Monday Smatterings
Rosh Hashanah’s done, so more or less back to business…
James Ellroy’s BLOOD’S A ROVER publishes tomorrow, and naturally there’s already a ton of coverage. Art Taylor spoke with Ellroy earlier this summer and runs the interview on his site; Richard Rayner evaluates the book’s highs and lows for the LAT; Ellroy divulges yet more to the Philadelphia Inquirer; The Austin-American Statesman’s Patrick Beach pretty much gets the drift; Kurt Anderson gets demolished by the Demon Dog; The Star Tribune’s Neal Justin visits Ellroy at his home and gets some telling quotes from ex-wife (and fellow author) Helen Knode; and even though I can’t find the link right now, The Economist makes the very apt comparison between Ellroy’s Underworld trilogy as a whole and the body of work of Roberto Bolano. Let’s be honest: if the roles were reversed, with Bolano alive and Ellroy dead, you don’t think the latter would be revered globally as a major literary figure and the former would be regarded as somewhat off-kilter, playing to the crowd with a carefully calibrated, over-the-top persona whose satirical aims mask real (and far quieter) concerns and philosophies?
Marilyn Stasio rounds up new crime novels by Arnaldur Indridason, Sara Paretsky, Louise Penny and Peter Lovesey.
Oline Cogdill likes how a name change and a new series has invigorated the woman now writing as Lisa Black.
Patrick Anderson gets sucked into the suspenseful South African world of Deon Meyer.
Margaret Cannon examines recent mysteries by Sara Paretsky, Kathy Reichs, Elliot Krieger, Anthony Zuiker & Duane Swierczynski, Sandra Brown and Stanley Evans.
In the Observer, Peter Guttridge has his say on crime and thriller titles by Val McDermid, Peter Leonard and Ian Rankin.
John O’Connell looks at thrillers by Peter Leonard, Alex Dryden, Henry Porter and Gerald Seymour for the Guardian Review.
Julia Keller welcomes the return of V.I. Warshawski in Sara Paretsky’s HARDBALL.
Attica Locke visits her native Houston with NPR’s Morning Edition.
William Deverell looks at the genre wars from the vantage point of someone who practices crime fiction, but understands literary fiction.
Mandasue Heller has lived quite the life, which she mines for her gritty novels of Manicunian criminal doings.
Getting Michael Biagent to review THE LOST SYMBOL is kind of perverse, no?
Victor Lodato talks with the WSJ about his debut novel MATHILDA SAVITCH, which I hope pulls off the child narrator conceit as much as reviewers say it does.
Book World previews the National Book Festival in DC, coming up this weekend.
Travel to Warsaw with Alan Furst’s espionage novels as your guide.
Sara Corbett’s feature on how Carl Jung’s long-hidden Red Book found its way to mainstream publication is amazing and well worth the time to reada.
Nicholson Baker gets the interview treatment in the Guardian and in New York Magazine, where he expresses his admiration for those who write plot-driven books with lots of suspense.
And no wonder President Clinton is nervous about Taylor Branch’s new book; now we know way more about Boris Yeltsin than we ever wanted to.