IN A MELLOTONE — No.16 Summer 2002

A John Harvey/Charlie Resnick Newsletter

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Mid-summer greetings from London    top
...or, more precisely, from the shed at the foot of the garden, which is where the business gets done these days. After just spending several days happily fell walking and the like in the Lake District, where it is supposed to rain — but didn’t, the sun could scarcely stop shining — returning to a rain-swamped London has been akin to taking on the mantle of Noah.
Climate notwithstanding, Mrs Noah (that’s Sarah) and I, having just survived the trauma that was Molly’s fourth birthday party – more drama than your average afternoon at the National Theatre, tragic hysteria to elation within the same few minutes and that was only Pass the Parcel — are getting down to some serious planning for the three month trip we are making to New Zealand come the end of September.

Basing ourselves in Wellington, we’re hoping to see as much of both the North and South Islands as we can, returning at the very end of the year so that Molly can start 'big' school in January. Another adventure in itself.
Doubtless, I'll report back in the next newsletter, early in 2003.

And now to serious matters In a True Light will be published in the United States in early September by Carroll & Graf/Otto Penzler and has so far been greeted by a starred review in Publishers Weekly, which spoke of "this dark and dazzling tale of crime and redemption." As ever, I hope those of you who haven't yet read the British edition will judge for yourselves.
The proximity of US publication to a major exhibition of Joan Mitchell’s paintings at the New York Whitney was enough to twist my arm, so Sarah and I will briefly be in the city mid-September. Just a few days before we fly off to New Zealand, in fact.
Of all the second-generation abstract expressionist artists, Joan Mitchell has long been my favourite and the character of the painter, Jane Graham, in In a True Light has more than a little of Mitchell at the root of her character.

While in New York, I shall be doing a reading and signing at Partners and Crime, 44 Greenwich Avenue, on the evening of Monday, 16th September, starting, I think, at 7.00 pm. Please check with the store for details. You can phone them on 212 243 0440 or you can email them at partners@crimepays.com.
I’m also going to be signing books uptown at The Black Orchid Bookshop, 303 East 81st Street, this almost certainly towards the end of the day on Tuesday, 17th. It’s an informal drop-in affair, but, knowing Bonnie and Joe who run the store, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t mind if you dropped in at around the same time. Their number is 212 743 5980 and their email address is borchid@aol.com.
Signed copies will also be available from The Mysterious Bookshop, 129 West 56th Street. Phone, 212 765 0900, or email at mysteriousny@worldnet.att.net. Alternatively, if you’re from that neck of the woods or ordering by post, you could buy your copies from The Poisoned Pen, 4014 N. Goldwater Blvd Ste 101, Scottsdale, AZ 85251-4335. Phone them on 480 947 2974, or email them at sales@poisonedpen.com.
Any of you who have been hanging fire waiting for the British paperback of In a True Light, originally scheduled for this September, will have to be patient a little longer. For various reasons, mostly to do with marketing and sales, Arrow are delaying publication until February of 2003.
The Arrow reissue programme for all the Resnick novels has gone ahead as planned, the tenth and final book, Last Rites, being published on October 4th.
This will be the first time that all ten books have appeared under the same imprint and in the same style and they really benefit from some splendid jacket designs and graphics. Smart, indeed!
To coincide with these reissues, Random House UK are publishing a revised and enlarged edition of Now's The Time, the Complete Resnick Short Stories, now more complete with the addition of a comparatively recent story, Billie's Blues. This will be available as a hardcover from William Heinemann and as an Arrow paperback.

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Talk of short stories    top
Talk of short stories brings me to Jack Kiley and Frank Elder, the two characters I’ve become most involved with since writing In a True Light and since Charlie took a well-earned sabbatical.
Kiley is a fairly short-fused former police officer with the Met., an amateur soccer player who briefly turned professional and who is now earning a crust as a private detective in north London.
The first Jack Kiley story, Promise, was scheduled to appear earlier this year in Murder Is My Racquet, a collection of tennis-based stories edited by Otto Penzler but, for various reasons, publication of the book has been put on hold.
This means that the second Kiley story, Truth, is the first to appear in print; this in the September/October double issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine in the States.
A third story, Smile, in which Kiley steps warily outside his own patch, will appear in Birmingham Noir, a collection edited by Joel Lane and Steve Bishop, to be published in the UK by Tindal Street Press in October of this year.
Frank Elder, like Kiley, has a police background, having begun his career in Yorkshire and then serving in Lincolnshire and London before joining the Nottinghamshire Major Crime Unit.

Due North, the first story to feature Elder, will be published in Crime in the City, a Crime Writers' Association anthology edited by Martin Edwards and due out from The Do-Not Press, also in October. Now aged fifty and already having served his thirty years in the force, this story finds Elder at a critical point in both his personal life and career.
Due North is a story I’m particularly proud of and Frank Elder seemed to be a character I wanted to spend more time with. No surprise then, to find him front and centre in the novel I’m currently working on. Titled Flesh and Blood and largely set in what Francis Fyfield, reviewing one of the Resnick novels, memorably called the killing fields of the East Midlands this book is closer to the Resnick series in tone and mood than In a True Light, though Elder is, I think, a quite different character to Charlie.
With so much travelling in the offing, as yet I’ve no clear idea when the manuscript might be finished, though early 2003 sounds sufficiently far off to be possible. We’ll see.

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BBC Radio    top
BBC Worldwide have released an audio version of Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter on two cassettes. This is the BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation starring Charles Dance, Harriet Walter and Tom Hollander which was first broadcast in October, 2001, and lasts close to two hours. This is Greene's story of love and adultery, promises and betrayal – and, of course, religion – set against the background of colonial West Africa during World War Two.
It was, I think, a good production, courtesy of Sally Avens, Charles Dance is in excellent form as Scobie, and if you examine the inside sleeve note with scrupulous care you’ll find my name alongside dramatisation.
The ISBN is 0-563-47846-2.

The second part of The Frederica Quartet, adapted from the novels of A. S. Byatt, begins on BBC Radio 4 on Monday, 9th September and continues until Friday, September 27th It is broadcast in fifteen minute episodes at 10.45 each morning, at the end of the Woman’s Hour slot, and repeated at 19.45 each evening.
The first section, broadcast earlier in the year, was based upon The Virgin in the Garden and Still Life, and this later section is based on Babel Tower & A Whistling Woman.
Since A Whistling Woman is not published until this September, I had to work from a large set of loose manuscript pages when writing my scripts – something which seemed to make the task even more daunting. But – as with the Greene – it was a treat to be able to work with material of such depth and quality. Antonia Byatt was very helpful and could not have been more supportive and the final results are, I think, splendid, with some very fine performances.


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I'm sure it's age    top
I’m sure it’s age, but whatever the reason I’ve been feeling increasingly compelled to go back and reread books that I first encountered thirty, sometimes forty years ago. A phenomenon which seems to have coincided with a rash of reunion fever, which has seen former friends and fellow students re-emerging from the woodwork to tell of busy lives and grandchildren and impending retirement. Only a previous engagement at the other side of the world will prevent me from stalking the halls of Goldsmiths' College in October, desperately trying to match names to faces and long-faded, though mostly pleasant, memories. Possibly books are easier to deal with.
I started with a batch of Hemingway – The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls and, of course, the short stories – and, the annoying 'thee' and 'thou' speech patterns in For Whom the Bell Tolls aside, I didn't feel let down. Quite the opposite. And if there is a finer, more cleverly crafted and sustained first chapter than that which briefly begins A Farewell to Arms in twentieth century English writing, I'd like to know what it is.
Next up, I’ve got my sights on the Brontes, George Eliot and liberal (what other kind is there?) helpings of Dickens. After which I want to revisit those British writers of the late fifties and early sixties who were so important in various ways to my Goldsmiths' days: Alan Sillitoe, Stan Barstow, Keith Waterhouse, Barry Hines, the list goes on.

When my friend, the writer, teacher and jazz musician Bill Moody, asked if he could include my poem "Chet Baker" as a frontispiece to his novel, Looking for Chet Baker, I was, of course, honoured and happy to say go ahead. Now that I’ve read the book, I’m happier still.
The fifth of Bill's crime novels featuring pianist and private detective Evan Horne, for me it’s the best, the one where the balance between investigation and music and between fiction and fact is most effectively achieved.
In England to fulfil a one week engagement at Ronnie Scott's, Horne gets drawn into the mystery surrounding Chet Baker's death in Amsterdam. He also gets to play with one of Moody's finest fictional creations, tenor player Fletcher Paige. Not only can you see and hear Paige each time he appears, you can hear the sound of his horn each time he plays.
It’s a book I strongly recommend and if anyone who doesn’t yet have a copy elects to purchase one from The Poisoned Pen (details as before), the store will sell them a copy of Bill's first Evan Horne novel, Solo Hand, in its Slow Dancer edition, for a mere $2.00!

John Harvey, August 2002