SHOTSMAG CONFIDENTIAL: silence of the lambs

Showing posts with label silence of the lambs. Show all posts

Wednesday, 15 May 2019

The Silence of the Book Reviewer

It’s been unbearable.

Anyone that knows me, understands my talkative nature but there is a book I am not able to publish a review until Thursday 16^th of May, due an embargo reinforced by punitive legal restrictions.

The book is Cari Mora by my favourite novelist, the former journalist with the Associated Press, Mr Thomas Harris.

It’s been unbearable not being able to discuss this book, but tomorrow the restriction is lifted, and so I will be publishing my review, and seeing the opinions of others.

Last week, while walking in the rain in Covent Garden, my mind would not give me peace, as my cognition constantly revolved around the exposure to that manuscript, Cari Mora, the 6^th novel by Thomas Harris. I got a fright when I walked, lost in thought - which I wrote about HERE

Last weekend’s Crimefest was hard for me, as I was only able to relay the information made public by Wm Heinemann HERE and the extract made public via Charlotte Bush of PenguinRandomHouse, which can be read HERE while all the while I wanted to discuss the book with others, but was unable to do so, due to the ‘Non-Disclosure-Agreement’ in place – the silence of the reviewers.

During the weekend in Bristol, I enjoyed the company many but of particular joy was chatting to the awarding writer, biographer and journalist Ruth Dudley-Edwards and the wonderful, and equally well-read Kathryn Kennison. I am fortunate to have known these two important figures in the Crime Fiction Genre for many years. We even shared a table during the Crimefest Awards Gala Dinner. It was amusing that when I got talking about my love of the work of Thomas Harris, Kathryn thought I was referring to Robert Harris. Which made both of us laugh. It was somewhat surreal that the three of us found we were all wearing Green, on the close of Crimefest on Sunday. Coordinated by fluke.

Anyway, I digress, as ever.

While making my way to Goldsboro Books, in Covent Garden for the world launch of Thomas Harris’ Cari Mora – I was again lost in thought, contemplating the book that lay heavy on my mind when again - I found my name being shouted on the street, which again startled me. This time I noticed that it was from a group of women who called me over from a pavement cafe. Surreally it was from Ruth and Kathryn who had spotted me. They were seated outside a café, sipping coffee on a very sunny London evening, with friends when they noticed me walking by.

I stopped to talk to the group, though Thomas Harris was heavy on my mind. I reminded Kathryn about us confusing Robert and Thomas Harris at Crimefest, and said mischievously that all it would take now, is for Ruth to think we were talking about Irishman Richard Harris, at which point we all laughed and sang the chorus to this song.

I had to say my farewells quicker than I would have liked, for I needed to make my way to the launch of Cari Mora, and I didn’t wish to be late.

As I walked, I thought of my love of this former journalist’s work, and how the writers with the darkest imaginations make the nicest of people.

Age and Reflection

I’m coming up to 56, and revelling in a very rare moment. The release of a novel by a writer who marks my life.

Thomas Harris is a writer who combines a very dark imagination with such an amazing ability in terms of story-telling. Thomas Harris uses words so carefully selected, configured in such a manner weaving a narrative that deploys such economy, sheer elegance. I spoke with his British Publisher Jason Arthur and his Publicity Director Charlotte Bush, telling them that as he’s aged, he cuts back the words. Cari Mora is his Sixth novel, but what a book.

Each of his novels, in my opinion have got better, sharper and more disturbing. Or perhaps a better word would be distressing.

But, more on Thursday.

“Reading his prose is like running a slow hand down cold silk.”

Stephen King in 2019

"The best popular novel published since The Godfather"

Stephen King in 1981

I have pre-ordered the abridged reading as my May download from Audible. Jason Arthur of William Heinemann (PenguinRandomHouse UK) told me an amusing anecdote about Mr Harris getting his voice into character for Cari Mora.

Of all my audiobooks, the abridged readings by the author rank as my favourites, he’s a great narrator that acts as he reads. He uses accents just a tad above his native American South, Mississippi twang.

I know in vivid detail, these moments in my life, the release of a book by Thomas Harris decorates my memory, making everything vivid, and marked into retrievable memory; moments to return too, to think back at who I was at that time.

The clueless 17-year-old kid in 1981 buying Red Dragon in Hardcover purely on Stephen King’s recommendation, of all places SPCK, Chester. Surreally a Christian Book Store.

I was aged 25, a marine chemicals surveyor in 1988, and nearly screaming at London Heathrow, spotting an ‘early / advance’ copy of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS in the airport bookstore. It was my second trip to the Arabian Gulf (for a six-week tour of duty), it made the flight memorable as well as that Six Weeks. I read the novel four times, back to back. I remember that time like it was yesterday.

I was 36 and a senior executive in a German Chemical Engineering company. I queued at Maxim Jakubowski’s MurderOne in Charing Cross, London on 7-8th June 1999, with a hotel Room Booked, and a bottle of Amarone waiting for HANNIBAL, and the first in the queue, for this book.

In 2006, I was 43 and under a huge burden setting up a complex business that was in its infancy, those difficult years. Thankfully after 15 years, it all came good. And my reading of HANNIBAL RISING helped me cope with the adverse camber of setting up a business, and watching it so very closely, because a business is like a flower, it can be crushed or wilt without close, close management especially in those early days.

I’m now 55, and CARI MORA arrives tomorrow, which I cannot publish a review until then, Thursday 16th May, 2019, so I will be keen to see what others make of this writer’s 6^th novel.

My review is written, and I have photos from last night, as well as video – which I will upload tomorrow when the embargo and legal restrictions are lifted – and my silence [and that of others] will be broken, because Thomas Harris’ narratives have decorated my mind, and the minds of others.

And thanks to Wm Heineman’s Charlotte Bush, there is an extraordinary competition, for which details are available from The Bookseller HERE to coincide with this books launch, and Goldsboro Books have special slip-cased signed first editions on sale now.

Speak tomorrow, the 'Avid Fan'

Ali Karim 15 / 5 / 2019

Wednesday, 10 April 2019

I Do Not Like Thee Dr Fell

So as the excitement gathers momentum for the worldwide release of CARI MORA by Thomas Harris, from PenguinRandomHouse UK on the 16^th of May 2019 and 21^st May 2019 in the US from Grand Central Publishing.

I reflect in an attempt to restrain my excitement about this novel, which Harris and his publishers tease with this synopsis

Twenty-five million dollars in cartel gold lies hidden beneath a mansion on the Miami Beach waterfront. Ruthless men have tracked it for years. Leading the pack is Hans-Peter Schneider. Driven by unspeakable appetites, he makes a living fleshing out the violent fantasies of other, richer men.

Cari Mora, caretaker of the house, has escaped from the violence in her native country. She stays in Miami on a wobbly Temporary Protected Status, subject to the iron whim of ICE. She works at many jobs to survive. Beautiful, marked by war, Cari catches the eye of Hans-Peter as he closes in on the treasure. But Cari Mora has surprising skills, and her will to survive has been tested before.

Monsters lurk in the crevices between male desire and female survival. No other writer in the last century has conjured those monsters with more terrifying brilliance than Thomas Harris. Cari Mora, his sixth novel, is the long-awaited return of an American master.

More information as well as how to pre-order CARI MORA, CLICK HERE for the UK and Ireland and CLICK HERE for the US and Canada.

It’s been seven years since we last saw a new novel by Thomas Harris, and I recall my interest in a character of his named “Dr Fell” - who is not all he seems. I also consider the surreal nature in which fact sometimes is intertwined into fiction and the existential thoughts of a writer, until they become tangible parts of our perceived reality.

Dr Fell was a fictional character in Thomas Harris novel HANNIBAL [published on 8^TH June 1999]. He was the curator of the Capponi Library in Florence, Italy, but ceased to exist when he was murdered by the fugitive Dr Hannibal Lecter, who assumed his identity in order to evade the FBI [following his escape from Baltimore, at the close of The Silence of the Lambs]. He is mentioned, but only seen as Dr Lecter’s disguise in both the 1999 novel, and the 2001 film version directed by Ridley Scott.

Dr Fell is given a first name ‘Roman’ and also a wife [Lydia Fell], in ANTIPASTA, the first episode of Season Three of Bryan Fuller’s NBC TV series Hannibal. Roman and Lydia Fell were murdered by Hannibal Lecter so their identities could be taken over by him [as Dr Fell] and Bedelia Du Maurier. It is alluded to that Dr Hannibal Lecter ate Dr Roman Fell, post-mortem, though it is uncertain if Lydia Fell was also eaten by Dr Lecter and / or Bedelia Du Maurier.

The origins of Thomas Harris’ use of the name Dr Fell are interesting, and there is a surreal twist where fact and fiction would merge.

Doctor Fell appears as a name in an epigram, said to have been written by satirical English poet Tom Brown in 1680.

The anecdote associated with the origin of the rhyme is that when Brown was a student at the Christ Church, Oxford, he was caught doing mischief. The dean of Christ Church, John Fell (1625–1686), who later went on to become the Bishop of Oxford, expelled Brown; but offered to take him back if he passed a test. If Brown could extemporaneously translate the thirty-second epigram of Martial (a well-known Roman epigramist), his expulsion would be cancelled.

The epigram in Latin [Italian] is as follows:

Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare.

Hoc tantum possum dicere: non amo te

A literal English translation is:

I do not like you, Sabidius, and I can't say why. This much I can say: I do not like you.

Brown made the impromptu English translation which became the verse:

I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,

The reason why – I cannot tell;

But this I know, and know full well,

I do not like thee, Doctor Fell

The rhyme "I do not like thee, Doctor Fell" was not treated as a nursery rhyme, or included in Mother Goose collections, until 1926, following the rhyme's inclusion in "Less-Familiar Nursery Rhymes" by Robert Graves.

Thomas Harris, also may have referenced Dr Lecter’s non-de-plume [Dr Fell] while in hiding in Florence to a fictional detective from crime fiction’s past, the amateur sleuth, Dr Gideon Fell - a character created by John Dickson Carr. He is the protagonist of 23 mystery novels from 1933 through 1967, as well as a few short stories.

CLICK HERE for some insight from Martin Edwards literary commentator on the Golden Age of Crime Fiction, crime writer and chair of The Crime Writer’s Association regarding JD Carr and Dr Gideon Fell.

Most of Dr Fell's exploits in Carr’s narratives concern the unravelling of locked room mysteries or of "impossible crimes", not unlike how Dr Hannibal Lecter escaped from his locked cell in Baltimore [at the close of The Silence of the Lambs], which in itself was a locked room mystery.

In the novel The Three Coffins by J D Carr; Dr Fell speaks of a "locked room lecture", in which he delineates many of the methods by which apparently locked-room [or impossible-crime] murders might be committed. In the course of his discourse, he states, off-handily, that he and his listeners are, of course, characters in a book, not unlike Thomas Harris’ Dr Fell / Dr Hannibal Lecter.

Though it was due to a curious twist of fate that the fictional character, Dr Hannibal Lecter would lead to the capture of the real life violent criminal Whitey Bulger, who like Lecter was in hiding in Europe under a non-de-plume. Whitey Bulger’s life has often been fictionalised to varying degrees by the work of Dennis Lehane, even inspired Jack Nicholson in The Departed as well as in the film BLACK MASS.

It was curious that Whitey Bulger was referred to by the Press as “The Hannibal Lecter of South Boston” CLICK HERE for more information

The breakthrough came last September when Bulger was spotted in Britain by a company executive who had befriended him in 1994. The executive recognised Bulger as the American tourist who had worked out alongside him at a health club inside Le Meridien Piccadilly hotel in central London almost 10 years earlier.

A week after September's chance encounter, the businessman was watching Hannibal, a film about the FBI search for the fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter. In one scene, the Bureau's genuine Most Wanted List was shown in the background.

The businessman recognised Mr Bulger's face on the list and immediately contacted the FBI in Boston. He has asked police to protect his anonymity in case of reprisals.

Read More from The Telegraph [London] 26 Jan 2003 HERE

In an act of Karma, Whitey Bulger was murdered while in prison, the day before Halloween 2018, in what appears to be a ‘locked room mystery / impossible crime’ that would not be out of place in a Dr Fell narrative from John D Carr. The brutality of Whitey Bulger’s murder in a high security penitentiary [in solitary confinement] also resembles the violent and bloody escape that Dr Hannibal Lecter deployed in escaping his incarceration from Baltimore, murdering two prison warders in the process. It was of course a ‘locked room mystery’ or an ‘impossible crime’

Mr. Bulger’s death, within hours of his arrival at the prison, raised numerous questions. Mr. Bulger, a long-time federal informer and a prolific killer over several decades, knew many who would want him dead. But how was he left vulnerable to a beating so forceful that it displaced his eyeballs?