Writers We Don’t Know: Peter Spiegelman
Wellington Leg: Today begins a series called Writers We Don’t Know. In the vast crime fiction spectrum your reporter doesn’t know the work of many fine writers. Luckily the research staff of the Druidical & Literary, though imaginary, work cheap and require little in the way of sustenance other than the occasional shout out. I tip my hat to you, especially Walter, our Heinrich Boell specialist.
I don’t know Peter Spiegleman. We shook hands at Left Coast Crime but in terms in journalist integrity I think we’re okay. Let’s borrow from Peter’s website in an effort to get to know his work: I’m reading BLACK MAPS, not his latest work, but quality wise this up there, my friends, bleak, subtle, well written with a Wall Street setting.
In fact, Peter edited WALL STREET NOIR a collection released in May from Akashic Books. You get Jim Fusilli, Megan Abbott, Reed Farrell Coleman, Jason Starr, Twist Phelan and more in this collection. Most of the traders on the Piltdown Exchange are reading this book when Live Hog trading permits.
BLACK MAPS won the Shamus Award. Peter’s most recent novel RED CAT was released by Knopf in February. I know what you’re thinking: Knopf? Mystery-thriller? It certainly implies high quality writing.
High quality in most products is a plus ( genuine Colgate toothpaste comes to mind.) Remember the Yugo? Quite a battle cry but I bring this up because in the commercial publishing world high quality writing is often seen as a barrier to success. And high quality writing that actually tells a story? Well, this can fall into the void between literary doodlings about dead hydrangeas ( must everything die?) and the more familiar thriller about librarians being chased by spectral descendants of Vlad the Impaler.
I’ll continue my Peter Speigelman coverage as the cup of knowledge slowly fills displacing the sodden molecules of ignorance. TTFN.