Crime Fiction Dossier

Speaking of "The Da Vinci Code"

Yesterday I made an off-hand reference to The Da Vinci Code, which I never read. (Although I did listen to it on audiobook, on the way up to Toronto for Bouchercon 2004. To be honest, I don't really remember anything about the story.)

Today we watched the Ron Howard film on DVD. I wasn't expecting a whole lot from it, but it was actually a well-done and entertaining film. Tom Hanks was his usual appealing, solid self, and the plot was more clever and interesting that I anticipated.

The female lead was miscast, but it's not much of a role in the first place, so it hardly matters. It's also a little long for a thriller, but there was a lot of material in the book that Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman were trying to keep, so that's understandable.

Watching the film didn't exactly make me want to run out and buy the book, but I must say that it made for an enjoyable 2.5 hours.

Better late than never

I finally read Bridget Jones's Diary. (Okay, so I'm a little behind the times.)

It's good. A little long, but with a strong voice and fun characters. I found it to be quite entertaining.

At this rate, I should be getting to The Da Vinci Code sometime around 2013.

Review of Joseph Wambaugh's "Hollywood Station"

My review of Joseph Wambaugh's excellent Hollywood Station ran this morning in the Chicago Sun-Times.

This was one of my favorite books of the year, so I highly recommend it.

By the way, if you read the review, you'll notice that I quote a piece of dialogue from the book that includes the word "shit." I wondered if the paper would allow that, but apparently they did.

Good for them.

I give up

Folks, it's time for me to find a new avocation.

Lev Grossman, literary critic for Time magazine, has proclaimed Harriet Klausner "one of the world's most prolific and influential book reviewers."

She's as prolific as diarrhea, but if that fraud is influential, then clearly I'm in the wrong business.

Happy holidays!  :)

Thank you, CrimeSpot!

On behalf of all of us here at the Crime Fiction Dossier, we'd like to offer a hearty thank you to Graham Powell and CrimeSpot.net. His wonderful site, winner of the 2006 Gumshoe Award for Best Website, is an invaluable resource to all crime fiction fans.

Thanks for everything, Graham!

Calling all debuts

If you're an author with a debut crime novel being published between January 1 and March 1, please let me know. No self-published, vanity press, PublishAmerica, etc.

Thanks!

This is why you should renew your domain name

Author Victor Gischler neglected to renew his website domain name when it expired. He assumed that the domain would be safe in the meantime.

The web gods laughed at his naivety, and insidious porn spammers leapt at the chance to secure such a primo domain.

What used to be a cool site featuring Victor's awesome noir novels like Gun Monkeys and Pistol Poets is now a porn haven, with links to "sex kitten dating," "free arab sex pic" and "gay amateur sex."

So don't forget to renew!

p.s. I'm purposely not linking to the website, so as not to give them any more traffic. It's not as offensive as it could be, but give them time...If you do click on it, don't say I didn't warn you.

p.p.s. Yes, I think this is just a wee bit hilarious. But I'm mean.

The BookBiz Santa

Once again this year, the indomitable M.J. Rose is running a feature on her blog with people's letters to the BookBiz Santa.

Just write to BookBiz Santa, telling him what you want him to bring you for Christmas. The best letter, based on reader comments, will win the writer's favorite charity $100.

My wish list is a simple one: more good books, less lousy ones.

Help identify this book

K. Watman writes:

I am searching for a book, the name of which I cannot recall. The protagonist happens to be witness to a young woman being thrown off the top of a tall building under construction. She falls directly past him to her death. Motivated to investigate, the protagonist discovers that the young woman was the daughter of a building’s prime contractor. She had been killed at the direction of an Indian (as in India) electrical equipment subcontractor who was seeking to sell defective electric motors for the building project. When the prime contractor refused, his daughter was murdered to “motivate” him to change his mind. The murderer is a truly memorable character, a member of an obscure Indian Hill Tribe, a Dhan. I’ve checked; there is such a tribe. He wields a kukri knife (like the Gurkhas), and to describe him as formidable would be a true understatement. Worship of Kali gets mixed up in this story, too.

Anyone have any ideas? It doesn't ring any bells for me.

Musings on Thomas Harris' "Hannibal Rising"

I finished the hotly-anticipated fourth book in the Hannibal Lecter series last night. (Okay...lukewarmly-anticipated.)

Rather than write a formal review, which sounds like too much work at the moment (the baby and I both have a cold), I thought I'd offer my thoughts on it in Larry King-like stream-of-consciousness style:

• Hannibal Rising isn't a thriller. I don't know what it is -- a character study, maybe? -- but it's not a thriller.
• Despite that, I found it to be reasonably entertaining.
• I still don't recommend it, though.
• Readers who are expecting another Silence of the Lambs or Red Dragon are going to hurl this book across the room in anger.
• Although it's not as much of a gorefest as Hannibal, it's still pretty bloody. But in a strangely dispassionate way.
• Lecter's really kind of a stiff in this book. He's almost boring, which considering what a brilliant character he was, is very nearly a crime.
• At times Hannibal Rising reads more like a treatment for a screenplay than a novel -- which isn't surprising, given that Harris apparently wrote the screenplay at the same time he did the book.
• How can the movie be finished at the same time the book is published? I have no idea.
• Some of the writing is god-awful -- there are some real howlers in it -- but most of it's okay. Some of the parts in the first half of the book (telling of Lecter's youth as a Lithuanian noble) are quite evocative.
• The book actually does a pretty good job of explaining how Lecter came to be the man (monster?) he is.
• I would have liked to read more about how he became so fiendishly clever, a topic the book barely touches. Probably because it would be hard to explain.
• Hannibal Rising strikes me as a lazy book. It seems that Harris put only a bare minimum of effort and imagination into it. It's also rather short.
• If the movie follows the book in anything other than name, it'll be duller than Paris Hilton.
• This makes it sound like I hated Hannibal Rising, which I didn't. It was a decent book, and I enjoyed it while I was reading it. But nobody picks this up looking for a decent read. They want to be thrilled, horrified, intrigued, scared, amazed, shocked, etc. Hannibal Rising does very little of that.
• You know how in Silence of the Lambs, Dr. Chilton shows Clarice Starling a picture of a nurse whose face Lecter mauled? Chilton says, "His pulse never got above 85, even when he ate her tongue." Well, that's Hannibal Rising. While reading it, my pulse never got above 85.
• I can think of no reason why this book was written, other than the money. Thomas Harris was once a brilliant writer, and even his junk is interesting to read, but he has squandered a truly great talent, and that's a damn shame.