IN A MELLOTONE — No.25 Winter 2007

A John Harvey/Charlie Resnick Newsletter

Past editions (from issue 15 onwards) can be found in the Mellotone archive

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I doubt if the old year could have ended better than by learning that I was to be honoured, in this year, 2007, with the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger, which is awarded by the Crime Writers’ Association for a lifetime’s achievement in crime writing. And there was I, thinking I’d just got started.

I was astonished by the phone call, which came quite out of the blue, and when I’d got over that astonishment, genuinely excited by the news. Whereas, like many writers, when you’ve got a book out there in any particular year that you think is more than half- way decent, it’s hard not to fantasise about receiving a nomination of one kind or another - even to the point, during those sleepless hours that seem to stretch unbidden from four in the morning onwards, of rehearsing the acceptance speech you will make when your name is called and you stumble, cheesy smile stuck on your face, towards the podium - I can honestly say the Diamond Dagger had not been amongst the litany of gongs and goodies hovering on my particular horizon. Even when I stood next to Ian Rankin, chatting to him on the occasion of his presentation a couple of years ago, and he said, ‘Don’t worry, your turn soon,” I thought it was merely a pleasant way of smoothing aside any possible tinge of envy, rather than something to be taken seriously.

So I’m well and truly chuffed and when, at some still to be decided date in May, I step forward at the Savoy Hotel to receive said Dagger from the charming and effusive Monsieur Arnaud Bamberger of Cartier, the names of many previous winners will be well imprinted in my mind - Eric Ambler, P.D. James, John le Carré, Dick Francis, Julian Symons, Ruth Rendell, Leslie Charteris, Ellis Peters, Michael Gilbert, Reginald Hill, H.R.F. Keating, Colin Dexter, Ed McBain, Margaret Yorke, Peter Lovesey, Lionel Davidson, Sara Paretsky, Robert Barnard, Lawrence Block, Ian Rankin and, most recently, Elmore Leonard.

It was reading Leonard in the 80s that persuaded me, after a couple of fairly disastrous false starts, to have another crack at writing crime fiction and so, although I’m not about to present myself as being fit to step into his shoes, it will be with a particular satisfaction and a marked degree of pride that I follow him along the path to receive this award.

The Frank Elder saga having come to a close, this February sees the publication in the UK of Gone to Ground, which is set partly in Cambridge and the nearby Fen Country, and partly - no surprise here - in and around Nottingham. Radio journalist Lesley Bryan is less than happy with the way the police - in the shape of D.I. Will Grayson and D.S. Helen Walker - are looking into her brother’s murder and decides to do some investigating on her own account, putting her life in danger as she steps into an imbroglio of fraud and corruption, sexual shenanigans, family secrets and fifties film noir. Sounds good to me!

I’m happy to be doing a launch reading for the book at Nottingham Waterstone’s on Wednesday, 7th February. More details further on.

As I said in the last newsletter, the Nottingham-based Five Leaves Press have commissioned a new story from me for their new Crime Express series of single, longish stories which will be issued in editions of around 1,000 copies. Some of you out there will be pleased to know that this features none other than Charlie Resnick, still labouring on within Notts CID and living, happily enough, with his former sergeant Lynn Kellogg, now an inspector in the Force Crime Directorate [and making a brief appearance as such in the aforementioned Gone to Ground]. My plan is for Charlie to meet up with another of my fictional characters, former police officer and professional soccer player and currently private eye, Jack Kiley, who makes the short journey from north London to Nottingham in the course of his investigation into the disappearance of a Iraq veteran who has gone missing with some unaccounted for arms and ammunition.

Jack and Charlie will find some common ground in Kiley’s one appearance at the Notts County ground, coming off the bench for Charlton Athletic in what was then the League Cup, and after a few shared pints and a few more reminiscences, proceed from a basis of mutual respect.

If all goes well, and the partnership feels right, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that they might both feature in the next-to-be-written novel. Not a full-scale Resnick novel as such, perhaps, but one in which he has far more than the walk-on role the Elder books allowed.

The other story alluded to previously, a jazz-based piece entitled Minor Key, set in Paris during the late 1950s, is now finished and will appear in Paris Noir, edited by Maxim Jakubowski. The collection, which features French writers alongside English and American, will be published in the UK by Serpent’s Tail and in France by Rivages.

Towards the end of last year, a piece by writer, critic and editor John Williams in The Guardian Review struck more than a few chords. Reviewing The Best American Mystery Stories 2006, Williams referred back to the heady days of 70s and 80s when American crime fiction was vital and exciting, and when many of the names that came to prominence during that period were doing, he claims, their best work. Since then, he suggests, a number of big names have been content to rewrite versions of the same book, while others, more recent, have done little to suggest a bright new renaissance is on the way. [Too hung up on Ellroy and outtakes of Tarantino??] The really interesting work in the crime field, Williams says, is coming, not from inside the genre but from writers in or at least on the edges of the literary mainstream, who are as interested in language as they are in story and plot. Examples he gives are Pete Dexter, William Gay, Richard Price and Daniel Woodrell.

As I say, the piece struck several chords and Williams’ argument goes some way, perhaps, to explaining why I seem to get less enjoyment from reading crime fiction than used to be the case. It also makes me consider the validity of my own work, existing quite firmly within the genre as it does.

Looking back through the previous year’s reading - a total of just over 60 books - of the eight that have stuck with me most, only one is what the majority of us would immediately think of as a crime novel - Peter Temple’s The Broken Shore, which I’ve trumpeted before - while two of the others - Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men and Dan Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone - come into Williams’ category of literary crime. Here, for the next time you visit your local library, is the list in full:

• Joan Didion: The Year of Magical Thinking
• Cormac McCarthy: No Country For Old Men
• Jon McGregor: So Many Ways to Begin
• Andrew O’Hagan: Be Near Me
• Marilynne Robinson: Gilead
• Philip Roth: Everyman
• Peter Temple: The Broken Shore
• Daniel Woodrell: Winter’s Bone

And my first book of 2007 - Richard Ford’s The Lay of the Land - will take some beating. I couldn’t wait to sit down with it each chance I got and when it was finished I felt a definite sense of mourning. Excellent, just excellent. And, yes, there’s a shooting ...

In the jazz field, someone who certainly isn’t interested in merely retreading old and worn paths is pianist Stan Tracey, invigorated and invigorating in his 80th year, and heard with his trio at Lauderdale House in north London, and leading both his medium-sized Hexad and his Big Band at the Brecon Jazz Festival. Also enjoyed, Lee Konitz, a mere 79, playing unamplified alto amid the fine acoustics of the Wigmore Hall; tenor saxist Andy Sheppard and the multi-talented piano player, Joanna MacGregor, together with the Britten Sinfonia and sundry others, kicking up a storm at the Queen Elizabeth Hall with MacGregor’s arrangements of pieces by the late American composer and street musician, Louis ‘Moondog’ Hardin; and the driving big band, Gillespiana, which holds forth downstairs at the King’s Head in Crouch End on the second Tuesday of each month.

John Harvey, January 2007
London, England

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