Ace Atkins talks to Shots Magazine

 

I was finalising my ‘Favourites of 2025’ crime and mystery fiction for Jeff Peirce’s The Rap Sheet, when like an unexpected incoming ICBM, Ace Atkins’ EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD landed on my desk from Little Brown UK [via an Advanced Readers Copy from William Morrow Imprint of HarperCollins US].

This changed everything –

Sometimes black humour is the only way to cope with the horrors of a possible nuclear war. Ace Atkins delivers laughs aplenty that overlay a terrifying cold war thriller. Readers who grew up in the 1980s will smirk at many of the popular culture references that Atkins peppers in this page-turner.

The novel elegantly traverses the American cities of Atlanta and Washington. The year is 1985 where the Cold-War will reach its icy conclusion in Geneva. America and Russia’s Nuclear Arms Race pivots on a meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. The veracity of the so-called American ‘Star Wars’ program [S.D.I.] will be determined at that meeting. The conclusion will be an escalation or a de-escalation of the nuclear stockpile as each side will decide if ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ is likely or does America’s Strategic Defence Initiative give Washington the upper-hand?

A deadly game of cat-and-mouse is in play as the Geneva Meeting looms heavily on both the Russian and American secret services.

Atkins peppers his hefty thriller with an oddball assortment of players.

The complexity and darkness of the narrative are balanced by equal doses of gentle humour and farce that striate the novel, making it very moving and at times tragically sad. But it is thought-provoking at all times.

Not unlike the recent Travis Kennedy comedic thriller [The Whyte Python World Tour], Atkin’s latest is equally life affirming.

A wonderful book filled with weird insights into the machinations of an absurd reality that masks the dangers of existence.

Read More HERE

So, Ace Atkins’ extraordinary novel sat high up on my top crime / mystery thrillers of 2025 – at The Rap Sheet 

To be totally honest, it was Ace Atkins continuation of Robert B Parker’s Spencer novels many years ago that brought his work to my eye. I had been a reader of Parker’s Spencer novels for many years, and paid my dues to him and his wife Joan at Bouchercon Albany in 2013, when I moderated a panel discussion about his work, and the shadow he cast over the genre. It culminated with me reading a letter I received from Joan Parker – which is archived at Jeff Peirce’s The Rap Sheet 

After putting Ace Atkin’s EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD down, I had a few questions. Despite being ultra-busy, on a promotional tour, he kindly agreed to a chat for his British Readers – which we present here -

Ali: Welcome to Great Britain’s Shot Magazine. Before we talk about your EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD can you tell us a little about your youth, and were your family ‘bookish’ people?

Ace: Not very bookish at all! My father was a professional (American) football coach, and we moved around quite a lot. He mainly had books about football strategy, but my mother kept a decent book collection that followed us around from city to city. I recall one house – in Buffalo, New York – where the previous owner left us a sizable library. Some good stuff that I have still with me today. Later on, I became a used bookstore regular. My sons will inherit a massive book collection whether they want them or not.

I was very involved in sports. But I would have much rather been reading. I started collecting books at a very early age.

AK: ……..and what lead you into journalism?

AA: I always knew I wanted to be a novelist and being a journalist seemed like the best training ground. I was very fortunate that I got into the last days of solid print journalism in the States. I started at the very bottom and worked my way up the beat I always wanted – crime. I learned most of what I know about cops and investigations during those years. I also had some terrific editors who helped shaped my voice and style. Mainly I learned how to get to the point and tell a decent story.

AK: And so what led you to start your own writing? And what books influenced you to pursue writing as a career?

AA: I blame it all on Ian Fleming! I had always liked books, and I read all that was required by school. But nothing captured my attention like Fleming. I recall being in middle school and a kid in my class was reading Goldfinger. He said if you like the Bond movies, the books are one hundred times better. And he was he right! Once I finished with Fleming, I read John Gardner, John le Carré, Len Deighton, Clive Cussler, and Frederick Forsyth.

Spy novels led the way to classic crime, and I later got into Robert B. Parker, Elmore Leonard and George V. Higgins. And of course, Chandler and Hammett.

AK: Tell us a little about Devil’s Garden and your interest in Dashiell Hammett?

AA: I had a college professor who introduced me to the Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle scandal of 1921. I was absolutely fascinated by the early days of the film business and old San Francisco (my family also lived in San Francisco when I was very young). But it was years later when I heard that Hammett had been a Pinkerton detective assigned to the Fatty Arbuckle case. There wasn’t much to go on. A bit here and there from Hammett and a rare interview with his detective partner. But I’m a huge Hammett fan and found him to not only be a brilliant writer but a wonderful character.

I was very lucky to have become friends with a man named David Fechheimer. David was a real-life private eye in San Francisco and the very first to do serious research on Hammett. He knew Hammett’s wife Jose and interviewed Hammett’s partner at the Pinkerton’s. He was a huge help to me while working on the novel.

AK: …and what led you into continuing the Spenser novels by the late Robert B. Parker?

AA: I give all the credit to my longtime editor at Putnam, Neil Nyren. For whatever reason, Neil tossed my hat into the ring when it was known the Parker family wanted the Spenser books to continue. Even though I was from the South and not Boston, Neil saw something in my work that reminded him of Parker. Or just knew how much I loved – and knew – those books.

When Parker’s editor reached out about me working on sample chapters, she offered to send me several of his books to get more familiar. I told her I had all of them, even first editions wrapped in Mylar. And I didn’t need any prep! I started into the first fifty pages and that became Lullaby.

AK: While penning the Robert B. Parker Spenser novels – in what appears to be your most prolific period, you also penned the Quinn Colson novels – can you tell us about that time.

AA: Whew. It’s all a bit of a blur. My children were very young and I welcomed the work and the challenge of writing two novels a year. I had a lot of fun switching up rural Tibbehah County, Mississippi, and gritty Boston. I would write half the year about my own backyard and then fly up to Boston to switch gears.

The location and characters were never an issue. But it was important for me to write Spenser in Parker’s voice. If I didn’t do that, I felt the series wouldn’t last. But it adds another level of difficulty to write a story in another person’s voice and style. So I had to make decisions based on what Parker would do. Not always how I might have told the story.

I had fun. But it was a lot of work. A book a year is much more manageable schedule for me right now.

AK: So coming back to today, tell us what made you embark on such a complex narrative as EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD? Was it an initial idea - and you followed the muse; or did you plot extensively?

AA: When I started to make a list of novels I wanted to write after the series, EWTRTW was at the very top. It’s set in a time and a place I knew very well: 1980s Atlanta. I was exactly the age of one of the main characters, Peter Bennett, who was deeply fascinated by spy fiction. Once I had the key premise of a boy who believes his mom is dating a KGB assassin, the narrative started to roll.

AK: How did you manage to keep track of the vast array of characters that populate the narrative? Ensuring they remain distinct in the reader’s mind?

AA: Before I dug into writing, I figured out who all would be telling this story. Peter was the start because, essentially, he was me as a young teen. And then Dennis X. Hotchner, the disenchanted pulp writer. Hotch is heavily based on the late, great Ralph Dennis, who wrote wonderful crime novels set in 1970s Atlanta. And then came Vitaly Yurchenko, the real-life KGB defector who was big news in 1985. I found his true story extremely interesting.. He defected to the U.S. and then escaped his CIA handlers and went back to the Soviet Union. It’s always been a mystery of what he was really doing.

Each of these characters were sharply defined in my mind from the start and ended up dictating how the story would flow.

AK: There is humour in your work, sometimes it’s deftly placed but in EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD, there is broad farce, can you tell us a little about striating humour in a thriller narrative?

AA: I’ve always liked writers who find can balance comedy with drama. I’m a big fan of Kate Atkinson. She’s a brilliant comedic writer who can also tear your guts out. I also was greatly inspired by my late friend Elmore Leonard who never gave much credit to writers who “couldn’t write funny.”

I think humor is always around us. Even in dark or desperate times. For me finding the balance is key. And I think a great deal of it comes from my newsroom background. Newspaper writers could often find comedy in the darkest situations.

AK: You have a cynical eye with the multi-faceted ‘people’ that populate EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD, would that cynicism stem from your journalistic background?

AA: Ah, this led right into this question. Yes! Absolutely. For most of my journalism career I worked the crime beat for The Tampa Tribune. I wrote stories about grifters and thieves, morally compromised public officials. One of my stories was about the district attorney in Tampa who was addicted to betting on dog races. His spokesperson later became the current U.S. Attorney General! Our government is so endlessly corrupt and morally twisted these days, you have to laugh. If not, as someone who looks for truth, it will drive you insane.

AK: What books and films have you recently enjoyed?

AA: The Big Empty by Robert Crais. Hatchet Girls by Joe Lansdale. I read the new Kate Atkinson, Death at the Sign of the Rook, earlier this year. Also Saint of the Narrows Street by William Boyle and King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby. As far as film, I loved One Battle After Another, another story that balances comedy and social commentary. I also really enjoyed Blue Moon with Ethan Hawke about songwriter Lorenz Hart. A very smart, very sharp film. And of course, Sinners. A brilliant film set right here in Mississippi.

 

Above: 25 Minute Video interview at Square Books 2nd December 2025

AK: And what’s next for Ace Atkins?

AA: That is the big question! I’m simultaneously working on a nonfiction true crime project based in Tennessee and Mississippi and a new novel set in Florida. I think Florida is the epicentre of modern American corruption and insanity. It’s a place that constantly calls me back as a writer.

AK: Thank you for your time and insight – we loved EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD.

AA: Thank you very much! So glad you enjoyed the book. So much fun to return to the ‘80s.

Shots Magazine would like to thank Amy Richardson of Little Brown UK for organising this interview, and Ace Atkins for his time and insight.

If you haven’t finalised your Christmas Gift buying. I’d urge you to pass Ace Atkins’ EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD to your friends.

More information on the work of Ace Atkins is available HERE and an excellent [and detailed] interview by the legendary Texan Bibliophile and Writer Scott Montgomery is available HERE it delves deep into the background to Ace Atkins’ latest novel. It is well worth your time.

The Bear Necessities: C.B. Bernard talks to Shots Magazine

 

Book reviewers can tell you how exciting it is to discover a novel that is ‘different’, that engages the mind and makes one contemplate, provoke thought. Recently I was persuaded to pick up a book entitled ‘Ordinary Bear’ by an American Author I’d never heard of – namely Chris C.B. Bernard.

My friends and colleagues Jeff Peirce of The Rap Sheet, and George Easter publisher of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine were extolling the novel’s virtues during Bouchercon in New Orleans, earlier this Month. George went one step further, he thrust a copy into my hands and said “…read up to page 38, and if you don’t like it pass it to someone else….” Anyway, serendipitously I took a front row seat at a book reviewing panel that George was moderating entitled “Crime Rave: Mystery Reviewers Talk About Their Favorite Crime Fiction” with renowned book reviewers / literary commentators Meredith Anthony, Oline Cogdill, Larry Gandle, and Jeff Pierce. At one point, George Easter held up a copy of Ordinary Bear indicating it was one of his recent favourite reads. George gestured to a bloke seated next to me and said “…and the author Chris Bernard has joined us here at Bouchercon…..” I blinked and grabbed my [gifted] copy of Ordinary Bear, and asked [in a conspiratorial whisper] the author if he’d be so kind as sign it for me, which he did.

On my return to the UK, Ordinary Bear was one of my early post-Bouchercon reads.

My thoughts?

This extraordinary novel is sadly currently not published in Europe, but was released earlier this year in America. I picked up a copy during the recent New Orleans Bouchercon thanks to the book receiving a Deadly Pleasures Barry Award, and excellent word of mouth in America.

I was energised by this novel, an unexpected treat, full of heart but a very tough and hard hitting literary thriller. Ordinary Bear provoked deep reflection and contemplation as the pages turned and the tale was told.

Ostensibly, its theme is redemption but the narrative is far more than purely a journey for the main character Farley to find inner-peace. The narrative weaves the former army veteran from working as an oil-field detective in Nanuqmiut [a small village in Alaska], to the homeless tented camps in contemporary Portland, Oregon. 

Read the Full Review HERE

I concluded my review with the following paragraph –

Rarely does one receive such a wonderfully realised literary thriller, one that is sleek like a ricocheting bullet – but one that makes the reader contemplate life-and-death, fear-and-love, cause-and-effect in a world that perplexes us further with each passing day.

Hugely recommended even if one has to order from America. 

One of my top reads of 2025, so far [and I read a lot of books].

As this novel was deeply thought provoking, I had a few questions for the author, and Chris Bernard cheerfully answered my queries with thoughtful [as well insightful] responses – which we present below for our readers – Ali Karim

Ali: Welcome to Great Britain’s Shots Magazine

Chris: Thank you for inviting me.

AK: It was great to meet you [albeit briefly] during Bouchercon New Orleans, so can you tell our readers a little about yourself?

CB: Your reputation precedes you, Ali, so what fun to end up sitting next to you at a Bouchercon panel.

Readers of my books will notice that place plays a key role. That’s because it’s so important to me as well. America’s a big country. I’ve moved back and forth across it six times and lived in nine states, and something tells me I’m not done yet. For the last six years, I’ve lived on the Rhode Island coast, in New England, but spent much of my adult life before that in Alaska and Oregon.

When I’m not writing, reading, or talking about books, I’m usually on the ocean—I love boats and have even built one—or walking with my dog and wife.

AK:…you make me blush….anyway… How important are books and reading to you, and are you a crime fiction reader? And what work did you read that made you consider penning your own fiction?

CB: I was the weird kid who always knew what he wanted to be. In my case, a writer—and since it took me a while to succeed at it, I guess I was that weird adult, too.

Books can change lives, right? As a kid, books were how I travelled. Books were how I learned. Books kept me company and entertained me. Books taught me empathy and perspective, and helped me realize that the things I felt and the things that scared me were not unique to me—that many of them were universal. And that’s a comforting thing for a kid to learn.

As a lifelong reader, I try to be open to all kinds of books. I find the concept of genre limiting. Write the best book you can and I’ll read it. Just don’t bore me. But a survey of my shelves would probably reveal a disproportionate share of crime fiction, literary fiction (whatever the hell that is), outdoors and climate writing, and books by Irish novelists.

All of which is to say that no one book made me want to write; every book made me want to write. Books have given me so much. I just wanted to give something back. Every novelist wants to be a bestseller, but I’d settle for having something I wrote connect with even one reader as intensely as I’ve connected with so many other writers’ books.

AK: …and your favourite writers and why they are your favourites, and their key work?

CB: This may sound like a dodge, but I think books are like wine. Different types or varietals suit different occasions, so the answer to your question would depend on my mood.

That said, some writers are automatic buys for me when something new of theirs hits the shelves. I’ve read everything by the American writer Robert Stone, and I’ll continue to read everything by the Australian writer Tim Winton, the Irish writer Kevin Barry, and English writer Sarah Hall. There’s a guy from the American Pacific Northwest called Bruce Holbert, whose books are difficult to characterize but never disappoint. His novels Whiskey—about two brothers on the run with a kidnapped bear—and Lonesome Animals, about a tormented sheriff called out of retirement to hunt a serial killer, are astonishments. 

Winton’s got a book, The Riders, about a guy searching for his missing wife with his traumatized daughter. Like Ron Hansen’s Atticus, it’s the kind of book that reframed for me what a mystery can look like or what it can be. And, of course, you can probably find traces of all of these writers’ DNA in Ordinary Bear.

But maybe you’re asking about crime writers? Man, I’m not even sure how you would go about making a list, there’s just too many great ones. I loved Robert Wilson’s Bruce Medway series set in Africa, as well as anything Denise Mina, Tana French, or Louise Penny write. I recently read and loved Urban Waite’s The Terror of Living, Bill Beverly’s Dodgers, and Gin Phillips’ Fierce Kingdom. My buddy John Straley writes excellent detective novels set in Southeast Alaska, which bring the place to life for me. And I’ve got shelves filled with Chandler, Leonard, and Greene.

How about Paz Pardo’s The Shamshine Blind, because it’s classic detective noir set in an inventively wild alternate universe—or Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union for the same reason?

AK: And was this your first Bouchercon? And can you tell us what you got up to in New Orleans?

CB: Ordinary Bear is my first crime novel but my third book, so I’ve made the rounds of writers conferences, book festivals, and literary conventions over the years. But this was my first Bouchercon, and what a revelation to find such a supportive community of writers, readers, and industry folks all lifting each other up and celebrating each other’s work and successes. I spent much of the long weekend in leisurely conversations about books with people like yourself, one of my favourite ways to pass time. I also got to meet up with some online friends in person for the first time, and sat in on some great panel discussions.

The Southern crime writing panel with S.A. Cosby, Ace Atkins, Henry Wise, Scott Blackburn, and Mark Westmoreland fascinated me. My three books have all been set in Oregon, Alaska, or both, so the south itself is a mystery to my sensibilities. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to so many southern writers.

The team behind Deadly Pleasures magazine and Mystery Mike Bursaw were generous enough to invite me to a dinner with some other writers and readers, where I enjoyed the company, conversation, and cocktails in equal measure. And I got to spend some time with your friend Jeff Pierce from The Rap Sheet, who has been very kind to Ordinary Bear.  

In addition, my wife and I made time to hit some of our favourite NOLA haunts for oysters and beignets, for drinks at The Hotel Monteleone—which has a rich literary history—and to listen to live music.

AK: It was winning the Barry Award 2025 at the National WW2 Museum for Ordinary Bear that brought your work onto my Radar, so can you tell us a little what it meant to you as a writer?

CB: It meant the world to me, Ali. Look, I’m pretty thick-skinned. As a writer, you have to be—the world of publishing can sometimes feel like a machine engineered to efficiently crush the human soul. I can take bad reviews and rejections, and I’m going to get up every morning and write no matter what. But it was a gift to be nominated for Best First Mystery Novel and an absolute shock to win.  

What made it especially meaningful is that, a decade earlier, my wife and I spent a day at the National WW2 Museum with some close friends, and I’d been deeply moved by the exhibits. So taking the stage and speaking to the audience there felt particularly gratifying. Not to mention looking out into that audience and seeing so many writers whose work I admire.

I’m not going to lie and tell you I don’t read my reviews, because I do. But I don’t write for critics, I write for readers, and that’s what made this award such a thrill—it’s a reader vote, and I’m grateful.

AK: Though ostensibly a Crime Novel, Ordinary Bear has a literary air, so can you tell us a little about its genesis and the writing process as well as journey to publication.

CB: Blackstone Publishing gave me a two-book deal when they bought my debut novel, Small Animals Caught in Traps. I wrote Ordinary Bear after I turned in that first manuscript.

Last year, while on a panel at the New Hampshire Book Festival with Sarah Stewart Taylor, Margot Douahiy, and Edwin Hill—all fantastic mystery writers—someone in the audience asked if we knew the endings of our books when we started writing them. I told them that I didn’t even know the beginning of Ordinary Bear. It’s such a difficult book to discuss without giving spoilers, but there’s a scene—you know the one—that came to me first. Not only did I have to write my way out of that scene, but I also had to write my way into it.

As you know, the entire book changes after that—tenor, tone, setting, all of it—so the first 20 pages or so are a bit of a feint. As a novelist, the challenge then became stitching those two parts of the book together without leaving a seam high enough for readers to trip over.  

I don’t think I sat down to write a mystery so much as to send Farley, the lead character, on a kind of odyssey. Like in Dante’s Inferno, but instead of Virgil, a different character guides him through each circle of the particular hell in which he finds himself, each damned in his or her own way. As the story began to take shape, I saw the opportunity to mirror a detective story as Farley sets out to try to save the kidnapped girl, but also to have some fun with it by putting him through some things along the way.

AK: I felt one of the major strengths of Ordinary Bear was how distinctly painted were the minor characters like Lady McDeath, like Edge [aka George Edgeworthy], Wayne and the cross-dressing former Army Veteran – turned bartender, Dolly, to name just a few. So tell me how you managed to control such an unusual array of background characters and make them so distinct in the readers mind?

CB: It wouldn’t make for an interesting story if Farley only encountered buttoned up accountants and people who have their shit together, right? Anyone who’s ever spent time in Portland, Oregon, will know what I mean when I say that it’s a city that punches above its weight in characters. I don’t know whether Portland draws them like pilgrims to Mecca or if it manufactures them, but they thrive there. That’s part of why I set the book there.

Farley is hurting. He’s bereft with grief, crippled by guilt, physically damaged, and actively trying to punish himself by sleeping on the streets. When he sets out to find the missing girl, his physical well-being diminishes as he gets deeper into his odyssey. At the same time, each character he meets opens his mind a little, awakening his empathy and reminding him that, as all-consuming as his grief and guilt are, they’re universal human emotions. Everybody’s hurt in some way, all of us.

The trick with writing characters like that is to highlight but don’t limit them to their quirks. Show what makes them human and readers will connect—and if readers connect with characters, they’ll remember them.

AK: You are a big bloke, but perhaps not as hulking as your main character Farley, so where did this protagonist come from?

CB: I don’t want to give too much away, but an extended metaphor runs throughout the book, a kind of relationship between Farley and the bear of the title. Polar bears are marine mammals. They spend most of their lives on ice. But as climate change melts the ice, they find themselves increasingly, jarringly out of place on land, mingling with humans. This leads to more negative interactions.

Not to draw a line in ink that’s too dark here, but Farley’s a huge bear of a man forced to leave the Arctic village where he lives for the urban streets of Portland, where he definitely does not belong. And in the end, when he absolves the bear for the impact it has had on his life because it was just doing what bears do, he’s absolving himself, in a way.

I liked the idea of kind of flipping a Jack Reacher story on its head. A giant ex-military type who lives out of a bag and helps someone in need, except he kindda sucks at it. Despite his size and obvious proclivity for violence, Farley makes it as far as he does in his search for the missing girl only because of all these characters who help him along the way.

AK: I see you have been writing a whiles before Ordinary Bear, can you tell us a little about your writing?

CB: As I said, Ordinary Bear is my third book and second novel, but my first crime novel. Small Animals Caught in Traps is set in a rain-soaked runt of a town in rural Oregon and follows an ex-boxer-turned-fly-fishing-guide grieving the loss of his wife as he tries like hell to help his daughter find her way in the world, even as he loses his own.

Obviously, I tend to skew dark in my fiction, but there’s always humour. Humour is critical—not just in fiction, but in life. As a novelist, if you’re going to write dark, you can use humour to give readers room to breathe. Like a bell between rounds of a fight. You can also use it as a jab to distract them so they don’t see the haymaker punch coming.

AK: And the backdrops in Alaska and Portland are vividly drawn, so I assume you are familiar with the Pacific Northwest of America?

CB: In 1999, I moved from Massachusetts to Alaska and fell immediately in love with the place. Not long after, I caught wind of an ancestor who’d done the same thing during the Gold Rush a hundred years earlier. Having failed as a miner, he became an explorer at a time when the Arctic still had a lot of blank spots on the map and lived a remarkable life, spending two decades exploring, shipwrecked, or frozen over in the Arctic. My first book, Chasing Alaska: A Portrait of the Last Frontier Then and Now, tells the parallel stories of his exploration and my own to show the Alaska we both knew and loved and how it changed over the century between us.

After I left Alaska, my wife and I lived in Oregon—twice—for more than a decade. As I said, place matters to me. The landscape of the Pacific Northwest resonates at the same frequency as my heart. But Rhode Island is beautiful, too—woods and waters—and we’ve built a good life here, for now.

AK: So what’s next for Chris Bernard….as I noticed there could be a possibility for a sequel, or am I mistaken?

CB: At the moment, I have no plans for a sequel, but never say “never,” right? My next book veers away from crime fiction because I needed a change in the months after I turned in Ordinary Bear, and because I like to challenge myself. But after that one, I plan to get back to it—the community of crime writers and readers feels too much like home for me not to want to return.

AK: Thank you for your time

CB: This was a lot of fun. Thanks for the opportunity, Ali, and thanks for all you do for writers and readers.

Shots Magazine thanks Chris Bernard for his time and insight – more information about Ordinary Bear and his work can be found HERE and HERE and in the video interview below from “Must Read Fiction”

AND for information about next year’s World Crime and Mystery Convention  [Bouchercon] click HERE

 

May’s Entry to The Island

Our colleagues at The Rap Sheet have been celebrating the return of Peter May to our bookshelves with the release from Quercus Publishing of ENTRY ISLAND.

So what’s Entry Island all about?

When Detective Sime Mackenzie boards a light aircraft at Montreal's St. Hubert airfield, he does so without looking back. For Sime, the 850-mile journey ahead represents an opportunity to escape the bitter blend of loneliness and regret that has come to characterise his life in the city.

Travelling as part of an eight-officer investigation team, Sime's destination lies in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Only two kilometres wide and three long, Entry Island is home to a population of around 130 inhabitants - the wealthiest of which has just been discovered murdered in his home.

The investigation itself appears little more than a formality. The evidence points to a crime of passion: the victim's wife the vengeful culprit. But for Sime the investigation is turned on its head when he comes face to face with the prime suspect, and is convinced that he knows her - even though they have never met.

Haunted by this certainty his insomnia becomes punctuated by dreams of a distant past on a Scottish island 3,000 miles away. Dreams in which the widow plays a leading role. Sime's conviction becomes an obsession. And in spite of mounting evidence of her guilt he finds himself convinced of her innocence, leading to a conflict between the professonal duty he must fulfil, and the personal destiny that awaits him.

Hot off the awarding winning and bestselling The Black House trilogy, Peter May has just embarked upon a promotional tour to launch the release of Entry Island.

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Over at The Rap Sheet there is an interview with Peter May here, and essay by Peter May on his research on The Clearances, which Entry Island references here and finally a competition to win a signed rare bound proof of Entry Island here

Details of Peter’s Tour is available by scrolling to the bottom of the link here

And a reminder, we have copies of Entry Island at a promotional discount available from the Shots Bookstore here

Photos ‘London Literary Critics Peter Guttridge, Barry Forshaw, Marcel Berlins, Ali Karim with Peter May with Quercus Publishing’ © 2013 A Karim 

J. Kingston Pierce’s Book to Die For -- The Eighth Circle by Stanley Ellin

J. Kingston Pierce is the editor of the crime-fiction blog The Rap Sheet, which has won the Spinetingler Award and been nominated twice for an Anthony Award. He also writes the book-design blog Killer Covers and serves as senior editor of January Magazine. Pierce is the author of more than half a dozen non-fiction books, including San Francisco: Yesterday & Today (2009), Eccentric Seattle (2003), and America’s Historic Trails with Tom Bodett (1997). He lives in Seattle, Washington.

I’m always surprised when I get to talking with committed detective-fiction fans, and I ask them whether they have read Stanley Ellin’s The Eighth Circle ... and almost invariably, the answer is “no.” In fact, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who’ve actually said “yes” to that question.

How is it that The Eighth Circle, which was first released back in 1958 and a year later won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Mystery Novel, could be so roundly forgotten? Well, it doesn’t help that it hasn’t been reissued much over the ensuing decades; the last edition appears to have come out in Britain in 2004. Certainly the handsomest and probably the most coveted version, however, is the Dell paperback from 1959 (shown below), which features a Robert McGinnis cover illustration. I like that edition so much, I’ve purchased a handful of copies over time and now pass them out to readers who seem especially deserving of an introduction to this remarkable tale.

The Eighth Circle ranks as a standout because it doesn’t try to jam in all of the conventions of the genre, and even endeavors to play against a few. Yes, this is a private-eye novel with a certifiable member of that breed as its protagonist: Murray Kirk, the son of a New York City grocer, who, after an unsuccessful stint practicing law, answered an advertisement to join Frank Conmy’s upscale Manhattan investigations firm and was hired on the spot. And yes, it boasts a plot filled with dire possibilities: Kirk, who’s now risen to become the suave head of the firm, and has even taken over the late Mr. Conmy’s elegant Central Park-side apartment, is hired to save the bacon of Arnold Lundeen, a policeman attached to the Vice Squad, who’s been caught up in a huge corruption scandal linked to a city-wide betting ring. But there’s no classic femme fatale in these pages, unless you imagine schoolteacher Ruth Vincent, Lundeen’s black-haired and long-lashed fiancée, to be more dangerous than she ever lets on. Furthermore, there are no bloody demonstrations of fisticuffs here, or even a gun drawn until well into Ellin’s story--and that weapon turns out to contain no bullets.

Ellin, who’s said to have studied several P.I. firms before sitting down to pen The Eighth Circle, offers here what at least seems to be a more realistic portrayal of the mid-20th-century sleuthing biz. Complete with officious secretaries. And plenty of paperwork and accounting responsibilities. And some boredom besides--because really, no modern enterprise exists independent of the periodically mundane, does it?

What ultimately propels this novel’s plot and keeps the reader hooked is the ethical quandary in which Murray Kirk finds himself. Despite his much-studied air of professional distance, he winds up falling hard for cop Lundeen’s unflashy but warm-hearted betrothed. In fact, he reasons that if he could get Lundeen out of the way--somehow reveal or manufacture the man’s guilt without leaving too many of his own fingerprints behind--he could have Ruth Vincent all to himself. The problem is, the more Kirk works on this case and tries to redirect things to his advantage (something that isn’t entirely lost on his veteran employees), the more clearly he recognizes the innocence of his client and the consequent hopelessness of his heart’s pursuit of darling Ruth.

It’s only too bad that Ellin abandoned Murray Kirk after The Eighth Circle (though he did go on to compose other P.I. novels, including 1979’s Star Light, Star Bright). As the exemplar of a less-disheveled, more-businesslike and morally divided gumshoe, he could really have been a contender in this genre.

Ali Karim's Silence To Die For - The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

Ali Karim is Assistant Editor at Shots eZine, a contributing editor at January Magazine & The Rap Sheet and writes for Crimespree Magazine, Deadly Pleasures. He is an associate member of The Crime Writers Association [CWA], International Thriller Writers [ITW] and the Private Eye Writers of America [PWA]. Karim contributed to ‘Dissecting Hannibal Lecter’ ed. Benjamin Szumskyj [McFarland Press] a critical examination of the works of Thomas Harris; The Greenwood Encyclopedia of British Crime Fiction [ed. Barry Forshaw] and the Edgar and Anthony Award nominated ITW 100 Thriller Novels ed David Morrell and Hank Hagner [Oceanview Publishing]. In 2011 at the Anthony Awards held at Bouchercon St Louis, he was presented with the 2011 David Thompson Memorial Award for Special Services to the Crime and Thriller Genre.

Ali Karim is also the programming chair for Bouchercon 2015 in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA.

When Ayo Onatade asked me to write about John Connolly and Declan Burke’s Books To Die For, she remarked that she didn’t need to guess which featured book and essay I would chose. She was right, despite the massive array of masterful essays from some of our leading writers commenting on novels that appear at the apex of the genre, there will always be one book, and one writer that I would die for.

Firstly, I have to admit my love and hatred of books like this, having contributed to them myself. The love of these peer reviews / appreciations comes from my own reading compulsion, and reading extensively allowing me to learn about life and the “world / reality” I see before me through the eyes of others. The hate comes from my knowledge that I am far from as ‘well-read’, as I consider myself, though this is tempered by using tomes such as this, in seeking out books and writers that I have overlooked, or perhaps cajoling me to re-read a particular work due to someone else noticing something or aspects writing, that I had missed. Much of this comes from my understanding of the aging process in a reader. Some books that knocked ‘me for six’, when I was a teenager, when I re-sampled them later in middle age, have not stood the test of time. Others however appear much more complex than my teenage mind understood at the time I first cracked their spines. You see, the books [per se] have not changed [unless they are redux versions, like Stephen King has done with ‘The Stand’ releasing it a decade later with additional text that was edited out in the first release]. Though what has changed is the reader [and his/her mind]. Age [and life] alter ones thinking and cognition and therefore changes aspects of the book, when re-read many years later with a more mature mind.

I have to applaud the Irish writers Connolly and Burke for producing such an interesting and hefty tome; an audacious idea soliciting erudite and passionate essays from some of the worlds greatest writers about books that enthused them. For what is life without passion and enthusiasm? And who best to select such milestones in the crime and thriller genre than the writers who plough that dark road themselves. The contributors are a “who’s who” of contemporary fiction, and to list them all would be a feat itself, and proves what a herculean task Connolly and Burke have achieved. Speaking in hyperbolic terms, the novel and essay that Ayo Onatade guessed would be the one I would write about is of course Kathy Reichs’ essay on Thomas Harris’ The Silence of the Lambs.

Reichs’ essay is filled with insights, that start with Harris’ precursor, the 1981 Red Dragon and Harris’ reoccupation with the injustices of God, as viewed by Lecter and Harris’ own Southern Baptist past. As a scientist, Reichs indicates the layered authenticity in the narrative from Harris’ own journalistic background as a crime reporter, but special mention is made on the characterization, how Harris carves the protagonists and antagonists as if deploying the skills of a master sculptor. Writing about such a well known work of the genre is a tricky assignment, though Reichs’ excels at showing the importance of secondary characters such as the Smithsonian entomologists Pilcher and Roden and how the scenes that flow from the narrative owe more to Poe than Ludlum. She uses the term ‘unsettling’ in her examination of Harris’ novel and how this atmosphere bleeds into the narrative, making the reader as edgy as one of Buffalo Bill’s victims. Naturally mention of the examination of the relationship between Lecter and Starling is shown as being pivotal to the proceedings. The critical point in the examination of Harris’ Silence of the Lambs rests in the opening from the editors “Harris maintains a low media profile and is reputed to find the process of writing intensely difficult: he has published only five novels in thirty-seven years”. This indicates that to produce something as definitive as Silence of the Lambs is hard, hard work, something that is shared with the novels dissected in this wonderful book.

Kathy Reichs’ last line ‘His writing greatly influenced mine’ shows the respect she has for this genre-shaping novel; a work that is as unsettling as it is insightful. Reading it makes one feel what it is like, to be that rabbit hypnotized and paralyzed by the headlights of that oncoming car, the self same metaphor that Harris uses in the first chapter. The Silence of the Lambs is not a book that you walk away from without your worldview being shaken, like a bullet wound, when you close the covers, it remains inside you, reminding you what the dark end of the street feels like.

Continuing the hyperbolic theme, Books To Die For is probably the most important work chronicling the novels and writers that make the crime and thriller genre the most interesting part of fiction-publishing. Any enthusiast who does not have this volume on their bookshelf is depriving themselves of the most enlightening glimpse of what the vertigo-inducing heights that crime and thriller fiction can scale. Reading it is like going back into a time machine, as you get flooded with memories of ‘what and who you were’ when you read some of these magnificent novels; because they scar your psyche.

Bravo Mr John Connolly and Mr Declan Burke for producing such a treat, and one that will endure and one that I hope to see in the non-fiction award nominations for 2012.  

And Ayo, you guessed right, it will always be The Silence of the Lambs for this reader, as Thomas Harris has produced a monster of a novel, and one that Kathy Reichs’ essay does justice to.