned with Bianchi and his opinion, or any opinion at all, and staggered drunkenly to the door. He pushed at is uselessly, then pounded it twice and gave it a kick. ... Brunetti could see Vianello walking away from them, one hand raised to shoulder height beside him, as if to keep it there, ready to grab on to the wire wall of the walkway should he not be able to continue.

A good read, with all the best reassurances of a sturdy and enjoyable crime/police series, and a disturbing aftertaste that may change your approach to dinner. Glad to see that Leon finally has a pro website, on which there are some great resources to explore: http://www.donnaleon.net.

Tana French, BROKEN HARBOR: Short Mention

US cover

UK cover

There's already been a lot written about Tana French's series of "Dublin Murder Squad" police investigations, and BROKEN HARBOR is the fourth -- this time featuring Detective Michael "Scorcher" Kennedy, along with his trainee partner Richie Curran. Each book draws a new protagonist from the secondary characters of the books before it; Detective Kennedy hasn't yet quite recovered from the debacle revealed in Faithful Place (yes, maybe a little better if you read it first but you don't need to). And his family life is a high-tension act of love and stress, and his interior flattened to survive. Because Mick has given up sexuality for the most part, interestingly, French's personal voice seems to come through more clearly in this one -- a voice of grief and longing for what Ireland could be, but maybe will never see again.

For me, it's been fascinating to pair this with John Kelly's new book on the Irish "potato famine" of 1845/1846, The Graves Are Walking. And of course to keep retracing the fury and violence in Stuart Neville's grim and graphic Irish crime fiction -- where the present is linked so clearly to the colonialism and poverty of the past.

BROKEN HARBOR is especially well titled, for the sense of betrayed safety evoked over and over again in Mick's investigation. I'm glad I read it in summertime, where I could go outside and remember that goodness happens at least as often as disaster. It happens for Detective Kennedy, too, but he has to work a lot harder to find it and it's always escaping him.

Check out the two cover designs, by the way -- US and European. Opinions, anyone?

Louise Penny, THE BEAUTIFUL MYSTERY

Published two weeks ago, already in fifth printing.

There were at least two times during the Canadian pre-release launch party when author Louise Penny had to hush members of her 200-person audience who'd already read THE BEAUTIFUL MYSTERY in advance. He voice rose over theirs in urgent interruption as she warned, "Don't say too much!"

So -- I've just finished reading the book. I wept at the end. And I'm not going to say very much more. Here is what I do need to say about this eighth Chief Inspector Armand Gamache book:

1. This time, you need to read the books that go before ... if you can't make time to read all of them (and I am the first to admit that STILL LIFE, the earliest of the series, starts slowly), at least read the three that precede this one: The Brutal Telling, Bury Your Dead, and A Trick of the Light. It will make a huge difference, I believe, to how deeply this latest book moves you and how clearly you hear and see the interplay of good and evil within it.

2. Ignore the readers and reviewers who are still trying to call this series "cozy" because so much of the action -- none of it in this latest book, though -- takes place in the village of Three Pines. You might with as much sense call Dante's Inferno a romance because it involves a man and a woman.

3. Our local newspaper, The Caledonian-Record, has chosen this season to air a 20-article series on how our beautiful, exhilarating, full-hearted region of Vermont, called the Northeast Kingdom, is also threaded through by disaster. One might say, by evil. Reading THE BEAUTIFUL MYSTERY confirms for me the names of the deepest forms of evil we're seeing in our culture. ... But it also reminds me that we can summon the courage and unity (and faith, by whatever name) to go forward and increase the amount of goodness and light around us.

Thanks, Louise, for daring so much.

When a Suspense Novel Is "Gothic": Vicki Delany and MORE THAN SORROW

This evening we welcome Canadian mystery author Vicki Delany to the Kingdom Books blog, to talk about a subgenre of mysteries that's getting fresh attention. Delany's newest book, MORE THAN SORROW, is a stand-alone (a break from her well-loved Constable Molly Smith series set in British Columbia  and her Yukon historicals), and while all the necessities of suspense are present -- a compelling protagonist, Hannah Manning, whose traumatic brain injury may have ended her career as an international journalist and war correspondent; threats against property and life; criminals with pathological approaches -- there's also a haunting strand of something less common, something airing a scent of evil out of Ontario's past.

But I'll let Vicki tell you about this approach:

The Modern Gothic Novel

By Vicki Delany

Sept 2012

Mention Gothic novels to ten people and you’ll get eleven different interpretations of what that means.

About all we seem to agree on is that it doesn’t mean a cozy or a comedy.

In the mid-to-late Twentieth Century the Gothic novel was the sort written by the likes of Victoria Holt or Mary Stewart that I grew up loving. Think of penniless governesses, crumbling Scottish castles, brooding, handsome aristocrats.  A dark secret in the family’s past. Always a dark secret.

Today the Gothic has been updated and the novels I love are sometimes called Modern Gothic, or British Gothic.

First, what they are NOT: No vampires.  No ghost hunters. Not horror. And probably not anyone you might call ‘goth’.

I go with Kate Morton’s definition.  In the afterword to her hugely successful novel The House at Riverton, Kate Morton describes the Gothic:  The haunting of the present by the past; the insistence of family secrets; return of the repressed; the centrality of inheritance (material, psychological and physical); haunted houses (particularly haunting of a metaphorical nature); suspicion concerning new technology and changing methods; the entrapment of women (whether physical or social) and associated claustrophobia; character doubling; the unreliability of memory and the partial nature of history; mysteries and the unseen; confessional narrative; and embedded texts. 

The Modern Gothic can be a ‘dark mystery’ but usually only in the psychological sense.  Michael Koryta calls his brilliant novel So Cold The River a Gothic and it is because it involves many of Morton’s definitions, but in it the paranormal presence is malevolent.  That is defiantly not always, in fact not usually, the case. 

 “Haunting of a metaphorical nature.” The modern Gothic may not even have a ghost story or paranormal aspect.  If there is a supernatural element it serves as a device to reveal the secrets of the past to the characters and the reader. 

  Kate Morton’s books, for example, have no paranormal elements.   In many books the suspected paranormal turns out to have a rational explanation after all, as in Carol Goodman’s Arcadia Falls.   In Peter Robinson’s Before the Poison the protagonist is ‘haunted’ not by a ghost but by the story of a woman who lived in his new house sixty years early and was accused of a dreadful crime, a crime that had to do with ‘the entrapment of women’.   If there is a paranormal element it is more likely to be benign or even helpful as in, for example, Katherine Howe’s The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane , rather than dripping evil.

Sometimes, that’s the question.  In my new novel More than Sorrow the protagonist, Hannah Manning, believes there’s something moving down in the dark damp root cellar. But Hannah is recovering from Traumatic Brain Injury caused by an IED explosion in Afghanistan.  So, both the reader and Hannah wonder, is there really a woman down there, or is she only the hallucinations of an injured mind?

 Which would be worse?

Contrary to popular opinion, Gothic doesn’t automatically mean romantic suspense. Romance is often a minor component, if there’s any at all, (e.g. The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton or Blood Harvest by S.J. Bolton.)  (Whereas in a Gothic romantic suspense novel, such as written by Susanna Kearsley, the romance is up front and prominent.)

The modern Gothic mystery novel can also be called a ‘psychological suspense’.  What defines it as ‘gothic’ I think is the centrality of setting. There is a house, a hotel, some old building with a long past, and most of the plot centres around and takes place in this building or property.  E.g. Michael Kortya again in The Cypress House .  Tana French’s The Likeness is set almost exclusively in crumbling Irish manor house and has very much to do with the “unreliability of memory” yet there is not the slightest hint of a paranormal element or romance.

Do you love the modern Gothic, or remember much loved books from the past? Why not share some names with us.

 ***

Vicki Delany is one of Canada’s most varied and prolific crime writers.  Her popular Constable Molly Smith series (including In the Shadow of the Glacier and Among the Departed) have been optioned for TV by Brightlight Pictures.  She also writes standalone novels of psychological suspense, as well as a light-hearted historical series, (Gold Digger, Gold Mountain), set in the raucous heyday of the Klondike Gold Rush.  

Vicki’s newest book is More than Sorrow, a standalone novel published by Poisoned Pen Press.  In a starred review, Library Journal called the book, “a splendid Gothic thriller.”

Having taken early retirement from her job as a systems analyst in the high-pressure financial world, Vicki is settling down to the rural life in bucolic, Prince Edward County, Ontario where she rarely wears a watch.

Visit Vicki at www.vickidelany.com , www.facebook.com/vicki.delany, and twitter: @vickidelany. She blogs about the writing life at One Woman Crime Wave (http://klondikeandtrafalgar.blogspot.com) 

If You're Reading Louise Penny, Grab Vicki Delany's New MORE THAN SORROW

I'm a committed fan of Vicki Delany's police series featuring Constable Molly Smith, with its solid traditional mystery format and beguiling protagonist. So I took a leap of faith and picked up her newest title, which is NOT part of that series. Instead, MORE THAN SORROW (Library Journal starred review!) is a gothic novel: that is, a dark, suspenseful work of fiction that hinges on the disturbances within its characters. There may indeed be crime involved also, and that's certainly true of MORE THAN SORROW, where death threats and other criminal activities have destroyed the idyllic back-to-the-land organic commitment at the little vegetable farm owned by Hannah Manning's sister.

But it's Hannah who's fascinating here: An internationally recognized war journalist, she's recuperating at her sister's home, from a traumatic brain injury that threatens to rob her of more than her career. Plagued by debilitating migraines, unexpected collapses, and frightening flashbacks to the "IED" that blew her life into grief and loss, Hannah reaches out to an Afghan refugee staying on a neighboring property in the rolling fields and woods of Prince Edward County, Ontario.

If you read my "headline," by now you are saying, "What on earth does this have to do with Louise Penny's books? Is it just that this is another Canadian author?"

Much more than that.

Penny's Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series, set in Three Pines, is a dark exploration of how murder arrives within "nice" communities, grows from otherwise tender hearts, roots in compromises of loyalty and integrity. And is seeded by the past. Three Pines, in fact, is named for the three pine trees planted (and since then, re-planted) by "Loyalist" settlers of the region -- British citizens appalled by the rebellion taking place in America. I've mostly ignored that aspect while reading Penny's crime fiction, while chasing her compelling characters and plot. But listening to her last week, I realized that the tension between the Loyalist settlers and today's French Canadians is a large part of the roiling tension underlying her Gamache series.

And that brings me back to Delany's MORE  THAN SORROW, in which Hannah Manning -- unable to make her damaged brain/eye circuits cope with typed pages of today's books -- grows obsessed with old hand-written letters that document the 1784 Loyalist refugees from America, who arrived in Canada and had to put their once-wealthy, cultured lives on hold, while becoming farmers. And for letter writer Maggie Macgregor, whose husband and child are dead and whose "extended family" has brought her to this harsh northern frontier, there are worse consequences than laboring with her hands. Will she be sexually abused as well? Hannah's own brain injury somehow short-circuits into Maggie's life, and the puzzle of three refugees -- Hannah, Maggie, and Afghani Hila Popalzai -- takes on risk and tension, especially threatening to Hannah's ten-year-old niece Lila, who may be the only person who still believes and adores her aunt.

As Hannah begins to grapple with solving the criminal threats to her community, she also struggles to regain her old capacities. And she works against something darker, that ineffable something that makes a modern Gothic novel dig its way into our own doubts and fears.

An explosion. A car on fire. Guns going off. Men firing rifles and cheering the flames on. Women weeping horror. Children screaming, calling for their mothers.

That's Hannah's recollection. But it connects in haunting fashion with the letters in her fist.

So -- not only is this a great read to gather a sense of the Loyalist history that threads through Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada (and lies under the Louise Penny setting in Three Pines). It's also a disturbing and ultimately confirming exploration of how one woman takes a stand in her own life. Thanks, Vicki Delany; I'll keep thinking of Hannah, as I explore more of your books.

SPECIAL NOTE!! Vicki Delany explores what "the modern Gothic novel" is, and why it is that way, from the point of view of an expert in several fiction genres. Check out her guest post here in the evening on Friday Sept. 7. We've got a lot to enjoy in this!

Calendar Alert: Carla Neggers Sept. 9, Vicki Delany Sept. 7

The newest books are arriving, the book room is getting happily rearranged, and we are very excited to be hosting Carla Neggers -- author of more than 70 books, most recently the highly enjoyable romantic suspense HERON'S COVE (set in Maine) -- here on Sunday Sept. 9 at 1 p.m. Hope you can be here! If you need a signed copy but can't make it to Vermont this time, contact Dave directly and he'll set one aside for you (dknel@charter.net).

By the way, I am fascinated by Carla's Pinterest site: http://pinterest.com/carlaneggers. It's a great example of how photos enrich fiction and give us insight into authors and their books. I followed up on the pix on her "Fabulous Russian Jewelry" Pinterest board and found the ring shown here, from the jewelry business Romanov Russia (http://www.romanovrussia.com/RosenRing.html). What do Russian jewels have to do with suspense? Come on, read the book (or review -- click here) and/or come meet author Carla Neggers!

While you're marking your calendar, TOMORROW EVENING Friday Sept. 7, Canadian mystery author Vicki Delany posts here as our guest, with a thoughtful and knowledgeable contribution on "The Modern Gothic Novel." Yes, that has a lot to do with today's mysteries, as well as a wider range of fiction. Stop in and check it out!

Another Reason to Visit Brome Lake Books in Knowlton, Quebec, Canada

Dave and I are still savoring yesterday's trip "across the border" into the Eastern Townships of Canada, to attend crime fiction author Louise Penny's pre-release launch of THE BEAUTIFUL MYSTERY, eighth in her Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series. One of the delights for Dave especially was meeting the owners and staff of Brome Lake Books -- welcoming, knowledgeable book lovers with whom Dave had spoken several times as we prepared for our journey north.

Brome Lake Books has an address on the main street in Knowlton, a delightful arts-focused town. The shop is tucked toward the back of a small strip of stores, and in Hobbit-home fashion, opens from a small entryway into more and more shelves of books, arranged for tempting browsing. (There's also a sale room in the lower floor.) Danny McAuley, Lucy Hoblyn, and others greeted us and I have drawn a complete blank on the name of the person who painstakingly wrapped our "Vive Gamache" café au lait mugs that I'd been so eager to purchase -- I was SO excited to be there -- but she made me feel great about my purchase.

Brome Lake Books is glad to ship books abroad, too. Notice this shelf full of books in French? This is a great asset for collectors stepping into the magical world of "foreign editions." Here at the Kingdom Books blog, we often compare American and British cover designs of mysteries. But actually there are many cover designs for those books that get into print in multiple languages. They're often a delight to gather on a shelf, as we have with a collection of Eliot Pattison's books here. In addition, even if you speak or read only a bit of another language, it's fascinating to compare the versions, to see how translation does or doesn't change the text. This is increasingly significant with work by Scandinavian crime fiction authors today, as American readers become accustomed to a dark and somber ambience reflecting ice-bound or darkened countrysides -- and wonder, in turn, whether "all those Scandianavian authors" actually write in that mode, or whether the shadows are being emphasized by the translators. It's also nice to give translators some credit for their labors!

So if you're really getting involved with Louise Penny's books, consider calling Brome Lake Books and asking the booksellers' advice on where to start with her French editions. You'll get thoughtful conversation, good suggestions, and -- when your copies arrive -- a new aspect to your bookshelves and your reflections on today's best mysteries.

Oh yes, and here's a comment I can't resist, for a 1994 Los Angeles Times article: "[Herb] Yellin, 59, also collects presidential documents and movie memorabilia, but it's his library that gets most of his attention. 'I've been acquiring foreign-language editions of Ray Bradbury's books. That's when you know you're over the edge, when you start collecting foreign editions.'"

Louise Penny, THE BEAUTIFUL MYSTERY: "Pre-Launched" Today in Knowlton, Quebec

Kingdom Books is just an hour south of Vermont's Canada border -- and two hours from the town of Knowlton, Quebec, a charming arts center easily confused with the mystical and murder-prone village of Three Pines in Louise Penny's award-winning crime fiction. Today we rambled north to the home turf of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, for Brome Lake Books hosting of the author's "pre-launch" of her newest book. THE BEAUTIFUL MYSTERY.  The title officially releases on Tuesday (Aug. 28), so it's a thrill to hold the earliest available copies (now signed! -- and at least one will be available tomorrow online from Kingdom Books).

It's too soon to talk a lot about the book -- I'm only two chapters into it, because so much of the day was spent driving (smile) and savoring French Canadian food (yumm). But this eighth in the series begins with the mystery of why and how music moves us, and proceeds to exactly the kind of mystery you'd expect a member of the Sureté du Quebec to investigate -- and more.

Louise Penny said today, ""My books are really about belonging, about the quest to belong, about love and friendship and second chances." In keeping with her pattern of alternating settings for the Gamache series, one book in Three Pines, the next outside it (to avoid too many bodies piling up in the village), Penny placed this one in a monastery in the Eastern Townships of Quebec province.

"I'm aware that one of the dangers of writing a series is that, inadvertently, you can keep writing the same book. So it's important to me to keep on taking chances," the author explained. She said she left behind her "safety zone" of Three Pines to go forward with just Gamache, who in this volume tests his own assertion from an earlier book that "This center will hold."

Penny also answered audience questions about a Gamache TV film in progress, based on her first two books, with filming starting in October. She is excited about the director and the directions worked out, and is an executive producer for the film. What does that mean?  "For me, being the executive producer is a lot like being the Queen of England," she dead-panned. "I can have opinions but I'm not allowed to declare war."

She usually takes some time off work in winter and begins writing a new book in March, so he is now in the third draft of a probable five or six for her next Gamache book, which returns, of course, to Three Pines as a locale.

The village of Three Pines -- err, that is, the town of Knowlton, Quebec, provided literally three pine trees as backdrop for the event, and they will be planted on the grounds of the community center where this event took place. Penny admitted she plans "an infinite number" of books for the series, so odds are good she'll be back at the community center for many title releases yet to come.

This year's event also included an amazing rendition of a "chant" (honoring the Gregorian ones featured in the new book) describing the Three Pines series, complete with setting and characters (Penny told the audience she tries to be even-handed among her characters, including Clara, whom she originally thought would be the amateur sleuth of the series, as well as Gabri and Gamache, but "I love Myrna -- she is someone I would like to have as a friend). The chant was written and performed wonderfully by Brome Lake Books owners Danny McAuley and Lucy Hoblyn with friends and family, accompanied by McAuley's mother-in-law on an organ! Louise Penny rose merrily at two cameo appearances in the performance, clearly enjoying the surprise, as did the audience.

Beth Mallon and Susan Jensen

It's a fitting tribute to Penny's books (and bubbly personality) that audience members included many who drove hours to be there -- Kingdom Books was honored and thrilled to be named by Danny McAuley at the outset of the event, along with Toronto's "Sleuth of Baker Street," but people also came from Ottawa, from Cambridge (England), and from New York state. The line for Penny's signatures lasted well over an hour, catered with food and drink by boys on best behavior offering Perrier and canapés. Dave enjoyed reconnecting with documentary filmmaker Louise Abbott and her husband and work partner Neils Jensen, and I was "found" by my long-time neighbors and friends from West Barnet, Vermont, Beth Mallon and Susan Jensen. These two teachers savored the opportunity to use some of the last of their summer break in coming to meet Louise Penny and capturing her new book. While waiting in line, they were both reading -- and had reached page 10 as this photo was snapped. Hurrah for Vermont's book community, as well as for Louise Penny, Brome Lake Books, and -- THE BEAUTIFUL MYSTERY.

Cheryl Strayed, WILD: Not a Mystery -- but ...

I won't post a full review of WILD here -- the book by Cheryl Strayed that's taken its author into collaboration with Oprah Winfrey. But it was my summer "non-mystery" treat to myself, so Dave listened to me move from exasperated exclamations of "This woman is SO dumb!" in the opening chapters (I couldn't put the book down for long, though), to muttered acknowledgments of "Worth reading" by midpoint, to satisfied sighs as the book wrapped up.

Strayed wrote the hiking memoir (set on the Pacific Crest Trail) some 15 years after her long-distance hike of suffering and gradual self-acceptance. Her writing skills stand out most clearly to me in her ability to absolutely convey the naiveté, risk-taking, and yes, stupidity of her younger self at the start of the 1100-mile hike, and the convincing growth of experience and ability to think things through that piles up to a believable wrap-up. This is also a good book for exploring the side of the West Coast that doesn't arrive in bags of coffee or on music DVDs or in the morning news. And it's a well-written portrayal of how a person can climb out of a very bad place, onto a ledge where joy and achievement become likely.

I was glad that I made time to read this.

Scandinavian Crime Fiction: Mons Kallentoft, MIDWINTER BLOOD

There's a "wisdom saying" in some groups that's based on the shape of the hand when pointing with one finger: "When you point a finger at someone else, you have three fingers pointing back at you." The usual meaning is, we see the flaw in others that we also have in ourselves -- but are less likely to see them there.

Single mother Malin Fors is a workaholic, even by the usual standards of police superintendents. Her teenage daughter manages supper alone frequently, and her ex-husband isn't always around to fill the gaps. Thirty-four, she's tough and well recognized in her town, Linköping, Sweden, where she and her partner Zeke pick up a case that's going to be front-page news ... and not just because Malin is having an affair with an aggressive journalist, either. Hanging from a tree outside town is the naked body of an enormous man, and no matter the actual cause of death, the wounds on the corpse are so massive and dramatic that right away there's a suggestion of ritual: of a midwinter sacrifice (that's the UK title, in fact) or, as Mons Kallentoft's US edition names it, MIDWINTER BLOOD.

For Malin Fors, the investigation quickly turns complex and risky, with at least two highly disfunctional and dangerous families acting out their own wounds on the society that inflicted them. "Love and death are neighbors. Their faces are one and the same," Fors muses. It's a harsh judgment, but one that her investigation promises to repeat.

Readers of Scandinavian crime will find Fors's world as bloody but in many ways less bleak than, say, the seasonal depression evoked by Henning Mankell or the sexual perversion of Steig Larsson. At least the darkness here is in motion, not frozen into place or forced onto all participants. Moreover, Fors -- athletic, young, emotionally vibrant and a good parent, when she's home -- usually knows the right moves to make, whether inside the police force political net, or on a crime scene, or while sweating off the previous night's self-indulgent drinking. Whatever the character and social flaws are that build repeatedly to erupt in crime in Linköping, they're not hers.

"There are still people living like that in Sweden today," she says. "Completely shut off from everything. It's anachronistic in an almost bizarre way."

"I don't know about that," Zeke says. Then he reaches for the first explanation that seems to come into his mind. "It's benefits," he says. "It's all because of benifits. I bet the whole lot of them are getting unemployment benefits, social support, and everything else too. And the child support for a horde of kids like that must amount to a small fortune every month."

"I'm not so sure about benefits," Malin says. "Maybe they don't get anything. But anyway. This is the twenty-first centure. In Sweden. And here's a family that seems to live entirely according to its own rules. ... You could see the fury in Adam Murvall's eyes."

"There are several of them, they could have done it together. ... We'll have to get a warrant so we can check their guns."

Yet time and again, as Malin notices the neglect and abuse among the criminals she's pursuing, and the tragedy for the victims, she's left her daughter alone yet again. Savoring the reading of this tightly plotted and well-written book, I caught that reflection time and again, that sense of a finger pointed toward the violent and psychopathic, while three gently curled other fingers cupped the knowledge that there is no such thing as perfect parenting for any of us -- and the choices made by Malin may create smaller wounds that still fester, still lead to something dark and regrettable.

There are three more Malin Fors books ready, in translation, to follow this crime fiction debut. I'm particularly curious to see whether Kallentoft's others include the paranormal aspect that haunts MIDWINTER BLOOD -- is the style an artifact of the plot, or a trademark of the author? With one finger, I can point to the pace, timing, and tension of the book ... and with the other three, to the series as it continues to be shaped by an author whose first fame flowed from a literary novel, but who now seems to have found both his own voice and the voices of our wounded, in the Malin Fors books. Next ones: Spring Remains, Summer Death, Autumn Sonata.