Maxim Jakubowski on Black is the Night

 

It actually began with a shot.

An imposing cathedral somewhere in the French provinces. A happy couple on the steps leaving the ceremony behind, smiles on their faces, the bride wearing the obligatory white. And then the shot breaks up the cheering crowd and the groom collapses to the floor.

It was Paris in 1968 and my first encounter with Cornell Woolrich, the week that François Truffaut's 'La Mariée Etait en Noir' opened. A film classic better known here as 'The Bride Wore Black', adapted from the unforgettable novel by Cornell Woolrich.

At first it was a little confusing as, having been brought up in France, I hadn't made the connection between Woolrich and William Irish, a pseudonym he used on a number of books and short stories, and which French publishers somehow had highlighted on the majority of his books issued there. I had probably read a number of his stories in magazines, probably those of a more supernatural bent as I was at the time more of an expert on SF &fantasy and hadn't immediately puzzled out the Irish/Woolrich connection. To this day his books are generally signed by William Irish in France. An oddity of the French publishing scene where, similarly the wonderful novels by my dear, late friend Derek Raymond, are attributed to his real name, Robin Cook (as the US writer of medical chillers is almost unknown there...).

At any rate, this was my introduction to the dark world of death, broken love and melancholy loners that is characteristic of Woolrich.

He is an author's author. The general public mostly know him because of the many film and TV adaptations: 'Phantom Lady', 'Rear Window', Mississippi Mermaid', 'I Married a Dead Man', 'Black Angel', 'Deadline at Dawn', 'Night has a Thousand Eyes', 'Union City', and over 50 others.

Flash forward 20 years and I decide to launch Black Box Thrillers, a new imprint to rediscover some of the classics of noir, much inspired by the fact that so many wonderful US authors appear to be better known in Europe and are mostly out of print in their own language. And my first choice is, naturally, Woolrich. By now I have read all his books and a good chunk of his hundreds of stories and I am not just a fan but, with my own writing hat on, heavily under his influence.

He 'talks' to me; over the gulf of years we share some of the same obsessions: the cloak of night, the breathless passage of time that none of us can halt, the seductiveness of the femme fatale who we know is bad for us but can't stop lusting after, the downbeat endings, the strong sense of despair that life sometimes throws in our path.

I have no doubt that had I not read Woolrich (and a few other noir poets of the night like Marc Behm, David Goodis and Jim Thompson) I might have not begun writing crime & mystery and remained in the SF & fantasy ghetto. So, you know who to blame!

A Sunday dim sum lunch with Nick Landau and Vivien Cheung of the Titan group and my erstwhile silent partners in Murder One saw us brainstorming ideas for some new projects for Titan Books to follow up on the anthologies I had edited for them and which had performed reasonably well. Somehow the subject of Woolrich came up in the conversation as Nick is as much of a classic film fan as I am.

There have been a spate of recent anthologies with American small presses featuring stories influenced by the music of many luminaries: Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Jimmy Buffett, etc... Lightning struck Baker Street (which is where the restaurant we were dining in was...)! Why not do the same with influential writers? We agreed on the spot Woolrich would be the first (I have since followed up with a similar book under the halo of J.G. Ballard, which will appear in 2023).

There were crime authors I knew who shared my passion for Woolrich which I approached and every single one came on board without a moment's hesitation. Then I mentioned the project on social media and was deluged by fervent expressions of interest. Some writers I would never have dreamed of contacting, others whose work does not on the surface appear to have any connection with Woolrich but were adamant in expressing how important he was for them. I had an embarrassment of potential contributors to the anthology and had to turn down so many with a heavy heart. And then there were dozens of speculative submissions; two of which actually made it into the final book.

I am absolutely delighted by the volume that came together. Truly marvellous stories, each and every one flying high under one aspect or another of the melancholy and murderous world that Cornell Woolrich created. Not imitations, but tales that are in his image, some that reflect twists on his themes, others that ingeniously transpose his world into contemporary times without losing the essential poignancy that lies at the heart of his work, every one a winner.

I have now edited, for good or worse, well over a hundred anthologies but 'Black is the Night' is undoubtedly in my Top 5.

Black is the Night edited by Maxim Maxim Jakubowski (Titan Books) Out Now

A gritty and thrilling anthology of 28 new short stories in tribute to pulp noir master, Cornell Woolrich, author of 'Rear Window' that inspired Alfred Hitchock's classic film. Featuring Neil Gaiman, Kim Newman, James Sallis, A.K. Benedict, USA Today-bestseller Samantha Lee Howe, Joe R. Lansdale and many more. An anthology of exclusive new short stories in tribute to the master of pulp era crime writing, Cornell Woolrich. Woolrich, also published as William Irish and George Hopley, stands with Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and Dashiell Hammett as a legend in the genre. He is a hugely influential figure for crime writers, and is also remembered through the 50+ films made from his novels and stories, including Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, The Bride Wore Black, I Married a Dead Man, Phantom Lady, Truffaut's La Sirene du Mississippi, and Black Alibi. Collected and edited by one of the most experienced editors in the field, Maxim Jakubowski, features original work from: Neil Gaiman, Joel Lane, Joe R. Lansdale, Vaseem Khan, Brandon Barrows, Tara Moss, Kim Newman, Nick Mamatas, Mason Cross, Martin Edwards, Donna Moore, James Grady, Lavie Tidhar, Barry N. Malzberg, James Sallis, A.K. Benedict, Warren Moore, Max Decharne, Paul Di Filippo, M.W. Craven, Charles Ardai, Susi Holliday, Bill Pronzini, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Maxim Jakubowski, Joseph S. Walker, Samantha Lee Howe, O'Neil De Noux , David Quantick, Ana Teresa Pereira, William Boyle

Charlotte Carter - In a world of jazz with Nanette Hayes

 

New Yorker Nanette Hayes the main protagonist in Charlotte Carter's excellent noir jazz infused series is a young black jazz musician who not only has a lust for life but an aptitude for solving crimes. Set in streets of New York this acclaimed series has just been republished by Baskerville with some glorious covers by Bristol based artist Lucy Turner who was asked to redesign the covers. Originally published in the 1990s this underrated but brilliantly written series when first published pointed me in the direction of a character who was not only funny with a sense of humour that made the series stand out but also showed that there could be strong sexually confident women who knew what they wanted and be a dab hand at solving crimes as well. 

At a time when there were not (in my opinion) enough black female crime writers visible within the genre (we did have Eleanor Taylor Bland, Barbara Neely, Valerie Wilson Wesley, and Grace F. Edwards) coming across Charlotte Carter made me realise that one had to dig deeper to find these gems to read and also the fact that this series was and still is a delight, whether you are reading them for the first time or whether you are reacquainting yourself with them like I am. Any author who uses Theolonius Monk song titles as chapter headings is is certainly worth reading.

The first book in the series Rhode Island Red sees jazz loving Nanette offering a fellow street musician a bed for the night. Finding him dead the following morning Nanette is soon involved with a strange and sinister couple, a fellow jazz lover who just happens to be a gangster as well and who is someone that she could easily fall for as well as trying to solve what might be the mystery that the jazz world has been trying to solve for quite sometime. Rhode Island Red was clearly inspired by Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, which being one of my all time favourite crime novels is another reason to enjoy this book so much. Furthermore, Charlotte Carter's love of film noir also comes shining through in her prose.

The second book in the series is Coq Au Vin and this time it sees Nanette in the city of love that is Paris. Nanette is trying to find her aunt Vivian who has disappeared. As Nanette hooks up with André a self-taught violinist from Detroit (who is also in Paris) as she searches for her bohemian aunt she finds herself once again deep in the midst of danger, this time in the dark side of historic Paris and at the centre of attention of some extremely dangerous people. Once again Charlotte Carter has continued to share her love of jazz by giving the chapter titles the names of songs sung by some very impressive jazz artists including Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltrane, Billy Strayhorn and Clifford Brown to name a few. 

© Ayo Onatade

Like Rhode Island Red, Coq Au Vin is an intensely jazz filled book. Jazz is certainly the main narrative that is seen via both Nanette and André and their interactions with each other. This time around one has the added love affair, that of the relationship between Paris and Black Americans. One cannot forget that some of the best jazz musicians for example Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Theolonius Monk and Charles Mingus all spent time in Paris during their lives. 

The third book in the series is Drumsticks and after a rather tragic sojourn to Paris, Nanette is back in New York drowning her sorrows metaphorically and figuratively and just about managing to make ends meet. Things start to look up when she receives a Voodoo doll as a present. Could her luck be changing after all? It falls to Nanette to investigate when the lady who sent her the doll is found dead. Who killed her and why? Liking up with some unlikely allies sees Nanette delving into the life of Ida the dead women who had rather a large number of dark skeletons in her cupboard.

Whilst it was great to see Nanette in Paris in the second book in the series seeing her back in her usual haunt of New York was a delight. There was slightly more grittiness in the dialogue (which I loved) which was not so evident in Coq Au Vin, but the descriptions of New York were just as vivid as those of Paris. Charlotte Carter certainly knows how to draw her readers into a city. Her descriptions are profound, lush and very much part and parcel of this trilogy. Again Charlotte Carter does not disappoint us when it comes to her chapter titles, with song titles from the Nat King Cole Trio, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, Horace Silver, John Coltrane, Chet Baker and Dexter Gordon.

Nanette's ability to be ferocious in what she delights in whether it be falling in love with men (decent or not) fine wine and food and of course the best of jazz music and not forgetting her innate ability to solve mysteries is what makes this series amongst the best music inspired series to read. 

It is an utter shame that we readers only have a trilogy to read about Nanette Hayes. I certainly wish that there were more. Charlotte Carter not only managed to write a thrilling series with a strong, sexy female character but she also brought jazz to life and enthused this series with jazz music that would delight anyone whether or not the are a novice when it comes to their love of jazz or a longstanding lover of Jazz. 

One of the best things of this series which always makes these books worth rereading is the great sense of place, characterisation and the love of jazz and jazz history that flows through the pages. I love the fact that jazz songs are cited, it makes you want to go and seek out all of them, You don't have to be a fan of jazz to enjoy this series but it does help and its incredibly easy to immerse yourself in reading this series with jazz playing in the background.

If you haven't read this series before then do so. They may have been originally published in the 90s but that has not stopped them from being great reads today. Welcome to the world of sexy, sassy Nanette Hayes, who if anything will bring jazz to life as she solves a number of mysteries. Re-reading these have been a joy. 

Charlotte Carter's Nanette Hayes series has been re-issued by Baskerville a John Murray Press imprint. More information can be found here.

When history taps you on the shoulder by Chris Lloyd

There was a moment when I was researching for The Unwanted Dead that stopped me in my tracks.

For me, one of the most important parts of research is walking the streets where my characters walk. I need to experience all the sights, sounds and smells that they do, the light at certain times of day, the sense of place that they take for granted and that I can’t. And even though the book is set in Paris in 1940, the city stays the same, a witness to its own past, and the streets and squares all resonate with that history. So I’d spent days losing myself in its heart. I’d wandered around the Fifth Arrondissement, where my protagonist, Eddie Giral, lives and I found his street and his apartment block. I’d walked to and from Thirty-Six, the police station where he works. I’d looked into the windows he’d have looked out of. I’d tracked down all the hotels and buildings that had been requisitioned by the Germans and where Eddie might have been summoned. I’d found the now-gentrified parts of town that would have been the unloved and ragged refuge of villains and rascals in Eddie’s day. I’d even had an unexpected moment of calm in the apiary in the Jardin du Luxembourg, which ended up as the setting to a few key scenes in the book. 

And throughout all this time, I’d come across unassuming plaques on nondescript walls, marking the place where a Resistance fighter fell or where a gun battle took place during the battle to liberate the city. I came across the building where poet Robert Desnos was living when he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 – he survived Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Flossenburg only to die of typhoid in Theresienstadt a month after the camp was liberated. Bullet holes still mark the stone around the windows and doors to ordinary homes and office blocks. Metro stations and squares are named after exceptionally brave but ordinary people murdered under the Occupation. And each one left their mark on me.

But there was one moment that truly stopped me. A small grey plaque that affected me more than any other. It was in the Pletzel, the old Jewish quarter, on the Right Bank. You walk through narrow streets before coming to a bustling road, still fairly narrow but wider than any of the others in the neighbourhood. Along the way, you’ve gone past kosher bakers and halal butchers, patisseries and delis, restaurants and takeaways. Until you come to a school. A primary school. Almost hidden inside the unobtrusive entrance, a gateway like an old mews, is the plaque. High up on the wall outside the porter’s room, it’s easy to miss. It lists the names of the children from the school who were deported to Auschwitz in 1942 and who never returned. They were all aged six, seven, eight years old. And the list of names is long. I stood and stared, rooted to the spot, as shoppers and workers hurried around me. Like a freeze-frame in a movie. It was some minutes before I could bring myself to stop reading and rereading the names and move on. I didn’t take a photo, it wouldn’t have been right.

I write stories set in this city at this time. Their prime purpose is to entertain. My character, Eddie, is irreverent and cynical, mouthy and damaged. He fights the evil he finds in his work with flippant words and a dogged tenacity. His moral compass is not always how he might have wanted it to be as a young man going away to the First World War. He gets things wrong and does wrong things. Yet underneath the grim wisecracks and mocking iconoclasm is a sense of responsibility. Towards the victims and towards the vulnerable. 

And that, I think, is what I took away from my walks around the city and on the day I saw the plaque in the primary school. The job of historical fiction, be it crime or any other genre, is to entertain, but there’s another purpose, and it took history to tap me on the shoulder to bring that home to me. There’s a responsibility in writing historical fiction. In whatever story, set in whatever period, there has to be an underlying truth and honesty. It goes beyond ensuring your tale is historically accurate and your research is as painstaking as you can make it. There’s a responsibility in using fiction to give a voice to people who lost theirs long ago. To enabling a sense of justice for the victims and the vulnerable. And that, in my case, is where Eddie comes in.

The Unwanted Dead by Chris Lloyd (Orion Publishing) Out 17 September 2020

Paris, Friday 14th June 1940. The day the Nazis march into Paris. It made headlines around the globe. Paris police detective Eddie Giral - a survivor of the last World War - watches helplessly on as his world changes forever. But there is something he still has control over. Finding whoever is responsible for the murder of four refugees. The unwanted dead, who no one wants to claim. To do so, he must tread carefully between the Occupation and the Resistance, between truth and lies, between the man he is and the man he was. All the while becoming whoever he must be to survive in this new and terrible order descending on his home.

Inspector Maigret is coming back to ITV this Christmas

Rowan Atkinson will be playing Georges Simenon's eponymous Inspector in a new film Maigret's Dead Man, which will be shown on ITV at 9pm on Christmas Day.

Inspector Maigret receives calls from a mysterious man who seeks police protection.  However, the next day the man’s body turns up leaving Maigret to piece together the man’s life which leads the Inspector into the slums of Paris.  This is also entwined with a series of vicious, murderous attacks on three wealthy farms in Picardy.

Research and origami with Anna Jaquiery

Today’s guest blog is by author Anna Jaquiery.  She is the author of the Commandant Serge Morel series set in Paris. She talks to Shotsblog about research and origami.

One of my favourite things about writing a novel is the research that goes into the story. This can be research into a detail or a major aspect of the book that I’m working on – anything from a type of architecture or wine to a particular religion or culture. I love the way a subject I initially know nothing about can gradually consume me. Over the past weeks and months, as part of my research for a new crime novel, I’ve been reading about North African migration to France. The more I learn, the more I want to know.

A couple of years ago, I found myself unexpectedly invested in another topic when I wrote my first book The Lying-Down Room. In it, I introduced my detective, Commandant Serge Morel. As I was developing the character, it came to me that he would have a passion and a gift for origami. It wasn’t something I’d planned, but once I thought about it, it made absolute sense. Since the book’s publication, several people have asked whether origami is a hobby of mine. The truth is, I can barely fold a paper airplane. But the art of paper folding suits Morel perfectly. He is a solitary man; alive to his emotions, but restrained; he has a logical way of thinking, and is also a romantic. Origami is both precise and poetic. It requires scientific rigor, and the ability to let your imagination take flight. I discovered exciting origami artists such as the late Eric Joisel, and Robert J. Lang. Based in California, Lang is an American physicist and also one of the foremost origami artists in the world. He gave me some insight into his craft. With all the time I’ve spent researching this particular aspect of Morel’s life, I’ve grown to really admire this art form. I’m still useless at it, but I’ve become a fan.

You can follow her on Twitter @AnnaJaquiery

  

Death in the Rainy Season

Phnom Penh, Cambodia; the rainy season. When a French man, Hugo Quercy, is found brutally murdered, Commandant Serge Morel finds his holiday drawn to an abrupt halt. Quercy - dynamic, well-connected - was the magnetic head of a humanitarian organisation which looked after the area's neglected youth. Opening his investigation, the Parisian detective soon finds himself buried in one of his most challenging cases yet. Morel must navigate this complex and politically sensitive crime in a country with few forensic resources, and armed with little more than a series of perplexing questions: what was Quercy doing in a hotel room under a false name? What is the significance of his recent investigations into land grabs in the area? And who could have broken into his home the night of the murder? Becoming increasingly drawn into Quercy's circle of family and friends - his adoring widow, his devoted friends and bereft colleagues - Commandant Morel will soon discover that in this lush land of great beauty and immense darkness, nothing is quite as it seems.

Death in the Rainy Season is by Anna Jaquiery and is published on 9 April 2015 (Pan Macmillian, £16.99

Interested in a copy of Death in the Rainy Season?  There is a copy of  Death in the Rainy Season up for grabs!  To get your hands on a copy please send your name, email address and postal address to shotscomp@yahoo.co.uk. Don’t forget to put Death in the Rainy Season Competition in the subject line!  Closing date is Monday 13^th April 2015

 

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