The Envelope, Please: Forecasting the 2014 Best Novel Edgar

I can't resist making some predictions for the Edgar Awards, presented each spring by the Mystery Writers of America, even though my forecasting abilities are nil. I've been wrong in my Super Bowl betting for years and that's when I've had a 50-50 shot at picking right. D'oh! For the Edgars, I might as well roll the dice or pick a name out of a hat. In fact, I'll do that too.

I invite you to make predictions any way you choose and to share them with us in the comments section beneath this post. As we all know, opinions about books and ranking them are subjective enterprises and the Edgars judging panels are as human as we are. (As far as I can tell, Edgar-nominee Matt Haig has planted no extraterrestrials on the Edgar panel.) We'll find out how well we agreed with the judges this Thursday, May 1, when the winners are announced at the MWA banquet.

Without further ado, I'll show you the nominees for Best Novel and tell you what they're about:

Sandrine's Case by Thomas H. Cook (Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press)
The Humans by Matt Haig (Simon & Schuster)
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger (Simon & Schuster/Atria Books)
How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books)
Standing in Another Man's Grave by Ian Rankin (Hachette/Reagan Arthur Books)
Until She Comes Home by Lori Roy (Penguin Group (USA)/Dutton Books)

When Sandrine's Case opens, Sam Madison, an unlikable Coburn College professor, is on trial for murdering his enigmatic wife, Sandrine. Between chapters of trial proceedings, Sam, who narrates, mulls over their relationship.

The Humans, by Matt Haig, details a visit to Earth by an extraterrestrial from Vonnadoria after Cambridge mathematician Andrew Martin scared that planet's extra-intelligent inhabitants by solving the Riemann hypothesis. The Vonnadorian's undercover mission is to take Martin's place and get rid of any evidence the hypothesis was solved.

In Kent Krueger's standalone, Ordinary Grace, its middle-aged narrator, Frank Drum, looks back at 1961 in New Bremen, Minnesota, when he was the 13-year-old son of a Methodist minister. That summer, a series of deaths rocked the community and his family and ushered Frank into the world of adults.

How the Light Gets In, featuring Armand Gamache, Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Québec, is the ninth in Louise Penny's popular series. It finds Gamache investigating a Three Pines disappearance against the backdrop of Sûreté infighting and corruption. Sister Mary Murderous reviewed it here.

Retired Edinburgh cop John Rebus is working as a civilian in the Serious Crime Review Unit of the Lothian and Borders Police in Ian Rankin's Standing in Another Man's Grave. After he fields a call from a mother convinced that her missing teenage daughter is one of a series of disappearances, Rebus dusts himself off and muscles his way into an active Edinburgh CID investigation. (See my review here.)

It's 1958 in Lori Roy's gothic-tinged suspense Until She Comes Home and Alder Avenue, a working-class Detroit neighborhood, is undergoing steady decline. Residents are frightened when a black prostitute is murdered near the local factory but the police ignore the death. It's the later disappearance of Elizabeth, a mentally disabled white girl, that galvanizes Alder Avenue.

Prediction:

I'll try to give you my thinking without divulging book spoilers.

Matt Haig

There were moments in reading Haig's The Humans when I laughed aloud at the Vonnadorian's confusion over customs we take for granted. At other times, my heart swelled with his joyful discoveries. Despite the book's lapse near the end into something akin to Hallmark card philosophizing I enjoyed its amusing and sentimental look at what makes us human. I think the Edgars are much like the Oscars, though. It's rare for a humorous nominee to win the big enchilada and I don't see an exception for The Humans looming on the horizon.

Ian Rankin

When Rankin retired Rebus in 2007's Exit Music, I was afraid we'd lost him forever. I read Standing in Another Man's Grave with a sense of relief and excitement. Rankin puts ol' Rebus under the searchlight here and we see anew how this man is a poor fit for the modern metropolitan police force. The force has changed since his retirement, but Rebus hasn't. He can't stick to assigned duties or stop smoking and drinking and he has no interest in learning how to use high tech investigation tools. He'll always have the fattest file in the Complaints department. Thank God. I don't think I could take a reformed Rebus. Rankin's plotting purred along as usual without any signs of rust. This is a good book and deserves its nomination. Because it's not Rankin's best, I don't pick it for the Edgar.

Lori Roy

Lori Roy is interested in the pain that accompanies social change. I liked her Bent Road, which won the 2012 Best First Novel by an American, and I liked Until She Comes Home, too. Roy does a great job of capturing 1950s Detroit, the lives of housewives and their working husbands, the shuttering factories, open and hidden racism and fear of what the future will bring. She looks at what motivates a person to commit a crime and how that crime drops like a rock into a neighborhood pond, sending mud and trash to the surface and creating ever-growing ripples of irrevocable change. Her writing is lyrical and she made me think. Yet, I don't think this is her year.

Thomas H. Cook

Thomas H. Cook dazzled me with Sandrine's Case. It's an intricate and unpredictable courtroom thriller with Sam facing the death penalty and I found myself going back and forth about whether he actually murdered Sandrine. His arrogant self-centeredness made me recall that awful Teddy Bickleigh from Francis Iles's Malice Aforethought, and we know how guilty he was. In addition to the legal jousting, Sandrine's Case is a gripping examination of a marriage, à la A.S.A. Harrison's The Silent Wife. I didn't care whether this exact marriage exists in the real world. What Cook captures very well is the growing awareness and animosity between a long-married couple when they can't figure each other out, they can't get through to each other and they no longer remember what motivated them to marry in the first place. During the trial, Sam slowly strips off his skin for us and we can see his heart and brain. He begins to understand his much more talented and attractive wife, Sandrine. It's amazing how a dead woman comes to vivid life. We ultimately cotton on to each of them, their marriage and Sandrine's death.

Louise Penny

I won't start a Louise Penny book unless I'm in a comfy chair with some milk and cookies handy because it's all part of the guaranteed-to-be-good Three Pines experience. There's such a sense of coming home while reading this series, with each book building seamlessly from the last, with a continuing cast of characters and themes of corruption and threats of reorganization interweaving with threads of the current investigation. How the Light Gets In is one of Sister Mary's favorites in the Three Pines series and it's one of mine too, a joy to read.

William Kent Krueger

William Kent Krueger is best known for his excellent Cork O'Connor series and he stretched for the powerful look at faith and redemption in Ordinary Grace, a nonseries book. It's obvious he knows the '60s, his Minnesota setting and the sort of people who lived there very well. His plot is deliberately paced and straightforward, even though it rolls out through the memories of a man looking back at his youth; interesting in this Edgars competition because another nominee, Thomas H. Cook, has used this device to good effect in some of his books, such as The Chatham School Affair and Breakheart Hill. Krueger's plot didn't surprise me but there are paragraphs of such strength and beauty that I had to stop so I could read them again.

I won't be surprised by the Edgar going to Cook for his clever and surprising courtroom drama, although if I were an Edgar judge I'd vote for Penny. She has written one excellent book after another leading to the fix her protagonist finds himself in in How the Light Gets In, but I think it will go to Krueger. Ordinary Grace seems like a Best Novel Edgar winner, the literary equivalent of Oscar-winning movies such as Ordinary People and Chariots of Fire.

Title drawn out of a hat: Lori Roy's Until She Comes Home. I'll laugh if this title wins the Edgar because I'll be able to claim I picked it to win.

I'll be back later this week to pick the Edgar winner for Best First Novel by an American.

Note: The nominees for Edgar Awards were all published in 2013. Other categories for the 2014 Awards are Best Paperback Original; Mary Higgins Clark Award, for the book most closely written in the Mary Higgins Clark Tradition according to guidelines set forth by Mary Higgins Clark; Best Fact Crime; Best Critical/Biographical; Best Short Story; Best Juvenile; Best Young Adult; and Best TV Episode. Special Edgars this year include the Robert L. Fish Memorial Award, for the best first mystery or suspense short story; the Grand Master Award; and the Raven, for non-writers who contribute to the mystery genre. For a complete list of 2014 nominees and the data base of previous years' nominees and winners, see the Edgars website here.

Bringing Up the Rear

I got a kick out of Maltese Condor's post on Wednesday, with its horse-racing theme. When I apply horse racing to my recent mystery reading, the books are far from front-runners. Actually, that's not quite right. The books are front-runners. But I'm reading from the back of the pack.

John Gardner and The Nostradamus Traitor

I don't think I'd ever heard of author John Gardner until a couple of weeks ago. My eye was caught by what I thought was a new book, called The Nostradamus Traitor. It turns out, though, that this is a republication, and a very nicely-produced one, of a 1979 original publication that was a finalist for the Gold Dagger that year. The Mysterious Press and Open Road Integrated Media are publishing the book this month in quality paperback and ebook formats.

Of course, I checked out Gardner on stopyourekillingme.com and I was flabbergasted to see how prolific Gardner was in his life (1926-2007). I was intrigued and had to do more research. Gardner began his writing career with a series featuring Boysie Oakes. The Oakes series is set in the swinging 1960s, but it's more of a spoof of James Bond, with Oakes being a professional assassin who doesn't like killing people.

The Liquidator, the first book in the eight-volume Oakes series, was a finalist for the 1964 Gold Dagger. Gardner went on to write several other series and a number of standalone crime fiction books. Probably the best fun fact about Gardner's career is that a few years after his last Boysie Oakes book, he was tapped by Ian Fleming's estate to write James Bond novels. He was so good at it (apparently) that he ended up writing 16 of them, including License to Kill and Goldeneye.

How in the world did I completely miss this guy? I know there are gaps in my crime fiction reading, but this is one the entire Kentucky Derby field could run through.

The Nostradamus Traitor begins in London in 1978, when what appears to be an old lady tourist from Germany approaches a Beefeater at the Tower of London. Instead of the usual touristy question, though, Frau Fenderman is looking for information about her long-dead husband, Claus Fenderman, who she says was a spy for Germany in World War II and was hanged at the Tower.

This hot potato (that's heiße Kartoffel for you German speakers) lands in the lap of British Intelligence veteran Herbie Kruger. It's only fair, really, since Herbie speaks German, having been born in Berlin. Herbie was a young boy during World War II, living in Berlin with the mother who lost her husband to a battle with an RAF pilot.  Herbie'd lost his father, but he also lost his friends, Jewish friends, and he knew what the Nazis had done to them, so when the Allies arrived, he immediately made himself useful to them. He's spent decades running agents for Britain in the Cold War, and now he's nearing the end of his career.

But shouldn't that say "hanged," not "hung"?

Frau Fenderman's story seems plausible to Herbie and he even wonders if she might be a possible contact for his espionage group when she returns to Germany. But then things start to smell funny. There is no record of a spy named Claus Fenderman having been hanged at the Tower––or anywhere else in Britain, for that matter. Frau Fenderman also seems to be more familiar with London's streets than she should be. The suspicious smell becomes overwhelming when somebody takes a shot at the lady outside her London hotel.

What little history Herbie can winkle out of the old files hints that Claus Fenderman had something to do with a British wartime intelligence con game called Operation Nostradamus. Herbie sits down with an old acquaintance in the Foreign Office, George Thomas, to find out about Operation Nostradamus, which attempted to distract and discombobulate some of the top Nazis with a mix of real and fake prophecies from Nostradamus's famed 16th-century mystical book. (If you've watched The History Channel––or even Raiders of the Lost Ark––you know that several of the top men in the Third Reich, including Josef Goebbels and Hitler himself, were a little looney on the subject of the occult and were always ready to believe any psychic, soothsayer or mythologist who said––or seemed to say––encouraging things about the Third Reich's glorious destiny.)

Operation Nostradamus was George Thomas's first mission for the Special Operations Executive. He was dropped into France and instructed to contact a deep undercover agent, Michel Downay, who had cozied up to a couple of SS officers and was advising them about Nostradamus. George's job was to impersonate an academic specializing in Nostradamus, an ostensible colleague of Downay, and then get in with those selfsame SS officers and feed them Nostradamian misinformation. George had the heebie-jeebies about going behind enemy lines, period, but having to spend so much time with the SS really didn't help. And could he really count on Downay's being on the side of the Allies? How about Angelle, the alluring refugee living in Downay's apartment? Was she just a trap waiting to be sprung?

In The Nostradamus Traitor, Gardner takes us back and forth between Herbie's 1978 investigation of Frau Fenderman and the attempt on her life, and George Thomas's account of his espionage work in 1941. As Herbie's dogged sleuthing and George Thomas's story progress, Herbie sees that Operation Nostradamus in 1941 and Frau Fenderman in 1978 are more connected than he'd thought––and the connection presents tremendous danger in the current day.

If you're not familiar with The Mysterious Press, founded by the famed Otto Penzler in 1975, check out its website here. In addition to new fiction releases, The Mysterious Press republishes crime fiction classics and hidden gems in high-quality paperbacks. These aren't sloppily OCR'd reprints, either. All are newly typeset, formatted and proofread, printed on quality paper and given attractive covers. For those of you who don't do paper anymore, The Mysterious Press has teamed with Open Road Integrated Media, and offers its books in digital formats.

I'm excited that there are still four more books in the Herbie Kruger series for me to read, all available from The Mysterious Press/Open Road. Then, I can't forget Gardner's 29 books in the other series and standalones, as well as the 16 James Bond books. What with my World War II obsession, I've got my eye on Gardner's Suzie Montford series, about a police constable in London during the war. It begins with Bottled Spider, which they just happen to have at my library. I may be very, very late to the John Gardner stakes, but I intend to earn a spot in the running among his readers.

The Return of John Rebus

Way back in February, Della Streetwise told us here about her two recent "redonkulus reads": Jonas Jonasson's The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared and Ian Rankin's Standing in Another Man's Grave. I rushed out and listened to the former and it really lightened a week of deep winter.

Somehow, though, despite Della's terrific review, I didn't get around to Standing in Another Man's Grave until this week. I always read all the John Rebus books right away in the past, but when Ian Rankin retired Rebus at the end of Exit Music in 2007, I eventually made the emotional adjustment to his leaving my reading life. (Though not well enough to read Rankin's Malcolm Fox books, The Complaints and The Impossible Dead.)

I think I was a little afraid to read Standing in Another Man's Grave. Would it be my old favorite Rebus? Now I'm wondering what I was worried about. He's the same guy, alright; the guy who drives everybody around him absolutely crazy because he breaks all the rules. The gravitational force of Planet Rebus is like a tractor beam that drags anybody who helps him into the disciplinary crapstorm that usually results from his misdeeds.

As night falls at the end of Standing in Another Man's Grave, Rebus must decide whether to fill out that application to be reinstated to CID. I wonder if he'll do it or if he'll decide that operating outside CID's rules is more to his liking. I'm looking forward to finding out. Next time, I'll be the first out of the gate.

Note: I received a publisher's review copy of The Nostradamus Traitor.

Redonkulus Reads

It's impossible to keep up with slang. What I'd call "cool," my kids call "hot." But whether I use "outtasight" or "da bomb" to describe the books below, I recommend them for a winter night's reading.

He's baaaaack! Yes, hallelujah, Ian Rankin had mercy upon us. After retiring Edinburgh cop John Rebus in 2007's Exit Music, Rankin brings him back in 2012's Standing in Another Man's Grave.

U.S. cover of book published in 2013
by Little, Brown and Company

Rebus is still an ex-cop, although he's working as a civilian for the Serious Crime Review Unit of the Lothian and Borders Police when he fields Nina Hazlitt's call. Her daughter, Sally, disappeared on New Year's Eve in 1999 and Nina is convinced that it was only the first in a connected series of disappearances by young women who were traveling on the A9 through the Scottish Highlands. Brigid Young in 2002. Zoe Beddows in 2008. Nina hasn't been able to persuade any cops of her theory but Rebus tacks up a map of the A9 onto his wall at home and starts to sniff around. Researching these cold cases leads him to Edinburgh's CID. There he hooks up with his protégé, DS Siobhan Clarke, to investigate the three-day disappearance of 15-year-old Annette McKie, who got on a bus to Inverness for a party and hasn't been seen since. Her last message was a photo transmitted from her mobile phone.

It's not the same Edinburgh police department Rebus retired from. New DCI James Page doesn't understand Rebus's references to Led Zeppelin, and there's a young cop who sits at her computer all day, doing research and interacting with online social communities. Other things haven't changed. Rebus still drinks and smokes too much. He effortlessly gets on his superiors' nerves and mostly ignores their instructions. He remains a subject of interest to Malcolm Fox in Complaints, the internal affairs division. Fox (yes, Rankin's new series protagonist, a straight arrow completely unlike Rebus, appears in this book) says there is no longer room in the police force for even one maverick who bends the rules while breaking cases. Fox distrusts Rebus and his socializing with retired criminal bigwig Big Ger Cafferty, whose life Rebus once saved, and other career criminals connected with the McKie case. Rebus, feeling like vinyl in a digital age, climbs in his old Audi and hits the A9 to chase down leads, while dodging the press and his bosses.

If having Rebus back in unofficial harness isn't, like whoa, enough, the force's mandatory retirement age has changed and he can apply for reinstatement. Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch can unretire, so why not Rebus? There's only one sticking point. Rebus may need to lose a few pounds to pass the physical fitness test. After this atmospheric book, in which little is what it seems, more Rebus would be too coolish for words.

Rod Bradbury translated from the Swedish
and Hyperion published it in 2012

Like the poor women in Rankin's book, Allan Karlsson doesn't plan to disappear in Jonas Jonasson's amusing debut, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared. He's never been one to ponder things too long, so almost before he knows it, he's slipping away from the Old Folks' Home in Malmköping, Sweden, and the birthday party about to take place in his honor. Allan decides he "could die some other time, in some other place." He ignores the beckoning of the shop where he buys his vodka and shuffles off to the bus station.

There, a long-haired punk whose big suitcase on wheels won't fit into the small restroom with him asks Allan to watch it while he relieves himself. The restroom door has no sooner swung closed before Allan's bus appears. So Allan "surprised himself by making what--you have to admit--was a decision that said 'yes' to life." He gets onto the bus with the suitcase and asks the driver how far a fifty-crown note will take him.

Allan is not the old coot the enraged punk/criminal who owns the money-filled suitcase assumes he is. He was once a famous demolitions expert who offered his explosive services to world leaders of all stripes, from Franco to Mao to Stalin to Truman. Allan not only hobnobbed with the powerful, he himself affected world events. Jonasson weaves stories of Allan's colorful past into his present adventure, in which he and his unconventional new friends are pursued by both police and criminals. Jonasson's droll writing and quirky characters are perfect for a satire about aging, crime, police investigations and the making of history. It's sweet sauce for topping off a very long day.

The Sculpted Book

A series of 10 exquisite sculptures by an anonymous artist in paper began appearing at various cultural sites in Edinburgh, Scotland in the early spring of 2011.

The still-unidentified sculptor apparently also has a typically dry Scottish sense of humor. This wonderful visual pun appeared mysteriously at the National Library of Scotland. It was lovingly carved from a copy of Scottish mystery author Ian Rankin's final Inspector Rebus novel, Exit Music. The attached note says, "In support of libraries, books, words, ideas...(& against their exit.)"

Obviously the artist, along with many readers around the world, mourns the death of Rankin's long-running series.

The artist had yet another trick to tweak Rankin's nose a bit. This sculpture, which appeared in an Edinburgh art movie house, depicts warriors racing and galloping out of a movie screen into the theater. If you look very closely, you can see that one of the audience members in this piece has the face of the author, quaffing a glass of Deuchar's Caledonian ale. (I had to take the BBC's word about the Deuchars label pasted on the glass, but that's Rankin, right enough.) The author, while flattered and amused, emphatically denies any knowledge of the artist or her work.

Despite international interest and curiosity, the Edinburgh artist remains unknown. The note left with her last sculpture reads:

"'You need to know when to end a story', she thought. 'Often a good story ends where it begins. This would mean a return to the Poetry Library. The very place where she had left the first of the ten. So here she will end this story, in a special place... A Poetry Library...where they are well used to 'anon.' Cheers, Edinburgh, it's been fun."

We may never know the name of this gifted artist, but her work set me searching for others who add the dimension of sculpture to paper books. There are a surprising number of them.

Artist Guy Laramee carves books into fantastically detailed landscapes, as illustrated in his mysterious carving of the abandoned desert city of Petra.

"The erosion of cultures––and of “culture” as a whole––is the theme that runs through the last 25 years of my artistic practice. Cultures emerge, become obsolete, and are replaced by new ones. With the vanishing of cultures, some people are displaced and destroyed. We are currently told that the paper book is bound to die. The library, as a place, is finished. One might ask so what? Do we really believe that “new technologies” will change anything concerning our existential dilemma, our human condition?"

Brian Dettmer carefully matches his artwork to the subject matter of the books he carves:

"In this work I begin with an existing book and seal its edges, creating an enclosed vessel full of unearthed potential. I cut into the surface of the book and dissect through it from the front. I work with knives, tweezers and surgical tools to carve one page at a time, exposing each layer while cutting around ideas and images of interest. Nothing inside the books is relocated or implanted, only removed. Images and ideas are revealed to expose alternate histories and memories. My work is a collaboration with the existing material and its past creators and the completed pieces expose new relationships of the book's internal elements exactly where they have been since their original conception."

What an appropriate and lovely thing to do with an old set of encyclopedias! Can you see Dick and Jane at the foot of the stairs? The battered but profusely illustrated encyclopedias that kept me amused on childhood rainy days often seemed just that exciting.

Su Blackwell is a UK artist who works in both paper and fabric. Of her delicate Book and Light sculptures she says:

"I always read the book first, at least once or twice, and then I begin to create the work; cutting out, adding details. The detail is what brings it all together, the magic element. It is a tediously slow process. I often work within the realm of fairy-tales and folk-lore. I began making a series of book-sculpture, cutting-out images from old books to create three-dimensional dioramas, and displaying them inside wooden boxes.

For the cut-out illustrations, I tend to lean towards young-girl characters, placing them in haunting, fragile settings, expressing the vulnerability of childhood, while also conveying a sense of childhood anxiety and wonder. There is a quiet melancholy in the work, depicted in the material used, and choice of subtle colour."

"Paper has been used for communication since its invention; either between humans or in an attempt to communicate with the spirit world. I employ this delicate, accessible medium and use irreversible, destructive processes to reflect on the precariousness of the world we inhabit and the fragility of our life, dreams and ambitions."

So will paper books ever really die? I certainly hope not. The destruction of any book makes me cringe, but like Dettmer, I love the concept of a book as an "enclosed vessel full of unearthed potential." If an artist sees that potential differently than I do, and can coax his unique vision from it for the world to share, it has served its purpose twice. While electronic and audible books are wonderfully convenient, they obviously can't, as paper does, provide both inspiration and raw material for this breathtaking and doubly meaningful art form.

Attack of the TBRs

Back a few years ago, I used to worry about finding mysteries to read. I would haunt the local bookstores and library and get recommendations from the few friends who were also mystery readers. I would read every mystery I got my hands on through those methods and I'd have a small handful of TBRs (to-be-read books) at most.

Then it happened. I went online and met Georgette, the Maltese Condor, Della, Periphera and a lot of other mystery readers. Because of their stellar recommendations, my TBRs now number over 100 and are threatening to burst out of their bookcase. Sometimes I hear their authors reproaching me for leaving them on the shelf, and for my seeming to prefer new books fresh from the library or bookshop.

Some of the authors with books among the TBRs boldly accost me. Ian Rankin demands to know why I tore through each Rebus book as soon as it was published, but now, just because he's moved on to a new character in The Complaints, I'm not so eager. Fortunately for me, his Scots brogue is so strong that I don't understand a lot of what he says. I think he called me a "bampot," though.

Graham Hurley points to all the shelf real estate being taken up by the second through eleventh books in his Joe Faraday series and asks why I don't read them, considering that I have a 2012 series reading challenge going on. He's particularly peeved that I've chosen to read Josephine Tey's books for the second time for the challenge rather than his books for the first. I weakly respond that I did read the first book in his series and my husband has read all of the series, but he seems dissatisfied with my answer. "Hey pal," I want to say, "keep it up and you're getting moved to the already-read shelves."

Charles Cumming reminds me how excited I was to pick up The Trinity Six at the library's used bookstore six months ago, and how fascinated I've always been by the Cold War's Cambridge Spy Ring. It's been awhile since I've read a Cold War thriller, he points out. "And now that the remake of le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is coming out, it's the perfect time to read my book," Cumming reasons. He could be right, so I pull the book so that it stands out an inch from the others on the shelf. You know, like a little spy signal.

Andrea Camilleri seems to understand that I respond better to positive enticements than to criticism and pushiness. "Ciao, bella," he says, "there you are in your winter with your short days, and you deserve a visit to Salvo Montalbano's sunny Sicily. Ecco, you have three of his first four books right here! Put up your feet, pour a nice glass of limoncello and read."

Don Winslow appeals to nostalgia. "Hey, remember back when you found me at The Book Passage in Corte Madera? A Cool Breeze on the Underground and my other Neal Carey books, The Death and Life of Bobby Z, California Fire and Life. Those were the days, right? I know The Dawn Patrol didn't work for you, but we can get past that. You picked up Satori: A Novel Based on Trevanian's Shibumi at a book sale on a whim and it's been sitting here for the last couple of months. Give it a try; it's totally different from anything I've ever done." Maybe he's right. So I pull his book forward a little bit too.

Tana French is sulking over there on the far right of the second shelf. She knows I wasn't crazy about Faithful Place and she seems to guess that In the Woods isn't going to entice me anytime soon, no matter how many of my mystery-reading friends loved it.

Jedediah Berry is diffident, but he can't keep the injured tone out of his voice when he asks why I abandoned The Manual of Detection for something newly arrived from the library and then never picked up his book again, even though I was enjoying it. Unfortunately, I have no answer.

It's just as hard to explain to Thorne Smith why I haven't yet read Topper, even though Georgette and my husband loved it. I can't even look at Carlos Ruiz Zafón over there on the far right of the bottom shelf. The Shadow of the Wind is one of the longest tenants on my TBR shelves. How can I not have read it after years of my mystery friends telling me how great it is?

Then there are my old friends, the Michaels Gilbert and Innes. They sit there together, Gilbert's Close Quarters and The Danger Within, and Innes's Lament for a Maker and six Appleby books. The Michaels don't say much, because they know I'll get to them. After all, having read others of their books, I know I'll enjoy these books and I'm a lifelong fan of classic British crime fiction. And, of course, being British, the Michaels would never be pushy. The American in me wants to tell them that's not the way to get ahead, but I know they can't change their inbred characters. (I suppose their being dead is also a bit of an obstacle to a transformation in their personalities.)

The clamoring and censorious looks from the TBRs became so bad that I recently moved them from the living room to the next room. I can still hear them, but faintly, and they try to accost me when I go past them to the laundry room, but at least they're no longer such a constant reproach. Now I just have to do something about my history TBRs. Some of those guys have guns!

Which of my TBRs would you spring from the shelf and place next to my reading chair?

Altered States

Recently I came across an interesting book entitled Booze and the Private Eye: Alcohol in the Hard-Boiled Novel by Rita Elizabeth Rippetoe. It did bring to mind some long-ago images that were almost constant: strong-jawed silent PIs who were pretty stoic, kept their emotions to themselves and sought their solace in a bottle. These were men like Philip Marlowe, Mike Hammer and Mike Shayne. Similarly tough policemen might spend their evenings in bars, since for most of these men family life had gone by the wayside. I don't recall the term "alcoholic" ever being used. Not even "drunk" very often, but I read those books so very long ago.

An essay by Stephen Budiansky in The Atlantic Monthly humorously compares the tough guys of the past with the modern detective who seemingly frets more about sissy stuff like high blood pressure. He points out that for Phillip Marlowe deep relaxation meant being knocked over the head with a tire iron and going to la-la land for a while and having a health problem might have meant being sapped with a blackjack, beaten with a gun, shackled to a bed post and shot up with heroin. In Strip Jack, John Rebus took a hot bath for deep relaxation for self-help. But here I must stand up for Ian Rankin's Rebus. What he went through in his SAS training was as bad as anything anyone went through–just read Knots and Crosses.

There is no doubt that the life of a crime fighter is tough and the pages of crime fiction are populated with protagonists who are described by the Teddy Thompson song "Altered State":

I like to live in an altered state
It makes me love all the things I hate
And I'm happy to be alive
I like to put on a happy face while I cry on the inside

The only question is, are there more detectives on the bottle these days or on the wagon? Some of my favorite sleuths who have alcohol problems are Harry Hole from the Jo Nesbø series, Ian Rankin's John Rebus, Simon Brett's Charles Paris and John Straley's Cecil Younger. In the female line, I like to follow the adventures of Faith Zanetti in stories with titles like Vodka Neat, Double Shot and My Favorite Poison written by Anna Blundy. These titles give a hint about her tippling and I highly recommend the books.

But at the top of my list, because he loves reading as much as he loves drinking is Ken Bruen's Jack Taylor, a PI who starts his day in his pub, which he calls his office, drinking coffee laced with whiskey to help him open his eyes. He makes no apologies for his love of the eau de vie or any other drug he can get his hands on, but he tries every so often to get straight. All of these detectives seem to solve their cases one way or another, no matter how impaired, and live to serve another day.

Very different from these, but likeable all the same, at the bottom of my list is none other than Leslie Thomas's Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective. Davies was given this moniker because he was said to be harmless and he was known by the London police as the "last detective" because he was never sent unless it was a very risky job or there was no one else. He was a drunk, frequently laughed at, often foolish but he never lost hope and always felt that one day he would redeem himself. Among his many shortcomings was that he was never suspicious or cautious and got beaten up on a regular basis. When interviewing a suspect most often he was the one answering all the questions. When he solved a case it was because he drank not despite it.

Much more common in crime fiction these days is the recovering alcoholic and drug addict. Joining these ranks are Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder, James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux, Lilian Jackson Braun's Jim Qwilleran, Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon, J. A. Jance's J. P. "Beau" Beaumont and Rinus de Gier, a creation of Janwillem van de Wetering. This type of character is sometimes more interesting, because he or she is more open about his emotions and is more likely to have a life outside of the job.

Some of the help for the now-sober has come from AA, some from friends and, for some, a change in lifestyle of a different sort. Van de Wetering described de Gier in ways that resembled himself at times: fashionable, debonair and mustachioed. They both moved to Maine and both cleaned up their life and drinking with the aid of Zen Buddhism. At one point, van de Wetering had stopped writing due to his alcoholism.

Another very famous and successful mystery writer was Raymond Chandler, who was known to have abused alcohol for the duration of his writing career. It has also been theorized that it was alcohol that killed Edgar Allen Poe, although modern theories include many other ideas such as drugs and rabies. Stephen King is quite open about his past in rehab, which was not of the celebrity type.

Rippetoe makes the point that fiction mirrors what society thinks about drink. Well, there is college-aged society, young society, middle-aged society and aged society and fiction aimed at all those groups these days. That leaves quite a bit of leeway. I would be very interested in input from readers with opinions on the subject of the changing role of alcohol or drugs in the lives of detectives and how it impacts their work.