Mysteries and Thrillers at the Beach

by Jamie Freveletti

I'm technically on vacation, (so writing this on the fly) but wanted to show everyone what Mysteries and Thrillers are traveling the world. Don't know if this image is clear enough, but the shelf that you see here is in the library of the Cuisinart Resort in Anguilla. Of course the minute we landed I headed into the library to get a look at the books. This picture shows only the Mystery and Thriller category and only those that I could manage to get into one photo.

They have other categories as well: Teen, Fantasy, Sci Fi, Romance and Self Help and Non Fiction. By far the most books were in the Mystery and Thriller category, which is not that surprising as the genre lends itself to a relaxing beach read.

The names are some of the best: Chandler, Slaughter, Cussler, Patterson, Grishom, Child, Coben, and Lescorat. By far the ones with the most on the shelf were Patterson, Cussler and, in the romance category, Nora Roberts with Harry Potter dominating the Fantasy section.

Patterson's teen series also were predominant on the Teen shelves with his Maximum Ride novels, which gives you an idea of the empire Mr. Patterson has created.

It's a lot of fun to see which novels the guests brought to their vacation, and the resort encourages everyone to feel free to leave the books behind for the next guest to enjoy. I picked up "As Husbands Go" by Susan Isaacs (still writing my own so avoiding thrillers) and am enjoying it immensely. My thanks to whatever guest left it behind!

Writers and Conferences.

by Jamie Freveletti

I just returned from Bouchercon 2010 the annual mystery convention. My first writers conference was Bouchercon when it was here in Chicago. I remember finding the web page online, seeing the list of authors--many that I admired and read voraciously, and scanning the panels page.

That conference sticks in my memory, mostly because it was my first, the weather in Chicago was beautiful (I rode my bike down the lake to get there) and many friends that I made there have stayed friends. Some were other, aspiring writers at the time that are now published and working on their second or third novels, and others were readers that loved the same authors that I did.

What is fun about these conferences now is the fact that they take me away from my computer and writer mode and back into fan mode. I learn about new authors, new stories, and get to be a fan again. For the first couple of days I'm thrilled to be out and about.

What's tough about the conferences is the flip side: that I usually don't have time to write. By the last day I'm usually holed up in my room pounding out a few pages. Writing keeps me balanced, happy, and gives me a chance to go wherever my imagination takes me. I love it. Can't wait to do more of it, and am thankful to be able to do it as a living. For that last bit I thank the readers.

Whatcha Reading, Barack?

On November 1, the Chicago Tribune invited its two heavy-hitter writers, Aleksander Hemon and Garry Wills, to come up with a list of required reading for the new president: five fiction, five non-fiction. You can see their list here: It includes Thucydides, Al Gore, and Jose Saramago, among others. I have to confess, I was underimpressed with their recommendations.

My own list:

Non-fiction: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.  Barack will have policy wonks aplenty on specific issues but my physics friends say this should be required reading for anyone having to think seriously about nuclear weapons, proliferation, dirty bombs, and related policy issues.  

Ahmed Rashid's The Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia.  Rashid, a Pakistani journalist who covered the Taliban for years, wrote this important book right before 9/11.  We could have avoided a lot of mistakes in Central Asia if we had listened to him and experts like him.

National Security, FBI and CIA Intelligence Briefings.  Given that the nation's security apparatus had warned Bush and Condoleezza Rice of an imminent attack on U.S. soil in the summer of 2001, a great deal of the mess we're in now could have been avoided had the president and his aides only read the briefings and acted appropriately.

Women's lives and bodies have been compromised by eight years of the Bush administration, in which access to contraception and abortion have been curtailed both at home and abroad.  Barack has announced support for Griswold and Roe, allowing people to return to the privacy of their  homes and doctors' offices to make important choices, but the Catholic bishops are demanding that he abandon these views.  There are many books available on reproductive matters; one that is eminently readable is Daniel Maguire's edited volume Sacred Rights. Maguire is Professor of Moral Theology and Ethics at Marquette University (a Catholic Institution) and has a deep and nuanced understanding of religion and reproductive rights.

Finally, Helen Thomas's Watchdogs of Democracy? is a timely critique of the way in which the Washington  Press Corps failed to ask the key questions needed for our citizens to understand what the Bush administration intended to do about war, peace, the environment, the economy, and our nation's health.

Fiction, Poetry

Irina Ratushinkskaya's Grey is the Color of Hope.  This memoir from the Soviet-era gulags tells readers about the human cost of power, and the human capacity for survival and hope.  

The Brothers Karamazov.  A ripping good yarn about faith, families and murder.

Richard II.  What happens when you let power go to your head.

Melissa Benn, One of Us.  This novel about ambition and politics, by the daughter of one of England's important labor leaders, is a gripping novel of the cost to the people who support the big kahuna on his/her quest for power.

Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest. Shows what could happen when we let greed rule in the place of justice.

What do you think Barack should be reading?

P.S.  Heman couldn't come up with any books by women; Wills had one.  Extra points for those who imagine women writers.

Can't We All Get Along?

By Barbara D’Amato

This week, on one of the mystery lists, I came upon an extremely hostile reviewlet of a new crime novel. It brought back thoughts of a specific type of comment about books that has puzzled me for years.

I’m not talking about negative reviews. They’re legitimate. A good reviewer is able to say, “This isn’t my favorite kind of novel, but it’s a good example of its type.” I’m talking about the comment in which the reader or reviewer is angry that such a book even exists.

It would be understandable if the reader were upset that a book dissed his religion or ethnicity. It’s even reasonable to have a distaste for a book that appears to the reader to be gratuitously bloody or cruel -- although in those cases I would say just don’t read it. But these, oddly enough, are stylistic objections.

Intentionally, I am not going to quote from any of these diatribes, nor name names or publications. It seems unprofessional to leave out all the proof of what I’m saying, but I’d rather not add to the back-and-forth. And anyway, we’ve all read some of them, haven’t we?

It’s not the writers who come up with these angry blasts. Virtually all the writers I know are supportive of other writers. They know how hard it is to write a book, and they are appreciative of others who do it, even the book isn’t what they like to read.

These are readers who are outraged that noir, or chicklit, or whatever they can’t stand, even gets published. They are outraged when a fast-paced adventure novel is low on characterization. Or they are furious that a chicklit book may be “light.” Or they can’t stand it that a traditional puzzle mystery is more intellectual than emotional. Hello? What were you expecting?

A sentence from the 60s comes to mind. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

If books had misleading cover descriptions, so that you paid money for an updated Rambo and got a knitting boutique, anger might be understandable. But mostly that isn’t the case, and, in addition, a lot of the outrage comes from reviewers and critics who get advance reading copies free.

What in the world triggers this anger? Maybe it comes from fear of the foreign, a kind of xenophobia: how can any person be so different from me as to enjoy this book?

I’d be interested in your thinking.