I wrote an appreciation for John Lutz recently for the Bouchercon 2011 website and focused on a quality of his that I admire: his craftsman like approach to writing. I’m not sure he’d recognize himself in the description I gave, but it’s my impression and it shouldn’t be taken as a slight that I put him in the “craftsman” category as opposed to the “artist” option. I simply meant to underline that he’s a writer the way a carpenter is a carpenter – always refining his technique and improving the durability of his ware. You may ask him to build a house, you may request a chair, the wood working is tested and solid. In the same way the word work of a true craftsman holds up and improves and appeals always and when they’re asked to write a mystery they’ll ask you – do you want a private eye novel or a serial killer procedural? Would you like a cozy or amateur? These hairs seem awfully fine to laymen and women, but they are perfectly legitimate questions for a craftsman. How about this one – could you tell me the difference between a suspense novel and a thriller? I betcha John Lutz could, (and I think he’s told me before… uh-oh, I’m going to fumble this, let’s see a suspense novel is when the protagonist and the audience are equally in the dark and a thriller is when the audience knows what’s coming before the protagonist does – did I get it right?). Incidentally – you ought to check out the Bouchercon 2011 site for more pieces on St. Louis area writers. S.J. Rozan has one on Robert Randisi and Jon Jordan wrote this one on Ridley Pearson.
In the piece, I provided a grossly inadequate and far from exhaustive list of other writers I’d put in the category with Lutz – Ed McBain, Ed Gorman, Robert Randisi and Elmore Leonard, who has a brand new book out, just like he does every year. And in true artisan fashion, some of his books are immediately more appealing to me than others. Road Dogs, for example, sounded much better than Mr. Paradise at first pass, but oh, I think we’ve got a winner with Djibouti about a Somali pirate. Leonard writes a pirate book? I am so there.
My fascination with pirates goes back to childhood viewings of Erroll Flynn in Captain Blood and Harrison Ford in Star Wars. They were lovable rogues self-emancipated from the tyrannous will of others, free to roam the unknown reaches of their worlds in search of whatever their whim was. They both ended up unrealistically drawn into causes bigger than themselves, but that’s romance and I’ll fall for it now and again. In case you're wondering, I have no room for Johnny Depp or Cary Elwes in my vision of pirates. As technology has shrunk the world so drastically and left far fewer places to hide, modern pirating is a different prospect than it once was, having less to do with physical strength and speed and more with choosing your targets and not biting off more than you can chew. The really big hijacking stories are far more white-collar fair these days. Come to think of it, pirates are pretty ripe for a Robin Hood figure to emerge.
That’s it, I am now formally requesting a modern Robin Hood pirate folk hero to come forth. We’ve had our bank robbers, con-men and drug dealers, now it’s time for our altruistic man of the people pirate to capture our collective imaginations and create some social unity and goodwill among the commoners, (I’m one). Or a banker, we could do with a hero banker too.
I should note, since I mentioned him earlier, Ed Gorman has a new collection of his short fiction just out called Noir 13 and continues to edit a great yearly anthology of the year’s best mystery and crime short stories, (and I continue to enjoy them, even though he never selects one of mine). By Hook or By Crook is now available from Tyrus books, co-edited by Martin Greenberg, and it’s a monster – 700 pages! That’s your money’s worth of short stories. Be sure to read Crazy Larry Smells Bacon by Greg Bardsley, (and remember his name – mark my words, he’s gonna be huge), as well as stories by Bill Crider, Laura Lippman, Tom Piccirrilli, Marcia Muller, Dennis Lehane and Dave Zeltserman. And another 500 pages worth.
Who’s your favorite craftsman/woman?
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
