Ed Gorman's Blog, page 273

Dave Zeltserman

This interview originally appeared on Rafe McGregor's blod tonight.


WEDNESDAY, 27 MAY 2009

McConfidential #2: Dave Zeltserman
Dave Zelterserman is a writer of dark crime fiction and lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Rafe: Tell me a bit about your current series.

Dave: Pariah is being published in the US this October, and is the second of my 'man just out prison' trilogy that Serpent’s Tail is putting out. I wrote this book on two levels — at one level it’s a fierce and uncompromising crime novel, at an

A Nasty Tale; TERRILL LANKFORD-MICHAEL CONNELLY

I don't know how many of you have been following this story about it shows that good old Oxford University is as much of a snake pit of jealousy and intrigue as most big ad agencies. I don't have a dog in this fight and it seems that both sides had a case to make but man this is sure an embarrassment for the university.


Poetic Justice: Briton Says She Helped Taint Rival
by JOHN F. BURNS
Published: May 25, 2009
CAMBRIDGE, England — A historic month for women in British poetry turned sour on Monday

Which blurbs are more valuable

The other day Tess Gerritsen noted a discussion-disagreement about the impact of the internet on book sales. In the course of the general back and forth the subject of blurbs came up--are blog blurbs all that helpful to publishers? This started when two Avon editors politely stated their opinion that, as of right now, newspaper/magazine blurbs are better and NY Times bestseller endorsement are best of all. Many writers and readers wrote in (apparently-I haven't read the source material) to comp

A brutal look at publishing from Crain's Business New York

By Matthew Flamm
SAVING TREES: [+:] SAVING TREES: Brian Napack says Macmillan is getting to the point where manuscripts will move through a paperless system. Photo by Buck Ennis
Filed Under :

Brave New World, Hachette, HarperCollins, Top Stories

Last week, an auction for a book by Capt. Richard Phillips, the merchant-ship hero who saved his crew from pirates, drew top bids of around $500,000—half the seven-figure advance it had been expected to fetch.

At least that book had bidders. In February, the

Villains

In the Guardian (UK) Michael Hann responds to David Thomson's piece about movie villains. The major and minor ones of different types.

"David Thomson thinks it's Robert Shaw – even when, as in Jaws, he's on the side of the angels, David believes Shaw to have the been the scariest man to stride across the cinema screens. So who are the greatest villains in cinema history? They must be characters who compel us to watch, people who make us wonder: what happened to make them that way?

"So those villai

Leigh Brackett

Im rereading Stranger At Home by Leigh Brackett (the mystery novel she ghosted for actor George Sanders--and which really needs to be in print again) and thought I'd run this oldie review.

Leigh Brackett

In a recent issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction magazine Robert Silverberg wrote a smart piece about growing up in the Fifties with your bedroom packed full of science fiction magazines. Easy to turn such a memoir into treacle but with only a tad of sentimentality Silverberg explained how thos

Gary Lovisi is a very busy guy

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As I've mentioned here several times before Gary Lovisi's Paperback Parade magazine covers material you never see anywhere else. Gary's love of pbs--and their history--has now carried him through seventy two issues. Features in the new #72 include a long and informative interview with novelist Terrill Lankford. Alan Guthrie is a fine interviewer as he shows here. There's are several pages of pb cover art by Paul Lehr, an interesting artist in that he never quite got the credit he deserved thoug

True Crime - And Stunning NY Times

Lawyer’s Ways Spelled Murder, U.S. Is Charging

By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
Published: May 20, 2009
NEWARK — He spent a decade as a top prosecutor, trying murder cases in New Jersey, drug cases in federal court and a wide range of offenses in the military justice system.

Paul Bergrin was a sucessful state and federal prosecutor.
Scared Silent
Articles in the series examined the problem of witness intimidation in New Jersey.
He went on to become one of the state’s most prominent defense lawyers, representing c

Robert Bloch; Terrill Lankford

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"This is a thread that runs through all of my mystery/suspense fiction," Bloch has pointed out. "The terrible inability to understand the irrational behavior of certain human beings, what is it that impels that sometime senseless sadistic cruelty, and I tried to familiarize myself with it because I can recognize that, deep down within, there are certain of those aspects within myself which I probably manage to exorcise by way of the typewriter."
--Robert Bloch

Last night and this afternoon I read

The First Quarry by Max Allan Collins

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As soon as I finished The First Quarry I e-mailed Al Collins to tell him that I thought it was not only the best of the Quarry novels but one of his best novels period.

The Anthony committee agrees with me. The First Quarry has been nominated for Best Paperback Original of The Year.

In case you're unlucky enough not to have read it, buy it right away. The craft is stunning. Al twists and twists and twists the story from first page to last. As I've mentioned before this is one of the most suspens