Bruce DeSilva's Blog, page 49

"Cliff Walk," the New Mulligan Novel, Gets a Starred Review in Publishers Weekly!

My thanks to Publishers Weekly, the bible of the book business, for this starred review of Cliff Walk today:

"The legality of prostitution in Rhode Island figures prominently in the plot of DeSilva's sterling follow-up to 2010's Rogue Island, which won Edgar and Macavity awards for best first novel. Liam Mulligan, a reporter for the declining Providence Dispatch, must handle a range of stories, from the discovery of body parts in Scalici Recycling's pig farm in Pascoag to the apparent murder of Sal Maniella, pornographer and owner of several strip clubs, whose body is found on the rocks below Newport's famed Cliff Walk. Mulligan's investigative work keeps him hopping, as do sexy black lawyer Yolanda Mosley-Jones, who represents the Maniellas; Mulligan's divorce-seeking wife, Dorcas; and Maniella's ex-SEAL bodyguards. Mulligan sports a bad ulcer, plenty of attitude, and connections that span all strata of society. The brilliantly limned supporting characters include Rhode Island attorney general Fiona McNerney (aka Attila the Nun) and earnest Edward Anthony Mason IV, "the scion of six inbred Yankee families that had owned the Dispatch since the Civil War." Look for this one to garner more award nominations."

The novel will be published on May 22. You can pre-order the hardcover or e-book here.

A Fine New Memoir by the Great Howard Frank Mosher

Howard Frank Mosher's new memoir, The Great Northern Express, is a must read for anyone who cares about good writing and the writing life.

Mosher has long been among my very favorite novelists, one of the few authors I actually RE-read. His quirky characters, his mischievous humor, and the way his superb storytelling probes America's national character make him the closest thing we have to Mark Twain. I especially love Waiting for Teddy Williams and On Kingdom Mountain, both of them stunningly beautiful books.

In the new memoir, Mosher embarks on a three-month long, 20,000-mile, 100-city, 150-store book tour to promote his latest novel, Walking to Gatlinburg. He departs from his beloved home in Vermont's remote Northeast Kingdom on his 65th birthday, just after completing 46 radiation treatments for prostate cancer. The car that he climbs in for the journey, his twenty-year-old Chevy Celebrity–AKA the Looser Cruiser–is in far worse shape than he is.

Along the way, he encounters an angry mother moose, a prophet called "West Texas Jesus," and host of other colorful characters, real and imagined. (On his long drives, he has some revealing conversations with the likes of Mark Twain, Jesus, and Harry Potter.)

He shares all of the pains and joys familiar to any author who has gone on a long book tour–including being mistaken as a vagrant in Oakland, CA–although no one has ever chronicled such a trip better.

On the long drives between bookstores, Mosher also thinks about his life with Phillis, the inspirational wife of fifty years who waits for him back home. He reminisces about when he and Phillis, fresh out of college, came to the little down in rural Vermont to take jobs as school teachers, thinking they probably wouldn't stay long. He thinks about the students they taught there, the friends they made, his early struggles to make himself the writer he has become, and how he and Phillis came to love their adopted town and the life they built there.

Along the way, he also takes us on a literary archaeological dig: his search for a missing manuscript about life in an Adirondacks town that was written many years ago by his late Uncle Reg.

Best of all, Mosher shows us, as he puts it, how he came to discover "what he loved enough to live for."

You can buy a copy of this fine book here. You'll be glad that you did. Meanwhile, do yourself a favor and pick up some of his superb novels here.

And if you'd like to learn more about this magnificent writer, check out his website here.

Win a Free Copy of "Cliff Walk," the New Mulligan Crime Novel

"Cliff Walk," my new Mulligan crime novel, will be published in hardcover by Forge on May 22.

Want a free copy?  Enter my publisher's giveaway contest for a chance to win. Just click here.

"Cliff Walk" is the sequel to "Rogue Island," which won both the Edgar and Macavity awards and was a finalist for the Anthony and Shamus awards as well.

"Rogue Island" A Finalist for the Audie Award!

Rogue Island, my first crime novel, has been selected as a finalist for the Audie award in the best mystery category.  The Audies, presented by the Audible Publishers Association, recognize the best audio books of the year.

The narrator and the quality of the production play a major role in the judging, so I owe thanks to Jeff Woodman, who did the narration, and to Audible Inc., the company that produced and distributed the audio book.

Previously, the print version of Rogue Island won the Edgar and Macavity awards and was a finalist for the Shamus and Anthony Awards.

The other books nominated for the Audie in my category are Feast Day of Fools, by James Lee Burke, Narrated by Will Patton, Simon & Schuster Audio; Naughty in Nice: A Royal Spyness Mystery, by Rhys Bowen, Narrated by Katherine Kellgren, Audible, Inc.; One Dog Night, by David Rosenfelt, Narrated by Grover Gardner, Listen & Live Audio; and Return to Marshall's Bayou: A Dassas Cormier Mystery, by S.H. Baker, Narrated by a full cast, Siren Audio Solutions

You can purchase the audio version of Rogue Island here. The trade paperback and Kindle editions are available here.

Cliff Walk, the second book in the Mulligan crime novel series, will be published on May 22, and is available for pre-order here.

Real Mob Shakedown Mirrors Plot of My Novel, "Cliff Walk"

Reality follows art:

In my forthcoming novel, "Cliff Walk," to be published by Forge on May 22, a Rhode Island mobster named Sal Maniella shakes down Providence strip clubs for protection money.

Today, several Rhode Island organized crime figures, including my old pal Baby Shacks Manocchio, have agreed to plead guilty to doing the same thing to the tune of $800,000.

A link to the Providence Journal story about the plea agreement can be found here.

Freedom Of Religion, Like All Constitutional Rights, Is Limited.

If requiring religious institutions to make contraceptive care available to employees is unconstitutional, how can these things be?

1. Twenty-eight states require religious institutions to not only make contraceptive care available for employees but to PAY for it.

2. Most religious institutions in those states, including Roman Catholic ones, comply with those laws.

3. Catholic Bishops in some of those states have sued to block these laws and have always LOST in court.

As I have followed the debate over the contraception issue, I have observed that many people misunderstand the nature of freedom of religion as it is guaranteed by the First Amendment. Many seem to think it is an unlimited right. It is not. None of our constitutional rights are unlimited. For one thing, my rights are limited when they conflict with yours.

In the case of freedom of religion, every American is free to BELIEVE anything he or she wants, but no one is free to DO anything he or she wants. Limits on what we can do in the name of religion are many, and some of them should be familiar to everyone.

Christian Science parents are not permitted to deny their children treatment for life-threatening diseases, and if they do so they can be criminally charged. Breakaway Mormon sects are not permitted to engage in bigamy or marry off underage girls, and some of their leaders are in prison for doing so. Conscientious objectors, such as Quakers, may BELIEVE that their federal taxes should not help pay for wars, but if they don't pay those taxes they face criminal charges.

And so it goes.

The farther a religious organization wanders from worship into other activities, the less it can claim those activities are protected as religious freedoms. That's why the administration's new contraception rule does not apply to churches but does apply to hospitals and schools, where what goes on is at least partially, if not predominantly, secular.

Anyone who operates a hospital or school is subject to a large number of federal, state, and local laws including building codes, medical standards, and business laws–and they must obey them regardless of whether they conflict with their religious beliefs.

Of course, Roman Catholics have every right to complain that providing contraception to employees would violate their moral beliefs. But this does not mean they have a legal right not to provide the benefit.

The constitutional claim here is weak, and so far it has been a consistent loser in the courts.

Want To Write A Mystery? A New Book, Which I Contributed To, Tells How

I'm proud to be among the contributors to "Now Write! Mysteries," a new book filled with advice and exercises to help you create a whodunit, a hard-boiled crime novel, a thriller, a police procedural, or anything else under the broad umbrella of crime fiction.

My contribution is an essay on how to create a vivid setting for your story. Other contributors include Louise Penny, Gar Anthony Haywood, Peter James, Simon Brett, Rebecca Cantrell, Reed Farrel Coleman, John Lutz, Meg Gardiner, and many more. The book was edited by Sherry Ellis and Louise Lamson and published by Penguin. It's available here now.

Checked Out Bill Crider's and Michael Haskins' Crime Novels Yet?

Bill Crider and Michael Haskins, two fine crime novelists, have books that you might want to check out.

Michael Haskins' Stairway to the Bottom:  After finding a murdered female killer from the Cold War era, Mick Murphy faces off with a hit man for Whitey Bulger who has escaped from witness protection to collect Bulger's hidden millions. At the same time, retired Cold War agents come to Key West looking for someone that walked off with more than $20 million in diamonds and they think the missing hit man is their guy. Murphy thinks the situation is funny as he meets and talks to the agents, but dislikes the hit man even though Padre Thomas has given him absolution. It's not long before his buddy Norm shows up with CIA agents looking for the diamonds. They are soon followed by the British, French, Israeli and Russian spy agencies. Everyone assumes Murphy can lead them to the Cold War agent, while Murphy tries helplessly to explain the man they are looking for is a Boston gangster. On the water, snorkeling at the reef with Tita, Norm and a female CIA agent everything in Murphy's world begins to unravel. As both those looking for the hit man and those looking for the diamonds collide, Murphy's world changes forever. You can purchase it here.

Bill Crider's Dead on the Island, my favorite of the Truman Smith adventures, finds the private eye returning to his hometown of Galveston to investigate the disappearance of his sister. He runs into people from his past, finds a cat, and gets into lots of trouble, Publisher's Weekly say Smith is "a moody, introspective PI in the finest tradition, who works in a seamy city smoldering with old and dangerous secrets." You can purchase the Truman Smith mysteries here.

Novelist Paul D. Brazill has a nice interview with Haskins that you can find here.

And novelist Timothy Hallinan has a fine interview with Crider that you can find here.

"Cliff Walk," The New Mulligan Crime Novel, Available For Pre-Orders

Cliff Walk, the sequel to my Edgar Award-winning first crime novel, Rogue Island, will be published in hardcover by Forge on May 22 — but it is already available for pre-order here.

This is what the jacket copy says about it:

Prostitution has been legal in Rhode Island for more than a decade; Liam Mulligan, an old-school investigative reporter at dying Providence newspaper, suspects the governor has been taking payoffs to keep it that way. But this isn't the only story making headlines…a child's severed arm is discovered in a pile of garbage at a pig farm. Then the body of an internet pornographer is found sprawled on the rocks at the base of Newport's famous Cliff Walk.

At first, the killings seem random, but as Mulligan keeps digging into the state's thriving sex business, strange connections emerge. Promised free sex with hookers if he minds his own business—and a beating if he doesn't—Mulligan enlists Thanks-Dad, the newspaper publisher's son, and Attila the Nun, the state's colorful Attorney General, in his quest for the truth. What Mulligan learns will lead him to question his beliefs about sexual morality, shake his tenuous religious faith, and leave him wondering who his real friends are.

Cliff Walk is at once a hard-boiled mystery and an exploration of sex and religion in the age of pornography. Written with the unique and powerful voice that won DeSilva an Edgar Award for Best First Novel, Cliff Walk lifts Mulligan into the pantheon of great suspense heroes and is a giant leap for the career of Bruce DeSilva.

 

The Japanese Edition of "Rogue Island" Has Arrived!

The Japanese edition of my Edgar Award-winning crime novel, Rogue Island, has arrived — and just in time for Christmas!

The publisher is  Hayakawa, one of the better houses in Japan. It's other American and British authors include George Pelecanos, Thomas H. Cook, Tom Franklin, John Hart and Ian Rankin. I feel lucky to be in that company.

The U.S. edition — in trade paperback, Kindle, and downloadable audio versions — can be found here.