Behind The Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed

Jason Starr builds THE FOLLOWER on the seemingly shifty foundations of feeling and perception, but in his hands these are the cornerstones of substantial suspense. With a dazzling alternation of third person points of view and razor-sharp dialogue, Starr contrasts the interior thoughts with the exterior realities of several twenty-somethings struggling to find satisfaction in the impersonal Big Apple. To see how completely feelings cloud perception, and as a result how differently each character perceives events, is disarming and ultimately terrifying. The novel seems to be a meditation on the question of whether there is any truth beyond perception, and perhaps also a parable of how the rampant commercialism of our era confuses person and product, subject and object. It is a novel reminiscent of the works of Alfred Hitchcock, Patricia Highsmith, and George V. Higgins, and yet unlike anything you've read before. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on thi

Most writers will tell you to write what you know; such advice places few constraints on author Jane Cleland, whose latest Josie Prescott antiques mystery DEADLY APPRAISAL is evidence of her vast experience and erudition.  Formerly a rare books dealer, Cleland uses her knowledge of the antiques world to vividly evoke Prescott's daily experience and demonstrate the fine line between antiquarian research and amateur sleuthing.  Currently a business communications specialist, Cleland discusses the marketing plan she elaborated to help her transition from aspiring writer to professional author.  A must-listen episode, for few are those who can successfully channel personal experience into the craft of writing and professional experience into the business of writing.  This podcast is brought to you Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on this episode, or make a donation to the podcast, please visit

P.J. Parrish is the penname under which sisters Kristy Montee and Kelly Nichols work their magic. Together they have written seven Louis Kincaid mysteries, and garnered the same number of major literary award nominations. On June 15 they join Clute and Edwards to discuss their latest release A THOUSAND BONES, which focuses on the dark past of Kincaid's lover--female Homicide detective Joe Frye. While the novel is a superlative work of suspense, most notably in its taut pacing and creation of a truly terrifying villain, it is also a poignant character study and the story of a place--as reminiscent of novels by Thompson, or even Faulkner, as it is of other great psychological thrillers. Kristy and Kelly candidly discuss the challenges they faced while writing this book, but also such topics as the history of their writing partnership, the craft of writing, and the many steps aspiring authors can take to improve their prose and their chances of getting published.  This podcast is brought to you Clute and Edwards

This episode features interviews with the creators of three alternative noir publications: Tee Morris, founder of podiobooks (www.podiobooks.com) and author of the fantasy-hardboiled podiobook "Billibub Baddings and the Case of the Singing Sword;" Kevin Burton Smith, creator of the superlative "Thrilling Detective" website and ezine (www.thrillingdetective.com); and Seth Harwood, author of the podiobook "Jack Wakes Up" starring movie-star one-hit-wonder and ex-drug-addict Jack Palms. The "Noircast Special" podcasts allow Clute and Edwards to address topics of interest to listeners of "Out of the Past" and "Behind the Black Mask." Please visit www.noircast.net for more information.

LACED is the tenth Regan Reilly mystery by New York Times bestselling author Carol Higgins Clark. Higgins Clark's training as an actress is everywhere apparent in this installment to the series: her visual prose allows us to see each scene, the action is blocked with precision, and the subplots involving the large ensemble cast are expertly laced to ensnare the reader. Moreover, her Irish heritage, and the many trips she has taken to the Emerald Isle, impart a strong sense of place--the romance of Ireland's castles, the warmth of it's pubs, and perhaps even the chill of it's ghosts. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on this episode, or make a donation to the podcast, please visit "Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed" at btbm.libsyn.com.

"If you can't write hard-boiled fiction about Coney Island, you're in trouble: the decay; the disappointment of what something once was, and what it is now. It's symbolic of how people view their lives. They start out as the Empire State Building, but by the end--or middle age--they look around, and they're Coney Island." So says author Reed Farrel Coleman, discussing his latest Moe Prager mystery SOUL PATCH--comments that distill hard-boiled to its addictive but acid essence. Though his 2005 THE JAMES DEANS was a tough act to follow (it won the Anthony, Berry, and Shamus Awards), Coleman does an admirable job with the latest installment in the series. By narrowing the scope of the intrigue he increases its intensity, etching in painstaking detail the emotional profile of a man facing himself in middle age. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on this episode, or make a donation to the podcast, please visit "Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Reveale

Like the haar rolling off the North Sea, Al Guthrie's HARD MAN will disorient and chill you. His Edinburgh is not the fairytale of High Street, but a nightmare of lower class hardship and indifference. It is populated by flawed characters desperately seeking a little creature comfort. For hope of a pittance they're willing to sow the seeds of destruction, but they reap only suffering--a red harvest. The prose befits the action. Artfully ambiguous dialogue makes you wonder why anyone would be so violent for so little, but also keeps you guessing how things will end. Numerous points of view allow Guthrie to explore victims' pain, but likewise build suspense by delaying resolution. HARD MAN is at once highly stylized and brutally realistic--the love-child of hardboiled fiction and crime reporting--and the experience of reading it is like none you've had. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on this episode, or make a donation to the podcast, please visit "

THE SONG IS YOU deftly blends fiction and fact, cinematic dream and post-war reality, to recreate the charged atmosphere of late-1940's Hollywood. It is a fictional account of events surrounding the real-life disappearance of actress Jean Spangler. In Gil "Hop" Hopkins, tabloid newshound and studio publicity spin-man, Abbott gives us one of the rarest and most rarefied protagonists in the hard-boiled firmament--a man at once entirely in control and savagely desperate, filled with endless hot air but sputtering on fumes. Like the town and era he inhabits, Hop totters on a gossamer thread between fantasy and truth, obsession and release. THE SONG IS YOU is Cain, Chandler, Hughes, and Ellroy, and none of these--something as elusive and ephemeral yet brilliant and timeless as the stars in Hollywood. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on this episode, or make a donation to the podcast, please visit "Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed" at btbm.

The "Noircast Special" allows Clute and Edwards to address topics of interest to listeners of "Out Of The Past" and "Behind The Black Mask." This inaugural episode features a roundtable discussion with the director, playwright, and lead actors of The Stolen Chair Theatre Company's off-Broadway play "Kill Me Like You Mean It." Inspired by film noir and the theatre of the absurd, the play is an artful mash-up that demonstrates how dark is the heart of absurdist theatre, and how absurd are the conventions of noir. This podcast--part interview, part radio drama--should please fans of film noir and mystery fiction alike.

English novelist Danuta Reah is a Forensic Linguistics lecturer specializing in the link between language disorders and criminal behavior, a creative writing instructor, the former chair of the British Crime Writers' Association, and winner of the prestigious Dagger Award. Remarkably, she cites none of these factors as being the primary influence on her writing. Rather, her understanding of un-happy endings (acquired by watching her father--a Polish soldier of Belarusian descent--live his life in exile in Britain) seems to be the primum movens of her fiction, and her appreciation for painting (acquired by watching her artist husband at work) has taught her to craft prose that is sensitive to "the spaces in between. From the confluence of these wellsprings of inspiration flows BLEAK WATER, the singular tale of the grief that seeps through lives shattered by a mad artist determined to bring Bruegel's "The Triumph of Death" into the modern world. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noirc

Theresa Schwegel's training as a screenwriter is evident in her fiction. She is able to zoom from the setting of Chicago to vivid locales in a flash, to enter and exit scenes with cinematic efficiency, and to focus on just those details that flesh out characters with heartrending minimalism. This focus on character, and a keen eye for the distinctions between Law and Justice, earned OFFICER DOWN the Edgar for best first novel, and make Theresa's January 2007 release PROBABLE CAUSE equally compelling. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on this episode, or make a donation to the podcast, please visit "Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed" at btbm.libsyn.com.

Author and editor Charles Ardai is a double-feature unto himself. In the first half of this special hour-long episode Richard Aleas (Ardai's anagrammatical authorial alter ego) discusses his Edgar and Shamus Award nominated novel LITTLE GIRL LOST: its literary predecessors--from William Blake's poetry to period pulp, and its complex vision of justice. In the second half of the interview, Ardai the entrepreneur speaks of his imprint Hard Case Crime: the reasons for its creation, the decision to commission fresh artwork from some of the finest painters of the classic era of paperback originals, and the particular challenges of editing and publishing a line that mixes period reprints with new titles while maintaining a consistent noir worldview. Abundantly clear are the intelligence and vision that have made Ardai the reigning Pasha of Pulp publishing, and Hetman of Hard-Boiled writing. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on this episode, or make a donati

Ex Private Investigator, failed academic, frustrated musician, and inspired writer--David Corbett himself is perhaps the best illustration of his theory on character development: if the back-story wound is evident, the person will act in meaningful and poignant ways. Only an author who has done his share of living could pen so piercing a tale of the dedicated cops, oddly talented citizens, and self-interested criminals, developers, and politicians who struggle in the incendiary communities of California. DONE FOR A DIME may be the definitive California crime novel--a work as acute, eclectic, ambitious, heart-wrenching, and vast as the state itself. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on this episode, or make a donation to the podcast, please visit "Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed" at btbm.libsyn.com.

The tagline is "mystery writers revealed" and Duane Swierczynski's frankness makes for truth in advertising. He admits that behind his hard-boiled exterior, a soft spot for family fuels his writing. He acknowledges that his Catholic upbringing creates a particular brand of justice in his novels, and that his ambivalent relationship with his hometown of Philadelphia injects those novels with dark longing. He speaks of how the characters in THE WHEELMAN helped to plot its action, and even shares a personal maxim with aspiring authors: if it's not action, it may not be worth writing. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on this episode, or make a donation to the podcast, please visit "Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed" at btbm.libsyn.com.

With his Sundance hit film BRICK, writer-director Rian Johnson attempted to convey his powerful reactions to the work of Dashiell Hammett. Thus, BRICK is a deeply personal film; though it may be evident that a Hammettesque script propels its action, its nuances can only be appreciated when a familiarity with Johnson is achieved. In this episode, Rian reveals how his personal experience, gourmand taste in movies, and willingness to heed his cast allowed him to leap-frog the conventions of film noir, and craft his eclectic hard-boiled debut. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on this episode, or make a donation to the podcast, please visit "Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed" at btbm.libsyn.com.

Where does pulp end and the real begin? As Paul Malmont discuses the historical facts underpinning his fantastic and fantastical throwback pulp novel THE CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL, he provides surprising answers to this question. THE SHADOW author Walter Gibson was a world-class magician, and married a woman who did a fortunetelling act with a chicken? Yes! The flesh-dripping zombies who chase DOC SAVAGE author Lester Dent through the pages of THE CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL have a basis in historical fact? Well, you'd best hear the shocking answer to that one from Malmont himself. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on this episode, or make a donation to the podcast, please visit "Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed" at btbm.libsyn.com.