SHOTSMAG CONFIDENTIAL: bouchercon 2013

Showing posts with label bouchercon 2013. Show all posts

Thursday, 16 October 2025

Who is Mason Coile?

Enthusiastic book reviewers often want to tell others when they have enjoyed a book immensely, discovered something special, a narrative that provoked deep thought.

EXILES by Mason Coile

So what’s this book about?

It’s 2030

The human crew sent to prepare the first colony on Mars arrives to find the new base half-destroyed and the three robots sent ahead to set it up in disarray.

In the four years since they arrived, the machines have formed alliances, chosen their own names and picked up some disturbing beliefs. Each robot must be interrogated.

But one of them is missing.

As the astronauts close in on the truth, it dawns on them that in this barren, hostile landscape - where even the machines have nightmares - none of them is safe.

I just finished this extraordinary work by an author I had never heard of - Mason Coile and reviewed it -

This slim novel punches well above its word count. It has heft in terms of provoking thought and stopping you in your tracks to ponder upon the ideas, themes and emotions it evokes.

There is a tragic finality in the climax - one that grips the mind.

Presented as a Science Fiction Thriller, it is actually a philosophical exploration of what it means to ‘exist’. As worthy as that may sound, it stretches the edges of this futuristic scenario into a cerebral examination of loneliness and why ‘humans’ and ‘non-humans’ behave in the ways they do when mentally and physically isolated.

Read the Full Review HERE

The climax caused me to put the book down and sit in silence, lost in my thoughts as I gazed at the stars glittering in the infinity of the night sky.

I felt alone and insignificant.

The writing was so assured and evocative it came as no surprise to discover that Mason Coile is a pen-name of the award-winning Canadian Author Andrew Pyper. The novel’s melancholic theme is matched by the sadness in the knowledge that Exiles is his final novel. It was published posthumously as Andrew Pyper tragically passed away earlier this year aged 56.

He dedicated his final novel to his wife.

I was fortunate to meet Andrew during Bouchercon 2013 held in Albany, New York State – where we discussed his incredible Horror Novel The Demonologist – which would be awarded the International Thriller Writers [ITW] hardcover novel of the year [in 2014].

If you’ve not read Andrew Pyper / Mason Coile – here’s his bibliography

Kiss Me (1996)

Lost Girls (2000)

The Trade Mission (2002)

The Wildfire Season (2005)

The Killing Circle (2008)

The Guardians (2011)

The Demonologist (2013)

The Damned (2015)

The Only Child (2017)

The Homecoming (2019)

The Residence (2020)

Oracle (2021)

As Mason Coile

William (2024)

Exiles (2025)

More information > https://andrewpyper.com/

Thursday, 10 October 2013

Brendan DuBois Resurrected

For me, one of the delights of attending Bouchercon, is to meet the writers that were behind the novels that pepper my life, books that startled me, books that made me think and books that entertained me – and perhaps challenged the way I view reality.

One great pleasure was not only to meet Brendan Dubois, but actually spend time with him. We first met briefly on a stairwell at Bouchercon Indianapolis, but in Albany we even got to share a panel together on Private Eye Fiction last month.

I got to thank him for the wonderful novel Resurrection Day which I read over a decade ago, and was just blown away. Brendan is not that well known in the UK, but it was the cover that caught my eye, and the tag line "Everyone remembers exactly what they were doing the day President Kennedy tried to kill them."

I’m not the only one captivated by this chilling alternate history thriller as Publisher’s Weekly reported on release in 1999 -

In his first novel outside of his acclaimed Lewis Cole mystery series (Shattered Sand, Forecasts, Feb. 15, etc.), DuBois delivers an alternate-history thriller that deserves to be as popular as Robert Harris's Fatherland. DuBois postulates an America that has been politically devastated by a nuclear exchange arising from the Cuban missile crisis. It's now 1972. Washington, D.C., is a radioactive crater; Nelson Rockefeller is running for president against George McGovern; and Boston Globe reporter Carl Landry is investigating the shooting death of a 60-year-old retired serviceman. Warned off the story after it gets spiked by the military's in-house censor, and emboldened by Sandra Price, a beautiful reporter from the London Times, Landry keeps digging at Swenson's past. What he uncovers is the truth behind the rumors of what really happened in the White House as the missile crisis spun out of control--and evidence of an unholy alliance that is poised to reverse the course of American history. From cryptic references to post-bomb chaos in California to clever reworkings of '60s history (e.g., antidraft demonstrators chanting, ""Hell, no, we won't glow!""), DuBois creates a sobering and imaginatively detailed vision of an America that has been crippled by tragedy--a nation where John F. Kennedy was not the King Arthur of Camelot but its Mordred, the man who brought down everything. One of DuBois's many brilliant touches is an underground of diehard Kennedy supporters who scrawl the graffiti ""He Lives"" on every available surface, because they believe that JFK was not only innocent, but is still alive and broadcasting from a pirate radio station. Cohesively plotted and smoothly written, steadily exciting and rife with clever conceits, this is what-if thriller fiction at its finest. Foreign rights sold in the U.K., Germany and Holland. (June)