Paul Bishop's Blog, page 40

LIE CATCHERS BOOK TRAILER

 LIE CATCHERS BOOK TRAILERCREATED BYANTHONY VENUTOLO

MARTINI IN THE MORNING

Martini In The Morning is back singin’ and swingin’ … I’ll be sharing my golden vocals (talking not singing, thank goodness) with host Brad ‘Martini’ Chambers on Wednesday, September 16th at 9:30 a.m. PST…   Join Brad, Mother Miriam, and me as we give the low down on the very important cameo Martini In The Morning makes in my latest novel, Lie Catchers… www.martiniinthemorning.com / Playing the Greatest Songs Ever Written, sung by the icons and the best of the new and happening now... TO LISTEN VIA TUNE IN RADIO CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE SESSION ON MARTINI VISION CLICK HEREAND FOLLOW THE LISTEN LIVE LINKS  

LIE CATCHERS AUDIO RELEASE

PRO SE PRODUCTIONS AND RADIO ARCHIVES HAVE JOINED FORCES TO BRING LIE CATCHERS TO AUDIO LIFE...DOWNLOAD IN MP3 FORMAT OR BUY AS PHYSICAL CDS...
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THE EMPATHIC LIBRARY

There is a very cool establishment in downtown LA called The Last Bookstore. All of their upstairs warrens of used books are organized first by color and then alphabetically within each color or variation.  It looks really great, but it is a royal pain to find those obscure titles collectors search for unless you know the color of the cover. Great for browsing, not so great for finding specific wants.
  My own shelves are organized aesthetically. Books appear to be grouped by subject and genre, however, they are really grouped by the emotions I attach to the books. Nobody else could find anything, but if you pushed all thousand-plus titles onto the floor and mixed them up, I would be able to methodically put each one back in its original place. If I was away and you needed to find a specific title, I could call you and tell you the specific shelf and position on the shelf where you could find it. Very OCD (or CDO – which is OCD in the right order), but I have a tremendous attachment to the books I now retain. I once had over three thousand books in the library, including a big collection of signed first editions. That got split in half in one of those life partings which see possessions cut in half with an emotional chainsaw.  In some ways, losing half of what I considered mylibrary was a big help to me. It delivered a strong blow to my obsessive collector tendencies, and made me think about what it was I really wanted from a personal library. I realized it should not simply be a collection of books without any strong connection to the individual who assemble the tomes on the shelves – it needed to be a living, changing, reflection of the individual collector. As a result, I ended up whittling down my half of the original library to only those books to which I had an emotional connection. I lost all interested in signed first editions, which to be of value must only have a signature without any personalization. I also came to realized as I grew intellectually, matured emotionally, and changed life perspective, my personal library needed to change as well. I realize this perspective will be seen as blasphemy by many, including a number of personal friends whose collections go back to the first books they bought for themselves. To each their own… However, acting on my epiphany has seen the books in my library settle in consistently at around 800 titles, but which have change almost completely three or four times in the past twenty-five years. There is still a core of about 200 books which are permanent entries, but all the rest are fair game to be swapped out for something different.   I do not seek signed copies any more unless I have a personal connection to a book or its author – for instance, I have signed copies of all the paperbacks from the Fight Card series I edited…and will always keep. I also have a signed copy of The Razor's Edge with which I will never part because of how the book came into my possession and how much that particular story has affected my life. I have also turned my collection into a readers' library. I prefer books that have been cared for, yet well read. They are not monetarily valuable in the least, but they have a priceless emotional history I can actually feel. I know that sounds wacky, but none-the-less it works for me. There isn't a book on my shelves I haven't read, where as before, when the tomes numbered in the thousands, over half had never been read and were simply sitting on the shelves to fulfill a compulsion.  For a number of years now, I've felt the current incarnation of my library was pretty static. In reality, it didn't change because I wasn't changing. I needed the stability of the titles I knew and kept there on the shelves waiting and comforting. However, recently, I have started to have an inkling a fairly large number of certain titles were telling me they expected to continue their journey from my shelves to elsewhere. In much the same way, I sometimes feel like a well-worn title in a confined collection – pushing myself further and further to the edge of the shelf – caught between fear of freefall and the exhilaration of new growing experiences. As this time for a gentle library purge approaches, I have been running my fingers down the well-worn spines of friends, recognizing it is okay for them to immigrate to new homes and collections. I also know there are other worn paperbacks and slightly battered hardcovers waiting for me to discover them and take them in…  ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Novelist, screenwriter, and television personality, Paul Bishop spent 35 years with the Los Angeles Police Department, where he was twice honored as Detective of the Year.  He continues to work privately as an interrogation and deception expert. His fifteen novels include five in his LAPD Homicide Detective Fey Croaker series. His latest novel, Lie Catchers, begins a new series featuring top LAPD interrogators Ray Pagan and Calamity Jane Randall.* WEBSITE * TWITTER * FACEBOOK * *  AMAZON * LIE CATCHERS * 

SLUGGING IT OUT IN BUKOWSKI’S BASEMENT

I stepped into Bukowski's Basement for a quiet drink and ended up getting worked over by tough guy, Anthony Venutolo...  PAUL BISHOPTHIS FORMER LAPD LIE CATCHERPRIMED TO CONQUER KINDLE’S CRIME CHARTSInterviewed byAnthony Venutolo Paul, you've been kicking around the writing biz for quite some time. You've written a bunch of novels, short stories, screenplays and were the co-creator of a new pulp line (Fight Card), what makes  Lie Catchersdifferent from your previous work? Lie Catchers is my most intimate book on two levels. First, it really delves into my personal experiences as an interrogator. This was something I’ve been wanting to do for several years now. Interrogation is an intimate dance between the interrogator and a subject all in pursuit of an elusive concept of truth. We all have our personal space, which can vary depending on the situation we are in – public, social, intimate. The intimate zone (0’–1.5’) is reserved for those individuals to whom we are closest, who we trust. A great interrogator lives in the intimate zone. When I am in an interrogation, I have no barriers between myself and the suspect. We are knee to knee, and sometimes closer. I sit on the edge of my chair alert to anything the suspect does I can interpret as a sign of deception. If a suspect’s behavior changes when I ask anxiety raising questions from what it was when I was asking non-anxiety questions (usually personal history stuff so I can get a behavioral base line) then I know I caused that deceptive behavior to happen. Often my first clue is when the suspect’s carotid artery begins to pulse in their neck. This is visible, but you have to be in the suspect’s intimate zone to see it. As a sex crimes detective, think about what I am asking of a suspect. I’m asking them to tell me their deepest, darkest secrets – secrets that will get them sent to prison for long stretches of time. The only way to do that effectively is to developed an intimate relationship between the interrogator and the suspect. Using my personality, my empathy, and a complete lack of judgment, I have to draw a suspect into a world where there is nothing outside of our mental engagement. I know this works because I’ve done it time and time again. And like Ray Pagan in Lie Catchers, I’ve been able to pass that skill on to others. The book is also intimate because it is told in the first person voice of Calamity Jane Randall – an experienced detective who is about to have her world turned inside out by Ray Pagan. My connection to Jane and her personality felt very real to me. As I wrote, it was as if she was right there, in my intimate zone, whispering in my ear. FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW CLICK HERE 
  ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER: By day, Anthony Venutolo (proprietor of Bukowski's Basement) works on the Digital Operations Team in the newsroom of NJ Advance Media, home of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Star-Ledger newspaper and its web site NJ.com. When he’s not in HTML, social media or SEO Hell, he also dabbles in writing fiction and a small bit of poetry. He has freelanced for such magazines as Bikini, Details, Chance, Men's Health and Playboy Online, while also writing columns for the gambling magazines Casino Player and Strictly Slots. His pulp novella FRONT PAGE PALOOKA was released September 2013. A follow-up collection of short stories, BOURBON & BLONDES is also available. 

THE CRISIS IN LAW ENFORCEMENT ~ PART II

The Huffington Post recently published my two part article examining The Crisis In Law Enforcement.  THE CRISIS IN LAW ENFORCEMENTPART IIPaul Bishop Because of my 35-year career as a sworn, gun-toting, member of the Los Angeles Police Department, I am often accosted by friends and acquaintances demanding explanations for the recent flood of police abuses across the country. Many of these inquiries are genuine. However, the aggressive tone of many others clearly shows the questioners have already judged me as complicit in these events -- guilty by association. While I am not privy to any insider information regarding these events, I do have the experience to provide a different perspective on the current crisis in law enforcement from the inside. Law enforcement nationwide is currently in crisis. I believe much of this crisis is caused by a failure of leadership, a failure of training, a failure to address the issues regarding the homeless and the mentally ill, and a failure to understand the changing needs of the public, which law enforcement is supposed to protect and serve. Law enforcement, at its best, should reflect the concerns and desires of society. When these things are out of balance, tragedy always follows. The law enforcement/public misconnect begins with the basic academy training philosophy. Law enforcement recruits are taught how to shoot guns, how to drive in pursuits, self-defense, and just enough of the Penal Code to get themselves in trouble. While all of these things are essential there is a significant oversight -- recruits are not trained how to talk to people. Communicating with the public comprises the overwhelming majority of what will be required of officers once they are on the streets. When communication and conflict resolution training are superseded by use of force and traffic accident avoidance, the shortfall leads to many of the tragedies we are faced with today. This isn't to say officer safety issues should not be tantamount, they should, but there must be a balance. Furthermore, continued in-service training has fallen into the political kneejerk of training by litigation. Often, wanting to show a hardline response to getting sued, too many departments fall back on training programs that tell officers what they are doing wrong, but provide little in how to avoid the situations in the future. Officers are mandated to attend such training, which usually consists of two hours of specifics stretched out over eight hours to meet arbitrary standards. There is also a distinct disconnect between the two ends of the political landscape charged with administrating city policies and response. One faction is driven by fear of crime and anarchy. To them, a police department is to be wielded as a militarized weapon of oppression -- a force designed to stamp out crime and civil disobedience not only when it occurs, but before it occurs.  The other faction is driven by guilt, wishing to give no offense to anyone. To them, the police are an antagonistic force which must be kept in its place. Political correctness is their top priority. This results in mandates such as those faced by Welfare Fraud investigators who are no longer able to interview those who are suspected of fraud let alone interrogate them. Instead, these investigators -- most often working alone in some of the most dangerous parts of the city -- are allowed only to have conversations with those they suspect of criminal activity. Neither of these approaches is correct nor do they even display an ounce of common sense. However, the constant flow of mixed messages driven alternately by political fear or guilt has a direct effect on police personnel coming under criticism for finding themselves caught in the middle.  TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE

THE CRISIS IN LAW ENFORCEMENT ~ PART I

The Huffington Post recently published my two part article examining The Crisis In Law Enforcement.  THE CRISIS IN LAW ENFORCEMENTPART IPaul Bishop Because of my 35-year career as a sworn, gun-toting, member of the Los Angeles Police Department, I am often accosted by friends and acquaintances demanding explanations for the recent flood of police abuses across the country. Many of these inquiries are genuine. However, the aggressive tone of many others clearly shows the questioners have already judged me as complicit in these events -- guilty by association. While I am not privy to any insider information regarding these events, I do have the experience to provide a different perspective on the current crisis in law enforcement from the inside. As an experienced Law Enforcement professional, I understand the public's frustrations and anger caused by the recent rash of incidents of questionable -- possibly criminal -- police shootings and misconducts. I too am frustrated by the deadly cost of these egregious episodes of police violence, failures in training, and unprofessional behaviors. I am also exasperated by the way these incidents – which should and must be objectively investigated and adjudicated – have been hot-buttoned, twisted, and exploited for media soundbites, headlines, and political advantage. Finding solutions to the issues behind these incidents is difficult enough without the flames of undirected unrest being constantly fanned by a quest for ratings or personal political gain. To confront the elephant in the room, there is no excuse for a police code of silence in any form. It is plain and simple corruption. Police are no more immune to the laws of the land than any citizen. If anything, police should be held to a higher standard because of the position of trust and responsibility they have willingly accepted. Lying, turning a blind eye, or joining in a cover up – at any level – makes those participating as guilty as those involved in the original incident. I intend no offense in this column. The ability to have frank and respectful interaction between opposing viewpoints will often reveal a wide common ground. Through conversation, we achieve revelation, understanding, and the ability to change for the better. We may agree in the end to disagree, but that is the nature of controversial situations and personal experiences. However, respect and control over our emotions is the quickest way to find eventual solutions in which compromise and decision can be reached. Consequently, the purposeful fueling of controversy by the news media and the virulent rhetoric of agenda driven politicians continues to cause potentially irreversible damages to both sides of the controversy. It is completely contrary to sincere attempts to find answers and apply appropriate actions. Public blind acceptance of the malfeasance of these self-centric entities can only lead to anarchy and chaos. Anger mongering, self-proclaimed, Facebook and Twitter pundits, who have no experience dealing with the split second decisions law enforcement is forced to make every day (the huge majority correctly) only distract attention from the real issues. They are engaged in nothing more than jumping to conclusions, jumping on bandwagons, or simply jumping up and down waving their arms to get attention. FOR THE FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE

ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK

MYSTERY GRANDMASTER LAWRENCE BLOCK Interviewed by Paul BishopLawrence Block collects writing honors and awards like his hitman character Keller collects stamps – here a few there a few, until the set is complete. Unlike Keller and his stamps, Block doesn’t have to bid for his prizes via auction. He has earned each and every one of them by doing what he does best – writing.  After almost a hundred novels, an uncountable – ever increasing – number of short stories, and cherished collections of writing advice and lore, Block can also lay claim to being the respected grand patriarch of the mystery genre. He has not only inspired several generations of writers (myself included), but continues to be a vitalizing force in the literary world through his association with Hard Case Crime, his forays into self-publishing, his embracing and understanding of the ever widening world of e-books, and keeping his work relevant by fearlessly mastering modern publishing’s obsession with branding, platform building, and marketing. His latest book, The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes, is due to be released by Hard Case Crime on September 22nd, sporting a stunning cover by the late Glen Orbik. Ever affable, Block has willingly stepped into the glare of the interrogation room’s bright lights… Your longevity in an ever fickle literary marketplace is quite a coup. In your early days as a writer, you wrote for specific markets to put food on the table. Later in your career, did you still consciously target your work for specific markets, or write by your instincts, knowing there would always be a favorable reception for your work? Sometime in the mid-1960s I found my voice as a writer, and since then I’ve written what I wanted to write. Now I’ve always written books in the hope people will read what I write, so I can’t claim to have written exclusively for myself. Then again, if it’s just for oneself, why bother to write it down? You’ve put lie to the cliché of teaching old dogs new tricks. How have you stayed on the cutting edge with your current incursions into self-publishing, your recognition of the importance of e-books, and your successful marketing ventures? Well, thank you, but I’m not sure how cutting-edge I am. I’ve been lucky enough to be open to new things – some of them, anyway. As far as self-publishing is concerned, my first venture was in 1985, with Write For Your Life; I had developed an interactional seminar for writers and wanted to see it available in book form. And it looked to be a perfect candidate for self-publishing, as I could sell it at the seminar and piggyback my advertising with the seminar promotion. Plus – a major advantage of self-publishing – I could have copies in hand in a couple of months rather than wait a year and a half. So I printed 5000 copies (there was no Print On Demand option then) and we sold them all. So that predisposed me in favor of publishing my own work when circumstances were right for it.  As for e-books, a fellow at HarperCollins was a big e-book fan back in the early 90s, and incorporated a visit to an e-book factory into my book-tour visit to Cleveland. I knew they had a chance to amount to something when I learned they’d tested an e-Reader at a senior center and found a high level of acceptance; seniors appreciated the backlit screen, the ability to make the type any size they wanted, etc. If a new technology won acceptance among the people you’d think would most resist it, I had to figure it had a future.  E-book sales figures kept increasing, but it was hard to tell if they would ever amount to anything. And then Kindle came along, and with it the opportunity to publish one’s own backlist titles, and, well, one thing led to another, didn’t it? In what ways has your fiction writing mirrored your life, or is there no comparison? I don’t know that it has. I suspect the later work reflects a more mature worldview, but as far as the facts of my life are concerned, I’m not sure I’ve mined them much. There are certain parallels, I suppose. I stopped drinking a few years before Matthew Scudder did, for example. But that may be the only thing his life and my life have in common. And Bernie Rhodenbarr’s life of crime was inspired by my own fantasy of what I might do, having hit a low point in my career and being cut out for nothing else. Maybe I could be a burglar, I thought. Having written so many books, both series and standalones, do you still find new plots and characters popping up in your head demanding to be put on the page?  Hardly ever. Ideas do occur, and I think them through and decide the hell with them. The new book, The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes, is very much the exception. In May of 2014, my wife and I were in a taxi en route to JFK, where we were to board a flight for two weeks in Belgium. Hard Case’s edition of Borderline had just been published after having been mercifully out of print for half a century. And, incredibly, it was getting excellent reviews, a far better reception than I could have hoped for. “You know,” I said to Lynne, “it might be fun to write something like that again. Something straightforward and hard-charging and pulpy. That might be fun.” “It might,” she said. And fifteen, twenty seconds later, I straightened up in my seat and said, “I’ve got an idea.” Yeah, just like that. Now ideas come around all the time, and most of them find their way to Idea Heaven, and that’s the end of it. But this stayed in my mind and I found myself thinking about it for the next two weeks, and it grew and developed, and when we got back to New York I used Airbnb to book an apartment on Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, and I took a train there the second week in July and came home four weeks later with the book written. Will we be treated to more Lawrence Block from Hard Case Crime or – as The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons was such a success – in a new self-publishing venture?  Oh, lord, I dunno. I thinkmy next project will be an updating of Writing the Novel From Plot to Print. It was my first book for fiction writers, and it’s still going strong almost forty years after I wrote it, but it needs updating and needs new material and, all in all, needs several weeks of concentrated effort. I’m not sure how I’ll want to publish it, but that’s not something I need to know until the work is done, and I’m not sure when I’ll get to it. And will there be more novels? Maybe, maybe not. I feel complete as far as all my series characters are concerned. But I may find something I want to write, and may decide I’ve got the time and energy for it. Time will tell. It generally does. ********My thanks to Lawrence Block for his time and thoughtful answers. Now go buy The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes, I promise you won’t be disappointed. TO READ THE FIRST CHAPTER OF THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES CLICK HERE  THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES In the depths of her blue eyes, He glimpsed – murder… Cashed out from the NYPD after 24 years, Doak Miller operates as a private eye in steamy small-town Florida, doing jobs for the local police. Like posing as a hit man and wearing a wire to incriminate a local wife who’s looking to get rid of her husband. But when he sees the wife, when he looks into her deep blue eyes... He falls – and falls hard. Soon he’s working with her, against his employer, plotting a devious plan that could get her free from her husband and put millions in her bank account. But can they do it without landing in jail? And once he’s kindled his taste for killing...will he be able to stop at one?   ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER: Novelist, screenwriter, and television personality, Paul Bishop spent 35 years with the Los Angeles Police Department, where he was twice honored as Detective of the Year.  He continues to work privately as an expert in deception and interrogation. His fifteen novels include five in his LAPD Homicide Detective Fey Croaker series. His latest novel, Lie Catchers, begins a new series featuring LAPD interrogators Ray Pagan and Calamity Jane Randall. www.paulbishopbooks.com Twitter Facebook Amazon

THE HARD CASE CRIME/LAWRENCE BLOCK CONNECTION

 HARD CASE CRIME EDITOR CHARLES ARDAIInterviewed by Paul BishopOn September 22nd, Hard Case Crime, in conjunction with Titan Books, will publish the latest novel by the mystery
genre’s most honored writer, Lawrence Block. THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES is a tightly wound, nasty, noir thriller just waiting to put a bullet in your brain. The sordid tale centers on an ex-New York cop private-eyeing it in Florida, who is bewitched by a local femme fatale with a plan to quickly become a widow. The book has been characterized as James M. Cain on Viagra. If you are unsure what that means, your noir education is sadly incomplete.
 This is far from the first time Hard Case Crime and Lawrence Block have conspired together.  In fact, their relationship is as tightly intertwined as THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES and her hooked ex-cop. Hard Case Crime editor Charles Ardai has professed both his admiration for Block as a writer and as a friend. With the publication of THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES, the eleventh collaboration between Block and Hard Case Crime, Ardai has agreed to face the bright lights and rubber hoses of the interrogation room…
Can we start by getting a little background on the guy who turned Hard Case Crime into the imprint of choice for hardboiled/noir fans?
Yes, of course. What would you like to know?
What was your initial vision for Hard Case Crime and how has it expanded as the imprint gained traction and impact?
When Max and I cooked up this crazy scheme, it was like a pair of heisters in a Donald Westlake novel – or a Lawrence Block novel, for that matter. We met in a bar and talked over drinks in a dark corner, dreaming up plans and thinking about the impossibility of pulling them off. And then we went and did it. 
Our original vision was that we wanted to publish new books and republish undeservedly forgotten old ones of the sort we loved to read when we were younger: slim, tight, high-velocity crime stories without an ounce of fat or a wasted page, with lots of sex appeal both in the prose and on the painted covers, and with a low enough cover price that they could be impulse buys, cheap entertainment like a movie ticket. That mission hasn’t changed, though the cover price has gone up (much like the price of a movie ticket has). But some things have changed.
When we started, Max and I thought maybe we’d publish half a dozen or a dozen titles and be done, since no one but us would want the things. We’re now well over one hundred, with more on tap. When we started, no one had heard of us and writers weren’t sending us new manuscripts, so most of our titles were reprints of old material. Now, we’ve used up most of the reprints we set out to do, but we’ve got submissions of new books flowing in at a rate of more than one thousand per year – so most of our books these days are new ones, or at least ones that have never appeared in print before, like our discoveries by James M. Cain and Samuel Fuller and Westlake. And we’ve broadened our mandate a tiny little bit. We never did a novel with a supernatural element until Stephen King brought us JOYLAND. Before Michael Crichton’s EASY GO, we hadn’t done a novel that was more adventure than crime fiction, with archaeologists searching for a lost tomb in the sands of Egypt. I’m not saying we’ll do a lot of those – but when you’ve got Stephen King and Michael Crichton excited about working with you, you take some chances.
What was the first Lawrence Block book you read…What was it about the story or the writing that hooked you?
It’s the writing – always the writing. Larry’s plots are ingenious and marvelous and I love them, but it’s his voice that hooks you. He could write about fly fishing (and has) or stamp collecting (and has) or literally anything else on earth and make it engaging and irresistible. When he writes about crime and sex, that’s the perfect storm of voice and subject matter. But a Lawrence Block shopping list would be more entertaining than half the novels out there.
I’m pretty sure my first Block novel was a Bernie Rhodenbarr, possibly THE BURGLAR WHO PAINTED LIKE MONDRIAN, which is still one of my favorites. But long before I knew him as a novelist (or as a friend), I knew him from his brilliant short stories in ELLERY QUEEN MYSTERY MAGAZINE and ALFRED HITCHCOCK MYSTERY MAGAZINE.
When did you first meet Lawrence Block…Did you stalk him or was it a casual encounter?
He likes to tell the story of how the first time he met me I was dressed in a skin-tight bodysuit with my face painted silver, pretending to be a robot at a book fair on Fifth Avenue. This is true. I was an intern at ASIMOV’S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE, and we got pressed into service manning their booth. The taller intern got to be Darth Vader. I was left with robot. And no one told me you’re supposed to wear something under a skin-tight bodysuit, so it’s a miracle I didn’t get arrested, or worse. But I didn’t. And Larry was there, at the same fair, signing his latest novel. I’d contacted him to see if he would write an introduction to one of the first anthologies I’d ever edited, a crime/horror collection called GREAT TALES OF MADNESS AND THE MACABRE. He’d agreed, so I had to get him a copy of the manuscript. And it didn’t occur to me that delivering it to him silver-faced and wearing a frankly obscene bodysuit was perhaps not the best way to begin a professional relationship.
But look, we’re still working together a quarter of a century later, so who’s to say I was wrong?
How did the Hard Case Crime/Lawrence Block connection begin and then intertwine?
When I started reading Larry’s novels, I just couldn’t devour them fast enough. I hunted down copies of every single one – or at least every one I could find, back in those pre-Internet days – and loved them all. So when the time came to start Hard Case Crime, and I went to my shelves to pick out candidates to reissue, what do you think I found? Alongside all the Chandler and Graham Greene and so forth – books we couldn’t reissue because they were very much still in print – there was my collection of Block novels, some of them well and truly obscure, some out of print for years. So I picked out one of my favorites – my copy was called SWEET SLOW DEATH, but it had originally been published as MONA – and I approached Larry with the idea of making it the very first Hard Case Crime novel.  (The second would be our first original novel, and my partner Max was writing that one. I’d write our second original. But we wanted something bigger than the two of us to kick the line off.)  And happily Larry said yes, taking a chance on two knights errant on this most quixotic of quests. His only condition was that we allow him to give the book back the title it was original meant to bear: GRIFTER’S GAME. 
The rest, as they say, is history. GRIFTER’S GAME was a hit, the line continued, and each year I went back to Larry to plunder his backlist further. We did THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART, which may be my favorite con man novel of all time. Then he brought us an obscurity called LUCKY AT CARDS that had never been published under his real name (and was nearly as good a con novel as LONG GREEN HEART). Then there was A DIET OF TREACLE, about drug users in Greenwich Village, and KILLING CASTRO, about what you’d think a book called KILLING CASTRO would be about. 
And then a strange thing happened. Larry wrote a new book, a very sexual, very violent book about a female serial killer out to rid the world of every man she’s ever slept with, and he decided that Hard Case Crime would be the right publisher to bring it out. We were thrilled to do so, and GETTING OFF became our first ever Hard Case Crime hardcover original.  There have been others since. When the Liam Neeson movie version of A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES came out, we published a paperback tie-in edition of the novel. Together with the collectible house Subterranean Press, we did a collection of Larry’s short stories, CATCH AND RELEASE, and a top-to-toe Ace Doubles-style pairing of two rare novels with lesbian themes, STRANGE EMBRACE and 69 BARROW STREET. And now we are beyond excited to get to publish a second brand-new Block novel, THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES. As a Block fan from way, way back, I can’t tell you what a thrill it is for me to bring a new Block novel into the world.
Now partnered with Titan Books, what does the future hold for Hard Case Crime…and can fans look forward to more offerings from the Hard Case Crime/Lawrence Block connection?
As long as Larry and I are still around and working, I imagine there will be more Block/Hard Case Crime books to look forward to.  Our next, in 2016, will be a truly rare find, the very first crime novel Larry ever wrote, which only ever got published under a fake name and of which he didn’t own a copy – he didn’t even know what title the book was published under! But after a search that lasted years and spanned the globe, one of his eagle eyed readers found a copy – and we’re honored to bring it out. We’re working on the cover painting right now. In fact, as soon as I finish typing this sentence, my next job is to audition models to play the part of the book’s femme fatale, posing in a white cashmere sweater and nothing else.
It’s a hard job, but I grit my teeth and do it. For the fans, you understand.
Thanks to Charles Ardai for making time for this interview and for continuing to keep Hard Case Crime on the cutting edge of the mystery genre.
TO READ THE FIRST CHAPTER OF THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES CLICK HERE
THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES
In the depths of her blue eyes, He glimpsed – murder…
Cashed out from the NYPD after 24 years, Doak Miller operates as a private eye in steamy small-town Florida, doing jobs for the local police. Like posing as a hit man and wearing a wire to incriminate a local wife who’s looking to get rid of her husband. But when he sees the wife, when he looks into her deep blue eyes...
He falls – and falls hard. Soon he’s working with her, against his employer, plotting a devious plan that could get her free from her husband and put millions in her bank account. But can they do it without landing in jail? And once he’s kindled his taste for killing...will he be able to stop at one?

 ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER: Novelist, screenwriter, and television personality, Paul Bishop spent 35 years with the Los Angeles Police Department, where he was twice honored as Detective of the Year.  He continues to work privately as an expert in deception and interrogation. His fifteen novels include five in his LAPD Homicide Detective Fey Croaker series. His latest novel, Lie Catchers, begins a new series featuring LAPD interrogators Ray Pagan and Calamity Jane Randall. www.paulbishopbooks.com Twitter Facebook Amazon

THE TRUTH IS COMING ~ WRITING LIE CATCHERS

Of the fifteen books I’ve written, my latest novel, LIE CATCHERS ,is the most personal and unique. Having spent thirty-five years with the LAPD and thirty years as a professional writer, I am a sturdy branch on the genealogy tree of police writers. Other cop-author branches on the tree include William Caunitz (NYPD), Joseph McNamara (San Jose PD), Sonny Grosso (NYPD), and a plethora of others (for a full list CLICK HERE ). The LAPD, however, has always led the way when it comes to police writers, including such luminaries as Dallas Barnes, Kathy Bennett , Gene Roddenberry (yes, that Gene Roddenberry), and almost 100 others ( CLICK HERE ). LAPD, of course, was also where the heavyweight champ of police writers, Joseph Wambaugh, hung his shoulder holster.


With that kind of professional ancestry, it was pretty much a given I would also do a Wambaugh when it came to writing novels. I have written books in other genres, westerns, an Elvis-is-not–dead novel, soccer mysteries, and boxing noirs, but cop dramas have always constituted the largest part of my output.

Fey Croaker, the heroine of the five book series in which she is featured, is a unique character, but the novels themselves follow the traditional sequence of mystery or police procedurals – there’s a murder, it’s a whodunit, the quirky detective doggedly works to untangle the morass of red herrings and false clues and, eventually, slaps the cuffs on the perpetrator. This is not a bad thing, but I wanted Lie Catchers to be something more. I wanted to take the reader into a world they only thought they knew and turn them on their heads.

During my LAPD career, I spent over twenty-five years investigating sex crimes. For fifteen of those years, I ran the Operations West Bureau–Sexual Assault Detail (OWB-SAD) – a unit of thirty detectives investigating all sex crimes in an area covering twenty-five percent of the city. This extensive jurisdiction included Hollywood Area, where anything that could happen sexually usually did.

From its formation, OWB-SAD consistently maintained the highest sex crimes clearance rate and number of detective initiated arrests in the city. We were busy, but what made us far more successful than the other sex crimes details in the city was our attention to interrogations.

Every interrogation we did was videotaped, reviewed, and critiqued. We developed many different techniques, both in the box and on the streets. Our byword was the belief the interrogation room wasn’t a place, it was wherever an OWB-SAD detective happened to be – the suspect’s home or workplace, in a car, in a coffee shop, literally anywhere. This was interrogation as it had never been approached before.

For good detectives, it’s not the cases we crack that matter, it’s the ones we don’t that haunt us. I now teach week-long interrogation classes to experienced detectives at wide variety of law enforcement agencies. Invariably, several detectives in the class have an epiphany. They think back to a case where they couldn’t get to the truth and realize they could have done so if they’d had these types of techniques – which are all part of a tactical approach to interrogation.

As a novelist, I finally had my own interrogation epiphany. I realized, I’d never seen or read anything dealing with interrogation in a realistic manner. Books don’t get it right. Movies and TV certainly don’t get it right – not even the real cop shows like 48 Hours.

However, with my background and experiences, I was in a unique position to write an interrogation themed novel and make it as realistic as fiction would allow. Lie Catchersis the result.

I didn’t want Lie Catchersto be just another whodunit murder mystery. I wanted to give the reader an intimate experience – much like the world created between a detective and a suspect in the box. To accomplish that goal, I knew the third personnarrative voice I’d used for the Fey Croaker novels would not work. For Lie Catchers, I had to get inside the head of one of the main characters and tell the story in the first person.


ORIGINAL COVER ART
JOSEPH HAYESLie Catchersfeatures two top LAPD interrogators, Ray Pagan and Calamity Jane Randall. Telling the story from Ray Pagan’s perspective just didn’t feel right. One of Pagan’s qualities is the unusual ways in which he approaches situations. This was best experienced from the point of view of another character who would come to understand Pagan along with the reader. This put me, as the writer, inside the head of Calamity Jane Randall – a very good detective, but still a woman who doesn’t truly understand herself. To become a great detective, a great interrogator, she needs Pagan to lead her on the path to self-discovery. However, Pagan also needs Randall – for many reason, which become clear in the narrative, but most of all to save him from himself.

I didn’t want Pagan and Randall simply to be a riff on Holmes and Watson. I wanted their dynamic to be an equal partnership. Randall isn’t just there to assist and marvel at Pagan’s brilliance – a foil used to listen while Pagan explained his cleverness. Randall is her own woman with her own strengths. Yes, sometimes Pagan acts as a mentor, but I wanted there to be an equal number of times when Randall’s actions saved the day. Jane was a leader, not just a follower.

But here was the challenge. As a male, writing in the third person about a female main character like Fey Croaker was one thing. Actually getting inside Jane Randall’s head to tell the story from her perspective as a woman was entirely another.

I had been living with the characters of Pagan and Randall in my brain for quite a while before I started writing Lie Catchers. As I prepared to start tapping out words, I was surprised to find I actually knew more about Jane than I did about Pagan.

Jane was a touch more tentative, a little less self-aware, than Fey Croaker. She was no less of a detective, but her approach was much more stealthy. Fey reacts, charging into situations until she crushed them. Jane quickly assesses situations and responds – achieving her goal with a minimum of shattered glass. Interrogation is all about becoming the person the suspect needs you to be in order to confess. You can’t do that by reacting…You have to be able to respond. Jane’s style complimented the skills she needed to become a great interrogator.

Jane also needed to tell her story, her way. Unless you are a writer, you can’t understand the joy and the amazement of experiencing a fictional character completely taking over your narrative. It is as if they are an entity inside you, knowing all your secrets, each skeleton in your closet. Every day, they force you to sit down at the keyboard and then take charge of your fingers to tap out their story in staccato bursts of channeled energy. 

Through this process, Lie Catchers became something more than just a story. It became an experience. All of the interrogation techniques within the pages are as real as I could make them, but the emotions and intensity – the intimacy I wanted to establish between characters and readers – were all sparked by Jane Randall and Ray Pagan.

My name is on the cover of Lie Catchers, but it’s Randall and Pagan’s story. They are your personal guides into the continent of darkness which lies in the soul of the art of interrogation. You couldn’t be in better hands.




ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Novelist, screenwriter, and television personality, Paul Bishop spent 35 years with the Los Angeles Police Department, where he was twice honored as Detective of the Year.  He continues to work privately as a deception expert. His fifteen novels include five in his LAPD Homicide Detective Fey Croaker series. His latest novel, Lie Catchers, begins a new series featuring top LAPD interrogators Ray Pagan and Calamity Jane Randall.

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