25 October 2010

About Black & White by Lewis Shiner, available as free PDF

Blackwhite Via Jenny D. of Light Reading, I heard about a book that sounds excellent, Black & White, by Lewis Shiner. Black & White, which was on several "best crime fiction for 2008" lists including the LA Times,  is published by Subterranean Press (2008, 2009) and as well as being a print book is available for free as a PDF at the Fiction Liberation Front site (direct link to the PDF is at the author's website). According to Jenny, the transfer into Kindle format is very easy. There is also a link to an audio-interview, and many reviews and quotes about the novel. Plot summary:

"When Michael follows his dying father to North Carolina, a lifetime of lies begins to unravel. His pursuit of his father's past--haunted by voodoo, adultery and murder--takes him to a place called Hayti, once the most prosperous black community in the South.  Now the mysteries of Michael's own heritage become a matter of life and death, as racial conflicts barely restrained since the 1960s erupt again. Rooted in the true story of the US government's urban renewal policy and its disastrous aftermath, Black & White is a literary thriller, a family saga, and a searing portrait of institutionalized hatred."

Lewis Shiner's autobiography is absolutely fascinating, both as a story of a life and an account of how he learnt to write.  

I believed that plotting was my biggest weakness, so I read Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald in the evenings and tried my hand at some mystery short stories. One of the first was called "Buyin' My Heartaches a Beer," about a construction worker who gets framed for his wife's murder. I got a nice long rejection letter from ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE for that one, and though I never did sell them anything, it was the first personal response I ever got on a story and it made me think I was on the right track. I followed it up with "Deep Without Pity," featuring an Austin private eye named Dan Sloane. At the time nobody had done a private eye who was a Vietnam vet, and I had dreams that he would catch on and I could do a series of novels about him.

---

Less than a month later my first Dan Sloane story, "Deep Without Pity," sold to the new MYSTERY MONTHLY, and for the first time I dared to think of myself as a real, honest-to-god writer. Unfortunately, I was premature again. The editor at GALILEO was "dismayed" with the rewrite I did for him, and I went a year and a half without knowing (or really much caring) if the story was going to be published at all. MYSTERY MONTHLY folded the month before my story was scheduled to come out. It was another three years before my next sale, when SHAYOL, a semi-professional magazine out of Kansas City, finally bought "Kings of the Afternoon."

There is lots more fascinating stuff about the author's path as a SF, fantasy or mystery writer, and here he explains why he now gives away his work for free (link via Jenny D).

More information:
Arts&Literature: Lewis Shiner reflects on Black & White. 
Austin Chronicle: review of Black & White. 
Black Clock: A long talk with Lewis Shiner. 
Wikipedia. 

25 Oct 2010 18:18:00 | Books

The comments to this entry are closed.

NEXT POST
Book review: Cemetery Lake by Paul Cleave Cemetery Lake By Paul Cleave Arrow PB, 2009 (first published 2008). Theo Tate is an ex-cop turned private investigator, who as this novel opens is supervising the exhumation of Henry Martins, a man who died some years ago. His daughter firmly believed that he had been murdered by his second wife, for whom he had abandoned his first family. The police were not convinced, but the widow’s new husband has also now died in suspicious circumstances, hence the exhumation. As Tate watches the digger at work, he notices what he at first thinks are giant, black bubbles in the lake adjoining this part of the huge cemetery. Soon he realises that the disturbance is, in fact, bodies rising to the surface – a sight that makes Bruce, the man digging up the grave, run away – in terror or in guilt? After this set-piece opening, Tate embarks on a fast-moving spiral familiar to readers of the genre. We soon learn that the reason he resigned from the Christchurch, NZ, police force two years ago was because his wife and young daughter were victims of a drunk driver. Emily, the girl, was killed and Bridget, the wife, is in a catatonic...
PREVIOUS POST
Book Review: The Reversal by Michael Connelly The Reversal By Michael Connelly Orion 2010 Michael Haller, the Lincoln lawyer, is presented with an unusual proposition – to be a special prosecutor for a 24-year-old case in which a young girl was taken from her garden one Sunday afternoon and within an hour found dead in a dumpster. A suspect, the driver of a tow truck, was quickly identified and the girl’s sister identified him as the abductor. He was tried and imprisoned for the crime. Now, DNA analysis of some of the original evidence raises questions about the conviction, and the criminal, Jason Jessup, wins the right for a retrial. Although the detectives and lawyers involved in the original case have all died or are too ill to contribute now, the DA’s office wants an independent prosecution to reduce the damages it will have to pay out if Jessup gets off (as seems likely). Haller, until now firmly on the defence side of the line, agrees to take the case if he can employ his ex-wife, Maggie “McFierce”, as his second chair, and LAPD detective Harry Bosch as his investigator. The main plot of the book alternates the story of Bosch’s (third-person) investigation of the old case,...

Maxine

Science editor who likes reading crime fiction

Search

Become a Fan

My Other Accounts

Recent Comments