Monthly Archive for February, 2010

Dick Francis died Sunday in the Caymans, where years ago he’d taken his English bones to warm in the sun, bones that had been broken so often in his first career as a champion steeplechase jockey. Bones so often broken that they forced him to give up riding. And find a second champion career, thriller writer.

He was one of my longtime favorite novelists, and curiously, I had spoken about him only a little over a week ago, at the Murder in the Magic City convention in Birmingham, Alabama. I was part of a panel — along with Sheila Lowe, Meredith Cole and E. Michael Terrell – that was titled Murder Gets a Hook. 

We talked about what ‘hooks’ a reader, and I shared my view that there were actually three hooks in good writing.

If you write a series, the first hook is the mix of ingredients that form your foundation — the protagonist’s occupation, the locale, mood, period, and the continuing cast of supporting characters. Second, the plot idea for each individual book. Third, the opening grab — what pulls readers into a book and makes them want to take it home.

Mr. Francis didn’t write a series, although some would argue that his heroes were often a variation on the same theme. Sid Halley appears in three novels, but Mr. Francis wrote dozens.

He excelled at the last two hooks.

He wrote intriguing plots that captivated readers who had never even seen a horse up close, let alone gone to a race, readers who weren’t British and knew nothing about bookmakers, trainers, changing rooms or club badges.

And he knew how to drop the reader immediately into a story.

His very first novel, Dead Cert, opens in the middle of a race, and no one made a race more exciting. Those descriptions would define his work. 

It was the beginning of his second novel, NERVE, that I brought with me to Birmingham to share with the panel audience. In it, he demonstrates one of his other remarkable talents: creating gripping first lines.

Art Mathews shot himself, loudly and messily, in the center of the parade ring at Dunstable races. I was standing only six feet away from him, but he did it so quickly that had it been only six inches I would not have had time to stop him.

How can you not keep reading?

It was jockey training perhaps. The keen, ingrained understanding of the importance of getting out of the gate. That above all else had to be perfect if you hoped to win. 

Dick Francis knew how to get out of the gate.

And we were privileged to be able to ride with him.

On My Night Stand: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Last night, we launched A Good Knife’s Work, with a huge party at Partners & Crime in New York City, one of the great mystery bookshops.

And it turned out to be an even bigger party than we had imagined. For reasons nobody could have foreseen.  

Our story begins on Sunday. I had made careful, extensive preparations for the launch party: for weeks, I had emailed and follow-up-emailed invites to friends, fans, coworkers. I’d hired a bartender, friend Michael Johnson. Because there would be limited space at the bookstore for drink mixing, Michael came out to the house on Sunday not only to mix up terrific batches of two iconic 1940s cocktails, the Manhattan and the Gimlet, but also to create a signature drink for me called A Good Knife’s Work, a fabulous red martini, which turned out to be the hit drink of the launch. Naturally, we had to sample his batches along the way, to make sure there was just the right ratio of rye to sweet vermouth (Manhattan) and lime juice to gin (Gimlet): we did not necessarily follow the advice of Terry Lennox in Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye: “A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice and nothing else.” We were zealous scientists in our pursuit of perfection. Fortunately, thanks to public transit, no driving was required.

I had also acquired some top-notch barware – gorgeous stemmed unbreakable cocktail glasses that looked like they’d materialized from the 1940s. I had baked my famous (at least among my friends) deadly delicious chocolate chip cookies, and my husband, David, prepared his equally lauded appetizer of bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with almonds. When we throw a party, we throw a party.

Now, story takes a serious turn on our unsuspecting heroine.

Monday, Kiz Reeves, part owner of Partners & Crime bookstore, called to tell me – as gently as she could – that my launch was about to change, drastically. There had been a miscommunication between the bookstore and the publisher and publicity people who represented another writer, Matt Beynon Rees. Somewhere along the line, the publisher and publicity people had come to believe that February 2 had been set as the date for a signing party for Matt, but the bookstore had no record of that agreement. On Monday morning, Kiz received a call from the publisher to check that everything was ready to go and was taken by complete surprise. Nevertheless, Matt had been told weeks before by the publicity people to go ahead with his plans, and oblivious to the miscommunication, he had sent out his own invites and alerted his fans.

To call this a miscommunication is like calling the Nile a creek.

My launch party had now become a dual signing with a man I’d never met.

And who to boot wrote dark mysteries about a Palestinian detective.

We skip over the part where our heroine, accepting fate, says goodbye, hangs up the phone and then expresses her disappointment to her husband and friends for a while. Okay, maybe for hours on end.

Tuesday night. Our heroine arrives early.

I have to finish cutting and rehearsing the portion of the book I’m going to read. As we have two writers, each will get about half the normal time. And okay, I want to get the lay of the land, get my close friends into a posse and establish a little territory, girded now for the possibility that I could get elbowed aside by a well known author with a more powerful publisher.

Then Matt Rees walked in. Gracious, charming, warm, generous, friendly and funny. One minute, I’m feeling proprietary about the cocktails, and the next I’m inviting his publicity people to hit the bar.

But we still have the dual signing issue, about which most of the guests will be unaware. They continue to steam in. The room is filling up. Common ground. Where did our work have any common ground? Is there any link we can present to the crowd? My suggestion: Both our books had dark covers, both had killings done with knives, and Matt’s hair and my roots are the same color. Fortunately, Matt had a better – if less entertaining – connection: We had both been deeply influenced by Raymond Chandler. And had taken that influence in completely different directions.

Kiz made a welcoming speech to the guests, in which she announced that the only people connected to the scheduling snafu who were completely blameless were the authors. Big laugh. We begin.

And we work the crowd like we’ve known each other for years.

We sell out of books (and dozens more orders are placed with the bookstore). As a bonus, I discover a writer whose work I can’t wait to read. Matt’s first book, The Collaborator of Bethlehem, is next up on the night stand.

New definition of SNAFUs: Splendid Night and an Unqualified Success.

And thanks to photographer Mark Lentz for the terrific pictures. 

Matt Reads from The Fourth Assassin

I Take a Question from the Audience

Fans Line Up for the 1940s Cocktails

I Start to Read from A Good Knife's Work