More Killer Enthusiasm

"Dave Zeltserman's Killer is simply one of the best crime novels I've read. Not in a long time, not in ages, not this year, but ever." Juri Nummelin, Pulpetti

Gearing up for Killer

Killer is six weeks away from being released in the US and is already generating a good amount of excitement.

"Spare prose and assured pacing place this above most other contemporary noirs." - Publisher's Weekly

"With graphic imagery and exciting twists, this novel is impossible to put down and has a surprising ending. A brilliant read" - Aberdeen Press & Journal

"This novel is everything hard-boiled fiction should be - compact, direct and disciplined, and concerned with humans rather than stereotypes. It is also, for all its violent subject matter, a quietly told story, which makes its tension all the more intense" - Mat Coward, Morning Star

"Killer is a major novel of crime." Ed Gorman

"The whole book is told in tightly controlled prose that's perfectly suited to the subject matter. Killer is another bang-up job from Zeltserman, and a noir novel in the grand tradition. Don't miss it." Bill Crider

"And the surprise ending... I was trembling after reading the final pages. It's a surprise not only plot-wise, but Zeltserman also turns the theme of his novel totally upside down." - Juri Nummelin, Pulpetti

"Here at the Bookbag, we've been very impressed with Dave Zeltserman's work thus far. He uses a wonderful noirish narrative that takes you straight to the heart of the story. His story telling is very straightforward, not weighing down the story with too much style, but sticking to the substance and delivering a hard-hitting work every time. With Killer, he has done the same again." - Iain, Wear, thebookgag.co.uk

"Read the book, amici. It’s a very good one that will rock you in the last few pages." - Charlie Stella

"To put it simply, Killer is a brilliant character study that will rip the literary rug right out from under the reader's tightly-curled toes." Corey Wilde, The Drowning Pool

"In a Nutshell: Superbly written with a real twist in the tale, Killer is a novel which will appeal to lovers of crime fiction and the general readers alike. As a reader who usually ‘crosses the road’ to get away from crime fiction, Zeltserman has single-handedly convinced me that I should rethink my long-established custom of shying away from the genre." RobAroundBooks

"Highly recommended ... Zeltserman’s choices and the way he links them feel exactly right. He times the revelations and the peeling away of the past to enhance events happening in the present." NextRead

Shot to Death by Stephen Rogers

When I was publishing Hardluck Stories I was always happy to be able to publish stories from fellow Massachusetts crime fiction author, Stephen Rogers, and now that Stephen has a new collection of short crime fiction, Shot To Death, I'm happy to let him hijack my blog for a day to talk about it.

--Dave

I reached the front desk out of breath.- DISTURBED

So begins one of the 31 stories contained in SHOT TO DEATH (ISBN 978-0982589908). Within that beginning lurks the ending to the story and everything that happens between the beginning and the end. Or at least it seems that way to me.

First off, I don't care for the sentence. It doesn't flow. There's something in the phrasing that just seems odd.

So, if I'm going to keep the opening as is, there's going to be something off about the narrator. (While editing the sentence would be easy enough, let's see where this one takes me.)

I reached the front desk out of breath.

We're at a hotel. Well, some restaurants have front desks, but I'm thinking hotel. A nice hotel.

I see four possibilities. The narrator is approaching the front desk from outside. The narrator is a registered guest approaching the front desk from the hotel. The narrator is an employee approaching the front desk from the hotel. The narrator is an employee approaching the front desk from the room behind the desk.

Other options are possible, but these four give me more than enough to work with.

If we're talking a nice hotel, it's unlikely that an employee would be odd in an interesting way. A dive on the other hand.... But I see a nice hotel, which means the narrator is not an employee.

Who rushes into a hotel from outside? Even if you're later than you expected, you're just going to stand in line, if only a line of one. So the narrator is a registered guest.

An odd version of a registered guest. Someone pretending to be a registered guest. Someone pretending to be a specific registered guest.

That's the spark. All that remains is the writing.

For a chance to win a signed copy of SHOT TO DEATH, click on over to http://www.stephendrogers.com/Win.htm and submit your completed entry.

Then visit the schedule at http://www.stephendrogers.com/Howto.htm to see how you can march along.

And then come back here to post your comments. Phew.

About Stephen Rogers:

Stephen D. Rogers is the author of SHOT TO DEATH (ISBN 978-0982589908) and more than six hundred stories and poems. He's the head writer at Crime Scene (where viewers solve interactive mysteries) and a popular writing instructor. For more information, you can visit his website, www.stephendrogers.com, where he tries to pull it all together.

Another Killer Review

"And the surprise ending... I was trembling after reading the final pages. It's a surprise not only plot-wise, but Zeltserman also turns the theme of his novel totally upside down."

Read Juri Nummelin's complete review here.

A List I'm On

It's pretty cool to see Small Crimes on this list of the 100 Best Crime Novels Ever Written (#53).

The Caretaker of Lorne Field

Yeah, I know. Pariah's hasn't been out that long, Killer is coming soon (May) and The Caretaker of Lorne Field won't be out until July, but I thought I'd let people know a little bit what this one's about. It's not crime, not exactly, anyway. So what is it? Well, here's what my publisher (Overlook Press) has put on Amazon:

Review

"If Stephen King had a true Noir calling and Peter Straub added contemporary horror... and Dean Koontz threw in his fine depiction of ordinary life on the edge of the unknown... then bring the specter of James M. Cain to write the narrative, you'd come close to describing the whole effect of this stunning slice for the zeitgeist wondrous novel and the writing is... pure dark bliss."-Ken Bruen, author of London Boulevard

"The Caretaker of Lorne Field is a magnificent novel, with truly believable characters and suspense that keeps building to an explosive climax. There it is, plain and simple." -Seymour Shubin, Edgar Award finalist, author of Anyone's My Name

Product Description

Dave Zeltserman's last novel was named by NPR as one of the top five crime and mystery novels of 2008 and one of The Washington Post's best books of the year. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, said his "breakthrough third crime novel deserves comparison with the best of James Ellroy." And Crimetime calls him a name to watch." Now, Zeltserman has written the book his fans have been waiting for-a classic unlike anything you've ever read.

Jack Durkin is the ninth generation of Durkins who have weeded Lorne Field for nearly 300 years. Though he and his wife Lydia are miserable and would like nothing more than to leave, Jack must wait until his son has come of age to tend the field on his own. It's an important job, though no one else seems to realize it. For, if the field is left untended, a horrific monster called an Aukowie will grow-a monster capable of taking over the entirety of America in just two weeks. Or so it is said. . .

Overlook has recently sent this out to a lot of people for blurbs, and it's going to be interesting to see who responds. When Paul Tremblay and I were at our event a couple of weeks ago at the Mysterious Bookshop, my Overlook publicist dropped by with ARCs fresh off the press, at which time I got my ARC and also got one for Paul. This is what Paul has to say about Caretaker after giving it a read:

"The Caretaker of Lorne Field is a wonderfully weird, gritty, and pitch-dark legend, perfect for New England. Weaved in the compulsively readable narrative is a heavy dose of our current society's meanness, unease, and ambiguity: kind of a nightmare-noir zeitgeist. The thing of it is, the reader is never safe in Dave Zeltserman's hands. I love that. You should too."

More later as Caretaker comes closer to its release date.

The Boston Globe asks ....

"Who is the next face of Boston crime fiction?"

Their answer:

This motley crew!

You can read the article here!

Killer "everything hard-boiled fiction should be"

From today's Morning Star:

"This novel is everything hard-boiled fiction should be - compact, direct and disciplined, and concerned with humans rather than stereotypes.

It is also, for all its violent subject matter, a quietly told story, which makes its tension all the more intense."

You can read the entire review here.

I'd like to thank Mat Coward for giving Killer a read and for including it as one of his crime thriller picks.

Signed ARCS for Caretaker

Last night at my reading at the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan, my Overlook Press publicist dropped off a stack of ARCs for 'The Caretaker of Lorne Field' at the bookstore, which I signed. Caretaker isn't out until July, but you can get a signed ARC for it now. Mysterious Bookshop will be giving out the ARCS they have with each purchase of a signed copy of Pariah. Not a bad deal.

Also last night, I got to meet Otto Penzler, who let me know that my story 'Julius Katz' has made their 50 list for next year's Best American Mystery Story anthology. Now I've just got to wait to see which stories their guest editor ends up picking for inclusion.

More Killer

Another great review for Killer, this one from TheBookBag.co.uk

"Here at the Bookbag, we've been very impressed with Dave Zeltserman's work thus far. He uses a wonderful noirish narrative that takes you straight to the heart of the story. His story telling is very straightforward, not weighing down the story with too much style, but sticking to the substance and delivering a hard-hitting work every time. With Killer, he has done the same again."

That's the beginning of the review and it only gets better from there. I'd like to thank Iain Wear over at TheBookBag for taking the time to read Killer, and for writing such a thoughtful review. You can read Iain's review here.