Tributes: Elmore Leonard, Tom Clancy, Barbara Park

This is the time of year I pay tribute to authors who have left us and left an indelible mark on my reading life. Elmore Leonard is one of my all time favorite authors. His quirky but realistic style of writing is like no other. Tom Clancy’s international thrillers were just that: thrilling. And Barbara Park influenced reading for children like no other author could.

About a decade ago I saw an interview by Larry King with Tom Clancy who said he couldn’t believe how lucky he had been because he got to lead a life of make belief in creating scenarios where the good guy always won, usually his hero Jack Ryan who has been portrayed on screen by three actors, Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck or his second hero Mr. Clark who has been portrayed by actors Willem Dafoe and Liev Schreiber.  The last novel by Clancy that I read was The Bear and the Dragon. He collaborated with other writers in continuing his war games. He died of an undisclosed illness at age 66 but one of his friends suggested that his heart wore out.

Barbara Park was the complete opposite of Clancy and Leonard but her influence in inspiring young girls to read goes without parallel. Sometime in the late 1990s, I was looking for books for my then youngest granddaughter Mallory. I had no problem finding books for her older sister Brittany. But Mallory was just learning to read and all I could find were simple books about animals. Then one day as I was standing in the book section of Wal-Mart and wondering if I would ever find something cute for Mallory, it happened. Out of nowhere Junie B. Jones appeared! Of course, it wasn’t like that exactly but Junie B., a mischievous kindergartner, stood out like no other fictional character. I bought one of the books and sent it to Mallory and she was off and reading! Barbara Park’s sense of humor and creativity have helped instill a love of lifetime reading as no other author could have done. She died at age 66 of ovarian cancer but Junie B. and other characters she created will live on forever.

Elmore Leonard's sense of humor and quirky style captivated me the moment I started reading his work.  The first of his novels that I read was Glitz where his “hero” goes to Puerto Rico (a place where I lived for four years) and in it he mentions the Carmen Apartments where a friend of mine lived with her young son. But it wasn’t just Puerto Rico that captured my attention, it was the characters and the plot. I have now read twenty-two of his books, the last one a compilation of nine short stories titled Fire in the Hole. And the last story in that series, Tenkiller, is one of the best short stories I’ve ever read. First of all it takes place in Okmulgee, Oklahoma where I was born. Second, he gives a hilarious portrait of the town and its inhabitants. The ending literally left me laughing out loud. He died at age 88 still at the height of his popularity.

I could go on forever extolling the virtues of these three writers. Each was unique and each contributed literature without parallel. 

The Best Books Read in 2012

It’s time of my annual wrap-up of the best books I read in 2012. Although mysteries (all sub-genres) dominate, I did read several enticing novels from other genres that captivated me.

I fell short of my goal of reading at least 100 novels last year but did manage to read 78 novels, novellas and short stories.

I began the year with Janet Evanovich’s Fearless Fourteen and ended it with her Finger Lickin’ Fifteen . I also read two books by another favorite author Carl Hiaasen and both made my favorites list: Striptease and Star Island. It’s pure joy when I pick up one of their books. Sue Grafton’s V is for Vengeance was not only one of my favorites this year but my favorite from her alphabet series. The ending was perfect.

I have tried to divide the rest of my favorites into categories:

Thrillers and Detective Procedurals:

Secret Prey by John Sandford. The murderer was a surprise although the clues were there but I love being surprised.

First Family by David Baldacci. Not wanting to give anything away, I will say there was exceptional suspense and climax.

Trial Junkies by Robert Gregory Browne. Excellent twists and turns from an author new to me. I look forward to more of his books.

Two outstanding novels by Iain Edward Henn: Disappear and The Delta Chain. This is another author new to me this year. Disappear is one of the best page turners I’ve read in years. In The Delta Chain, an array of characters, good and evil, lead to one of the longest, most harrowing climactic scenes I’ve ever read. Both are fantastic reads.

Solo by Jack Higgins. This author is one of my all-time favorites but beautiful scenes from the Greek Isles make this novel a stand-out. It is a cat and mouse hunt from England to Greece and back again.

Thicker Than Water by G.M. Ford. This is the first novel I’ve read by this author and it is a great rollicking but brutal adventure.

The Chalk Girl by Carol O’Connell.  A psychological thriller in which I can only say, wow! It is part of a series but the first I’ve read by this author. Superior plotting and writing.

The Matarese Countdown by Robert Ludlum. This is the sequel to The Matarese Circle, which I read years and years ago. I love Ludlum’s books and this one didn’t disappoint with an exciting convoluted plot.

Secrets to Die For by LJ Sellers. A violent story of rape and murder with twists and turns and an unbelievable traumatic climax. A real page turner.

Fire and Ice by Dana Stabenow. This is the first Liam Campbell mystery. The action goes from spotting herring in a plane to stumbling over bodies in a small Alaskan settlement. An excellent, thrilling read.

Cozy Mysteries:

Where There’s a Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart. This was an old-fashioned, hilarious romp, very different from many of her mysteries.

Chile Death by SusanWittig Albert. There are lots of suspects, red herrings, an unexpected villain and a rip-roaring climax. Lots of chile folklore also.

Giving Up the Ghost by Marilyn Levinson. This is a ghost story with a rousing ending to a well-plotted mystery.

Bogey’s Ace in the Hole by Marja McGraw. A thoroughly engaging cozy mystery with a climax that left me laughing out loud.

Divine Inspiration by Jane Langton. A Homer Kelly mystery that had a slow start but when the pieces finally came together, it reached a clamorous climax.

Romance:

A Stolen Chance by Linda LaRoque—romantic suspense. Outstanding storyline and one of my favorite settings: the American Southwest.

The Marriage List by Jean Joachim. I read many wonderful romances by Jean Joachim in 2012 but this one was my favorite. I truly loved it. It is a very sensual love story with plenty of yummy food to add to the spiciness of the romance.

Valentine’s Gift by Marie-Nicole Ryan. This is a sequel to See You in My Dreams, which takes place ten years later. It is a lovely follow-up of the main characters and how their lives changed but their love remained despite suspicions and unexpected illness.

Paranormal:

The Cheetah Princess by Joan Conning Afman is a beautifully written novel of love and suspense in another world setting.

Rereading:

I reread My Brother Michael by Mary Stewart. I first read it when I was a senior in college and at that time I was blown away by it. It influenced me, not only in my reading habits but also to become a world traveler. Rereading it I realized how far romantic suspense has come since then because although there was suspense, the romance was very understated. But it still remains at the top of my list of all time favorite novels.

REAL HALLOWEEN MONSTERS?

Once upon a time Halloween was a most enjoyable and safe holiday for children. My childhood memories of Halloween trick or treating in the late 1940s through the early 1950s are among the happiest that I have. It was the one time of the year when all the kids in the neighborhood could roam from house to house and stay out very late (even on a school night if that was when the holiday fell) without any adult supervision. The most fun, along with collecting candy, was trying to fool the adult neighbors as to who we were when we knocked on their doors. And oh what candy! My favorites were peanut butter logs, peanut butter kisses, candy corn and wonderful homemade popcorn balls. Nothing to worry about—it was a time of fun and freedom.

 Strangely though, the first Halloween that I can remember was very scary. We lived on an Oklahoma farm with Kerosene lamps for light and a coal-burning stove for heat. On that typical evening of the last day of October, my little brother Mike and I were seated on the divan with our mother between us. Our father had not yet come home from work. Mother began to read one of our favorite stories, The Poky Little Puppy. The story scared me because I felt sorry for the puppy who was always late coming home and missing his supper. I wanted him to be safe and sound at home with his brothers and sisters.

 Suddenly, someone knocked at our door. That in itself was strange. Certainly our father wouldn’t knock. Mother went to the door and we heard her laugh. Then—a monster walked into the living room! My brother and I huddled together and almost cried at the sight of this strange apparition. “It” was dressed in shirt and jeans and boots but its head was made out of a paper sack with the eyes cut out. We started to cry because we had never seen anything like that before. We couldn’t understand why our mother was laughing. The monster said, “Boo!” and we jumped. He sounded like our twelve-year-old cousin who lived up the road on another farm but we knew it wasn’t him because that wasn’t his head. Mother gave him an apple and the monster left. We were happy to see him go and hoped that he wouldn’t come back. But we couldn’t understand why our mother didn’t return to finish reading the story. Immediately, another monster came into the room and we both screamed and began to cry. The monster was dressed like our mother but had a paper sack head just like the other monster. It also spoke with our mother’s voice. Finally this monster left and our mother came back into the room, saying there was nothing to be afraid of. She said that people dressed in costumes on Halloween and tried to scare other people, especially children. She didn’t fool us—we knew that two monsters had visited us.

 First Published in Seasons for Writing October 2002

Do authors have favorites among their own books?

The standard response to this is usually, "The book I'm writing now." That's true for me. I always love what I'm working on at the moment. But as I look back on the books I've published there are two that stand out in my mind, maybe because they have lived within me for a very long time.

Whenever I think about A Caribbean Summer written under my romance pen name Tricia Lee, I immediately wonder just where in the story my two protagonists are at the moment. Of course, I know how they end up but I spent so much time thinking and writing this book that certain scenes pop into my mind and I get homesick for them at times. Crazy? More than likely. I love the characters. I love the setting. Sometimes I wish I were still writing it. Okay, still writing it is not quite true. I wish I could be there with them again in that time and space when certain scenes were created. The book itself gives me great joy.

The Chameleon Chase, written under my mystery pen name Lea Chan, was not meant to be a dark comedy like my other Lea Chan novels. From my point of view it isn't a comedy but if readers think that it is, that's fine with me. I conceived it long before I wrote the others. After I had written it and left it for many years, I came back to reread it and couldn't believe I had written something like that. One scene in the book surprised even me although I knew it was coming. The inspiration for the novel came after watching an old Barnaby Jones episode in the 1980s featuring actress Mariette Hartley. But as my fantasy evolved, it had nothing to do with that storyline. I fantasized so much about it until when I finally started writing it in the 1990s, my original ideas had dissipated. The novel also has scenes on my fictional island of Palmaltas with a romantic subplot. Palmaltas is a magical place for me.

I wonder--do other writers have favorites among the books and stories they have written?

ALLITERATIVELY SPEAKING

By

Anna Arlene Amsterdam

Redheaded Rosie played with perky Patsy and sassy Sally while daring Dan dived into the deep, dark water. Now, isn’t that clever, I asked myself.
When I was very young I wrote a little story and asked a teacher to read it. There was one passage that I thought was very clever such as the one above and I anxiously waited to see if she would comment on my creativity. When she finally returned my story, I quickly turned to the aforementioned passage to see if there were any comments. And yes, there were—but to my dismay, she had marked out several of the words and written in “alliteration”.

What could alliteration allude to, I asked myself. I looked the word up in the dictionary and saw that it meant, more or less, the repetition of a sound at the beginning of two or more consecutive words. And this was a bad thing? When I had read poetry with alliteration, I had thought the poets to be very talented and creative.

I asked the teacher about this and she smiled and said, “It just depends on the poet and the poem. It’s certainly acceptable when the poet intends for his work to be alliterative as in satire. But you must try to avoid it in prose.”

“But why, what’s wrong with it?” I asked alliteratively.

She smiled and simply said, “Read your passage out loud. Listen to how it sounds to you. If you had to read an entire story like that, you would lose the gist of the story and be bogged down in bouncing rhythm.”

“Oh, okay,” I answered, still alliteratively.

What a disappointment—my admirable alliteration couldn’t compete with my teacher’s exemplary expertise.

Palmaltas note: The above is a work of fiction.

(Published in Seasons for Writing, March 2002)

The Golden Age of Mystery: Ngaio Marsh

I am ending my essays about the ladies of the Golden Age of Mystery with my favorite of all of them, Ngaio Marsh. I fell in love with her sleuth Roderick Alleyn from the first book I read. I picture him as tall, dark and handsome--the way one wants a detective to be. Or at least I do. In fact when I started writing my first novel, a romance, I subconsciously named my hero Roderick Allen who lived on a Texas estate named Allensford Manor.

After I had written the first draft, I visited my mother and stepfather at their home on Lake Texoma where they had an extensive library of mystery novels. I spied their collection of Ngaio Marsh novels, grabbed one and started to read it. To my horror, I realized what I had done. Nonetheless I kept the names Allen and Allensford Manor but changed Roderick to Rockwell. I considered it my way of paying homage to Dame Ngaio.

Ngaio Marsh was born April 23, 1895 although that date can't be verified because her father didn't register her birth until 1990. She died February 18, 1982. She was born in Christchurch, New Zealand and died there also. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1966.

She studied painting and became an actress with a company that toured New Zealand. According to Wikipedia, from 1928 until the end of her life she divided her time between living in the United Kingdom and in New Zealand.

According to Wikipedia, she wrote 32 detective novels featuring her British detective Roderick Alleyn. There are only two remaining that I have not read and I'm looking forward to reading them. She has been considered as one of the four original "Queens of Crime" along with Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Agatha Christie.

Although all of her novels feature Roderick Alleyn, several also revolve around her other main interests, the theater and painting. Alleyn even marries an artist, Agatha Troy. All but four of her novels are set in England and those four are set in New Zealand.

My favorite of her novels is Clutch of Constables although when I pick up one of her books, it's with a feeling of great joy and anticipation and now I have only two remaining.

Of course, there's no law against rereading old favorites.

Hooked From the Start, Part Five: "Never open a book with weather."

One of my literary heroes is Elmore Leonard and in his ten rules for good writing, number one is "Never open a book with weather."

Say what? In the previous installment of this series of first lines by favorite authors, I talked about Ken Follett's Eye of the Needle, which indeed did begin with weather. Gripping, icy cold weather.

And other favorite novels also begin with weather:
"She was dead. What did it matter if icy needles of freezing rain flayed her skin raw . The young woman squinted into the wind pulling her wolverine hood closer. Violent gusts whipped her bearskin wrap against her legs." From The Valley of Horses by Jean Auel. As this was the second in Auel's Earth Children series, I knew I was going to read it before I ever read the first lines. It didn't matter to me how she started it. I was hooked from the first novel in the series--truly hooked from the start but not from the first lines. And after reading the subsequent books, this one remains my favorite of all of them.

From Tony Hillerman's Listening Woman:
"The Southwest wind picked up turbulence around the San Francisco Peaks, howled across the emptiness of the Moenkopi plateau, and made a thousand strange sounds in windows of the old Hopi villages at Shongopovi and Second Mesa." This was the first of Hillerman's novels that I read and I read it because I saw an interview with him on the Today Show. My interest was peaked because of the subject matter and his Navajo policemen. And after reading this book, I was determined to read every book by Hillerman. The first lines had nothing to do with my love of his books. On a side note, three years after reading Listening Woman and several of his other books, I found myself substitute teaching on a Ute reservation in SW Colorado. I remember one cold winter day when the students were quietly working, I looked out the window on the barren landscape and the mesas in the distance. A feeling of peace and tranquility came over me along with the realization that I was in Hillerman country. Incidentally, Hillerman's books were on the shelves of that classroom.

My first published novel The Pig Farm (by my alter ego Chancey Hernández) began with a reference to weather:
"The tropical night air lay heavy and dense as three men stumbled and shuffled over the stone pavement of the dark, narrow street." Whether or not those words would prevent someone from reading the novel, I have no idea. I hoped when I wrote them that they would entice readers to want to read the novel.

However, with my subsequent novels, I have not opened with weather references, heeding Leonard's advice. The Pool Lizards (the sequel to The Pig Farm) begins this way: "A body was floating in the pool Sunday morning but it was a while before I or anyone else noticed it." That first line was read at a meeting of romance authors and one lady raised her hand and said those lines made her want to read the novel. And The Pool Lizards is most definitely not a romance novel!

So, I try not to start with weather when I begin writing a novel but if weather is the subject of another author's first sentence, I will still read the novel. In fact, this leads me to the next topic in this series. Many times I am hooked from the start not with first lines but with the title such as Death in Zanzibar by M. M. Kaye.