I haven’t forgotten about my pledge to read a book by Harlan Coben. It’s taking me longer than I planned, but I did take the first step last night: I bought a copy of The Woods.

I haven’t read Jenna Bush’s Ana’s Story: A Journey of Hope (HarperCollins), but I was intrigued by Ben McGrath’s description in the New Yorker (”First Book“):

The book has a spare, verging-on-hardboiled prose style ("’How did your parents die?’ Ana asked. ‘They were sick," Berto said. ‘Mine, too.’"), and suggests that Jenna may yet have a future following Margaret Truman and Susan Ford into the mystery-novel genre. She has a weakness for dubious ethnic analogies: "His eyes were wild, like those of the pumas that lived in the jungles," and "A nurse wrapped Beatriz in a blanket - like a burrito."

I also appreciated–after reading so much about about how serious she is, and how she did write it herself, and isn’t it the kind of book a liberal would write?–learning about Bush’s opening remarks at the book’s launch party:

"If you don’t have a glass of wine and you want one, you should get one, because it’s a party," she said, drawing a laugh. "No, really, go back to the bar and get one."

In her defense, crime writers are notorious drinkers.

Since 2001, when his Joe Pickett mystery series debuted with Open Season, C. J. Box has earned accolades and fans in ever-growing numbers. Not only was Booklist one of the earliest publications to take note of his exciting talent (Bill Ott wrote a double-length, rave review), Box went on to have a track record here that few writers can equal: five of seven Joe Pickett novels have been deemed worthy of a starred review.

It takes guts to tinker with a successful formula, but the Wyoming native (recently photographed sans cowboy hat) has done just that. In January, St. Martin’s Minotaur will publish Blue Heaven, his first stand-alone thriller. It’s different from the Joe Pickett books in a number of ways, most notably in the larger cast and the breakneck pacing. Set in north Idaho, dubbed "Blue Heaven" by the California cops who are retiring there, it starts with two kids watching a man get executed–and then things really get hairy. Does Box pull it off? Make that six starred reviews in total.

I talked with the author in 2005 about his remarkable Out of Range, but given the new direction he’s taking, it seemed like high time to check in with him again. Over e-mail, Box explained why he wrote Blue Heaven, affirmed that "Blue Heaven" actually exists, and proved he has a gift for sports prognostication, too.

First things first: is Joe Pickett on hiatus?

Joe will be back next May in the eighth Joe Pickett novel, called Blood Trail. My intention is to keep the series going with Putnam while writing stand-alone thrillers for St. Martin’s Minotaur. It’s not as crazy at it sounds. Blue Heaven has been in the works for over two years.

Why did you decide to write a stand-alone thriller?

There are themes, formats, and characters that just won’t work in a series format and I wanted to stretch myself. Plus, I hoped readers who may think of the Joe Pickett books as "huntin’ and fishin’" books–which they aren’t–might give Blue Heaven a try and be surprised.

Blue Heaven has some familiar elements we’ve come to expect from you, but with a different feel. How different were you trying to make it?

As different as it needed to be. There is a large cast of characters in Blue Heaven, and the novel is told from the point of view of many of them in real time over 60 hours. Because of the ticking clock, the characters needed to be introduced as quickly and clearly as possible before moving to the action. There was no time for a lot of back-story but enough, I hope, that the reader can tell everyone apart and empathize with several of them. There’s somewhat of a comfort zone with the Joe Pickett books because we know the protagonist and his family and we know–to some degree–what they’re capable of. With Blue Heaven, the onion is peeled just a little each time a character is reintroduced to the story.

I feel like I saw some familiar character traits, too–but with a larger cast, it was almost as if they were spread out over more characters. Not to keep asking about Joe Pickett, but it almost seemed as if you need more than one character to replace him.

That’s a really good point and shows your familiarity with Joe Pickett! I never really thought of that before. There are also a couple of very "gray" characters in Blue Heaven that I find as interesting as anyone; the local businessman with a guilty secret and the wavering ex-cop who just might turn out to be okay after all.

Is it true that California cops are retiring to north Idaho in great numbers?

Yes. In fact, the first time I heard the phrase "blue heaven" was from an ex-LAPD officer at a book signing who asked me if I came from "that blue heaven country." He had dozens of colleagues who who had sold their California homes for a lot of money and bought acreage and huge homes in north Idaho. It turns out there are hundreds of them up there. Luckily, I’ve run across no bad ones like the ones in the book.

What kind of research did you do? Does a stand-alone require more research than a series book?

I went to Santa Anita Racetrack one day and found it completely empty but every gate or door I tried was open. It was very strange. I walked through the grounds, on the track, inside the restaurants and saw absolutely no one. I also spent some time in north Idaho interviewing locals. They confirmed not only the presence of all of the ex-cops but how their community had been transformed pretty quickly from a kind of sleepy timber and mining economy to one that catered to wealthy new residents. The cultural cross-currents were there for anyone to see. And I drove around a lot on my own, just looking and taking notes.

There wasn’t necessarily more research required than an series book, but there was more background required of the characters. I was creating a whole new world.

How is the culture of Idaho different from Wyoming–or is it different?

I found the culture in Idaho very different, even from other parts of Idaho. In that state, the division is from north to south, not east to west, like Wyoming or Montana. The north Idaho I got to know doesn’t have a single iconic image and is kind of a mish-mash of influences–a little ranching, timber, mining, recreation, but also Pacific Northwest and the new California thing.

You have more stand-alones coming out with St. Martin’s. Can you tell us what they’ll be about and when they’re coming?

All I’ll say about the second stand-alone is that it takes place in Denver, Lincoln (Montana)–and Berlin.

Your work seems to be getting even more attention since we last talked (you’re a New York Times bestselling author, for one). Has it changed your life or the way you write? Does your office still have a bad view of a window well?

I now have a painted window well, thank you very much! Thanks to my artist daughter Molly, I look out on a painting of a fly-fisherman on the Lamar River in Yellowstone. Last year it filled with snow for several weeks. That was kind of boring.

Will the Cubs finally go all the way this year?

No, I’m sorry. The Rockies will beat San Diego in the one-game playoff tonight and take the rest of the National League by surprise (although, as I write this, the Padres just hit a grand-slam and went up 4-3).

[Editor’s note: If Box ever tires of writing thrillers, he might try his hand as a sportswriter. The Rockies went on to win a wild, 13-inning game and make the postseason. At this writing, they’re leading the Phillies in the NLDS 2-0. As for the Cubs, well, they’re behind the Diamondbacks 0-2.]

(Photo credit: Roger Carey.)

A little while ago I reviewed Adam Langer’s review of Michael Harvey’s The Chicago Way. Langer said that the book didn’t work because it didn’t have a strong sense of place; I said that maybe no sense of place is the new sense of place. (I thought the book didn’t work either, but for different reasons.)

Anyway, while catching up on some of the magazines lying around my apartment, I read what Mike Newirth had to say in Time Out Chicago (”If the gumshoe fits…“). He felt the book “captures the city’s rough vitality across the spectrum, from a tense society benefit at the Drake to the bada-bing jokers haunting River North’s Mr. Beef.”

Furthermore, he writes:

Harvey grounds his debut in the plausible, visceral details of Chicago: the wind and weather, the political foibles that can make or murder careers, the lonely forensics labs and superannuated station houses of the CPD. It was as a journalist that Harvey fell in love with the city’s secret rhythms.

Hey, if you want four opinions, ask three book reviewers.

Reading the Chicago Tribune Books section on Saturday — yes, Saturday — I had a strange feeling in the middle of Adam Langer’s review (”Just the facts“) of Michael Harvey’s The Chicago Way: I thought it was unfair. Like Langer, I gave the book a mostly negative review. But some of his criticisms bothered me. I guess I’m saying that he didn’t like the book for the wrong reasons.

Langer’s main theme, summarized in the subhead (”City’s people and texture missing in debut crime novel set in Chicago”) seems to be that the book doesn’t have enough of a sense of place.

But often, the Chicago depicted seems less that of a private eye who grew up on its streets than that of a location scout. Key scenes and confrontations take place at Navy Pier, Millennium Park and the Drake Hotel ballroom; mentions of Wrigley Field and the Cubs abound; and the author’s characters seem more in their element in North Side yuppie bars and coffeehouses than in the prisons, streetwalkers’ haunts and crime labs that give the novel its urban grit. 

Saying that the locations seem two-dimensional is a valid criticism. But throughout the review, it seems as if Langer is more bothered by the locations themselves. Granted, Navy Pier, Millenium Park, and Wrigley Field aren’t the most original choices, but they certainly are locations that millions of people are familiar with. Millions of people have interest in them, too — that’s why they’ve become tourist destinations.

I tend to favor crime novels that are rich in atmosphere, with dingy diners and cracked sidewalks, but I don’t see that as a requirement. Maybe I’m getting Langer wrong, but I get a whiff of a logical fallacy often employed, as a matter of fact, by tourists: discovering an overlooked tavern/diner/thrift store/neighborhood, people think they’ve discovered the “real” Chicago. The fewer people know about a place, the more “authentic” it is.

But those places are links to the past, not representations of the present. Yes, they may be authentic to an era, or to the proprietors’ personalities, but they’re not necessarily authentic to the experiences of millions of people. They may be a more soulful version of Chicago — they may be the parts of Chicago I like best — but I would have to argue that in fact “real” Chicago is becoming more and more like the real everyplace else: an endless series of chain establishments. The offbeat holes-in-the-wall are rapidly getting paved over.

So there’s nothing wrong with writing about Navy Pier – if the writing’s good enough. (And if Wrigley Field isn’t part of the real Chicago, I don’t know what is.) Different things are important to different writers. Sense of place may be more important to Langer, and plot may be more important to Harvey.

Early on, Langer states that, before he even started reading, he was looking for something in particular.

My daughter still asleep, I cracked open Michael Harvey’s debut crime novel, “The Chicago Way,” preparing to be transported back into the Chicago I remembered, the rich, atmospheric, densely populated burg that gave birth to an alphabet of great writers starting with Algren, Bellow, Cisneros and Dybek.

It’s hardly fair to fault Harvey for not being Bellow, is it?

The most important part of book reviewing may be matching the right book with the right reviewer. Langer is a great writer (Crossing California), but he’s not a crime writer — he writes general or literary fiction strong on character and sense of place. His expectations seem a little unfair for the book:

“The Chicago Way” does not sufficiently distinguish itself from its forebears to exist on its own as either great literature or essential popular-genre fiction. 

I have doubts that Harvey was going after Great Literature.

Actually, you know what? I liked the review — I just think it was written for the wrong book.

So what did I dislike about The Chicago Way? First of all, it wasn’t bad. But with so many great books out there, I can’t recommend an almost-good book. I enjoyed the snappy banter. I even thought it was fun seeing the “location scout” Chicago portrayed as mean streets. Well, hell, since Booklist reviews are so short, here’s all of what I had room to say:

The opening pages are packed with the kind of wry, dry narration that goes down as smoothly as a pulp paperback with a shot of rye. But the case that walks in through Chicago PI Michael Kelly’s door is no laughing matter: find a brutal rapist who walked out of jail nine years ago. Harvey is a cocreator of A&E’s Cold Case Files, and his plot reflects a true-crime sensibility. As Kelly’s investigation uncovers a growing body count, DNA evidence, antirape activists, and a John Wayne Gacy-like serial killer all come into play. But as much as we enjoy a mix of vintage prose and contemporary settings, wisecracking banter is the wrong tone for a topic like rape. The prose sobers up somewhat as the tale goes on, but Harvey never gets the blend quite right. It’s a twisty page-turner (and Chicagoans will enjoy seeing the Lincoln Park and Wrigleyville neighborhoods cast as mean streets), but if Harvey had chosen either a lighter plot or darker prose, the book could have been much better.

It could be said that all reviewing is a case of weighing a work against one’s own preferences and expectations. But still, it’s important to try to evaluate a writer against what he or she is trying to accomplish. I may take issue with Jason Starr, but it’s not because he’s not Sandra Cisneros. 

I may have put too much emphasis on the tone thing in The Chicago Way. But that’s what struck me most at the time, and I still think he could have had a better book if he would have chosen to go either funnier or darker. But if I’m looking for a book that captures Chicago in all its nuance, I’ll look elsewhere.

Maybe in a book by Adam Langer.

That’s the sense one gets from reading this Seattle Weekly piece on the trouble inmates have getting books from the outside unless they come from “approved vendors”:

“While Washington state isn’t alone in only allowing new books (Oregon also only allows books from publishers and major national distributors like Amazon.com), its adherence to the approved vendor policy has made it, according to [Books to Prisoners volunteer Andy Chan], ‘a pretty tough nut’ compared to other states. [Risa Klemme, public information officer at Airway Heights Corrections Center west of Spokane] says this is a moot point, as prisoners still have access to all the reading material they’d want. ‘We have a library,’ she explains. ‘It’s not like they don’t have access to any books.’

“Indeed, Airway Heights’ library is open 20 hours a week, but how long a library is open for and how much access inmates have aren’t the same thing. ‘I worked at the jail library briefly, and I know they just throw stuff on a cart and everyone [clamors for] it…it’s kind of sad,’ says [Carla McLean, a librarian and volunteer for Books to Prisoners]. ‘Their access to the library is very limited; both of my pen pals have complained about that. One can get access to the wood shop, or he can try to run with 30 or 50 people to the library for a half an hour. So he usually forgoes it because he hates [literally sprinting to the library] and doing that. So he just stays in the wood shop.’”

The story helped fulfill my constant search for nifty little mystery plot twists with this:

“Theoretically, the concept of approved vendors is to provide offenders with their books in a more timely fashion. ‘This is good for the offenders,’ says [Klemme], adding that books no longer have to go through the second step of the package room, where items were catalogued before being distributed.”

Two possible twists there for a mystery novel or screenplay:

1. Someone who wants to ship contraband to a prisoner gets a job at one of the approved vendors (which can be small businesses) and inserts the items in a hollowed-out “new” book that will now bypass the package room.

2. Some whacked-out employee of an approved vendor, hearing about this policy, puts a gun into a prison shipment just to see what might happen.

If any authors out there use said twists, I expect a thank you in the acknowledgements and a signed copy of the published work…

Ghosttown, the third novel in Mercedes Lambert’s trilogy featuring L.A. attorney Whitney Logan, comes out from Five Star this month. Lambert was the pen name of Douglas Anne Munson, who died of cancer in 2003. The first two Logan books, Dogtown and Soultown, will be reissued by Stark House next spring. All three were written in the 1990s.

The L.A. Times this week profiled Munson, who apparently came across as “a tough chick” until one noticed that “she was painfully soft-spoken and so fragile her hands would tremble”:

“Like a lot of noir novels, the career of Douglas Anne Munson, a hard-boiled Los Angeles writer who once seemed like one of the city’s bright new lights, just gets murkier and more confusing the closer you look. …

“…despite her early success that included rave reviews and anchoring a sizable magazine article on L.A.’s then-nascent noir revival, she never quite arrived as a writer.

“In fact, after some early success, she spiraled downward when the conclusion to her trilogy was rejected by her publisher. Health problems, severe depression, a stint of homelessness in Santa Monica, an escape to Prague and death by cancer in 2003 followed. …

“Her advocates describe her as a potentially major figure, ahead of her time for her hard-bitten female protagonists and her portrayal of multicultural L.A. in love and squalor.  …

“…her key inspiration was probably Raymond Chandler, and Munson was acutely conscious of dressing Chandler’s work in drag: Each of the detective novels includes an epigraph from his work…”

As LA Observed noted, Munson “has champions in Michael Connelly, Carolyn See, John Rechy and Jonathan Kellerman. Also in Denise Hamilton, the editor of L.A. Noir…”

Here’s an excerpt from the hot-off-the-presses Booklist review of Ghosttown:

“Much of Ghosttown is superb, diamond-hard noir, but mimicking the late author’s life, it devolves into surreal meanderings.”

Sounds like one of those books that’s better if you’re immersed in the back story. And reading that back story is enough to have any mystery author reaching for a stiff drink.

I was reading Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind when I discovered that I’d missed the announcement of the Shamus nominees. And here they are:

2007 SHAMUS AWARDS - NOMINEES

(For works published in 2006.)

Best P.I. Novel

The Dramatist, by Ken Bruen (St. Martin’s/Minotaur)
The Darkest Place, by Daniel Judson (St. Martin’s/Minotaur)
The Do-Re-Me, by Ken Kuhlken (Poisoned Pen)
Vanishing Point, by Marcia Muller (Mysterious)
Days of Rage, by Kris Nelscott (St. Martin’s/Minotaur)

Best Paperback Original

Hallowed Ground, by Lori G. Armstrong (Julie Collins)
The Prop, by Pete Hautman (Simon & Schuster)
An Unquiet Grave, by P.J. Parrish (Pinnacle)
The Uncomfortable Dead, by Paco Ignacio Taibo II and Subcomandante Marcos (Akashic)
Crooked, by Brian M. Wiprud (Dell)

Best First Novel

Lost Angel, by Mike Doogan (Putnam)
A Safe Place for Dying, by Jack Fredrickson (St. Martin’s/Minotaur)
Holmes on the Range, by Steve Hockensmith (St. Martin’s/Minotaur)
The Wrong Kind of Blood, by Declan Hughes (Morrow)
18 Seconds, by George D. Shuman  (Simon & Schuster)

Best Short Story

"Sudden Stop," by Mitch Alderman (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, November 2006)
“The Heart Has Reasons,” by O’Neil De Noux (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, September 2006)
"Square One," by Loren D. Estleman (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, November 2006)
"Devil’s Brew," by Bill Pronzini (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, December 2006)
“Smoke Got In My Eyes,” by Bruce Rubenstein (Twin Cities Noir, Akashic, 2006)

Interestingly, Booklist only starred one of the Best P.I. Novel nominees: Kris Nelscott’s Days of Rage. It’s always interesting when someone else’s list is so different from one you’d compile. It makes you wonder whether you’re missing something — or whether the other guy is just plain wrong. (We liked the First Novel nominees a lot more.)

The Shamus Awards are given by the Private Eye Writers of America (PWA) and will be presented this year on September 28, 2007, at the PWA banquet in Anchorage, Alaska, at Bouchercon.

Ever since I signed up for the artsJournal newsletter, I’ve been reading more books coverage from Canada. (Confusingly, they spell “out” the same way we do.) In the Globe and Mail (”Books still win“), Rick Groen declares:

I’ve done the math and here’s the bottom line. If you want consistent artistic bang for your buck, skip the movies, forget the theatre and turn off your TV set. Instead, read a book. More specifically, read a novel. More specifically still, read the kind of novel that publishers call "trade fiction."

It’s a good essay, but I was waiting until the very end for a cost-benefit analysis that would consider financial outlay on said artistic commodities against the time spent consuming them. But Groen’s a little more highfalutin than that. Still, I’ve always defended the rising purchase price of books by comparing them to movie ticket prices. Even the fastest readers are likely to get more value from books unless, say, they’re speed readers who bought the latest Ken Bruen in hardcover.

(I’m not saying anything about the quality of Bruen here: his books are short and there’s a generous amount of white space on the page.)

The second annual Thriller Awards have been announced. The winners?

Best Novel
Killer Instinct, by Joseph Finder (St. Martin’s)

Best First Novel
Mr. Clarinet, by Nick Stone (HarperCollins)

Best Paperback Original
An Unquiet Grave, by P.J. Parrish (Pinnacle)

(I left out the screenplays — we’re a book site.)

The other nominees?

Best Novel
False Impression, by Jeffrey Archer (St. Martin’s)
Cold Kill, by Stephen Leather (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Messenger, by Daniel Silva (Putnam)
Beautiful Lies, by Lisa Unger (Crown/Shaye Areheart)

Best First Novel
Shadow of Death, by Patricia Gussin (Oceanview)
Switchback, by Matthew Klein (Orion)
A Thousand Suns, by Alex Scarrow (Orion)
18 Seconds, by George D. Shuman (Simon & Schuster)

Best Paperback Original
Skeleton Coast, by Clive Cussler with Jack DuBrul (Berkley)
The Deep Blue Alibi, by Paul Levine (Bantam) 
Headstone City, by Tom Piccirilli (Bantam/Spectra)
Mortal Faults, by Michael Prescott (Onyx)

Just FYI, Booklist doesn’t review too many paperback originals (that’s changing gradually, but because our core audience is librarians we focus on hardcovers) — hence the paucity of links. And first novelists have to fight it out with a bazillion books by people we’ve heard of already.