Entries from Westport Public Library BOOK blog tagged with 'celebrity'
The stolen generation
F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda are among the many famous literary figures who have called Westport home, although their stay was brief. The newly-wed couple were here for six-months in 1920 during which time Fitzgerald began writing his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned. A stolen manuscript is at the heart of the newly-released The Fitzgerald Ruse, the second title in Mark Castrique’s Blackman-Robertson series. Former U.S. military CID Chief Warrant officer Sam Blackman and his partner Nakayla Robertson have opened a detective agency in Asheville, North Carolina. Their first client is Ethel Barkley, a charming elderly woman who hires them to retrieve a lockbox that she claims holds a valuable F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscript which she stole from the author in 1935 while he was living at the stately Grove Park Inn.Too fast to live, too young to die
Edna Ferber, detective? In the recently released Lone Star by Ed Ifkovic, Ferber investigates the murder of a young woman who was an “extra” in the film Giant, based on her blockbuster novel, which is in its final days of production in 1955. As the Kirkus review points out, “Nobody knows better than the author of Show Boat, Cimarronm So Big and Dinner at Eight that everyone has a skeleton in his closet.” James Dean is the prime suspect.CSI: Sarasota?
One does not usually think of Sarasota as a hotbed of criminal activity, but there is not just one, but two, popular mystery series set in this southwestern coastal Florida city. Stuart Kaminsky’s transplanted northerner Lew Fonesca is “an unlicensed peeper, bargain basement dick and process server living out of his office overlooking the Dairy Queen on 301. “ Although they have their lighter moments – mainly due to an entertaining assortment of odd characters – these books are generally dark in tone, and psychologically complex, dealing with questions of grief and depression. And then there is Blaize Clement’s sleuth Dixie Hemingway who has given up her stressful job as a sheriff's deputy in Sarasota to become a professional pet sitter. Although definitely lighter than the Kaminsky novels, Clement’s books should not be dismissed out-of-hand as just another humorous feline mystery series. According to Publishers Weekly “Clement blends elements of cozy and thriller to produce an unusual and enjoyable hybrid.”The tale-telling heart, part II
In a bizarre form of tribute no author would invite, Edgar Allan Poe has been cast as the inspiration for a number of fiendish murderers. In Michael Connelly’s The Poet, a serial cop killer in Los Angeles gets his victims to write suicide notes that contain snatches of Poe’s verse. This same character returns in The Narrows. All of New York City is in the thrall of “The Poe Killings” in Heather Graham’s suspense novel The Death Dealer. There has been a string of homicides mimicking Poe’s macabre stories and all of the victims have been members of a literary society devoted to the author. Chicago is the scene of recent Poe inspired crimes in Sheldon Rusch’s For Edgar. And somewhere back in time Harry Houdini teams up with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to investigate a series of chilling murders that imitate those found in Poe’s stories in William Hjortsberg’s Nevermore.The tale-telling heart, part I
January 19, 2009 marks the 200th birthday of Edgar Allen Poe. His words continue to enthrall us and a definitive account of his life – and death – continues to elude us. Some consider Poe the first American literary critic. He was one of the first American crafters of short stories. Some identify him as a pioneer of the science fiction genre. Just about everyone agrees that he is the father of detective fiction. According to the legendary H.R.F. Keating in the Crown Crime Companion, “When you look at the immense panorama of mystery fiction today … it is extraordinary to think that it all sprang from three short stories for magazines” in which, he adds, “… Poe laid down once and forever the rules and foundation for a new sort of fiction.”What the Dickens?
Bestseller Dan Simmons has written a forthcoming (Feb. 09) fact-based novel about Dickens, Drood – a prequel, you might say, rather than a conclusion – imagining a terrifying sequence of events as the inspiration for the novel. In the course of trying to rescue fellow passengers after narrowly escaping death in an 1865 train wreck, Dickens encounters a ghoulish figure named Drood, who had apparently been traveling in a coffin. Wilkie Collins, Dickens’ real-life novelist friend, narrates the tale of Dickens’ newly acquired dark double life as he pursues the wraith through crypts and lime pits in the worst slums of London. Despite the book's length – 784 pages – PW says “readers will race through the pages, drawn by the intricate plot and the proliferation of intriguing psychological puzzles.”Shiver me timbers
Edward Chupack expands the story of one of Robert Louis Stevenson's most memorable characters—Long John Silver—in his Treasure Island spinoff, Silver. Told from the pirate's perspective, it opens on board a ship carrying an unrepentant Silver to his execution in England. He shares the story of his early life and rise to infamy and chronicles his lifelong pursuit of an elusive treasure. Silver is a man with a plan and hopes to secure his release by promising to reveal the whereabouts of the fabled trove. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, called it a “swashbuckling debut” and a “riveting narrative” and it is, indeed, peppered with superb pirate dialogue – along with a murder, a map, ciphers and codes, and even a bit of romance.Yellow Brick Roadworks
The year is 1940. When a Munchkin is murdered, Los Angeles-based private eye Toby Peters is called before the real-life Wizard of Oz himself, legendary MGM head Louis B. Mayer in Stuart M. Kaminsky’s Murder on the Yellow Brick Road. With help from none other than Judy Garland, Clark (You Made Me Love You!) Gable, and Raymond Chandler, Peters follows -- as the book description reads -- “a treacherous trail of clues … one as winding as the Yellow Brick Road, and deadlier than a field of poppies” to find a murderer even wickeder than the Wicked Witch of the West.See Jane run!
There is so much Jane Austen buzz these days. Book clubs are still dissecting Karen Joy Fowler's The Jane Austen Book Club -- the film version of which opens today -- and people are still queuing up for Becoming Jane, which is making the rounds at art cinemas. PBS is launching an Austen extravaganza in mid-January 2008 when Masterpiece Theatre will begin airing adaptations of all six of her novels. There are two mystery series which arise from the Austen legacy. Stephanie Barron has a series in which Austen herself is the detective and Carrie Bebris has a series where Austen's fictional characters Fitzwilliam Darcy and his wife Elizabeth (née Bennet) do some genteel sleuthing.Pulp fiction
Walter Satterthwait’s new crime novel Dead Horse is based on the mysterious death of Raoul Whitfield’s second wife Emily.
Although it was ruled a suicide, the book is built around its somewhat questionable circumstances.
Hard-boiled pulp writer Whitfield was the highest paid mystery writer in America in the 1920s and is believed to be Dashiell Hammett’s model for Nick Charles.
“Oh, who can ever be tired of Bath?”
Jane Austen’s Catherine Morland journeys to Bath in Northanger Abbey to “walk and be seen” and is quite taken with the city.
I will be visiting there this coming week to walk in the footsteps of Jane Austen herself, albeit hoping to see, rather than be seen.
This is the city of Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond as well, and I will be watching for all of the landmarks described in author Peter Lovesey’s mysteries. I am eagerly awaiting the newest book in the series, The Secret Hangman, which is due out in early summer.
Positively medieval
The latest addition to the celebrity detective list is none other than Dante Alighieri, newly installed Prior of the city of Florence, who is searching for shards of evidence in The Mosaic Crimes by Giulio Leoni.
It is June, 1300. Ambrogio, a master mosaicist has been found tortured and murdered, his face covered with quicklime.
While making enquiries about the dead artist, Dante is welcomed by the Third Heaven, a group of scholar-philosophers who discuss theology, philosophy, and question the workings of the powerful and mysterious Knights Templar.
True of false test
Another interesting newspaper piece this week! In his February 6th Bookshelf column of the Wall Street Journal entitled Watching the Detectives, Tom Nolan discusses how the social and political climates of an era are often reflected in the personalities of its fictional detectives. It's not good news for any of us that the 21st century detective exhibits "wobbly emotion and crippling self-doubt."
And the nominees are ...
The Academy Award nominees may make the headlines but what mystery readers really care about are mystery award nominees!
On January 19th, the Mystery Writers of America announced the contenders for this year’s Edgar awards.
Highbrow gothic
Dead of winter, 1804. Konigsberg, East Prussia, already on edge awaiting invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte.
An aged, eccentric Immanuel Kant enlists the aid of a young rural magistrate to unmask a serial killer terrorizing the city.
Elements of the mystic and demonic combine in Michael Gregorio’s Critique of Criminal Reason as bodies continue to turn up, with no visible wounds. Is it the devil’s handiwork?
The emergence of the celebrity criminal
If you enjoyed Erik Larson's The Devil in The White City, which was a National Book Award finalist and a winner of the Edgar award for true crime writing, don’t miss Thunderstruck.
Didn’t she see it coming?
Psychics are very popular in mysteries these days, both in print and on screen.
The latest in the Louisa May Alcott mysteries by Anna Maclean, Louisa and the Crystal Gazer, has Louisa May attending séances at the home of Boston's most famous crystal gazer and then investigating the medium’s mysterious death.
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