Dave's Fiction Warehouse

A few weeks ago, I wrote that I was returning to the keyboard after a hiatus of too many months napping, reading, working out, doing crosswords, playing solitaire, drinking wine, mowing the lawn, surfing the Internet, cursing the cats, brooding through Wichita's monsoon season -- any and all of the hundreds of things writers do to avoid actually writing. As a bit of reinforcement before the fact, I bought a new laptop computer, reasoning that it might be easier to write if I didn't always have to be in the same room when I was doing it. So far, it's working. While I'm not going to give the new machine all the credit, it's probably true that the deep shame of buying unnecessary hardware has fostered at least a temporary surge in productivity. My goal is a minimum of 500 words a day; so far I've been closer to 1,000. For this book project, I'm trying a couple of other new tricks -- new to me, at any rate. I only reread the last few paragraphs of what I've...

This year's winning entry in the 2007 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is a sobering reminder on the perils of handling dashes and subordinate clauses without parental supervision. It's also quite funny: "Gerald began -- but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them "permanently" meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash -- to pee." -- Jim Gleeson, Madison, Wis. Personally, I thought the runner-up entry worked even better: "The Barents sea heaved and churned like a tortured animal in pain, the howling wind tearing packets of icy green water from the shuddering crests of the waves, atomizing it into mist that was again laid flat by the growing fury of the storm as Kevin Tucker switched off the bedside light in his Tuba City, Arizona, single-wide trailer ...

Looking over the New York Times fiction bestseller list this morning, I notice that only four of the top 16 titles can't be classified as mysteries or thrillers. Those include "A Thousand Splendid Suns," Khaled Hosseini's book about the enduring friendship between two Afghan women; and "Bungalow 2," Danielle Steel's book about, well, what most Danielle Steel books are about. I suppose that's good news for writers of mysteries and thrillers, particularly if you happen to be named Janet Evanovich or James Patterson. Surely it must mean there is a vast demand for the genre we've chosen. The rest of us can brood over the list, nursing our lukewarm coffee and lukewarm talent, and vaguely imagine the sequels for the breakout novels we have not yet written. But really, while the bestseller list is every writer's fantasy, it probably shouldn't be any writer's goal. That path leads to imitation and formula, and practically guarantees even dee...

While we must wait until Monday to get the results of the 2007 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest , it behooves us all to reflect soberly on last year's winners , and ask ourselves if we can't do better. In case you did not print this out and frame it when it was first announced, here's last year's winning entry: "Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean." How they judge these I can't say, since most of them seem equally funny. Here's another, the winner of the detective fiction division: "It was a dreary Monday in September when Constable Lightspeed came across the rotting corpse that resembled one of those zombies from Michael Jackson's "Thriller,...

When I'm browsing books, I always give special weight to the opening line. The very best of them set up the essential conflict right off the bat. They reassure you that, yes, there's a story here, and you're not going to have to wait until Chapter 8 to get interested in it. I'm a great fan of opening lines, from the famous to the obscure. Often they're the reason I take a closer look at a book I might otherwise pass by. So it's interesting to examine this list, compiled by American Book Review, of what they deem the 100 best first lines of all time. Some I agree with; others ... meh. For example, the No. 1 choice: "Call me Ishmael." I don't know. While eloquent, as a single sentence it doesn't really grab you by the throat, or suggest the epic struggle to come in Moby Dick. Then there's that other famous beginning: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Leo Tolstoy's oft-quoted opening...

When you fancy yourself a writer, it complicates the pastime of reading for pleasure. Like it or not, you end up judging every book with the eye of a technician. I inevitably have one of two reactions: "Hell, I could do better than this" (to which the inner voice replies, "then why didn't you?"); or "I could not write this well in a million years" (to which the inner voice replies, "You're finally starting to get it"). I'm having the second reaction to " The Yiddish Policeman's Union ," which I mention below. While I'm thoroughly enjoying this book, it's also kind of depressing to be reminded so forcefully that there is such a thing as innate talent, and that some people have a lot more of it than others. Michael Chabon puts more pathos, humor and insight into a single paragraph than I've been able to do in a thousand of them. He's a fine writer to read, but a daunting one to compare oneself against. I gu...

You've got to hand it to Michael Chabon -- he's one of the most inventive writers working today. I've just started on his latest, " The Yiddish Policeman's Union ," which publisher Harper-Collins calls "At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, an homage to 1940s noir, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption." Hey, if I could handle just one of those, I'd be dancing in the streets. I'll see how he pulls it off, but the early signs look good. I've enjoyed Chabon's writing before, in "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," and most recently in the serialized adventure "Gentlemen of the Road," which appeared in the New York Times Magazine. Chabon has a fecund, literary style, but he also has a sly and pervasive sense of humor -- I always appreciate it when serious fiction is rendered not quite so serious. Which is why I bought this book. And because of the whodunit element, of course. I...

I don't have anything to add about human train wreck Lindsay Lohan , but apparently Google has recently forced legislation through Congress requiring every Web site and blog to mention her name at least once a day and run helicopter footage if available. This is my quota. Look, I don't make the laws; I just follow them. It seems Lohan ingested a liter and a half of apricot brandy, two grams of cocaine and a 64-ounce Mountain Dew before climbing behind the wheel of a luxury SUV and pursuing the mother of her personal assistant, who had recently left Lohan's employ to "pursue other interests." There were reports that Lohan wasn't wearing panties and chanted slogans concerning the forgiveness of Third World debt, but it is the policy of this blog not to repeat such rumors until photographs become available. Speaking on condition of anonymity, Lohan's attorney, Blair Berk, noted that "addiction is a terrible and vicious disease." Other sources say it...

My fatuous poll pitting Charles Dickens against three of today's big-name crime writers proved less than nothing, but it did elicit an interesting comment from Sally Crawford of Blogging for London : Which of today's writers might endure as long as Dickens? My short answer would be "none of the above." But let's think about it. It's certainly possible that the most enduring contemporary writer may be somebody we've not yet heard of -- some Van Gogh of the literary world whose genius is widely acknowledged only after he or she is dead. But since I'm trying to maintain a vague focus on crime writing, let's limit the choices to that genre. Can you think of anybody writing crime fiction today who might still be in print 165 years from now? Dickens set the bar pretty high in that regard. Too bad he wasn't writing detective stories. Probably it's a dumb question. The things that sell modern crime novels -- adherence to the conventions of the genr...

Right up front: I haven't read “The Quickie,” the latest book with James Patterson's name on it. The title seems apt enough, but I was wondering: Why use it now, instead of a dozen books ago? Patterson's hirelings have been turning out volumes of this description for at least a decade. Next up: “The Phoning It In.” Of course I'm not suggesting that such a book atop New York Times bestseller list represents the death of American culture – let's not forget “The Love Machine” in 1969, or “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” in 1972, or “Oliver's Story” in 1977 – but it's not something that gives me great comfort either. Shouldn't writers, even very wealthy ones, be required to actually write the books they're selling? Paying someone else to do it is like paying a pauper to do your military service in the Civil War. Rant off. Yes, I call myself a writer and no, I can't afford to hire someone to do it for me. Pass those sour grapes over here, please.

My brother is a far more voracious reader than I am, so a good part of my paperback collection consists of titles he's passing along. That's how I came by Sean Doolittle 's fourth novel, "The Cleanup." Mike gave it to me months ago, but I only recently got around to reading it. In terms of plot and and pace, it's a big step up from "Rain Dogs," the other Doolittle title I've read. The story revolves around a somewhat underachieving Omaha patrol cop, who is assigned as a disciplinary measure to guard against robberies at a supermarket. When a girl who works at the market dispatches her abusive boyfriend, he finds himself helping her cover up the homicide. Complications, as they say, ensue. This is a good, tightly written yarn with a few surprises. If you're looking for something to take to the beach, or to help you get through your next hellish commercial flight, I recommend "The Cleanup."

I was underwhelmed by the first couple of episodes of "The Wire," but after renting a few more via Netflix, I'm beginning to see why this show has attracted a loyal following. While I still think Dominic West looks a little too much like a J.C. Penney model to be fully convincing (and his divorced, hard-drinking character is somewhat cliched), the rest of the cast and the consistent writing overcome that minor quibble. Another observation: Like "Deadwood" (which I never liked), "The Wire" can be comical in its over-the-top profanity. The writers seem almost to be mocking themselves in one five-minute scene that involves the use of nothing but the F-word and its variations. It was amusing enough, but I wonder if such a self-referential stunt really serves the larger story.

We turn now from fictional mysteries to a real-life one: What was Tammy Faye Messner thinking when she appeared Sunday on Larry King? (That's Larry on the left, by the way). I know she's not long for this world and I sympathize, but somebody might have advised her that this is the time to think about checking out with a little dignity. She's had so little of that in her life. During the horrific interview, Tammy Faye said she talks to God every day -- almost as often as she talks to Larry King.

In the James Lee Burke novel "Jolie Blon's Bounce," he introduces a character named Legion Guidry, a man who appears by the end of the book to be, if not the Devil himself, then at least pretty high up in Lucifer's chain of command. Burke has flirted with the supernatural before, with the ghosts of "In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead" and the dead partner who occasionally shows up to offer advice to Billy Bob Holland in "Bitterroot" and "In the Moon of Red Ponies." I mention this because I love this sort of thing in a mystery -- just a hint of the paranormal, an element of mystery that might persist even after the main plot is resolved. Recently I read Ruth Rendell's "13 Steps Down" and it initially seemed that she was hinting at the actual ghost of a serial killer making his presence known to a young man with an unhealthy interest in such things. In the Karin Fossum book I just finished, "He Who Fears the Wolf...

Because I can, I've set up a poll (above and to the right). It's a new feature offered here at blogger.com, and I might as well be among the first to try it. Sorry for the choice in authors; they were the first ones that came into my head. UPDATE 7/25: With a whopping 16 votes in, little-known English author Chuck Dickens came out of nowhere to win it all. We'll be sending him a complimentary three-month pass to the warehouse.

At the recommendation of my former colleague Peter ( Detectives Beyond Borders ), I just read Karin Fossum's " He Who Fears the Wolf ." I recently decided I needed to broaden my reading list to include more female authors and more foreign ones. Fossum, with her stalwart fans and arsenal of glowing reviews, seemed like a good place to start. I had serious doubts during the first scene: a madman in the middle of a major meltdown (possibly incurred by aggressive alliteration). It was, as one review put it, "a harrowing journey inside a warped mind" -- something I get quite enough of just being me. Fortunately, Fossum's madman turns out not to be the demonic figure so common in the work of lesser writers. By the book's end, he is a character as fully formed as Fossum's series protagonist, Inspector Sejer, and almost as understandable. The story revolves around a bizarre crime and oddball characters, but it's the sympathy with which she crafts those c...

My brother Mike, whose unstated mission in life is to read every mystery and thriller ever written, has this to say on Ian Rankin's latest, "The Naming of the Dead." "I have to admit I was just a little disappointed. It seemed somewhat disjointed. There were some great lines there, though, some real laugh-out-loud ones. It seems to be setting the stage for a battle royale between Siobhan and Mo Cafferty at some point. In fact, I would not be surprised to see something with Rebus as a secondary character, or not in it at all ... It was a good read, but the bar is so high for Rankin that anything less than superb seems a letdown." Which seems in line with some of the other reviews I've seen. I'll still pick it up myself, of course, but as I mentioned earlier , I may just wait until the paperback -- or until the library acquires a copy.

I'm really not trying to make this the one true Harry Potter blog, but I have to remark on the jackass who took the trouble to (a) obtain J.K. Rowling's latest tome days before its official release date, and (b) take a digital picture of every freaking page, for the express purpose of posting it on the Internet. Remember, this book is close to 800 pages long. The sheer idiocy of this is incredible enough, but even more astonishing is the fact that tens of thousands of people -- I'm going to guess most of them are also mouth breathers -- actually downloaded every poorly shot page, presumably to read the book on screen, thereby gaining a huge advantage in prestige and wisdom over the poor saps who elect to wait until the official release on midnight Friday. Boy, nothing like curling up with some blurry pictures of text and a cup of hot chocolate, is there? It's sure good to see people reading.

Rebutting the conventional wisdom that the Harry Potter phenomenon is good for reading, writing and publishing in general, Washington Post book editor Ron Charles has written a provocative essay entitled " Harry Potter and the Death of Reading ." In it, he cites a few facts to buttress his case that millions of people reading the same book does not quite portend a renaissance for the written word: More than half the adults in this country won't pick up a novel this year, according to the National Endowment for the Arts . The same data point to a dramatic and accelerating decline in the number of young people reading fiction. In 1994, over 70 percent of total fiction sales were accounted for by a mere five authors. There's much more, and the essay is worth reading in its entirety. This line will get some attention: "Start carrying on like Moaning Myrtle about the repetitive plots, the static characters, the pedestrian prose, the wit-free tone, the derivative the...

I'm always a little skeptical when magazines or newspapers run their perennial lists of what celebrities are reading, usually under the rubric of "guilty pleasures." I mean, if they're really guilty about it, they're not going to be totally frank, are they? But Time magazine's July 23 issue has a nice twist on this: What writers are reading at the beach. Judging by some of the titles, they're being pretty honest. The biggest surprise: Joyce Carol Oates 'fesses up to being a huge fan of Mad magazine, concluding with this remark: "...the fatuously grinning Alfred E. Neuman with his perennial query ("What, me worry?") prefigured the improbable presidential cartoon character George W. Bush many years later." Ah, poor George. Talk about a legacy. On the same list, I notice Nathan Englander recommending the mystery "Literary Murder" by Batya Gur. Sounds interesting -- anybody else read this? I'm not sure I read anything I...

The fine blog Detectives Beyond Borders recently had a discussion about the significance of setting in crime fiction. Peter was commenting on an assertion by Clive James that many of today's international crime novels are so crammed with geographic detail that they are essentially guidebooks. I've had the same reaction, most recently to " A Small Death in Lisbon ," where the protagonist's steps through the city are described in such detail that it begins to sound like a guy following Mapquest directions. But then it occurred to me that such detail is a lot easier to appreciate if you're actually familiar with the place being described. Then it's not a distraction at all; it's evocative. At least that's been my reaction to the three novels James Lee Burke has set in my hometown of Missoula, Mont.: "Black Cherry Blues," "Bitterroot," and "In the Moon of Red Ponies." I know very well every road, river, building an...

There must be some cathartic force at work, to compel those of us who blog to arrange our most fleeting, insignificant thoughts as electrons on a screen. Maybe it's a desire for connection, like casting a bottle into the sea in the hope that some sympathetic soul will retrieve it. Or not. Maybe we all just have too much time on our hands. In any case, here's the message in today's bottle from the warehouse: Roald Dahl rules. I've been in a nostalgic mood all week, making a mental list of all the writers whose work I most admired as a young man. I'm not thinking so much of stuff like "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," which was pretty good; mostly, I loved his razor-sharp and frequently ice-cold short stories, which were written in that golden era before most successful fiction was about vague epiphanies concerning the shortcomings of one's parents. Remember his superb collection " Kiss Kiss ?" It's one of those books I always wish I...

This is a rough description of my thinking over the last couple of weeks. Having reached stage seven already, it may be time to regroup. Not sure what I was thinking, devoting a blog to crime fiction when there are so many excellent ones already out there. Perhaps I'll change the focus to late-50s quiz shows... 1. I'll just see how it works. You figure everybody else is blogging, so why not give it a try? There's always a chance it could be more fun than watching "Deal or No Deal." 2. Look, I'm writing! You read and reread your published posts and experience a thrill akin to seeing your name on a best-selling novel. This is easier than you thought. And just think: every day your erudite ruminations are out there for all the world to see. 3. Here's the link. You realize that your thoughts are not only as valid as anyone else's, they're probably quite a bit more so, given your expertise and innate understanding of the topic. So you start spreading ...

In a far corner of the warehouse, back in the dust and shadows, there are some books I haven't seen or read in more than four decades. I no longer remember the plots or characters or dialogue, but I do remember the pleasure of reading them. Sometimes I wonder: Did those books start my interest in detective stories, or was I drawn to them because I already had a fascination with dark secrets and the way those secrets might be revealed? I don't know; that's one mystery the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew don't seem up to solving. Maybe a bit of both. Between the ages of 8 and about 12, I devoured as many of those books as I could find at the Carnegie Library in Kalispell, Mont. -- dozens of each, I'm sure. It wasn't until I was a young adult that I discovered, to my annoyance, that there was no such author as Franklin W. Dixon or Carolyn Keene. But by then I had gone on to darker fare: Raymond Chandler, John MacDonald -- even a bit of Mickey Spillane. I know: a middl...

After a writing hiatus of quite a few months longer than I intended, I'm back to work on what I will refer to as "the book." I knocked out another 500 words yesterday, and expect to make that the standard day's output. But since I've had these productive impulses before, and since they tend to expire after about a week, I'm employing a few other strategies. First: A new computer! Yep, I have decided that there are too many games on my desktop machine, it's too noisy, and it confines me to one room of the house. So I ordered a new notebook computer from Dell. It's their new 1420 model. Should be here in a couple more weeks -- although you never know with Dell -- and then the only files I'll transfer from my old computer to the new one are my in-progress writing projects. I know what you're thinking: Basically, I'm offering myself a cheap bribe to a commit to a project that will probably take a year -- long after the shiny new computer cease...

I suppose it is not a sign of my good taste or reverence for books that so many I own are paperbacks. I have fairly strict criteria for buying hardbound volumes: If the book is a gift, if it is a work I expect to frequently reread, if it is a reference book, or if it is something I just can't wait to get my hands on. (Also, if it is offered at steep discount from Sam's Club or Costco, but I can be flexible on that point.) Thus, I recently sent my brother, for his birthday, a hardbound copy of Ian Rankin's new title, "The Naming of the Dead" even though I'd have been content to wait for the paperback myself. That's not an entirely selfless act: While I have loved nearly all the Rebus novels, I've found the most recent entries to have taken on kind of a meandering quality. I'll see what my brother Mike has to say before picking up a copy for myself. A number of books in my eclectic collection of hardbounds I'm not particularly proud to display --...

For Father's Day this year, my daughter Cassie presented me with the first volume of the Harry Potter series and two CD audio sets: Stephen King's "Blood and Smoke" and Gregory Maguire's "Wicked." (While she shares my fondness for reading, she leans more toward fantasy and horror than crime fiction, a genre she dismisses as shopworn and tedious.) Now, I had started on Harry Potter a couple of years ago to see what the fuss was about, but put it aside because it seemed, well, just too childish. Cassie was horrified when I said this, and insisted I give the series another chance. And so, because I believe that using a gift is a token of affection to the person who gave it to you, and because my daughter would never stop asking about it, I am now reading "The Sorcerer's Stone" all the way through. Two reactions: The writing still seems a little childish, but that's the demographic and J.K. Rowling is an excellent storyteller. Secondly, I r...

We don't watch a lot of TV here at the ancestral manse, and now that "The Sopranos" is history, we watch even less. My current viewing schedule is about the same as it was a decade ago: Reruns of "Seinfeld," mostly, and the odd episode of "American Justice." But whenever the wife and I rave about "The Sopranos," certain friends and relatives keep insisting that the HBO series "The Wire" is not only just as good, but better. Recently we went off to Blockbuster to test the truth of that assertion. The verdict, after viewing the first two episodes: It ain't bad, but it ain't "The Sopranos." What made Tony and the crew so appealing was the constant tension between Tony's role as a modern suburban family man and his role as boss in the volatile and amoral mob. That tension allowed a lot of incisive, surprising and frequently humorous commentary on American life. "The Wire" does deliver some sharp writing, ...

I've discovered this great new writer: Ruth Rendell. I predict that one day she will sell a lot of books. Seriously, I'm embarrassed to admit that even though I call myself a fan of crime fiction, I had completely ignored the works of Ruth Rendell until about a year ago. I'm even more embarrassed to say that I had deliberately browsed right past her books, mostly because she's so prolific I was sure it must all be crap. Even worse: I had this baseless suspicion that female writers could not really do justice to the genre, Agatha Christie and P.D. James notwithstanding. Yes, that is a terribly sexist and ignorant attitude, and I apologize. I have read the top-selling female writers like Janet Evanovich, Sue Grafton and Patricia Cornwell. As successful as they all are, their work has never really connected with me. I'm sure that's my problem, not theirs. What I like about Ruth Rendell is her brilliant way of exploring the psychic landscape of her characters, teasi...

One of these days I suppose I should admit that my preferred creative form, short crime fiction, is all but dead. When's the last time you enjoyed a good detective yarn that was under, say, 8,000 words? I thought so. Me too -- even though I like writing short stories, I sure don't read many of them these days. So why am I stuck on short stories? It's not for the money -- Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, where I've sold most of my work, still pays about the same as it did 40 years ago -- which is to say, very little. Mention those paltry checks to the IRS, and you pay self-employment tax in addition to the tax on the income. It's not for the fame, either -- as far as I can tell, EQMM and its sister publication, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, are two of the least-read periodicals in the nation, coming in just behind Goat Riders Quarterly. No, the real reason I write short stories is that I'm too daunted by the concept of finishing something that may run 40...

I'm one of those writers who does a lot of it my head, often late at night while I'm trying to go to sleep. As I toss and turn, I craft ingenious plots and dazzling metaphors -- really great stuff. The only problem is that my head is not a leak-proof vessel. Most of the time, I stumble out of bed the next morning to find that my great ideas have largely disappeared. What was effervescent champagne the night before is now sticky residue at the bottom of a smeared glass. Which usually drives home the point that if I want to have written, I have to -- well, write. It's not enough just to think about it. This is a serious downside to being a writer. It's so much easier to soar away on the wings of imagination if one isn't tethered to a keyboard. And it's very easy to put off the unpleasantness of coughing words out one by one if you've managed to convince yourself that your great ideas will one day write themselves if only given enough time to bloom. You'd t...

... is " A Small Death in Lisbon " by Robert Wilson. Actually, it's not the worst -- that distinction goes to Harlen Coben's dreadful " Promise Me " -- I just liked the best-worst symmetry of this and the preceding post. Still, I didn't much like this book. While I admire the author's ambition and research, this is one of those yarns where meticulous geographic detail actually undermines the story. The book is two intersecting tales about a modern-day sex murder and SS operations in Portugal during World War II, and it was deemed worthy of the Golden Dagger award. Which goes to show that I am not the best judge of these things. Two things put me off: the relentless recitation of Portuguese landmarks and street names, and the lack of a compelling protagonist in the Nazi-era portion of the tale. Since that part accounts for at least half the book, it's a serious shortcoming. To paraphrase the old saying: I don't know much about writing, but I k...

... is Martin Cruz Smith's "Stalin's Ghost." The morose and laconic Arkady Renko returns for the sixth time since his debut in the brilliant "Gorky Park" of 1982. This time he's back in Moscow, which has changed a great deal in 25 years. It's a city where the excesses of capitalism and corruption have engendered an odd nostalgia for the days of Stalinist Russia -- even as mass graves yield reminders of what those days were really like. The plot is labrynthine, involving bureacratic treachery and atrocities committed during both World War II and the Chechen war, but the real strength of "Stalin's Ghost" is in the finely drawn characters, starting with Renko himself. The detective's stoic sense of irony and humor in the face of brutality keeps you turning the pages to see how he's going to survive. Along the way, you'll learn quite a bit about the soul of contemporary Russian. For my money, this is the best of the series.