Prudentia Chalfont-Smythe here. My late husband was a great patron of the arts. After inventing the Toaster at an early age he traveled far and wide; it is fascinating to know that the toaster was originally called the Smythe Oven, a name I find quite catchy. Sir Donald enjoyed fancy dress and was quite smitten by the Bronte sisters although I cannot imagine why. With everyone out of the office, it falls to me then to blog in real time about the Edgar nominees in the area of crime fiction, a genre that I find lacking in gentility, and quite frankly, something one expects the Earl to hack out on his portable Royal. Honestly, the man is appalling.

The list is here somewhere…where is that intern? While I have you, let me remind you that my column The Smoking Bun nows appears bi-weekly in the Wellington Leg Intelligencer. Those of you in Goth and Lesser Hornbrook will have to acquire your copies from Mrs. Frothingmunster at the Post Office. They say the Goth Highway is blocked by skirmishers from the Valeria Victrix legion, to which I say piffle. What on earth is a skirmisher?

This is embarrassing. I cannot lay me hands on that list. I do wish that someone would supervise Ms. DeMedici from time to time. Oh, there’s the alarm on my Smythe Oven. Must dash.

Dope is Sara Gran’s third novel, published by GP Putnam. Set in New York in 1950 it tells the story of Josephine Flannigan. She goes by Joe; she ‘s a Hells Kitchen girl, daughter of a hooker, sister to a fashion model who dumped the life for a shot at the big time. Joe is paid a thousand dollars to locate the daughter of a Westchester couple who fear their college coed, Nadine, has vanished into the maw of the big town’s nasty drug scene.

Nadine is hanging around with Jerry McFall, tough guy, pimp, and general bad ass. Joe starts asking around, hitting the junkie hot spots from the Lower East Side to Bryant Park to Harlem. Joe’s been clean for two years so this is no picnic for her; her search for Nadine brings her close to the places she doesn’t want to be, to the railroad flats where people shoot, nod, drift and die with what remains of their humanity. Joe knows this world which is why the nice people from the suburbs hired her in the first place.

Sara Gran lets the reader run with her setup until the hook is in deep. Joe makes progress after talking to the taxi dancers at the Royale a run down theater off Times Square where rundown theaters go to die. Jerry McFall punched Nadine around leaving her bruised and bloodied, unable to work. If you grew up in any kind of neighborhood you knew guys like Jerry; the best you could hope for is a piano falls from the sky when Jerry steps out to light a cigarette. Yeah, that never happens.

What does happen turns the story around, making Joe the pursued rather than pursuer. Sara Gran makes artistry appear simple with straight forward prose that blends the grit of the story with an elegant economy of style. Few things are as complex and difficult to render as simplicity; a novel can be a labyrinth with many false starts and scenic byways. This one stays on course making the restrictions of the first person point of view work to advantage. When Joe sees a familiar face wearing a grimy suit and filthy shirt she can throw the knockout punch with the line he is my husband.

Joe is a loner; her friends and allies are broken beyond repair yet she understands their limitations because she shares them; Dope presents a world fractured by a common need, of youth and promise lost. Wolves are always at the door and that door is wide open. Cops, pimps, hustlers, and junkies push Joe around secure in the knowledge that she is powerless. No spoilers about the story’s resolution; suffice to say that the ending does justice to what preceded it, that the climax flows from the narrative with logic and impact.

The story falters once or twice in scenes where Joe steps out of character for what feel like forced moments of doubt. Doubt is fine, but it might have been distributed rather than compressed into the narrative in large doses. I’m talking about a handful of paragraphs in the entire book, which is an indicator of how well Dope is written. This is like pointing out how a pitcher throws a perfect game, but has a few three ball counts along the way. If Sara Gran wasn’t so damned skilled a writer, and Dope so good a book, there would nothing left to say except Sara, get busy with your next one. I’m looking forward to it.

Here is the excerpt:
Tubby Ingram hated being called the “Tubster” in that offhand way some people used. At his age and station in life resentment often sprang full-bodied from the slightest offense. The “Tubster” was a name someone his own age could use, but never would, an unspoken pact among the survivors; the young man disturbing the serenity of his office was too self-absorbed to sense Tubby’s umbrage.
“You on the phone?” Gennardo asked, pushing his lips into the bad boy pout that drove the women wild. It drove Tubby wild too, albeit in a different way. An odd recollection of his first wife provoked a bleak moment of homophobic inflection before Tubby conjured pouting lips of the feminine kind from deep in his memory. It worried him that his psyche had reached such a delicate state that fantasy and reality were each on the ropes waiting for somebody to count one of them out.It didn’t matter which prevailed, as long as one of them was around to do things like drive the car. A hard knock on the door preceded the arrival of Solly Face. “Tub?”

“Solly,” Tubby said. “Come on in.”

“Tub” was a form of the “Tubster,” but more of a peer thing, if an over boss scumbag could be considered a peer. The ritual was always the same. Solly liked to pretend he was dropping by. Tubby pretended he was surprised to see him. “Hey,” Tubby said. “What a surprise.”
Solly lingered near the door. He nodded to Gennardo. “Give us a minute, will ya?”

The young sculptor glanced at Tubby.

“Give us five,” Tubby said. “Smoke a cigarette.”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Go bother Maria. She’s getting too much work done.”

Solly tousled Gennardo’s hair as he left the office. Then he gave Tubby a sick smile like he was a member of the Joint Chiefs and Tubby was some grease monkey. “Bother Maria, that’s a good one,” Solly said to Tubby. “What’s the matter with your door? Is it broke?”

Tubby hiked his shoulders. Solly Face wasn’t a big man. He was Jimmy Warden’s top guy and he was Tubby’s boss. Solly wore his favorite suit, a dove gray tropical weight, with a white shirt and a maroon tie. The man sported a ton of hair swept into a silver pompadour above a high forehead and a long sharp nose.

Solly had once tried to kill Tubby on a windy Saturday one November when they were both young and tough. It was on the Chelsea Pier and Solly had a tire iron. Tubby cold-cocked him with a chunk of concrete that God handed him for the occasion.

“It felt like it was stuck or something,” Solly said. His dark eyes narrowed and his silver eyebrows arched. Big door conspiracy here. Solly set a gym bag on Tubby’s desk.

“I’ll get it checked,” Tubby said. Solly never looked at him, even though by-gones were fucking by-gones. Tubby knew that under all the hair on Solly’s head was a jagged scar. It was a small joy, like seeing your face in a grammar school photo.Looks like Lord Font-Leroy has run amok.

Okay it’s Sunday and as promised the opening to Aztec, about seven hundred words, is posted herewith. I’ve put it under the ‘optional excerpt’ feature since it is an excerpt and reading it optional. I’ll be curious to see what this feature actually does; it is new to me since the upgrade on Friday.

SMP sent me the new Michael Koryta novel as well as Steve Hockingsmith’s Holmes on the Range. I think Ben Sevier is Steve’s editor and Peter Wolverton is Michael’s. It’s the first time since last winter SMP has sent me anything when I reviewed Ken  Bruen’s The Magdalen Martyrs one of my favorite books from 2005. Dope is up next though. I’ll post my review of that here and at Metaxu Cafe and maybe at The Untrained Eye on Publishers Marketplace.

Hat tip to Steve Clackson for linking his readers to this humble page. Steve, I’ll add you to the roster at PM while Google scientists and engineers work with Depew in the basement; the Romans have cut the feeds again. They are a nuisance.

This is the weekend for the San Diego State Writers Conference. If you’re there, good luck with your quest. SDSU is among the best of these events, well organized, high quality people and designed to bring writers, editors, and agents into proximity at various functions throughout the weekend. They have the Editor’s Choice awards which my pal David Isaak won a few years back. No surprise there. He and Pamela took us to Old Town the real one the one in the park. That was fun.

This was two years ago. My meetings were with Paul Stevens at TOR and Stacy Creamer of Brioadway. Paul liked my sample, Stacy was polite. My sample was the opening ten pages to a novel called An Aztec in Central Park. Stacy was alarmed to discover that the character, Tubby Ingram, was a small time crook whose art gallery in Hells Kitchen is a front. Who else would open an art gallery on Ninth Avenue? Anyway Paul offered some notes and said he didn’t know what to do with the book. My former agent ambushed me in the hall by shouting my name. A few months later I signed with Bert. He doesn’t like crime fiction, so we work on other things: non-fiction, Ways to Die in the Congo and the historical novel. Bert is a great editor. When he writes ‘barf’ in the margin next to one of my paragraphs I take it he wants me to change it.

Meanwhile Poisoned Pen has asked to see the full manuscript of Flamingo Dawn which is a book in the series with Aztec. Josh Long at Rugged Land read it and had nice things to say but they weren’t planning any crime fiction last summer. I try not to think about the process which began last August with a query and a partial. Flamingo Dawn is not for everyone. One of the PP readers found it off putting saying everyone in the book was corrupt. But they asked for the manuscript. All anyone can ask for is a shot.

I’ll post the opening pages to Aztec tomorrow. I have figured out that the Swiss flags on this new dashboard are file folders. I’m on the cutting edge now.

Wow. Imagine for a moment that you parked your Volkswagon out on the street and in the middle of the night the fairy godmother sped past sprinkling fairy dust and now your battered Beatle is a Ferrari. You’re behind the wheel of this machine that looks like a million bucks thinking this is great, this is cool, this has dials and blinking things gauges and a leather grip for the tranny chrome glass brushed steel four hundred horses under the hood but the problem is you’re not sure where the ignition switch is oh wait kaboom this is not the putt putt sound no this thing has a throttle all the way to Poughkeepsie and back. This is Wordpress 2.0.

Okay that new paragraph command responds like George Patton looking for Rommel and yeah that’s an HTML button on the dashboard and if I press that we’ll all be in hyperspace our noses pressed to the glass. On the right are a whole bunch of Swiss Flags that say things like post slug and Discussion and uh oh more features. Things may weird around here for a while since the earl will have to be crosstrained along with the entire staff. Signal before pulling away from the curb, tap that pedal, avoid the neighbor’s dog…floor it, baby.

Booksquare has a discussion about whether bloggers are superproductive people. Hmm. Frank Wilson announced he’s going dark in order to do things like write articles, make a living. The conversation was triggered by the return of Mad Max on Bookangst 101 who confessed to being Dan Conaway editing Sara Gran’s novel Dope. I always assumed that bloggers did other things when not blogging, but then I always wondered what Rocky and Bullwinkle did on their day off. Maybe they blog.

Blogging is a profession for some, a new profession to be sure. I think most bloggers, though, are more like me. I started blogging at Collected Miscellany reviewing books. Why? I wanted to re-learn short form writing. That’s how we all start writing. One of my early novels, more of a novella, imagined a world controlled by the New York Transit Authority. Step lively and watch the closing doors was the nation’s slogan. That advice is still valid. After writing book length material for a long time I enjoyed the short stuff, write it, rewrite it, post it. A wind sprint. I never thought of blogging as a substitute for doing what I really want to do.

Since December I’ve been working on a historical novel, not in the research phase, not in the drafting phase but in the finishing stage. My first draft was a kind of narrative outline, 350 pages of ideas, some of which made the cut, some didn’t. I like the ending so this draft is easier because I’m writing to that ending. Most of my blog entries during this period of intense focus have nothing to do with writing a novel, yet they have something to do with my process. What that something might be is a mystery, but if you’re batting .400 in April you don’t want to over analyze because as Old Blue Eyes once said, you’ll get shot down in May.

To simplify the investigation into the Thuringian Dressmaker case, Mrs. Anderson-Cooper QC has banned the wearing of lederhosen. The announcement, read by heralds at the Tower’s South Portal, came just two days after Lloyds of London began offering Mockery Insurance for the fashion challenged. Both the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal were caught flatfooted by the edict. “None of our reporters wear lederhosen,” insisted FT spokesperson Gwendolyn Carbide-Wright. “In fact,” she added. “We discourage it.”

Brokers on the floor at Lloyds were required to confirm with the doormen that lederhosen insurance remained in full force and effect despite the ban. “No cancellations are forthcoming,” remarked Sir Peter of Elysian Fields. “We stand by our product.”

A spokesman for Die Welt am Sontag expressed bitterness. “What about Beefeater outfits? Or those tall furry hats? Why lederhosen?”

The Prosecutrix released a follow up statement: “The Earl has spoiled things for everyone else. Since our investigation began he has obfuscated at every turn. If he reports to the Tower voluntarily his summary beheading will put this matter to rest.”

As some of you know leaving a comment here at One More Bite of the Apple is a chancy thing. Some of you can, some of us cannot. The shotgun guy has no problem. In order to address the problem Booksquare, my web hostess, tells me we’re being upgraded to WordPress 2.0. An even number! That bodes well.

This coincides with a shakeup at the Druidical & Literary. Reporter Geraldo Riviera, who spent time with the Roman invaders, is being tranferred to the Sports desk. His memoir, Tuesdays with Severus Antoninus, is being hailed as a remarkable achievement by the Wellington Leg Intelligencer.

Underwater Service reporter Roger Ramjet will remain near Santa Cruz. Roger will cover the movements of Her Most Catholic Majesty as she and Proconsul Arnold restore order in the Californias.

Finance specialist Donald Thump is on the trail of literary fraud wherever he can find it, although he missed the James Frey story and still believes in JT Leroy. Don will report to Olivia Earthwindandfire currently on leave at Belvedere Castle. We look forward to sporadic weather updates from Olivia and some sort of epiphany from the Donald.

Crime fiction will be reviewed by Earnest and Julio Fallow if they ever show up for work. Of course the entire staff remains devoted to literature however it may be defined, although being forced to read the Earl’s epic Voltaire’s Miasma has created pockets of resentment. Intern Heather DeMedici will continue to run the office and organize the Letters to the Earl, one of our most popular features. Dogsbody Urquhart Depew will deliver the D&L to your doorstep through the Earl’s Own Dialup and Telephony Service.

Sara Gran is one of those rare authors capable of being funny and poignant without falling back on familiar cues of melodrama. Saturn’s Return to New York came out from SoHo Press in the gloomy year 2001. It tells the story of Mary Forrest, a young woman whose life of quiet desperation is the byproduct of childhood trauma. Her father died when she was a girl; her mother, Evelyn, is a star of the New York literary world, a relentless fabricator of alternate histories coming undone before the advance of a devastating disease. Evelyn’s ability to confound Mary with bombshells of family history provide the story’s major moments of confrontation, moments that dissolve into resentful confusion for Mary, dismissive claims of veracity from Evelyn.

This is not a New York story, but a Greenwich Village one, framed by an astrologer’s warning to Mary that her twenty ninth year coincides with Saturn’s return to its position at Mary’s birth. It’s a make or break sort of year, it won’t occur again for twenty nine years. Mary is back in the Village, despite the fact she lives in Inwood, following Evelyn’s bizarre trail of mental disarray. Lots of landmarks have vanished over the years: Balducci’s, Jefferson Market, The Peacock Cafe, and, if you know the neighborhood, you can appreciate all the blank spaces first hand through Evelyn.

I love stories where astrologers quote Raymond Chandler and people go to Italian restaurants on MacDougal Street for guidance as much as food. Since this novel has both I was hooked.