Under the influences

Talking about Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block, Dan J. Marlowe and other influences, over at Ed Gorman's blog.

N.J. noir

A New Jersey-centric profile/intvw. conducted by veteran Philadelphia journalist and author Mary Walton.

Show me the mummy!

Airing my Guilty Pleasures over at the Crimespree Magazine site.

Greetings from Asbury Park (and Paramus)

Two New Jersey appearances coming up: Saturday June 4 at Words! bookstore on Cookman Avenue in beautiful downtown Asbury Park, from 7 to 9 p.m. as part of the city's First Saturday festival. All the stores in the business district will be open late and free parking is available.
On Sunday June 12, I'll be part of the BOOKSNJ festival at the Paramus Public Library in Paramus from 1 to 5 p.m., along with Mary Higgins Clark, Chris Grabenstein, Brad Parks and many others. At 1 p.m., fellow St. Martin's author Todd Ritter and I will be hosting a panel on "A Female Heroine from a Male Perspective."

True confessions

A new Q&A up at Todd Ritter's blog, in which I cop to many personal details previously uncopped to.

Pittsburgh noir

Forbes Ave. & Bouquet St., 1 a.m., 5/3/11. Late-night dining after the Festival of Mystery.

My desk 4/22/11

Everything is relevant

Talking COLD SHOT in Brick City

My interview on Newark jazz station WBGO-FM 88.3 with WBGO Journal host Andrew Meyer is now archived and available for instant listening.

Criminals and poets

I was surprised – and a little alarmed – when Gerald So asked me to contribute to Issue Three of his poetry anthology THE LINEUP last year. I hadn’t written any poems since college, and hadn’t much felt the urge to in the intervening years. But poet and musician Jim Carroll, whom I’d admired greatly, had recently died at age 60, and I’d been thinking a lot about his work. Gerald’s invitation seemed to come at the right time, even if it was out of the blue. The result was “Independence Day, 1976,” my first published poem in 25 years.

To say it sprang out of nowhere wouldn’t be accurate though. A few years back, I’d played with the idea of a novel set on Manhattan’s Lower East Side during the mid-’70s, when the punk scene was emerging just as New York’s crime rate was soaring. I’d been listening to Television’s 1977 album MARQUEE MOON a lot, and was intrigued by the idea of those two environments – a burgeoning artistic scene and an increasingly drug-addled criminal world – intersecting at a particular place and time. I was also recalling Carroll’s THE BASKETBALL DIARIES, a harrowing memoir about his days as a teenage heroin addict in late-’60s Manhattan.

That novel never got written – I had a setting and a few characters, but not much else. However, the idea stayed with me. Years later, when Gerald requested a poem for THE LINEUP, I knew immediately what it would be. Turning some of those abandoned concepts into a poem allowed me to convey a mood outside the strict confines of narrative. It let me be evocative rather than descriptive, ambiguous rather than specific, the total antithesis of my novels. Being in the anthology also put me in the company of writers whom I considered to be real poets – James Sallis, Reed Farrel Coleman, James W. Hall and David Hernandez among them.

I was reminded of all this while reading Issue Four of THE LINEUP, just released to coincide with National Poetry Month. Mary Christine Delea’s “Leaving Long Island” also evokes the mid-’70s, when New Yorkers lived in fear of an unknown killer who preyed upon young women in parked cars, a stranger who stepped from the shadows to open fire on them with a .44 revolver, for no reason other than that they were pretty and had long brown hair. Conjuring up the brutality of another era, Coleman’s “Slider, Part 7” is a chilling glimpse of mass murder in World War II Europe.

At the other end of the spectrum, David Corbett’s lyrical “Bargain” is a moving ballad of love, loss and hope. Jeanne Dickey’s “An Elegy for Susan Atkins” is told from the point of view of a Manson family member who died in prison in 2009. H. Palmer Hall’s “Suburban Blues” and Charles Harper Webb’s “Prayer for the Man Who Mugged My Father, 72” both give voice to the victims of crime, the latter with a white-hot anger at its arrogance and destructive nature.

The other poems in this collection hit equally hard. They come at their subject matters from a variety of angles, but the best of them are as evocative, as complex and as emotionally challenging as any prose. These poems use words precisely and effectively – like a weapon.

"Independence Day, 1976"

This is the poem I wrote for Gerald So's poetry anthology THE LINEUP, Volume 3, published last year:


Independence Day, 1976

The fireworks over the Hudson
Light up the graffiti here on East Thirteenth.
We huddle in the doorway,
Watching, nodding, waking

You looked like Kansas when you got off that bus
I could see the fields in your eyes,
Smell the wind in your hair.

You were so brave and lost,
When I took your hand you said
You would go anywhere
Except home.

On my mattress on the floor,
Windows open to the heat,
WIth the sirens our lullaby,
Your trembling fingers touched
The vein that ran from my heart.

I showed you how to do it,
To take the slow bullet
Like warm love inside you.

Sweet steel and a smile
And the sirens fade

Into this wilderness of tears
You came falling like an angel
Now we go down dreaming
together



– For Jim Carroll

Radio Free Newark

On Friday (4/15) at 7:30 p.m. ET, I'll be guesting on Newark jazz station WBGO-FM, talking with WBGO Journal host Andrew Meyer about crime fiction and novels vs. reality. In the NY/NJ area, you can listen in at 88.3 FM or stream it online at http://www.wbgo.org/news everywhere else.

Last chance for the Hammett/HANDLE challenge

Tonight (Monday 4/11) at midnight Central Time is the deadline for entering the Hammett/HANDLE challenge I'm hosting over at the Violent World of Parker site. Find the Dashiell Hammett reference in Donald E. Westlake's 1966 "Richard Stark" novel THE HANDLE (also reprinted as RUN LETHAL, above) and you're eligible to win a signed copy of GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER. Full details are here.

Tabloid talk

Talking crime fiction, newspapers, organized crime and "Jersey Shore," as part of PRX's "Poets of the Tabloid Murder" radio show (free registration required).

The Hammett/HANDLE challenge and giveaway

Think you know your Dashiell Hammett and your Richard Stark? I'm hosting a trivia contest and giveaway this week over at the Violent World of Parker site (devoted to the works of Donald E. Westlake, aka "Richard Stark"). Answer the trivia question (it pertains to the eighth Stark novel, THE HANDLE) and you could win a new signed trade paperback edition of GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER. Details here.

New review

The inimitable Elizabeth A. White offers her verdict on COLD SHOT TO THE HEART, in a syndicated review.

More on COLD SHOT

Ali MacGraw, Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, Sam Peckinpah and more... Talking COLD SHOT today over at Patti Abbott's site, as part of her "How I Came to Write This Book" series.

SUSPENSE review

SUSPENSE MAGAZINE reviews the trade paperback edition of GTN:

GONE ‘TIL NOVEMBER by Wallace Stroby

Sara Cross has problems. She is a single mother and her six-year-old son is battling Leukemia. She is one of the best deputies her small Florida town has ever seen.

Sara is the first responder to the scene when a shooting occurs and when she shows up,her ex — a fellow deputy — has shot a young, black man and his story is self defense and it seems that the evidence supports his story. Initially, Sara believes Billy’s story, but the more she investigates the more questions she has.

Mikey-Mike is a New Jersey drug dealer who is having issues. His product is getting a name for being weak. He doesn’t trust his hired man, Morgan, and his money has come up missing. He sends Morgan to Florida to find the missing money and what happened to the carrier. True to form, not only does Mikey send Morgan, but also a couple of thugs to make sure the job gets done.

Morgan has his own agenda and problems he has to deal with. The other thugs definitely don’t blend in to the quiet Florida community well and Sara is caught right in the middle of it all.

Fast-paced and exciting, this book will keep you entertained the whole way through. Characters so life-like, you will feel intense emotions toward each one of them!

Reviewed by Ashley Wintters for Suspense Magazine

Pulped

What do Mickey Spillane, Richard Thompson, Cornell Woolrich and Philip Glass all have in common? I cite them all in this Q&A with Cullen Gallagher over at his great Pulp Serenade site.

My dinner with the boys

I guest blog at the excellent Mulholland Books site today, talking about my 2008 dinner with some N.J. mobsters, and the genesis of COLD SHOT TO THE HEART.

COLD SHOT weekend

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Are they talking about hot tubs?

Snapped off a coffee shop menu in South Fla.

The sounds of Asbury Park, 1967

The Asbury Park music scene, circa 1967. A summer's worth of shows at Convention Hall.

With a tip of the hat to Stan Goldstein.

NY Times News Service review

Another syndicated review, this one from the New York Times News Service, via the Dayton (Oh.) Daily News.

Some warm words for COLD SHOT

Two new and noteworthy reviews out today. One from the inestimable Oline H. Cogdill, written for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, but syndicated elsewhere as well.
Another very long - and thoughtful - one, from the Chicago Cultural magazine, The Week Behind.

What I'm reading ...

Today, over at Campaign for the American Reader, I get to talk about the new novel by one of my favorite authors, Tom McGuane.

Random Readings, Vol. 10

This installment of Random Readings is a meditation on manhood, from Helen Eustis' 1953 novel THE FOOL KILLER, about a young orphan boy roaming the post-Civil War American South, and the strange companion he picks up along the way. (It was filmed in 1965 with Anthony Perkins and Edward Albert). In this passage, the boy, George Mellish, having witnessed an attempted-murder-turned-suicide, gets some post-traumatic-stress counseling from a benevolent father figure who's taken him in:

"Well, George," says he, "looks like here's a case where they ain't nothing for it but to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and start in to be a man ...

"I don't reckon nobody could give you an exact recipe, but I'll tell you the best I know. Seems to me like you got to look at the facts and look at em straight, but not go play-acting off in this direction and that, making out things is worse than they are when they're bad enough to begin with. You seen some dreadful things happen ... Ain't no wonder if you don't know what to make of em ... Only this much I do know: ain't no use laying here turning yourself inside out over your fault, his fault, t'other one's fault; and it ain't no use brooding over dreadfulness, neither. You got to think of them good times ... and try your level best to put the awful ones out of your mind. Enjoy the good and stand up to the bad - that's the best I can tell you how to be a man."

– From THE FOOL KILLER

by Helen Eustis (1953)

Tuning up THE MECHANIC

More memories of my misspent '70s youth: I play film critic over at the Rap Sheet today, with a look at the new version of the 1972 Charles Bronson film THE MECHANIC. It goes well with a splash or two - or ten - of Mandom.

Meanwhile, on Page 69 ...

COLD SHOT TO THE HEART undergoes the Page 69 test over at Campaign for the American Reader.

Random Readings, Vol. 9

"But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes."

– Robert Frost, "Two Tramps in Mud Time"

COLD SHOT ARC giveaway & Stark contest

Trent Reynolds is giving away an Advance Reading Copy of COLD SHOT TO THE HEART over at his Violent World of Parker site. All you have to do is e-mail him at the site address (available on the contest page) with the subject “Cold Shot giveaway.” He'll pick a winner at random.

He's also offering a signed first edition of the long out-of-print hardback of my first novel, THE BARBED-WIRE KISS, for sharp-eyed readers of COLD SHOT (and fans of Richard Stark). Contest details on the same page.

COLD SHOT NYC launch party

Weather be damned, tomorrow (1/28) night's launch party for COLD SHOT TO THE HEART is still on at New York’s historic Mysterious Bookshop from 6:30 to 8 p.m. (COLD SHOT is also MB's hard-boiled book club pick for Feb. Reviews can be found here. Beer, wine and refreshments will be served, and festivities will continue afterward at the Raccoon Lodge, directly across the street. The Mysterious Bookshop is located at 58 Warren St. in Tribeca, just a block from the Chambers Street subway station (1,2,3, A,C,E) and a short walk north of the WTC PATH station (map below). (212) 587-1011.

New COLD SHOT reviews

Some more reviews, just out this week:

Bookreporter.com

Pop Culture Nerd

Barnes & Noble "Ransom Notes"

Book Brahmin

Shelf Awareness gave me a chance to play Book Brahmin this week, and plug some excellent works by Reed Farrell Coleman, David Corbett and others.

COLD SHOT interview

Trent Reynolds gives me a bruising over at his Violent World of Parker website.

Calling all psychopaths

Tonight (1/19) I'll be appearing at the New York Public Library's Mid-Manhattan Branch at 6:30 for a Mystery Writers of America panel titled "Without Conscience: Why Psychopaths Make Such Interesting Characters." Joining me will be authors Katia Lief, Alice Loweecey, Jonathan Maberry, Wendy Corsi Staub and moderator Anthony Rainone. Copies of COLD SHOT TO THE HEART will be available, courtesy of the Mysterious Bookshop. The library is located at 40th Street and Fifth Avenue, and the event will be held on the Sixth Floor (212) 340-0837.

Out today

My fourth novel, COLD SHOT TO THE HEART, is in stores today (1/18), and available on-line and in both Kindle and Nook versions.

The reviews below were just posted this weekend:

^ NEWARK STAR-LEDGER/NEWHOUSE NEWSPAPERS

^ MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL

^ VIOLENT WORLD OF PARKER.COM

^ Yahoo's SHINE MAGAZINE

^ And my thoughts on Dashiell Hammett's THE GLASS KEY, over at MYSTERY SCENE

GTN trade paperback & new review

The trade paperback edition of GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER goes on-sale today. To mark it, barnesandnoble.com is offering a limited-time 37% off sale ($9.37, regular $14.99) if you order on-line.

Also today, Elizabeth A. White makes GTN her first review of 2011, over at her book review blog, Musings of an All-Purpose Monkey.

Happy 2011 everyone

Courtesy of Otis Redding and Carla Thomas, the greatest New Year's song ever:

Happy Holidays!

Kirkus Best of 2010

Kirkus Reviews has named GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER one of the best books of 2010. Here's a link to their original review.

"15 Songs" - The Covers

Here's a sneak peek at the custom individual covers for the five random CD mixes I'll be sending out this week as part of the "15 Songs" giveaway contest. Deadline to enter is this Thursday (12/16) at 5 p.m. To be eligible, just stop by my official FaceBook page and post the title and artist of the first album you ever bought. I'll pick at least seven (and maybe more) winners at random.

GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER trade paperback

The trade paperback edition of GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER - with a slightly tweaked cover (click above for larger view) - will be published by St. Martins/Minotaur Jan. 4, 2011. It's already available as a pre-order via Barnes & Noble, and will likely show up on Amazon and other sites before long as well. And, of course, the Kindle and Nook versions remain available.

The "15 Songs" giveaway

My friends know me as an inveterate mix-tape maker and frustrated DJ. I've put together mix tapes and CDs for more than three decades for friends and acquaintances, sometimes thematically assembled to mark certain events (weddings, birthdays, etc), or holidays (I made an Xmas music compilation for seven years). I even compiled a CD to mark the publication of my novel GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER.

A recent FaceBook exchange with author David Corbett got me thinking about this "15 Song" chain e-mail making the rounds. The rules of the game are simple: "(1) Turn on your MP3 player or music player on your computer. (2) Go to SHUFFLE mode. (3) Write down the first 15 songs that come up - title and artist. First rule - be honest! Don't keep shuffling forward for "cooler" songs. This is a 'getting to know you' exercise. NO editing/cheating, please."

So here's the idea: Go to my official FaceBook page and Like/Join it (if you haven't already), then post the title and artist of the first album you ever bought. In return, five respondents will get a free personal mix CD from me of 15 random songs automatically generated by the "Shuffle"function of my iTunes library, with a unique cover and complete track listing. In keeping with the spirit of it, the five winners will be chosen at random as well, and each will get a separately generated mix. In this case, iTunes will play DJ, and I'll adhere to the rules above. Everyone's eligible.

The selections will be suitably eclectic. However, be advised I have a huge CD collection. There are more than 4,000 songs in my iTunes library at the moment, and I'll be adding more this week. The selections may range anywhere from rare live Springsteen to Tom Waits outtakes to Ennio Morricone and Philip Glass film music, Wynonie Harris jump blues, Charlie Haden jazz and surf guitar instrumentals. In short, they could be anything. But I guarantee it'll be a fun listen.

I'll choose the winners next Thursday (12/16) at 5 p.m., burn the discs that day and mail them out shortly afterward in time for the holidays. Happy listening.

The Kirkus review

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RT Reviews review

RT Reviews (formerly Romantic Times) reviews the very unromantic COLD SHOT TO THE HEART:

TOWER raffle/Bad Thanksgiving contest

I'm raffling off a brand-new copy of Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman's brilliant (and Anthony-Award-winning) crime novel TOWER over at the official FaceBook page. Just join the page (if you haven't already) and list the *worst* place you ever spent Thanksgiving. I'll choose a winner at random this Friday (11/19) at 5 p.m.

UPDATE: Some of the responses so far have been so good - in a painful kind of way - that I'm also going to add a signed first-edition of the long out-of-print hardcover of THE HEARTBREAK LOUNGE to the mix.

RED BAKER review - 7/22/85

From the vaults, one of the first things I ever published: A review of RED BAKER by Robert Ward. From the Asbury Park (N.J.) Press, July 22, 1985 (click for larger - hopefully readable - image).

Publishers Weekly weighs in

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