Julia Buckley's Blog, page 17

Ellis Peters on Spring

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"Every spring is the only spring - a perpetual astonishment."

~Ellis Peters

"The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day."

~Robert Frost

photo: spring flowers at Brookfield Zoo. JB, 2006.

Brett Battles and THE SILENCED

[image error] Brett Battles, thriller writer, hard-working dad and friend of this blog (see Brett Battles interview at right) has come out with another exciting Jonathan Quinn adventure. This time out, Quinn, a "cleaner," must find a body hidden in a wall in London twenty years ago--before the building is demolished. But that's just the beginning of Quinn's problems . . .

What I like about Battles' novels is that he often begins from a female point of view. Therefore, a woman like me, who might be reluctant to pick up the book because I think it's somehow a man's tale, will be lured in by the female character and her dilemma, and then I'm just caught by the narrative.

I haven't yet finished THE SILENCED, but I greatly enjoyed SHADOW OF BETRAYAL, the third Quinn adventure, and Battles really seems to be hitting his stride with this series.

Next on the reading pile: Donna Leon's A QUESTION OF BELIEF. I have never read a Commissario Brunetti mystery, and my mystery friends think less of me for it. Donna Leon was in my town a few years ago, and I didn't go to see her because I'd never read her work (foolish, I know). I'm sure once I read this I'll regret that decision.

New Version of an Old Favorite

[image error] Anyone familiar with me or this blog knows that I love the suspense novels of Mary Stewart, and have various dusty versions of all of her titles. But I've mentioned before that Chicago Review Press is releasing selected Stewart titles, the latest of which is this lovely version of The Moonspinners, one of Stewart's trilogy of novels set in Greece.

This isn't my favorite Stewart book, but since I love them all that's not a very harsh criticism. In it Stewart displays her passion for Greece (she once said that she visited there and "fell in love" with the country) and its various terrains. Stewart is particularly good with setting and description, and she describes a Crete that is wildly beautiful but also sinister and rough.

The windmill on the cover, Stewart fans will recall, plays a part in the story and in the description, since windmills dot the landscape and create a backdrop to the intrigue and suspense.

Michael Harvey and THE THIRD RAIL

Since THE THIRD RAIL came out in paperback recently, I thought I'd re-run my interview with its author, Chicago's Michael Harvey.

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Michael, thanks for chatting with me about The Third Rail.

Your narrator tells his story in first person, but we get a bad guy's perspective in third person. Why did you choose a double point of view?

Good question. My first two books, The Chicago Way and The Fifth Floor, were both written in the first person, from Michael Kelly's point of view. I enjoy writing in Kelly's voice and wanted to keep him in the first person. My plot for The Third Rail, however, called for multiple crime scenes that unfold almost simultaneously across the city. In order to maintain and feed the dynamics of that story line, I felt it was critical to get into the killer's head at certain points and allow him to drive the action forward. So I kept Kelly in the first person, and used the third person for my killer.

This decision is not without risk. But I figure nothing ventured, nothing gained. I will be interested in readers' reaction to the switching. Did it bother them? Did they like it? Did they even notice? We'll see.

Your plot involves some real-life events, including a 1977 el-train crash that I remember seeing on the news. Were you around when this crash happened? When did you decide you wanted it to be a facet of your novel?
I was a kid living in Boston, so, no, I don't remember the 77 L crash. I first heard about it when I was working as a journalist for CBS in Chicago. At that time, I took the L just about every day and certainly recall many days when I thought our train was going off the edge as it negotiated a turn in the Loop.

I decided I wanted the accident to be part of the novel about halfway through writing it. I knew my spree killer was going to attack the city through the L system. I just didn't know exactly how. Or why. As I ran through different possibilities, I remembered the old L accident. I was especially intrigued with the idea that the accident could be used as a vehicle to tie into Kelly's childhood, and help strip away a little more of his character. Once I saw that possible tie-in, I knew the 77 crash was going to be part of the book.

Many a cop (both fictional and real) is willing to walk into danger despite the wishes of their loved ones. The same is true of Michael Kelly, a former cop and now a private investigator. What makes Kelly determined to do it despite his girlfriend's desire for him to find a safer job?

The easy answer is... that's just Kelly's job. The better answer is... that's his nature.

I have interviewed a lot of cops, firemen, EMT workers, military personnel -- people whose job it is to put themselves in harm's way. They understand the risks inherent in what they do and, for the most part, don't assume those risks lightly. Their comfort level comes from a belief in their own abilities and an implicit trust in the people they work with every day. They figure if everyone does their job, chances are nothing bad is going to happen. Do bad things happen? Yes. Do people die? Yes. Do these folks realize that? Yes. But they don't dwell on it. Their nature allows them to tolerate a considerable amount of risk, and do the jobs no one else in society wants to think about.

Interesting! One of your more evil characters saw active duty in Afghanistan. Is the reader to deduce that he was twisted by war, or was he a warped individual before he went overseas?

That's up to each individual reader to decide.

One of the great things about writing (and reading) novels is that each reader brings his or her life experiences to the novel, and essentially completes the story with their own interpretation of events and character.

I believe Robles was twisted well before he hit Mogadishu. As I said in the book, he was born in a toilet in a Greyhound bus terminal. And it went downhill from there. His experiences overseas probably didn't help things, but he was already in trouble before he joined the military. At least, that's my take.

The mayor of Chicago is fictionalized in your book, but he's very similar to Mayor Daley—-especially with that intensity that seems to border on insanity. Did one inspire the other?

Wilson is based on my impressions of a number of different politicians. Most tend to be highly driven and a little paranoid, with an unsettling mix of ego and insecurity. These folks like the spotlight, crave power and know how to use it. Scary? Sometimes. Interesting? Without a doubt.

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You paint a negative, almost a sinister vision of the Catholic church. Is this Michael Kelly's perspective, or is it yours?

It's Kelly's experience, more than perspective. And it's an evil that is not limited to the Catholic Church.

One of the subsets of the Kelly series is the idea that the major institutions of society -- government, big business, the Catholic Church etc., -- are morally bankrupt, act only in their own self-interest and are not to be trusted. I think this reflects a feeling many people have when they look at the real world these days. Katrina, the war in Iraq, Wall Street's meltdown, the Catholic Church's ongoing abuse scandal -- the examples are, unfortunately, almost too numerous to list.

Kelly, in some ways, represents the little guy whose job it is to jump in the water and swim with these sharks. He gets bitten a lot, and is understandably wary. But he wins some of the time. At least enough to pay the bills and keep him in beer.

Everyone in your book has an agenda, either political or personal. Is this Kelly's cynicism, or is this the way you view Chicago?

Both. In my experience as a journalist and documentary producer, I have found most people in positions of power tend to act in their own self interest – with the prime directive being save one's own skin at all costs. There are exceptions -- but that's what they are....exceptions.

Did you study the history of Chicago's elevated trains before formulating your plot, or after?

I knew about the 1977 train crash, but did not initially think I'd use it in the book. As I got into the writing, I kept coming back to the crash both as a way to tie Kelly's past into the plot and as a tool to strip away more of his character.

Overall, I have always thought the L would make a wonderful crime scene. It's a huge, mobile, daily undertaking that runs through the heart of the city and connects all its component parts. It's a place where a killer can find anonymity – be it on a crowded platform, in a dark tunnel, or tucked up in a building that overlooks the tracks. It's an exciting place, a place every Chicagoan recognizes, and, whether we like it or not, a sometimes dangerous place.

One of your scenes takes place in a ruined building in Cabrini Green. Did you visit this site? The details seem very specific.

I lived in Cabrini for three days as a journalist. We did a report documenting living conditions in the housing project in the early nineties. Cabrini was a dangerous place. It was also a place a lot of wonderful people called home...a place where a lot of families lived, loved and cared for each other. Gunfire be damned.

Such a sad truth. You have a master's in journalism from Northwestern University. Do you live in the Chicago area?

Yes. I live about a half mile from Wrigley Field. Another place of great tragedy in the city.

Haha. I'm married to a Cubs fan, and he's either angry or sad for most of the summer. :)

The Third Rail is the third Michael Kelly crime novel; will there be more in the series?

Yes. The Third Rail leaves a couple of story lines unresolved. Some people probably won't like that, but it was done intentionally. Why? Because that, more often than not, is how life works. Even when a homicide detective clears a case, it's rarely tied up into a nice, neat package. It might appear that way, but appearances can be deceiving. There are usually questions in even a closed file that linger; certain facts that still don't make sense; suspects that might not have killed anyone...but are suspicious nonetheless. Homicide detectives look at all of this as extraneous and a headache. They usually just want to catch the killer, close the file and move on to the next case. As a result, these lines of inquiry often remain open, unresolved and, for lack of a better word, messy. That's just how it is.

Anyway, the next book in the Kelly series takes one of these unresolved, messy story lines from The Third Rail and follows it to its logical...or perhaps illogical conclusion. I guess that's the long way of saying the next book is a bit of a sequel to The Third Rail.

Kelly's girlfriend is a judge, and sometimes in the narration she is referred to as "the judge" rather than by her name. Is this symbolic?

I don't think so. "Judge" is just more likely to come up when Rachel is being talked about in her capacity as...you guessed it... a judge.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer said you have "done for Chicago what Raymond Chandler did for Los Angeles and Dashiell Hammett for San Francisco." Wow! Were you surprised by this accolade linking you to the biggest names in crime fiction?

Hammett, Chandler and Ross Macdonald essentially created the private detective genre and were three of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century. I could write another five lifetimes and not touch any of their work. But it's a nice thought, and I appreciate it.

Your novel contains a great many details that only Chicagoans might recognize: Tom Skilling giving a weather report, someone reading Michael Sneed's column, the typical behaviors of Irish south-siders. How do you decide which details to include? Do you ever put in homages to your personal favorites?

I own The Hidden Shamrock, Kelly's favorite watering hole, and get my coffee at Intelligentsia, so I guess those are two favorites. Otherwise, I try to find places in the city that people might relate to, or find interesting. I especially look for scenes that convey the intangibles and atmospherics of Chicago. It's a great city, so why not!

Good question! How can readers find out more about Michael Harvey and the Michael Kelly novels, especially The Third Rail?

They can go to my website www.michaelharveybooks.com or my Facebook page.

They can also follow me on Twitter at TheChicagoWay, and can go to Knopf's home page.

Thanks for the conversation, Michael.

My Grandma

I posted about my grandmother, who was born on Valentine's Day in 1904, on Poe's Deadly daughters today.

An Ever Fixed Mark

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Happy Valentine's Day. The most beautiful love poem I can think of was penned by William Shakespeare. So I offer this sonnet for the day. May you enjoy all the loves in your life.

SONNET 116

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved."

--William Shakespeare

Exciting New Reading

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[image error] I'm very lucky today, because I received some books in the mail that will provide me with some delicious weekend reading.

First, I've started a historical mystery--not usually my bag--called THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN JOHN EMMETT. I gave the first page a try and then couldn't put it down. This delicately written tale set after World War I focuses on a young man who has lost everything, including his wife and child, and therefore finds himself willing to take on a seemingly pointless task: to look into the suicide of a former school mate, at the request of that man's sister.

I've not yet gotten beyond the fifth chapter, but I can't wait to finish my chores and get back to this mystery by Elizabeth Speller, whose other books I will be investigating soon.

Also, in the mail today like a special gift, a book I had not yet heard of called HAUNT ME STILL. Macbeth fans will recognize this little snippet of this quote from the shattered MacDuff: "If thou be'est slain with no stroke of mine/My wife and children's ghosts will haunt me still."

As a teacher of MacBeth and a lover of Shakespeare, I can't think of anything more fun than a mystery set in Scotland at the very foot of Dunsinane Hill! Looking forward to this seemingly moody mystery from Jennifer Lee Carrell, whom the book cover tells me is a Shakespearean scholar. Long live Shakespearean scholars!!

Okay--I'm off to read now. :)

After the Storm

[image error] The blizzard passed through Chicago last night, fierce and howling, cracking tree branches with its 60 mph winds. Today it is calm, but we're snowed in under feet of heavy white stuff. Only the Beagle seems to really enjoy it--something in a dog can't resist piles of snow.

Laugh for the Day

[image error] This is one of my favorites from the family picture file. My youngest enjoying his first experience with swimming (sort of) in a pool, and all the equipment that required.

Limerick Fun

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Recently in my creative writing class, we learned just how fun and addictive writing limericks can be. I wrote three, but this was my favorite:





There once was a cat with two tails
Who longed for a cottage in Wales;
He wagged and he grinned
Till he made such a wind
That he flew there as if he had sails.


If you leave a comment, be sure it's in limerick form. :)