Queen of Crime

Several weeks early, I offer my New Year’s resolution for 2017: whenever I hear someone is making an enemies list, I’m gonna do what I can to be on it.

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There’s still time to go, but it’s entirely possible the best movie I saw in a theater in 2016 will be ... the best movie I saw in a theater in 2015. Seattle’s Cinerama recently wrapped a 10-day run of Mad Max: Fury Road – The Black and Chrome Edition. What better time to revisit the apocalypse! George Miller called this black and white print “the best version” of his action extravaganza, a “more authentic and elemental” experience. I loved the film when I saw it last summer, but this viewing was indeed more intense and emotional. Monochrome is Tom Hardy’s friend, revealing new layers to his performance. Both versions will be available on Blu-ray next month, but I may put Fury Road in the rarified category of movie I only watch on a big screen.

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One of the titles I picked up in the self-serve book room at Bouchercon in New Orleans was Blood Relations: The Selected Letters of Ellery Queen, edited by Joseph Goodrich. As one-half of Renee Patrick, I’m always interested in the working methods of other writing teams.

Rosemarie and I intend to remain married, so we’re not about to follow the lead of cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee. As Ellery Queen they wrote numerous novels and short stories about a detective also named Ellery Queen, with Dannay responsible for plotting duties and Lee handling the prose. It was a fraught system, each man resenting their interdependence and feeling unappreciated by the other. Their exchanges are charged with recriminations but also hugely instructive. One letter will offer a devastating critique of the work in progress, followed by an equally avid and airtight response. It’s bracing to read correspondence between partners who both have their reasons and are more than capable of defending them.

Here’s where I confess my ignorance of the Queen oeuvre. My experience was largely limited to the TV series from Columbo creators Richard Link and William Levinson, which incidentally is streaming on Hulu. Goodrich culls the letters in Blood Relations from what scholar Francis M. Nevins calls the “Third Period” of Queen, from 1942-58, when Ellery Queen the character was transformed from effete dandy to flesh-and-blood individual. I set out to read the books from Queen’s golden era even though the Dannay/Lee letters made me familiar with their twists and turns. I was curious; having peaked behind the curtain, could I still enjoy the show?

Ten Days’ Wonder (1948) is something of a chamber piece, one of the novels where Ellery retreats to the bucolic hamlet of Wrightsville. As such, it has a small cast of characters and for that reason I couldn’t shake the feeling that even coming to it fresh I would have sussed out the killer. The core idea still strikes me as a shade too intellectual. But the writing is soulful, seeking and finding a deepening of the character, and the mechanics of the final revelation are impressive. The next year’s Cat of Many Tails, in contrast, seemed even more thrilling knowing what tricks the boys had up their sleeves. The gripping tale of a serial killer terrorizing New York, it’s thick with mid-century atmosphere; when handing over his detailed outline, Dannay suggests Lee use the then-in-the-theaters The Naked City as a guide. The Cat’s method of selecting his victims is as diabolical now as it was nearly seventy years ago, the motive behind it every bit as chilling. The psychological explanations tend to be long-winded, understandable given when the book was written. But that gentility also makes the shock easier to take.

It was fascinating to approach a book when its gaff has been blown and look for the seams. Time to read some Ellery Queen where I don’t possess any of their secrets.

Me Elsewhere: Hooray for Hollywood

All right, kids. Time to release some news that Rosemarie and I have been keeping under wraps for a few months now. Good news. Big news.

Drumroll, please!

Seriously? That’s the best drumroll we can – you know what, forget it. We’re forging ahead.

Rosemarie and I are hugely excited to announce that our mystery novel Design for Dying, which we wrote under the pen name Renee Patrick, will be published by Macmillan’s Tor/Forge Books in April 2016, with a sequel to follow in April 2017.

An early Paramount promotional photo of Edith

Design is set in 1937 Los Angeles and introduces Lillian Frost, an aspiring actress who has traded in her dreams of stardom for security as a department store salesgirl. When her former roommate is murdered, Lillian is drawn into the investigation – and the orbit of Edith Head, the famed costume designer at Paramount Pictures then in the early days of her legendary career. With assists from a host of silver screen luminaries, the two ladies join forces to track down a killer hiding in the shadows around the Klieg lights of Hollywood.

We were thrilled when Design won the 2013 William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant for Unpublished Writers. (Reminder: you have until November 15 to submit your application for this year.) We are beside ourselves that the book has found a home with the great people at Tor/Forge, and that Renee Patrick will have the opportunity to write another mystery featuring Lillian and Edith. Rosemarie and I have always envisioned this as a series drawing on real Hollywood history and the astonishing legacy of Edith Head, an enormous talent who dressed everyone, knew everyone, and blazed a trail for women in show business.

Word of Design’s sale broke on Halloween in this post we wrote for the Boucheron 2014 blog. We’ll be in Long Beach for this year’s convention and participating in a Tor/Forge author event at Bouchercon on Friday, November 14. If you see us, come say hi. We’ll be the couple standing around looking dumbstruck at our good fortune.

Miscellaneous: Met Them in St. Louis, Louis

It wasn’t until we were on the plane en route to the annual crime fiction writers and readers convention Bouchercon that we learned St. Louis was also playing host to over 40,000 Christian women attending various conferences the same weekend. This sets up any number of obvious jokes. But after listening to Rosemarie and her seatmate, who was bound for one of those conferences, have a long conversation about their favorite mystery writers, I’ve decided to take the high road and focus on what unites these groups. St. Louis was full of people inspired enough to get out into the world and meet with like-minded individuals. I can only hope the ladies returned home as I did, with a satchelful of memories, an inexplicable minibar bill (we didn’t HAVE a minibar!) and a hacking cough so dry it merits a brushfire warning.

(With that ecumenical moment out of the way, I will say to the women wearing sweatshirts reading “God’s Love is Better than Life” that that sentiment chills me to the fucking bone. I know what it means. I do. But I can’t help thinking there’d be an unholy uproar if hundreds of members of a different religion – no names; just pick another of the major ones – walked around an American city similarly attired.)

The trip kicked off with one of STL’s fabled Noir at the Bar readings. Among the evening’s line-up were soon-to-be Crimespree and Anthony Award winners Hilary Davidson and Duane Swierczynski, John Rector, and Matthew J. McBride. Plus the St. Louis Walk of Fame ran down the sidewalk, honoring local luminaries like Buddy Ebsen and James “Cool Papa” Bell, who legend has it could throw a pork chop past a wolf.

We came, we saw, we paneled. Rosemarie and I split the duties again this year to take in as many relevant ones as possible. Some of my favorites included:

• The fight panel, with themed moderation by Eric Beetner and savvy comments from Frank Bill, my secret sister Christa Faust, Jamie Freveletti and Tom Schreck

• One on Hitchcock’s enduring legacy, disappointing only in that nobody named Strangers on a Train as their favorite

• The comics panel, with panelist Duane Swierczynski ably doubling as emergency moderator and Max Allan Collins (a ubiquitous presence whose band provided the closing night’s entertainment) provoking an interesting conversation about why graphic novels were separated from an author’s other work

• The first “Bouchercon After Dark” panel, with a battery of reprobates and S. J. Rozan discussing “Sex, Violence and Everything That Makes a Book Great”

I’d suggest to future organizers putting Christa Faust on as many panels as possible, but that might cut down on her time intimidating tough guy writers at the bar, which offers tremendous entertainment value.

But for my second Bouchercon I spent more time prowling the halls and the book room, which yielded terrific dividends. Like meeting Robert J. Randisi, one of this year’s local living legends and author of the Rat Pack mysteries. (I read the latest entry, Fly Me to the Morgue, just before the con and as usual enjoyed the hell out of it.) He even sang an Elvis song with Max Allan Collins’ band. And hearing firsthand James Crumley stories from the con’s unofficial mayor Scott Phillips and the inimitable Robert Ward. And having a long conversation with the gentleman of the genre and my favorite blogger Bill Crider. And getting to say hello to Craig McDonald.

Then there’s the bar. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy until next year in Cleveland, when I certainly hope to be in attendance. It was here that I learned Megan Abbott shares my obsession with reality TV’s staged trainwreck Ryan & Tatum: The O’Neals. That I shook hands with Johnny Shaw, like me a hugely talented man hoodwinked into writing for Ray Banks’ movie blog for free. That I bore witness to Martyn Waites’ uncanny imitation of Brian Cox in The Music Man and glimpsed the performance of Renfield in Dracula that made Martyn the gay icon he is today. That I shouted at Wallace Stroby about ‘70s New York movies. That I saw Reed Farrel Coleman bust out his Mr. Met moves at the mere mention of our shared home team. That I gaped in amazement as Lisa Brackmann chowed down on scored sheep’s head brought from Iceland by Yrsa Sigurdardottir and choked down some sheep’s head pate myself. That I lost sight of Rosemarie for a moment only to realize she was tugging Laura Lippman’s boots off. It was here, then, that I became a man.

All praise and credit is due to Jon and Ruth Jordan, Judy Bobalik, Jeremy Lynch, and the many volunteers. I also have to acknowledge the sterling work of the staff of the Renaissance Grand Hotel, especially the crack team in the bar. And I salute the winner of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, your friend and mine Ed Gorman.

It was raining when we left St. Louis yesterday, so I put on my cap as we walked to the train to the airport. Two stops later a group of people on a scavenger hunt yelled, “Is anyone here wearing something sports related that’s not from St. Louis?” With a sigh I walked to the rear of the car. Somewhere out there is a photograph of me in my Mets hat, pretending to be at home plate alongside four total strangers wearing neon deely bobbers. I will never see this photograph. Somehow it seemed the perfect way to end the weekend.