Rocky Road to Dublin Features in Sherlock Holmes

I Have A Thing

Check out http://www.powderburnflash.com/?q=node/378 for latest flash fiction from Irish crime fiction writer James M McGowan

John Connolly, Lee Child, Carol O'Connell, Otto Penzler at Fiction Center, New York, Wed Nov 11th

Mercantile Library Center for Fiction in NY City hosts a crime fiction evening moderated by Otto Penzler on Wed 11th Nov 2009 at 6.30.

A great recurring character in a series you love becomes an old friend. You learn about their strange quirks and their haunted pasts and root for them every time they face danger. But where do some of the most fascinating sleuths in the mystery and thriller world really come from?

In the anthology, The Lineup, Otto Penzler has gathered the best crime writers of today to tell the stories behind the detectives they've created and we're bringing some of them to the Center.

John Connolly was born in Dublin, Ireland and is a contributing writer to The Irish Times. His first novel, Every Dead Thing, was published in 1999, and introduced the character of Charlie Parker who has been featured in seven of Connolly's novels. He is also the author of several other books including Bad Men.

Carol O'Connell is the author of eleven books, ten featuring Kathy Mallory, most recently Bone by Bone, and a stand-alone Judas Child. She lives in New York City.

Lee Child has written thirteen novels featuring drifter Jack Reacher, including most recently Gone Tomorrow. He is also the editor of the anthology, Killer Year.

Otto Penzler is the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City, and the editor of many mystery anthologies, including The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, for which he won an Edgar Award. He lives in New York.

Hard Case Crime Night Wednesday, October 28th at 7pm

Hard Case Crime Night with Peter Blauner, Russell Atwood and Charles Ardai
Wednesday, October 28th at 7pm, Center for Fiction, New York

Hard Case Crime is a publishing house dedicated to bringing back the entertainment, suspense and excitement of the golden age of paperback crime novels. This event will feature three of their best writers.

Peter Blauner won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel for Slow Motion Riot. His subsequent books include the New York Times bestseller The Intruder and Slipping Into Darkness.

Russell Atwood is a former managing editor of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Losers Live Longer is his second Payton Sherwood mystery and is set against the seedy backdrop of the Lower East Side.

"Charles Ardai" is the alias of award-winning mystery writer Richard Aleas. He is also the co-creator of Hard Case Crime.

Crips and Bloods: Made in America

Crips and Bloods: Made in America, Directed by Stacy Peralta, Produced by Baron Davis, DVD, PBS Independent Lens, 94 minutes.

“Part of the mechanics of oppressing people is to pervert them to the extent that they become their own oppressors.” - Kumasi, 2009.

This Independent Lens production for PBS is a documentary, a sound track, a sociological and historical review, a vivid dissection of the murder that young black men carve through their own community.
This film is also an attempt to act as an adjunct to the peace and reconciliation movements in LA founded and run by ex-gang members. Listening to these articulate and reflective gang members it is sobering to assess the waste of talent and potential apart from the misery behind the 15,000 deaths over the last 40 years in LA County.

The fundamental question of why the internecine feud between the Crips and Bloods has gone untreated or unchecked is addressed in the movie. They are not white or rich, basically. The irony of Blacks killing other Blacks who share the same sidewalks, strip malls, poverty, neglect, urban decay, stigmatization and color is dissected although remains baffling.

One cogent explanation is provided by the 62 year old Kumasi, an original Slauson gang member (they used fists rather than Uzis) “Part of the mechanics of oppressing people is to pervert them to the extent that they become their own oppressors.”

Kumasi has spent 18 years in gaol – he is a revelation – passionate, articulate, forceful, enunciating the oppression and dismay with a voice made for paying attention to, with a timbre made for radio or TV that you could listen to for hours.

In one scene when he recounts how the violence was precipitated in Watts in the 1960s he remarks that “Every day he's (police, whites, the man) feeding me a spoonful of hatred. Every day that's my diet a spoonful of hatred.” Not surprisingly it's going to erupt somewhere and it did in the 1965 Watts' riots and in1992 after the Rodney King trial.

This documentary traces the genesis of the Crips and Bloods from the time of the disintegration of organized black power and civil rights organization after the murder or incarceration of every influential Black leader - Malcom X, Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King for example.

The territorial limits on Blacks (enforced with manic determination by the racist LA police) fostered a mind set of claiming and protecting territory within the segregated area by various local youths. It consisted of fist fights often at set times – everyone knew you had an appointment so you had to make sure you were there. There were almost no guns or lethal weapons.

After the optimism of the Black Power period was quashed the gangs were re-initiated but this time they were more deadly. The Crips evolved from the Slausons. The Bloods (a name that black soldiers called themselves in Vietnam) established themselves as the rival force to the Crips and black on black murder became the de facto norm.

Ironically the rival gang members were dying by the hundreds every year defending blocks where they were confined by the LAPD. The 'enemy' was not perceived as the establishment, the ruling class, the government, the police – the enemy was the fellow deprived Blacks living in adjacent blocks with the same paucity of schooling, skills and opportunities.

The main aim of the film makers was to start a debate and close the gang warfare down, to highlight the discrepancy between 15,000 African American killing each other and what the reaction would be if affluent white adolescents starting killing each other in such numbers in Beverly Hills.

Forest Whitaker who narrates the film made the valid comparison that the war in Northern Ireland which claimed approx 3,600 deaths (see the Cain Project) in the same time period prompted major initiatives, Nobel prize winners, disarmament and major funding initiatives but nothing of even remote urgency happened in LA.

The main initiatives even now are coming from ex gang members through education and dialog and this movie attempts to bolster this work by producing a cogent, artistic and urgent call to reverse the tide of remorseless murder. One short segement features the mothers of young men killed on both sides, face to camera, and the names of their sons scrolling past. Most are crying, all are grieving - and don't forget there are 15,000 other mothers in one small area of LA County.

The gangs were made in America, the Crips and Bloods were made in America, the poverty, police brutality, white supremacy and oppression were made in America. It is time that justice was made in America.

Dominick Dunne Dies at 83

Dominick John Dunne (October 29, 1925 - August 26, 2009) came from a gifted Irish-American Catholic family in Connecticut. His early career as a TV producer and member of the glitterati imploded at age 50 after his divorce and coincided with the end of his lucrative career in show business.

After sequestering himself in an isolated cottage for six months he refashioned himself as a writer and then later as a true crime writer after his daughter was murdered by her estranged boyfriend. The accuser got four years for manslaughter instead of a longer sentence which a murder conviction would warrant. Dunne objected loudly in court at the sentence and subsequently derailed the career of the judge in the case.

Like many parents he was outraged by the way victims of crime were treated and realized he could have an impact through his writing. Before the murder of his daughter he freely admits he cared less about the criminal justice system or its workings.

He subsequently wrote a fierce account of the trial for Vanity Fair and became the defining voice of that magazine for many years. He also defined how a new generation of writers would consider true crime reporting and many tried to capture his level of passion and elan. His awakening to the justice system however focused on celebrity crime like the Menendez Brothers, OJ Simpson and Phil Spector rather than how the general population interacted with the criminal justice system.

The documentary After The Party (2008) was a critical success and is a major insight into how he viewed himself as a child and a man. The film is full of pathos and courage - he tried to atone for various failures in the course of the documentary and admitted his personal and professional mistakes.

See the official website for more details.

The Homicide Report

The Homicide Report is an experiment by the LA Times to act as a counterbalance to the glamourous and sensational true crime coverage in the tabloids and TV. The FBI promulgated the out-of-control spectre of black on white (female) crime even after crime levels fell off dramatically in the 1990s. (Remember FBI estimations of 200 serial killers roaming America?).

TV shows reinforce this stereotype as do the multi-million selling True Crime books which ignore the reality that the majority of crime across America is perpetrated by young urban poor Hispanic and Black males on young urban poor Hispanic and Black males.

The Homicide Report addresses this imbalance in perception and manufactured fear by outlining each death in LA with the unadorned details that are so compelling and gruesome as you scan through them.