News, Etc.

Man seated

(Photo thanks to Mindy Ewing)

The next Frank Quinn thriller, MISTER X, will be released on September 28th. The novel got a starred review in Publishers Weekly. Advance buzz bodes well. Fingers crossed.

Some of the Quinn novels will be published in China, beginning in 2012. You go, Chinese economy!

Very good news. URGE TO KILL has been nominated for a Best Original Paperback Award from International Thriller Writers. Tough competition. Winners will be announced at ThrillerFest in New York in July. (Yours truly didn't win. Maybe next year. Tom Piccirilli won the award for his excellent The Coldest Mile. Congrats to him. And I urge you to read his novel.)

I made my stage debut in a dramatic reading (including a fight scene with Sherlock Holmes) of the play Sherlock Holmes: the Final Toast, at the Players Theatre in Sarasota, Florida. Working with professional actors made me appreciate anew and wonder how people manage that difficult and tricky art and profession. It's fun being out there on the boards, but I'll stick to writing.

Yours truly will be on RadioEarNetwork.com in a taped interview with Joe Dobzynski, hosted by Susan Klaus. The show airs every Tuesday from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM, usually with two authors per show. It repeats on Thursday from 7 to 8 AM for Europe. Interview air dates are scheduled for March 9th and 23rd, but subject to change for reasons beyond anyone's control. Go to radioearnetwork.com and hit listen. The show has an audience of 10 million in 35 countries. Now if ten percent of them buy a book...

SLWG short story contest winners have been announced. Congrats to Jaclyn Devey, Matt Sorrell, and Andi Gregory Pearson.

Much thanks to the above-mentioned and other Kensington folks for their indispensable roles in enabling URGE TO KILL to spend four weeks on the USA Today bestseller list.

New York theater recommendations: Superior Donuts. Also well worth seeing are Finnean's Rainbow and A Heavy Rain. After Rain the undershirts of stars Craig and Jackman were auctioned off for thousands of dollars. True, it was for a charitable cause, but those shirts are just like the ones you can buy at Macy's and don't immediately have to wash.

A good time at Bouchercon in October; lots of old friends, lots of books signed and sold.

I talked about, read from, fielded questions about, and signed my new thriller URGE TO KILL at Left Bank Books, 399 N. Euclid. Phone: (314) 367-6734

Night Kills radio spot can be found here.

Information from the publisher: The Quinn novel DARKER THAN NIGHT has gone into its eighth printing.

NIGHT KILLS spent three weeks on the NYT extended bestseller list, and four weeks on the USA TODAY bestseller list. The author doesn't make these lists on his or her own. As before, kudos to Kensington, and especially to Michaela Hamilton and Doug Mendini.

I Signed copies of URGE TO KILL at the Big Read in St. Louis.

A bargain price new edition of the suspense novel FINAL SECONDS, written in collaboration with David August, is now available.

NEW AND UPCOMING WORK:

The suspense novel MISTER X will be published in late September, 2010.

The previously published short story LILLY AND MEN appears in the anthology Florida Heat Wave, edited by Michael Lister, published September, 2010.

The new suspense novel URGE TO KILL was published in October of 2009.

A new edition of the previously published NIGHT SPIDER was published at a bargain price under the title NIGHT VICTIMS in September.

The short story EYE OF THE STORM, written in collabortion with Lise Baker, is in the ITW anthology First Thrills, edited by Lee Child.

The short story RECREATIONAL VEHICLE is now out in the new anthology Sex, Lies, and Private Eyes. A Nudger-Carver story.

A previously published short story, THE WEAPON, was produced for French television.

Another story, MITT'S MURDER, appears in the anthology At the Scene of the Crime.

Also, the short story COFFEE AND CONVERSATION appears in the anthology Murder Past, Murder Present.

The previously published short story THE FINAL REEL was produced for French televsion.

The short story POE, POE, POE appears in On a Raven's Wing, an MWA anthology of stories related to...Poe.

__________________
MOVIES THAT CAME AND WENT, BUT IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO RENT:
EYE OF THE NEEDLE
Still a terrific suspense movie. Worth watching even if you saw it first time around. Donald Sutherland is great in this, and particularly menacing.

MONSIEUR HIRE
One of the best movies ever about murder and obsessive love. Beautifully filmed, scored, acted, plotted. It will surprise you time after time as it weaves its spell. Six out of five stars.

I'VE LOVED YOU SO LONG
Sure, this French mystery itself sometimes seems so long. It takes its time introducing and exploring an intriguing predicament, meandering from plot turn to plot turn like a befuddled and curious gendarme. But it's well worth your time to see the marvelously talented Kriston Scott Thomas raise her craft to the level of an art, with never a false moment.

BURN AFTER READING
What happens when everyone's stars are unfavorably aligned? Fickle fate meets human foible meets bureaucratic implacability meets the Coen brothers. When you're not smiling while watching this film, you'll be laughing, from beginning to end. The Coen brothers have everything perfectly aligned in this movie, including its talented stars. Nobody underdoes it better.

GRAND TORINO. Eastwood's thoughtful, high quality cross between DIRTY HARRY and ALL IN THE FAMILY really does deserve more attention than it got.

VICKY, CRISTINA, BARCELONA
Two young American women are up to mischeif in Spain with a trendy painter. His explosive wife complicates things. People talk like Woody Allen, mostly about relationships. Lots of conversation, sex, wine, surreal painting, off-camera narration, on-camera screaming, deep contemplation, and relationships. You'll like this one a lot if you're a Woody Allen fan, and like it at least a little even if you aren't. Good stuff.

ROMAN DE GARE
A dandy French movie about an escaped serial killer, a researching novelist, peasant life, nouveau riche life, wrong vehicular turns, and wrong romantic turns. LIke many good French movies, it keeps taking you where you don't expect to go, but always someplace interesting. Well worth seeing.

THE LOOKOUT
A former high school hockey star has an auto accident that leaves him mentally impaired and in no condition to get mixed up with bank robbers. But he does. Terrific in a small way, and probably the most original movie of 2007.

LUST, CAUTION
Politics, love, murder, intrigue, betrayal, sex among people who've obviously read the Kama Sutra. A finely tuned work of art, beautifully filmed and directed, with pitch perfect performances. Probably the best movie of 2007.

SPIDER
I have a theory that any movie or novel with the word spider in the title won't find much of an audience. How about a movie with that title precisely, directed by David Cronenberg, staring Ralph Fiennes, Gabriel Byrne, and Miranda Richardson? How about if it's a minor masterpiece? Such a movie came and went, way too fast. I'm afraid not nearly enough people saw it or were even made aware of it. Maybe because of its grim subject matter. Okay, it will cheer you down. But then, so will HAMLET.

MR. HULOT'S HOLIDAY
Okay, you want to cheer up? Watch the first fifteen minutes of this one. The rest of the film is also good, but the first fifteen or twenty minutes after the credits are great. Gotta watch closely, though.

RIDE WITH THE DEVIL
This is an mesmerizing Civil War movie starring Toby McGuire and the singer/actress Jewel. Adapted from a fine novel by Dan Woodrell. Grit, violence, and insight along the Kansas Missouri border. See this and you won't understand why it wasn't number one in the box office war.

WINTER'S BONE
This gem is also an adaptation of a Dan Woodrell novel. Maybe everything Dan Woodrell ever wrote should be adapted for film. In this one, hard, hard times aren't enough to overwhelm an even harder young Missouri woman. What she needs, she reaches back and finds. The girl's got grit. If you haven't seen this film, do yourself a favor and find it, see it. Grim but great.

Not a movie, but something worth watching (or worth watching again) is the Upstairs, Downstairs British TV series that was popular in the seventies. Hugely entertaining and a great representation of the British Empire's class system during its heyday and eventual dissolution in its journey toward the light.

Which leads me to recommend the brilliant movie Remains of the Day. We can only hope that somewhere along the line the butler in Remains met Hudson the butler in Upstairs, Downstairs.

FAREWELL, an excellent espionage film, might still be making the art film rounds. Relive the Cold War, with Fred Ward's eerily on target portrayal of Ronald Reagan. Secret papers, miniature cameras, intricate exchanges, people following people following people. This is a spy film you can wallow in.

PHOTOS...

John Lutz receiving an honorary degree

John with his wife Barbara, after he received an honorary Doctor of Arts and Letters degree from the University of Missouri – St. Louis, thus establishing his bona fides as an absent-minded professor. It’s okay now to lose the car.

John captivating B&N audience. Some were so mesmerized that after the presentation they had to be prodded out of their advanced states of concentration.

John Lutz at Left Bank Books
John at Left Bank Books.