The Write Stuff

Shortly after our hairy and smelly ancestors climbed down from the trees, they discovered that long pieces of wood tipped with sharp points not only discouraged sabre-tooth tigers but also put Wooly Mammoth meat on the table (where there were more empty seats, since the uncooperative mammoths often stepped on the hunters).   The more literate among the un-stomped cavepersons (although they couldn’t have known they were literate since the word hadn’t been invented) soon found out that by dipping smaller versions of those sharp points in a liquid – probably mammoth blood – they could start writing books. (I’ve skipped over cave paintings as a story-telling medium, mainly because they were probably done with fingers, which annoys the hell out of me since they are much more sophisticated than anything I can do 30,000 years later.)   The first books were non-fiction. With a life span that didn’t extend much past puberty, most people didn’t have enough experience to make u...

There is a marvelous book: The World of Raymond Chandler (In His Own Words), edited by Barry Day. As a thriller writer myself, I didn’t think I had so much in common with Chandler, the acknowledged master of the genre. We both like cats and cocktails. What? You expected me to say that we are literary equals? There aren’t enough martinis in the known universe to make me say something like that. (By the way, is there an unknown universe? How would anyone know that?) Chandler never wrote a memoir or autobiography, so the surest insight into his mind (at least his literary mind) is through his novels, short stories, letters and the many interviews he gave after he became famous. Day’s book is loaded with excerpts from all those sources, as well as fascinating photos of Chandler and his contemporaries. I’m ashamed to admit that most of my previous exposure to Chandler is through the movies made from his novels, including The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely and The Long Go...

When I’m reading a novel, nothing annoys me more than an author who interjects his or her own prejudices and/or politics into the narrative. Except, of course, if I’m the author. Truth is, I can’t help myself. I have a lot of axes to grind, and where better to grind them than in my thrillers and mysteries. In everyday life, when I spout off, it’s usually after the second martini, and everyone stopped paying attention to me midway through the first. But in a novel, after I’ve presumably hooked my readers with a few murders and sex scenes, I can usually say something that I think needs to be said. Hey, it’s a free country. In various books, I’ve taken aim at Wall Street greed (like shooting fish in a barrel), as well as   academic elitism, the publishing industry, the media, unethical politicians (there may be a bit of redundancy here) and the sports establishment. I try not to overdo it. I’m not writing polemics. I fully understand that most of my readers are more in...