Reviewing: "The Silent Hour: A Lincoln Perry Mystery" by Michael Kortya

“The Silent Hour: A Lincoln Perry Mystery” opens with Private Investigator Lincoln Perry working solo while his partner Joe Pritchard mends in Florida. Perry is receiving letters from Parker Harrison, convicted murder, who is seeking his help. When the letter campaign doesn’t work, Harrison comes in person. Simplifying greatly, Harrison wants Perry to find the woman who owned the home “Whisper Ridge” where Parker Harrison first stayed on his release from prison. The home was unique as were its owners, Alexandra and Joshua Cantrell. She disappeared along with her husband, twelve years ago, and Harrison wants her found for a variety of reasons.

Harrison wants an ending to the story. He says he wants to know what happened to her. He claims there wasn’t a romantic interest and yet, it comes across to Perry that something was going on between the two. Along with being able to get under Perry’s skin and push his buttons, Harrison has the ability not to tell all while saying he is telling all. He manages to pull Perry into the case, one agonizing step at a time, and once he is in, not let go for anything.

While the book jacket states that, “… Michal Koryta has crafted an intricate, lightning paced thriller, ratcheting up the tension as he explores just how dangerous the offer of a second chance can be.” I would disagree. Intricate---it certainly is. Thriller -- it isn’t. Nor would I agree with the idea that the book has a lightning pace. Instead, this slow moving mystery novel is primarily a psychological character study of Lincoln Perry. As befitting fitting a fourth book of a series, usually a major turning point for the primary character, Perry is at a major crossroads. Guilt and fear have rightfully so become increasing burdens and Perry spends much of this book in contemplation regarding the human costs of his actions. Such mental gymnastics heightens the tension considerably and strengthens the complexity while also making it very important for readers to have read this series in order starting with the Edgar nominated first novel, “Tonight I Said Goodbye.”



Such mental contemplation of the past does noting to make the novel either a thriller or lightning paced. The fact that the jacket copy is so obviously incorrect does nothing to disprove the notion that this is a very good book. As long time readers know, Michal Kortya writes complex novels full of deep storylines, action, and intricate plots that create storylines that carry over from book to book. “the Silent Hour: A Lincoln Perry Mystery” is yet more proof that if you aren’t reading this author, you are missing one of the big names these days and for some time to come.


The Silent Hour: A Lincoln Perry Mystery
Michael Kortya
http://www.michaelkortya.com/
Minotaur Books (St. Martin’s Publishing Group)
http://www.minotaurbooks.com/
August 2009
ISBN# 0-312-36157-0
Hardback
311 Pages
$24.99



Material received from the good folks of the Plano, Texas Public Library System.



Kevin R. Tipple © 2009

Sylvia Dickey Smith interviews John Floyd TODAY!

Today, November 16, at 6:PM central time, I will be interviewing John Floyd, editor of Wolfmont Publishing's annual Toys for Tots anthology, A GIFT OF MURDER. I invite you to listen in at:

www.blogtalkradio.com/MurderSheWrites

And if you haven't gotten your copy in support of a worthy project, and a collection of great Christmas mystery stories, get yours now. John will tell you how to order yours tomorrow on the program.

Sylvia Dickey Smith Author
Sidra Smart mystery series
http://www.sylviadickeysmith.com/
http://sylviadickeysmith.blogspot.com/

Event: WGT Meeting 11-16-2009

Mark the _third_ Monday of every month for the Writers' Guild of Texas meeting.

Monday, 16 November 2009 7-8:30 p.m. Topic: Revision Hell in 14 Days Speaker: Candace "Candy" HavensRichardson Public Library900 Civic Center Dr.Richardson TX 75080Basement Room

Revisions can be hell at times, but there is a way to get through them. Candace will lead us through several steps, and provide ideas of things to look for as you revise and clean up your manuscript. In less than two weeks you could have a polished manuscript ready to send to agents and editors.

Candace "Candy" Havens is a best selling and award-winning author. Her novels include /Charmed & Dangerous/, /Charmed & Ready/, /Charmed & Deadly/, /Like A Charm,/ and /The Demon King and I/. She is known for writing strong female characters who save the world, but aren't exactly perfect. She is a two-time RITA, Write Touch Reader, and Holt Medallion finalist. She is also the winner of the Barbara Wilson award.
Candy is a nationally syndicated entertainment columnist for FYI Television. A veteran journalist, she has interviewed just about everyone in Hollywood from George Clooney and Orlando Bloom to Nicole Kidman and Kate Beckinsale. You can hear Candy weekly on 96.3 KSCS in the Dallas Fort Worth Area. Her popular online Writer's Workshop has more than 1000 students and provides free classes to professional and aspiring writers. Check out http://www.candacehavens.com/.

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A MESSAGE FROM THE FRIENDS OF THE WRITERS' GUILD OF TEXAS:
The Guilded Pen

wwww.theguildedpen.ning.htm
a social network developed for writers, offers an open forum that welcomes writers of all levels and writing mediums. Come join the fun. Create, develop, and promote your work. Get support and inspiration and share in an open, non-threatening environment. Be a resource for those looking for collaborators for joint works. Friends of the Writers’ Guild of Texas.

Kat Smith, Membership Chair, is developing a membership directory to help members find members with similar interests, etc. to partner for critique or support. The membership form will provide a clear picture of each member's profile. Take the opportunity to talk to her at the next meeting.

==============

Pay annual 2010 WGT dues of $20.00 (not prorated) on 1 November 2009 or later so you can be a voting member by December 2009. This also makes you eligible to be a reader at the December Read-In.


All WGT events are free and open to the public. For information on the sponsoring organization, visit http://writersguildoftexas.org/joomla/.

* *_Monday, 21 December 2009_. Regular meeting: Annual WGT All-Stars Read-In* *and Election of WGT Board members. All are welcome; only paid-up members may read and vote.*
* *_Monday, 18 January 2010_. Regular meeting: TBA *



Writers' Events Calendar (contact shurlock@flash.net to have your conferences, meetings, or other writing-related event listed here--no individual book signings, please): *
10-11 April 2010_, DFW Writers' Conference 2010! Grapevine, Texas.
http://dfwwritersworkshop.org/

Second Saturday each month: North Texas Speculative Fiction Workshop. http://www.ntsfw.com_

Visit http://www.writersleague.org/programs/classes.html for up-to-date information on Writer's League of Texas workshops held in Austin TX. Visit http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/ for guidelines to participate in the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.


The Writers' Guild of Texas is a nonprofit professional organization whose primary purpose is to provide a forum for information, support, and sharing among writers; to help members improve and market their writing skills; and to promote the interests of writers and the writing community.

Permission to forward this email is not only granted, but encouraged. Let's get the word out to as many in the writing community as possible.

Carol Woods, Communications Writers' Guild of Texas

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Reviewing: "Killers" edited by Colin Harvey

Mysteries come in many forms. Sometimes they are straight forward and easy to figure out as the author hits all the expected points one by one. Like dominoes, each plot or storyline point is hit in turn and they fall in a story by the numbers precision. Other times, not at all because the author weaves complexity and misdirection into the tale in such a way to keep the readers guessing all the way to the end.

Then there are those books that don’t fit easily into categories while clearly containing some crime and mystery elements. Novels and stories that might be classified more in the horror, supernatural, fantasy, etc genres and yet also contain a few elements of crime and mystery. Tales and books that don’t easily fit into the classifications created by libraries and book stores because the stories cross genres. Such is the case here with this intriguing and often disturbing anthology edited by Colin Harvey. If the stories in the “Killers” anthology share anything beyond the basic genre elements, they also frequently feature characters questioning their own sanity. Or not, as the book opens.

The very disturbing story titled “Doctor Nine” written by the multi Bram Stoker award winning author Jonathan Maberry begins the eleven story anthology. A very hard to describe story that features a child responding to a telepathic call to commit murder. This story powerfully sets the tone of what most will follow in the book.

“Dead Wood” by Sarah Singleton, also a winner of awards including the 2005 Children of the Night Award, comes next. Long ago someone once wrote of the woods being dark and deep. Chris has his own issues with sleep and these woods will slowly give up their secrets one by one.

Philip J. Lees heads to the virtual world for his story “Virtual Analysis.” Listed last month as an honorable mention finalist for the Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year Anthology, his tale tells of a plan to study the thought processes of a serial killer while he kills in a virtual world. Of course, things will go disastrously wrong- at least for some of the study participants. But why?

Multi award winning Bruce Holland Rogers contributes next with “Pushover.” Beware those that appear meek and naïve as not only can appearances be deceiving, they also have jobs to do.

“Beautiful Summer” by Eugie Foster works on the angle that the fashion world is always looking for a fresh new face. Nominated for numerous awards, her story is haunting as well as highly entertaining.

Editor Colin Harvey steps into the author shoes with his own story titled “Just Another Day.” Set in Iceland, this story has a feel of being ripped from the head lines type of read to it. More straight forward than most in the collection, it features a police officer trying to figure out who killed the woman he loved set against the backdrop of genetics and cloning research.

“Losing Paradise” by G. C. Veazey follows next in a tale set in a hospital ward. Virginia may work among the patients and staff, but she isn’t really one of them.

Mental health also plays a role in “Visibility Less Than Zero” by Paul Meloy. Mr. Meloy is a mental health nurse in Bury St. Edmunds and one gets the feeling that he is writing well of what he knows. A tale that shifts in points of view and explores the idea of whether anyone really knows if he or she is sane.

Charlie Allery uses computers and hackers in her very good story “Hunter-Killer.” While Philip J. Lees went one way with some of the same elements, Charlie Alley went a different way in her own cyber murder tale. Each is equally good in its own right and either vision or both could easily come true.

“Index Of An Enigma” by Gary Fry tells the tale of a professor making a lecture appearance a symposium. The problem is that he is haunted by what is real and what might not be real.

Bram Stoker Award winning author Lee Thomas closes out the anthology with “The Good and Gone.” A hospital is again the setting in this tale of a patient dealing with pain in a rather unique way.

Published by Swimming Kangaroo Books of Arlington, Texas, this 233 page anthology features stories that share a very wide brush stroke link of murder and crime. After that, they have little in common as they showcase different genre elements in tales that feature widely divergent writing styles and tastes, and reader accessibility. Difficult to review or categorize, the “Killers” anthology features no easy tales that are quick reads and forgettable. Instead, each very good tale manages to hint at far more than it explains and makes you think long after you close the book.



Killers
Edited By Colin Harvey
Swimming Kangaroo Books
http://www.swimmingkangaroo.com
September 2008
ISBN# 978-1-934041-66-6
233 Pages
Paperback
$14.99


Material provided by the publisher in exchange for my objective review.


Kevin R. Tipple © 2009

Barry's Reviews: "Lost Stories" by Dashiel Hammett (edited by Vince Emery)

LOST STORIES (2005) by Dashiell Hammett

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

This book is clearly a labor of love. Its editor, Vince Emery, is also the publisher, and he obviously took great pains to be sure the book was carefully designed and constructed.

It contains twenty-one stories—though in a handful of cases calling them stories rather than vignettes is stretching the point—not all of which are mystery/crime tales, the type of story for which Dashiell Hammett is most famous. Some display Hammett’s more “literary” side, harbingers of those aspects of his later work that readers and critics have seized upon to justify his “legitimacy” as a writer of substance and significance—as if any justification were needed! Some—e.g., “Laughing Masks”—are wonderful examples of pulp action/suspense stories. Many have not been seen since they first appeared in print. Others have been reprinted, but in abridged or extended versions, depending on the whims of presumptuous editors. Fred Dannay is mentioned more than once as being notorious for “editing”—which is to say trimming—the works of established authors he reprinted in Mystery League and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

Perhaps the most intriguing point Emery makes is that Hammett became a writer from necessity rather than from compulsion. There was absolutely nothing in his past to indicate even the slightest literary inclination. That he was never a hack but rather a conscious craftsman who took pride in his work (as his fictional sleuths took pride in theirs) is further testament to his achievements. Despite Carroll John Daly’s preceding him into the pages of Black Mask by a matter of weeks, it is Hammett who genuinely deserves to be called the father of the hardboiled mystery* story, perhaps even of the truly American mystery story. Three-Gun Terry Mack and, subsequently, Race Williams, in Daly’s clumsy prose, brought a fanciful wild-west sensibility to urban settings, whereas Hammett’s carefully-wrought plots and prose rendered them more real and more believable.

Hammett’s importance as an influential Twentieth Century writer, as Emery points out, is undeniable. (A debate has apparently raged for years about who influenced whom, Hammett or Hemingway. I’ve long felt that in The Glass Key, which I consider his greatest novel, Hammett outdid Hemingway at his own game. According to the evidence Emery provides, Hammett published quite a number of short stories before Hemingway arrived on the scene.) Like Raymond Chandler, whom I’d also nominate as a major influence on many of his contemporaries and successors—originators and imitators alike—both in and out of the mystery field, Hammett’s style and vision has had a profound effect on writers in America and around the world.

Lost Stories is highly recommended.

*I use the term mystery here in its broadest sense, since not all of Hammett’s crime tales contained fairly-clued puzzles.


Barry Ergang © 2009

Former Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine and current First Senior Editor of Mysterical-E, Barry Ergang's work has appeared in numerous publications, print and electronic. He was a 2007 Derringer Award winner.

Happy Halloween

to all who are into Halloween and being scared.

I'm not.

Fear is something I deal with a lot. As part of that, fear regarding my own writing is a major issue. So, submitting something to my local writer's group always makes me a nervous wreck before and after our meeting. With considerable unease, I submitted another somewhat weird story of mine for today's meeting.

General consensus of the folks that were able to attend was that the story worked. Needs a little work primarily in the area of dialogue and conflict between the two major characters. But, overall the piece has a good nucleus and hangs together well.

I also got an idea from them on how to bridge the vast middle on the novel project.

So, all in all, it was a pretty good meeting though I wasn't able to offer much advice their way on their projects. And so it goes......

News and Notes for October 25, 2009

Interesting reading seen elsewhere:

1) E-books and libraries
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/books/15libraries.html?_r=1

2) A lack of respect for sci-fi authors
http://sffmedia.com/books/science-fiction-books/417-why-science-fiction-authors-just-cant-win.html


Just stuff I found interesting and informative.


On a separate note—finished my latest story effort about an hour ago and sent it off to my local writer’s group. Will found out next Saturday how it went over as if dealing with Halloween isn’t enough.