Guest Post: Kira Peikoff

This post is subject to my disclosure notes, which you can find here.

I' m not normally a huge fan of first novels. LIVING PROOF by Kira Peikoff is, however, a huge exception. It is an exceptional story, and one that happens to concern a topic about which I'm passionate. Kira is one of the smartest young people I've ever met, and her insight and diligence is admirable. I'll have a review of LIVING PROOF for you over the next few days, but in the meantime, I asked Kira to share some of the story behind the book.


Enjoy!

When I was 12 years old, I decided that I would become a novelist. By college, this yearning had morphed into a certainty as sure as any fact. I never doubted that I would commit to it one day, but finding the right time was tricky. After all, I needed to graduate from NYU with my journalism degree and establish myself in a real job; writing fiction seemed like a luxury, not a career. Looking back now, it’s sad to see how often growing up squashes childhood dreams, deeming them second-class citizens to practicality and convention.

Luckily the storyteller in me didn’t take the conformist that seriously. I hunted for a good idea anyway so I could get started as soon as possible. Around this time, in June 2006, I moved to Washington, D.C. for a summer reporting internship with The Orange County Register.

On one assignment, I went to the White House to cover President Bush’s first veto—rejecting Congress’s bid to lift federal restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. He spoke like a saint, proclaiming that morality and human decency required his rejection of the bill, as an adoring group of pro-life advocates sat at his feet.

It took all my trained journalistic objectivity to return to my office and write a fair, balanced piece for the newspaper. But when I went home, I was livid. I thought of all the ill and injured people who could potentially be helped by embryonic stem cell research, and how backwards it was for the government’s religious-infused politics to put a stop to it. The way I saw it, the promising field was being thwarted in its infancy (excuse the pun). How much time was being lost, I wondered—and how many lives that might have been saved?

It was deeply personal wishful thinking. When I was 15, my best friend Caroline was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. It was hellish, surreal: visiting the hospital every weekend for months, watching her heave into plastic basins and shed her long blonde hair in chunks. Astonishingly, she joked with the nurses in the ICU and even apologized for causing me sorrow. She died on May 17, 2002 at age seventeen. Almost a decade later, it’s still a sensitive subject. I believe that Caroline’s tragic death laid the groundwork for my fascination with biomedical research—and my fury at its obstruction.

So after Bush’s veto, I started to imagine a character. She was a very sick woman, one who desperately needed this research to save her life. But what if she lived in a society that had gone just one step further than our own, taking conservative views to their logical conclusion by declaring the destruction of any embryos illegal? How far would she go to get around this law if she was courageous and desperate enough? And what would happen if someone in the government started to suspect her—then simultaneously fall in love with her?

I was hooked. I wanted to know more about this courageous woman and the world she lived in. I wanted to demonstrate the life-or-death stakes for each of us today regarding stem cell research, and where we could be headed in the near future. I wanted a heroine I could believe in, and a hopeful ending I couldn’t have rendered in real life.

After graduating from college, I dedicated one year full-time to writing LIVING PROOF. After countless revisions and drafts over several more years, I now have a book I am proud to share with the world. I have stayed true to my original vision, and I hope that it entertains and inspires. I also hope it provokes readers to consider how deeply religion in politics today can affect the science and medicine of tomorrow. Our lives depend upon it.

Interview with a Character: Tony Hill

Tony Hill is as fascinating a psychologist as you'll ever want to meet. His almost supernatural ability to get into the heads of criminals belies his kind heart and complex past. As a rule, I'm not a crier when I'm reading, but some of the scenes with Tony in THE RETRIBUTION brought be awfully close, which is saying a lot about both that story and those that preceded it, each of which made me a bit more attached to Dr. Hill. I was nervous when I asked Val McDermid if Tony would answer some questions, mostly because he is one of my favorite characters, and I am eternally grateful for her help!


Your relationship with your parents is...complicated. Is there a fictional parent-child relationship you particularly admire?

I've never been one for reading fiction. Reality has more than enough drama for me. But when I was a kid I read every superhero comic I could get my hands on. Looking back, I envy Superman both his birth parents and his adoptive ones. Jor-El and Kara sacrificed themselves to save their infant son, and the Kents gave him love, a moral code and a fabulous costume. He grew up knowing he'd been doubly loved. And the sense of duty he learned in small town America meant he used his powers for good without ever resenting it. The bond they all shared is something most families aspire to.

What's your favourite colour?

For what? Most of my wardrobe is dark -- black, grey, navy, dark green. But the interior of my house is painted white. I think blue works well for the sky, green for the grass. It's horses for courses, isn't it? I'd have to admit I don't possess anything orange. It's always struck me as an unpleasantly strident colour. I think it may have something to do with the colour of lipstick my mother wore when I was small.

You face the darkest aspects of human nature, those which would give many of us nightmares. Does anything frighten you to your core?

Not on my own account. I fear for the people I care about because most of them have the kind of job that exposes them to serious risk. So when I know they are in close pursuit of someone who is capable of terrible things, then I fear for them. Because I know very well what their antagonists are capable of.

Do you vote?

I think it's a moral obligation. People have died to give the likes of me the chance to express my preference at the ballot box. But I think most politicians are even more deeply flawed than I am, so I tend to cast my vote for one of the minority parties. If you stand for election for a party that has no chance of being elected, I suspect your motives are more admirable. And I also get the chance to stake out the moral high ground, whoever ends up in government. (Yes, I know... I am a psychologist, after all)

Is there anywhere you have never been but would love to visit?

I'm not much of a traveller. But if you could arrange time AND space for me, I'd quite like to go back to Vienna around 1910, when Freud and Jung were both developing their theories of the self. If would be interesting to challenge them in the light of present-day opinions. And just to listen to their own accounts of their ideas.

Was there a specific moment when you realised that criminal psychology is your calling?

When I was studying for my undergraduate degree, I grew quite uneasy when we came to consider criminal psychology, particularly in relation to serial offenders. I could see my background and upbringing shared a lot of common elements with serious repeat offenders, particularly rapists and murderers. But I knew I wasn't a rapist or a killer. I knew I wasn't suppressing those desires either. After a lot of soul-searching, I decided I knew where the crucial divergence had come. But I still felt as if I was very close psychologically to what had shaped those criminals. I wanted to help them understand themselves and maybe work with them to find a route towards redemption or rehabilitation. I know that sounds like a pipe dream, but I do believe that none of us lacks all humanity.

If someone came to you having encountered a person who has obvious criminal tendencies, would you suggest he or she go to the police or a mental health professional for help and advice?

It depends on your relationship to them. Of course, you can't report someone to the police because you think they might commit a crime, only if you know for certain what their plans are. Without concrete information, there's nothing the police can do. I'd say if you're close to the person, you should try to persuade them to seek counselling or some sort of behavioural therapy. You'll probably fail, however. If you're in an abusive relationship, the best thing for both of you is for you to walk away. No, make that run away.

Do you have any interest in sport? Any teams or athletes you admire?

I understand the semiotics of sport in bonding, particularly between males. So I make sure I know enough to contribute to the conversation. I enjoy football occasionally, and I support Bradfield Victoria, the premier league football club in the city where I've lived and worked for most of the last dozen years. What I really enjoy is computer gaming. Tomb Raider, Skyrim, that sort of thing. I'm not much of a team player, so I never really got on with World of Warcraft.

THE RETRIBUTION by Val McDermid

I discovered Val McDermid’s books on the small screen, via the excellent ITV series Wire in the Blood. I can’t imagine a better actor to play Tony Hill than Robson Green, and when I started reading the books, Tony quickly became one of my favorite series characters. To be fair, the character of Carol Jordan is as deep, complex, and fascinating as any McDermid has created, but for me, these stories have always been Tony’s.

But I digress…

THE RETRIBUTION, the seventh entry in the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan series, brings back a villain more vivid than Hannibal Lecter in the form of Jacko Vance, whom we first met in WIRE IN THE BLOOD. Jacko is terrifying in no small measure because McDermid doesn’t “overdraw” him, providing exactly the right amount of detail about his background and motivation (and you won’t be lost if you haven’t yet read  WIRE IN THE BLOOD). He is, at every level, disturbing.

Jacko’s been safely ensconced in prison since Carol and Tony put him there. When he escapes, he does so with a vengeance, and in a mind to mete out the retribution of the title. It’s difficult for me to describe the arc of the story without giving away too much, and so I’ll say just that I was alternately petrified, heartbroken, angry, and fascinated as I read.

One of the (many) things I love about McDermid’s books is that they don’t have just the one story. In this one, Jacko’s escape is but one case occupying Tony, Carol, and the crack police team. We also see the dark side of “corporate” politics (in this case, the corporation being the police department), and the realism with which these shenanigans are painted made me squirm.

My point here is that THE RETRIBUTION isn’t just one story. It is several, and each is woven with its neighbors in such a fashion as to make the book really and truly difficult to put down.

I realize that many readers are reluctant to start a series with its most recent book especially when that book is closely tied to a predecessor, but as with all beautifully crafted stories, THE RETRIBUTION doesn’t require you to have read the others. Of course, I would recommend them all…and if you’re inclined to start at the beginning, all the better, but it’s not absolutely necessary.

All of the series stories I read include some books I like more than the others. The Tony Hill/Carol Jordan series is no exception. For example, I enjoyed last year’s FEVER OF THE BONE, but it was not my favorite of the series. And THE RETRIBUTION now occupies that spot.

And the ending of THE RETRIBUTION? Simply one of the best story endings ever.

Author's Website: www.valmcdermid.com

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The Book-Eating Ocean

This week on Dead Guy, I'm talking about books that fall into the Atlantic Ocean, never making it to American shores...and some that make it, but need more readers!

THE WHISPERER by Donato Carrisi

THE WHISPERER has been knocking around for quite a few years now, having been published in “nearly twenty countries” and transited into a bunch of languages from its original Italian. I’ll freely admit that its global success was no small part of why I was keen to read it.

I also like police procedurals—which THE WHISPERER is—and serial killer tales, a category into which it also fits. So I was predisposed to like THE WHISPERER. While I did like it, I didn’t love it as much as I thought I would…but the reasons for this are a function of my idiosyncrasies rather than problems with the story itself.

THE WHISPERER concerns the search by a team of cops for the murderer of six missing children. The hunt kicks off in gruesome style, when six child-sized left arms (just left arms) are discovered buried in the woods. Each of the members of the police squad and each of the (potential) bad guys has a voice of his or her own, and each has an interesting backstory.

About halfway through, THE WHISPERER also becomes a psychological thriller, and in the context of the story, this makes perfect sense, particularly as the transition doesn’t focus on just one character.

But ask me where the story is set…and I can’t tell you. For me, a strong sense of place is an important element of my favorite books, and the lack of it in THE WHISPERER was disconcerting. I started off quite certain that it was set in Italy. But then there’s a decidedly American-style motel, which gave me pause. And units of measurement vary between metric and imperial. And no city, state or country is ever named once in the book’s 400+ pages. I understand that Carrisi likely intended this to allow readers to focus on the story rather than the setting, but for me, it had the opposite effect.

Setting—or lack thereof—aside, THE WHISPERER is a simple story buried in a complex tale as each of the sub-plots develops. The one civilian member of the police team, who also happens to be its de facto leader, criminologist Goran Gavila, is drawn in the tradition of Val McDermid’s Tony Hill. Mila Vasquez, a specialist in child abductions who joins the team for this case specifically, is deliciously flawed.

Reading THE WHISPERER made me wish yet again that I could read Italian because I expect the prose is more elegant in the original Italian than the translated English. This book is something of a commitment—it’s long, and because each of the story lines receives copious attention in the pages, it is a bit like reading 3 or 4 books at once, but if you enjoy police procedurals in the European tradition especially, it’s worth the investment.

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Who Do You Love?

Today on Dead Guy, I'm talking about books and authors I love, and why you should too.

DEFENDING JACOB by William Landay

DEFENDING JACOB is what publishers call a “lead title,” which basically means they’re putting a whole bunch of effort into promoting the book. At Bouchercon in St. Louis, you couldn’t spit without hitting a copy (not that I was spitting). Lots of respectable authors, including Joe Finder and Linwood Barclay, have called the book variations of one of the best they’ve read. There’s not a book blogger on the planet who didn’t get at least one advance copy (I ended up with two).

DEFENDING JACOB is a solid legal thriller. The story concerns a respected assistant district attorney, Andy Barber, whose world is turned inside out and upside down when his son Jacob’s 14 year-old classmate is murdered and Jacob is accused of the crime. Hence the title. Get it? Defending Jacob?

When I started reading DEFENDING JACOB, I thought it might be worthy of all the hoopla. I really enjoyed the first 100-ish pages, which are close to and in the tradition of John Grisham (whose early books, especially A TIME TO KILL, I adore) and Scott Turow (I dug PRESUMED INNOCENT, his other books, not so much). It is a strong story, one to which most readers will be able to relate on some level. As I continued reading, though, I had two problems with the book.

First, I didn’t like the characters. Not a one of them. I found them melodramatic and overwrought, and not sympathetic in a manner to which I could relate. Barber lives in a posh Boston suburb and nothing about it or its inhabitants appealed to me. Jacob’s mom is alternately delusional and desperate. And Andy? Well, I just wanted to yell at him to remove his head from his rear end for three-quarters of the book.

But wait…if I cared enough to want to yell at him, I must have found something redeeming in the character, right? Yeah, I guess. That, or I just wanted to like the book more than I did because so many people I respect really enjoyed it. Barber is just kind of a milquetoast, and when he gets passionate or scared, it rings slightly hollow because of this. I wanted a hook other than his being a devoted dad to like him. Maybe he should have had a dog or something (I’m kidding).

And my other problem? That was the fact that I figured out the ending way too early, so I wasn’t surprised at all. Now, this could have been a function of my being lucky or could have something to do with the fact that I’ve read a lot of legal thrillers.

I’m looking forward to reading more reviews of DEFENDING JACOB because I’m pretty sure my reaction to it won’t end up being typical. My best advice is that if you enjoy legal thrillers and/or any of the variations of “Law & Order,” you’ll likely enjoy DEFENDING JACOB.

Author's Website: /www.williamlanday.com

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THE END OF EVERYTHING by Megan Abbott

I read THE END OF EVERYTHING months ago, and immediately began talking about it to anyone who would listen. I was lucky enough to meet Megan Abbott at Bouchercon in St. Louis, and I’m happy to report that she is as a wonderful a person as her books would have you hope her to be. As I spoke with more people about THE END OF EVERYTHING, one thing was clear: this book has a tremendous impact on each reader. I haven’t found anyone who didn't like it—although I expect there are some folks out there (read on for explanation).

I read THE END OF EVERYTHING simply because it was written by Abbott. Given her previous novels, that was more than enough recommendation for me. And because her previous novels were set in earlier eras, I knew this would not be a standard crime fiction tale. And it’s not.

The timeframe in which events in THE END OF EVERYTHING occur isn’t immediately clear. There are clues, though, if you watch closely and are old enough to have endured The Era of Leg Warmers and Shoulder Pads, which place it in the early to mid 1980s. The story is told with unflinching clarity and shocking honesty through the eyes of 13 year-old Lizzie Hood in the time leading to and through the disappearance from an idyllic American suburb of her best friend Evie.

One of the many aspects of this story that make it remarkable is how Lizzie and Evie’s friendship is explored. In this world of texting and everyone being everyone else’s BFFs, I can only hope that kids still have best friends like that, like I did, relationships as deep and impactful as any I’ve had before or since.

I expect that readers inclined to Puritanism could be put off by THE END OF EVERYTHING because it is both honest and graphic. Parents of teen girls will likely find it decidedly uncomfortable as Lizzie tells us all about the violence and sensuality that she sees in her idyllic suburban world. Frankly, I had forgotten just how adult I considered myself at the tender age of 13. It’s no accident that Judy Blume loved this book.

The crime at the heart of THE END OF EVERYTHING is not straightforward—for much of the book, Evie’s disappearance is truly a mystery. Because Abbott never strays from Lizzie’s narration, we don’t have many of the elements we would normally expect; there’s no third-party description of anything nor any procedure to which we’re accustomed, all of which contributes to making reading THE END OF EVERYTHING wonderfully uncomfortable.

It took me a good few pages to get used to the cadence of Lizzie’s narration because I found myself bound by these expectations, but once I relaxed into reading, the story moved as quickly as any I’ve read recently.

THE END OF EVERYTHING is an extraordinary book, a tale that is unique in every sense of the word, and one that will stay with you. If you have not yet read it, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Author's Website: www.meganabbott.com/

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World Book Night

Today on Dead Guy, I'm talking about World Book Night.

RAYLAN by Elmore Leonard

I’m a big fan of the TV series Justified. It’s one of my current and all-time favorites. Right up there with ER. I’m also a fan of many of Elmore Leonard’s books. Somehow, though, I had managed to not read any of his stories that created the characters who populate Justified

So when I heard that he was writing a new book, RAYLAN, with these selfsame characters, to say I was excited is an understatement.

I got an early copy of RAYLAN and deliberately didn’t read the jacket copy, so I didn’t know what to expect exactly. The same characters? Continuations of story lines I’d seen on the show? Entirely new characters (except, of course, Raylan Givens himself)? Stories that existed independently of the TV show’s take on Harlan, Kentucky?

The answer, it turned out, was “yes” to all of the above. RAYLAN has many of the same characters as the TV series, but they’re each slightly different. Like parallel-universe versions. The places and plot lines are also similar, but not the same. I was thrilled, too, that Mags, the character Margo Martindale played with painful perfection in Justified, is absent from RAYLAN, replaced by a male character who fills the role just fine. Martindale did such a beautiful job with Mags that it makes sense to leave her be.

But whether you watch Justified or not, whether you’ve read Elmore Leonard before or not, RAYLAN is a joy. It’s really two novels in one, with a couple of plot lines that touch but never really intertwine. The characters are each vintage Leonard, and their cadence will make you want to read passages aloud. The book is not laugh-out-loud funny, but it is clever as hell.

In some respects, the relationships in RAYLAN work better than those in Justified. Boyd and Ava make only a brief appearance, for example, but one that makes far more sense than their relationship in the show. RAYLAN doesn’t waste time on anything silly—Leonard, after all, treats each word as though it costs a million bucks—but manages to have all the depth it needs when it matters, whether talking about the impact of strip mining on Kentucky communities or the merits of poker as a career choice for smart young women.

Nobody will ever accuse Elmore Leonard of being politically correct, and RAYLAN is no exception. Yet he is respectful of his story, its heroes and villains.

Reading RAYLAN, it’s impossible to forget you’re in the hands of a master. Elmore Leonard knows how to tell a story, it’s just that simple. His dialog is often touted, but for me, it’s his descriptions of the regular world, the pot growers, court reporters, and race horse owners, that make RAYLAN vintage Leonard. If you’ve never read his books, this is a fine spot to start, and if you have, RAYLAN will be like slipping on your very favorite, if a bit itchy, sweatshirt.

Author's Website: www.elmoreleonard.com

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