Sunday, November 4, 2012

THE BLACKEST CARNIVAL OF ALL

The second novel in my eBook exclusive series of Chris Lyon thrillers is now available for Kindle and Nook.

CARNIVAL NOIR follows right off the end of PARTS UNKNOWN, the novel that introduced Chris Lyon (though, to be fair, Chris had cameos in the Hector Lassiter novel PRINT THE LEGEND and last year's standalone thriller, EL GAVILAN).

PARTS UNKNOWN, like the Lassiter novels, is an historically inflected crime novel/thriller based on the Cleveland torso slayings—aka, the crimes of the so-called "Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run."

The second of the Lyon thrillers spins on historical crimes to varying degrees, but it moves in a very different direction from its predecessor in many key respects.

Consistent with one of the aims of the Lassiter novels, the books comprising the Chris Lyon series are calculated to be very different from the novel immediately preceding and the one following each entry. In other words, readers who sample the Lassiter or Lyon series shouldn't expect quite the same novel book-to-book.

In approaching CARNIVAL NOIR, I wanted to try for a blend of the feel of Ian Fleming's early James Bond novels and William Lindsay Gresham's classic circus noir, NIGHTMARE ALLEY.

Central to CARNIVAL NOIR, and to the remaining Lyon thrillers, is the female protagonist introduced in the opening pages of the new novel.

Salome Arnaud is not just the pivotal woman in Chris Lyon's life, but in a real sense, she's the axis around which many other aspects of my work spins.

I first wrote the character of Salome Arnaud in a never-to-see-the-light-of-day first novel finished in the late 1980s. A lot of my subsequent characters, themes and even some plot elements lurk in that early text, but only Chris and Salome survived into my published works.

In the manner of crime novelist/screenwriter Hector Lassiter, "the man who lives what he writes and writes what he lives," — Lassiter, whose life and writing career were shaped by the great love of his life, Brinke Devlin — Salome is the pivotal woman in Chris Lyon's life.

But she is much more: Salome is the hook upon which much of my own writing hinges.

Salome Arnaud, born of Gypsy lineage, raised in seedy traveling carnivals and cultivated to be a fortune teller by her "adoptive mother," hints at erotic and supernatural undertones infusing Lyon and Lassiter novels still to come; she heralds an occult aspect that will broaden and deepen as other of my novels appear.

If future Lyon novels are warranted, in time, Salome will center her own thriller. In the fourth of the Lyon novels, Salome will also bridge my two primary series in an unexpected way, profoundly binding the worlds of Chris Lyon and Hector Lassiter.

The following book trailer sets up the future direction of the Lyon series, and gives a clue or two about the looming nexus between the Lyon and Lassiter sagas.





Thursday, August 2, 2012

PARTS UNKNOWN eBook exclusive now available




PARTS UNKNOWN is my new eBook kicking off a series of thrillers featuring a writer named Chris Lyon. The novel is available for Kindle and Nook.

The Lyon series is vintage pulp-noir, to my mind; stuff from my until-now private reserve. There have been tastings, to be sure: Chris crops up at the end of my 2010 novel, PRINT THE LEGEND. He appears a couple of times in my 2011 standalone, EL GAVILAN.

PARTS UKNOWN is the first sampling of the wider Lyon vineyard.

Some literary critics would have you believe authors have only a single book in them. They even have a term for this concept: “urtext.”

Urtext, in a nutshell, means, “the original text.” To put it another way, in a literary sense, it’s the “first text,” or axis around which a novelist’s fictional world rotates. Writers evolve; hopefully they gain skills over time.

But in the end, their core remains the same, urtext proponents would have you believe. The English Lit student in me grudgingly buys into the notion that if you look back at the first complete novel from any given writer’s hand, you’ll uncover the seeds of much, if not all that follows. Look at a mature writer’s juvenilia, and you will, in theory, see from where the seasoned stuff springs.

In 1989, I completed my first crime novel, PARTS UNKNOWN. The book was “inspired,” if that’s the right word, by a real series of mutilation murders committed in Ohio between the 1930 and perhaps extending into the 1970s or beyond.

I’d tried my hand at writing literary novels throughout the 1980s. At age nine, I tried to write a mystery novel about a guy named Chris Lyon.



Sometime around 1990, I read and was riveted by James Ellroy’s THE BIG NOWHERE. It was that Ellroy novel that reminded me genre fiction could rise to the level of literature. The Ellroy novel directly inspired me to go back and try to write a genre novel of my own. A then newish nonfiction book about these old Cleveland crimes inspired the plot of my first crime novel.

The Cleveland Torso Slayer and I go back. Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandparents. Here and there, my grandmother used to tell stories about this killer who stalked Cleveland during the Depression. She would tell little six- or seven-year-old me tales about the family car breaking down in Cleveland during the Depression-era murder spree. In the most recurring version, scared and alone, she went off in search of my granddad who had, in turn, gone in search of a mechanic.

At some point, she met a stranger she remained convinced was the killer. My grandmother was unabashedly given to melodrama. She was an aspiring poetess and mystery fiction fan who bought me a subscription to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine when I was a kid. I still have every copy she got for me, though I never read a single issue of the magazine that I regarded, even at age 10, as neutered and tedious. Even then, the thirsty reader in me craved the harder stuff.

Consistent with that juvenile, jaundiced view, I regarded my grandmother’s tales of an Ohio-based decapitation murderer as nonsense.

Flash forward: A downbeat, lonely Christmas Eve in 1989. My widowed grandmother, it was clear to me, was displaying the early intimations of Alzheimer’s. In theory, I was spending time with my family.

But instead of hanging with seldom-seen cousins on that rather depressing Christmas Eve, I bolted. I drove to German Village to a still-standing Indy bookstore open until midnight for last-minute shoppers. I roamed the stacks.

At some point, determined to close the store down, I wandered into the True Crime section. On a whim, I cracked the spine on this newish book called TORSO by Steven Nickel.

In a few seconds, I realized it was an account of the very Cleveland crimes my grandmother had spent so many years talking about.

In various interviews given in 2007 and ’08 regarding my “debut” novel, HEAD GAMES, I went to some lengths to distinguish “first-published novel” from “first novel.”

Few are the writers whose first novel is the first published. Some of us—probably most of us—write many, many books before publication happens through some combination of luck or kismet.

The sad thing is, all those unpublished books that might have been “debut novels” can be pretty strong stuff all on their own.

In all key respects, PARTS UNKNOWN is my first novel. My urtext. When I completed it, I started shopping it around, cockily expecting to find myself a published author sometime in the early- to mid-1990s.

But Chris Lyon faced many of the challenges Hector Lassiter faced years later in getting published. The Lyon books, like the Lassiters, were regarded as something hard to categorize. Hector, in the end, had an advantage Chris didn’t: In the early 1990s, with the exception of books by Daniel Woodrell, Ellroy, James Crumley and James Sallis, nobody was really publishing edgy or envelope-pushing crime novels. The market was saturated with police procedurals, cozies and long-running series short on steam and sparks.

Throughout the 1990s, I kept on stubbornly writing about my central character, Chris Lyon, a journalist-turned-crime novelist who tended to use himself and those around him as characters in his fiction.

I wrote, in fact, an entire series of interconnected books about the character. I kept on writing about Chris and his world because I believed in them. I still believe in Chris Lyon.

Only in retrospect did I come to see he was also a premonition of the character I’m now best known for writing—that of Hector Lassiter.

Hector, in his world, is a screenwriter and crime novelist popularly known as, “the man who lives what he writes and writes what he lives.” Hector debuted in 2007 in HEAD GAMES, an Edgar- and Anthony-award finalist for best “first” novel.

There is a lot of overlap between the Lyon and Lassiter series. I shamelessly plundered the urtext of the Lyon books to populate the Lassiter novels, lifting whole characters and moving them into Lassiter’s mythology.

EBook technology now allows me to pull a William Blake and essentially package and publish the Chris Lyon series myself. Over the next few months, new titles in the Lyon series will appear with some regularity, about one every two or three months, until the series is complete. I won’t put a number to the series. That would, in its way, constitute its own spoiler.

I’ve resisted the urge to greatly revise the Lyon novels for eBook publication. When I wrote them, they were contemporary crime novels. Now they pretty much read as early 1990 historical novels. Cell phones and the Internet were just coming into their own and actually constitute plot points in the first two or three novels.

The novels stand as the pieces I would have started publishing in 1992, or thereabouts, if the fates allowed. If you choose to take the ride, as a side note, you’ll see where nearly everything of Hector Lassiter’s world and attitude springs from—that pesky urtext thing, again.

So that’s the one significant thing I have chosen to do in prepping these books for publication: Rather than revising out some of the things that link the Lyon/Lassiter series, I’ve ramped them up, played to them. The two series entwine as the saga unfolds. At some point, a torch is passed.

In fact, that blending of Chris and Hector’s worlds carries on through the eBook extras in this first Chris Lyon thriller.

Along with PARTS UNKNOWN, in the new eBook you’ll find previews of the next Lyon novel, CARNIVAL NOIR, which introduces Salome (who briefly appears in EL GAVILAN), the key woman in Chris Lyon’s life.

PARTS UNKNOWN, the eBook, also contains a preview of the next Hector Lassiter novel, ROLL THE CREDITS, which features an appearance by Jimmy Hanrahan, a key player in PARTS UNKNOWN and already established as a longtime crony of Hector Lassiter’s (Jimmy, like Chris, crops up in PRINT THE LEGEND, AKA: Lassiter #3). Like some other characters already in print, Hanrahan was first created for my partly Cleveland-set, first crime novel featuring Chris Lyon.

As a last bonus, there is also an interview with James Jessen Badal, author of the two definitive nonfiction books on the Cleveland Torso slayings. That interview was conducted several years after my novel about the Cleveland crimes was written, and so does not have bearing on my book’s plot or content. The interview does, however, give some deep insight into the actual Ohio crimes, as well as the most likely suspect to have committed the murders.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

HEAD GAMES FREE FOR KINDLE ALL WEEKEND


Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich, Jack Webb and an ex-President!

Starting today and continuing through the Memorial Day weekend, my 2007 debut novel, HEAD GAMES, is available for free download exclusively for your Kindle right here.

This is the novel that introduced crime novelist Hector Lassiter, “the man who lives what he writes and writes what he lives”—the internationally critically acclaimed character who went on to headline TOROS & TORSOS, PRINT THE LEGEND and last year’s ONE TRUE SENTENCE.

HEAD GAMES WAS:

• 2008 Edgar® Nominee for Best First Novel

• 2008 Anthony Award Finalist

• 2011 Sélection du prix polar Saint-Maur En Poche

• 2008 Gumshoe Award nominee for Best First Novel

• Head Games shortlisted for 2008 CrimeSpree Magazine award for Best First Novel

"One of the great American road novels."
—Heirloom Books

"This slick caper novel touches chords of myth, history, loss and redemption just enough so you can hear echoes faintly under the gunfire."
—Publishers Weekly

ABOUT THE BOOK:
“In a dusty cantina on the far side of the Rio Grande, larger-than-life and recently widowed crime writer Hector Lassiter and Bud Fiske, a callow young poet sent by True Magazine to profile Hector, are handed a carpet bag. Inside they find the stolen head of Mexican general Francisco ‘Pancho’ Villa—a long missing relic that may point the way to a fortune in lost treasure or a blood-and-thunder death...

“In the dank, hallowed halls of Yale University creep the members of the Skull & Bones, a secret society shrouded in whispers. They are a fraternity whose members include media barons, über executives and politicians, including three generations of men called Bush—and their sanctum sanctorum's trophy cabinet is purportedly packed with the stolen bones of long-dead luminaries...

“In a '57 Bel Air, Hector, Bud, and the beautiful Alicia tear through the desert with a trunk full of human heads. Caught in a crazy crossfire, they lead all manner of headhunters on a breakneck chase across Lost America. U.S. intelligence services, murderous frat boys, the soldier of fortune who stole Pancho's head from its grave, and the specter of a dead Mexican legend all want Villa's head—though they might settle for Hector's...”

*********************
What some other authors have said about Head Games:

"Head Games is terrific, a real discovery, informed by—but never weighed down by—Craig McDonald's intimate knowledge of pulp fiction, politics, history, literature, film noir and all manner of frontiers. A truly original debut that leaves one eager to see what this writer will do next."
—LAURA LIPPMAN, author of What the Dead Know

"Moves like a bullet, like a trajectory of magnificent artistry and line-on-line of almost casual, throwaway description. The beautiful, understated humor running like a sad song all through the whole novel...I'm beyond impressed."
—KEN BRUEN, author of American Skin

"Reading Craig McDonald's Head Games was like reliving those wonderful and exciting, tequila-fired weekend border-town tours of my youth in the '50's. A different character, vivid and lively, waiting around every new corner of the artfully twisted plot. The time and place are captured perfectly, and story never falters as it dashes to the surprising ending. It made me homesick for El Paso the way it was."
—JAMES CRUMLEY, author of The Last Good Kiss

"Few writers can blend a contemporary feel with what drew us to old-style pulp and original paperbacks: that momentum, that craziness, the thrill of the downhill slide and crash. Head Games is smart, it's funny, and it moves like a roach when the lights go on—what's not to love?"
—JAMES SALLIS, author of Drive

"Head Games is fast, funny, furious, heart wrenching, real smart and totally unapologetic...a five-star page turning sizzler in a four-star world. Talk about nailing your debut...Head Games seals the deal and establishes McDonald as the new badass on the writing block. Kick back with a shot of Cuervo and a cold Tecate chaser. Enjoy the search for Pancho's missing head in this fast-paced thriller of lost and sorely missed Americana."
—CHARLIE STELLA, author of Shakedown

"Head Games is contemporary noir at its finest. Prose that bites like a guillotine blade. A voice that sings in your skull. And in aging pulpster/adventurer Hector Lassiter, a hero who's the real deal—morally complex and damned funny."
—ALLAN GUTHRIE, author of Hard Man

Selected as one of The San Francisco Chronicle's Top 10 crime books of the year: "Craig McDonald, a genuine expert on the history of crime fiction, gives free rein to all his obsessions in a debut novel that's a berserk 1957-based caper running roughshod through the politics and pop culture of the latter half of the 20th century. Strap in, hold on, enjoy the ride."
—EDDIE MULLER, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

"Head Games is a gravel and mescal cocktail, a one-day burn, a novel of genuine piss and vinegar, the kind of book you thrust on people with the wild eyes and intent of a PCP freak. It's Tom Russell singing ‘Tonight We Ride’ with a gut full of tequila and a loaded Colt. Craig McDonald knows the tough guy, has created one of the very finest, a pulp writer called Lassiter who knew Hemingway, Welles and Dietrich, and who I wish wasn't fucking fictional so I could hunt for his books. He spits in the eye of the pansy-ass authority hero that has glutted the crime market, reminiscent of Crumley at his best and with Ellroy's sick historical verve. Bottom line, McDonald's a talented bastard."
—RAY BANKS, author of Saturday's Child

"A booze-soaked tribute to those great gonzo noir writers of days gone by."
—ANTHONY NEIL SMITH, author of The Drummer

"Yeah, I'm late catching up to this guy, but damned if this 1950's set tale of a crime writer carrying the head of a Mexican rebel in a bag across some kind of crazy road trip didn't set my pulse racing. There's a strange switch at a late stage in the novel which might divide some readers in the way the ending of No Country For Old Men did its audience, but for my money it's a bold move that more or less works exactly as intended. This McDonald guy is definitely one to keep your eye on."
—RUSSEL D.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

BORDERLAND NOIR: SIX YEARS LATER




“Swing for the fences…Gut-shoot me and/or break my heart, because, tonight, I just want to feel something.”

Many years back, pre-HEAD GAMES time, I was invited by Dave Zeltserman to guest-edit an edition of the now long-gone Hardluck Stories e-zine.

The year was 2006. I immediately pitched this theme concept tied to Cinco de Mayo I dubbed BORDERLAND NOIR. Dave Z. was dubious, but ever the gentleman, gave me a shot. I wrote this pitch for the sucker that drew some pretty potent submissions:

"La frontera … what El Paso-based songwriter Tom Russell describes as 'that delicious, dark-eyed myth of the border.'

"We’re headed way out west, out past where you’ve dared to go before. Out to Touch of Evil country (that’s the film, not the book, hombres).

"Our troubadours are Russell, Dave Alvin … Marty Robbins and Ry Cooder. Mariachi bands dominate the shortwave radios down this way, where tortured widower Orson Welles hands out justice with his ham-sized fists, all the while muttering under his boxy Stetson.

"We’re not looking to be slavish about the coordinates: The Border is a state of mind every bit as much as it is a geographic boundary. But fiction or nonfiction, I will be seeking that Malcolm Lowry/Day of the Dead/Cinco de Mayo vibe.

"Focus on that uneasy friction between Old Meh-hi-co and El Norte … because, way down deep, we all know that you can leave Brownsville, but you can never get Matamoros out of your soul.

"Give me stories about young lives snuffed out chasing the dream of more money and better futures up north.

"Show me guilt-stricken 'coyotes' who can no longer stand to roast peasants in locked freight cars, or to abandon babies and their too-young mothers in the scrub-oak purgatory of the Sonoran desert.

"Tell me tales of Narcotrafficante madmen with too much cash and bent imaginations who build crazy tunnels under miles of wasteland to smuggle drugs. I’m craving stories about bad bastards who kidnap tourists and mail them back one-finger-at-a-time, seeking impossible-to-pay ransoms from gringo wage-slaves whose one foreign vacation has gone so terribly south on them.

"To this day, cherry boys with butterflies in their bellies steal across the border to get laid … to drink rum at TJ’s infamous 'longest bar in the world' and to find out exactly what the hell a 'Donkey Show' is. But sometimes things take a turn. Rum and tequila and first sex are a treacherous mix. Show me how treacherous.

"Emiliano Zapata said, 'It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.' So, in that spirit, swing for the fences, amigos. Give me strong and original voices. Gut-shoot me and/or break my heart, because, tonight, I just want to feel something."

Well, we put that issue out on May 5, 2006. Ken Bruen kicked in a Johnny Cash-inflected story. Manuel Ramos had a wonderful story, too. Then we had these great pieces by Mike MacLean, Garnett Elliott (whom I had the pleasure of meeting in person in Arizona this past February), Theresa Kennedy, Bradley Mason Hamilton and Rick Deckard.

Dave Z. kicked in a terrific essay on Touch of Evil. We fronted the whole package with a painting (the original hangs on my living room wall) by singer-songwriter Tom Russell whose album, Borderland, inspired the theme for that special edition of Hardluck Stories.

Sucker took on a life of its own. The next year, Head Games came out with its own Borderland Noir vibe and Touch of Evil aspects. Ken and Manuel's stories were promptly anthologized. Rick Deckard has a book contract and will be putting out a borderland noir-length novel from Serpent's Tail.

Hardluck Stores, however, folded, and I thought all that material was lost.

Turns out, it's archived...

So here, for your Cinco de Mayo inspection, is BORDERLAND NOIR, now aged to a sublime and palate-teasing six years. As I said in the introduction back then:

"The Tecate is cold and a storm is coming across the desert.

"The jukebox is grinding on in the corner: Freddy Fender singing “Across the Borderline”….

“A thousand footprints in the sand … reveal the secret no one can define.”

But watch these writers try."

Check it out HERE.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

1957 ESSAY BY HECTOR LASSITER ON FICTION WRITING FOUND

Jen Forbus of Jen's Book Thoughts Fame unearths a circa-1957 Hector Lassiter essay on fiction writing, murder and the matter of villains from a long defunct writing magazine of yore...

Sunday, April 1, 2012

EL GAVILAN FREE FOR KINDLE & NOOK; MORE NEWS



EL GAVILAN is currently available for free download for your Kindle and Nook.

The novel is also a finalist for a Spinetingler Award. Please consider casting a vote in its favor HERE.

The novel deals with illegal immigration in Ohio and the ripple effects of a single murder in a small Buckeye town. It is also based on real events.

Along with that other 2011 novel, ONE TRUE SENTENCE, EL GAVILAN was selected for numerous year's best lists.

Some nice things readers have said about EL GAVILAN:

"Searing. Sobering and as urgent as tomorrow's headlines. McDonald deftly...dissects one of America's most tormenting social problems."
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"An addictive read."
—Library Journal

"Everything you'd hope to get from a modern day master stretching his impressive-as-all-hell wings."
—Spinetingler Magazine

"A fascinating thriller...highly recommended."
—The Drowning Machine

"A thoroughly gripping crime story."
—Mystery Scene

"Stunning."
—Suspense Magazine

"A major step forward for [McDonald's] already formidable breadth and range."
—Barnes & Noble Book Club

"An awesome novel..."
—The Mystery Bookshelf

"Timely and alarming."
—Mystery Lovers Bookshop

"Craig McDonald has aced it."
—Huntington News

"McDonald explores values, attitudes, emotion, ethics, relationships, and the nature of intolerance in a satisfying, thought-provoking novel."
—Technorati

"This might be 2011's most relevant crime novel."
—Patrick Shawn Bagley

GRIFT MAGAZINE DEBUTS!
There's a slick new crime magazine filled with top-drawer fiction and nonfiction on the market.
The first issue of GRIFT is now available.


The official lineup includes:

Scott Phillips on the Factory novels of Derek Raymond
Ray Banks on film adaptations of Charles Willeford’s books
Lawrence Block on his various experiments with storytelling styles
Chris Rhatigan’s long interview with author Julie Morrigan
My even longer interview with author Chris Offutt
My review of the three novels of John Rector

It also features brand new stories from Jack Bates, Ken Bruen, Alec Cizak, Matthew C. Funk, Chris F. Holm, Craig McDonald, Court Merrigan, Thomas Pluck, Keith Rawson and Todd Robinson.

You can get yours HERE.

CONVERSATIONS WITH JAMES ELLROY!

A new collection of interviews with the Demon Dog has been assembled by Steven Powell for the prestigious University Press of Mississippi "Conversations With..." series. Three of the four interviews I conducted with Ellroy are contained in the volume. You can learn more about it HERE.

Also, you can check out the Walter Mosley edition, which also contains a couple of my conversations with Mr. Mosley HERE.



NEW INTERVIEW COLLECTION!
Author Jean Henry Mead has assembled a new collection of author interviews including talks with a slew of authors including Lawrence Block, Sue Grafton and myself.



Apart from an interview with Ms. Mead regarding PRINT THE LEGEND, the Hemingway legacy and the distinctions between crime and mystery writing, I also contribute an original essay on the craft of fiction.

You can get your copy HERE.

PRINT THE LEGEND COMING TO ITALY!
On a PRINT THE LEGEND note, the third Hector Lassiter novel will appear in translation in Italy (as KILL THE LEGEND) in middle May. Here's a sneak peek at the cover of the Italian edition.




New translation rights have also recently been sold for TOROS & TORSOS (more to come on that). HEAD GAMES will also be appearing in Mexico at last. (More on that to come, too.)

MORE NEWS COMING!
Check back here soon for a coming announcement regarding something new tied to both the Hector Lassiter series, and EL GAVILAN, exclusively in eBook format...

Saturday, February 18, 2012

TOROS & TORSOS FREE ON KINDLE TODAY ONLY!




TOROS & TORSOS is available for free download as an eBook exclusively from Amazon.com just for today (Saturday, February 18).

Although it is technically the second novel in the Hector Lassiter series, the book is set decades in advance of number one, HEAD GAMES, and so is a perfect starting point for first-timers.

-----------------------------

Here's a bit more about the novel:

Hector Lassiter is a legendary crime novelist who writes what he lives and lives what he writes. But Hector frequently goes a step beyond, drawing friends and lovers into the tawdry and turbulent territory of his fiction. Now, the large-living pulp author has at last met his match in the ultimate performance artist: a phantom killer committed to the art of murder… a blood-thirsty provocateur who leaves a string of macabre tableaus modeled on famous works of surrealist painting and photography…

Against the vivid backdrops of a killer hurricane that nearly destroyed the Florida Keys in 1935, the Spanish Civil War, post-war Hollywood and the first days of the Castro regime in Cuba, Hector engages in a decades-long duel against a cabal of killer artists…

As in its Edgar®-nominated predecessor Head Games, history and myth merge, drawing on recent scholarship pointing to the existence of a dark underground of artists, photographers and art collectors that flourished in Europe and United States through most of the Twentieth Century.

In a blood-limned haze of love, deception, murderous metaphor and devastating betrayal, nothing is what it seems and obsession and creativity collide in a wicked and unexpected climax that will shake the art world to its foundations…

*********
TOROS & TORSOS was also:

• A 2009 Crimespree Award finalist for Favorite Book

• A 2009 Crimespree Award finalist for Best in an Ongoing Series

• One of Woody Hauts' Favorites of 2009 (You can read his take on the book here.)

You can also learn more at my official site, and view additional trailers, access interviews and various other extras related to TOROS & TORSOS, including an interview I gave in France regarding surrealism and serial murder, right here.

Friday, January 27, 2012

HEAD GAMES FREE ON KINDLE TODAY!



Starting today for a very brief time, my 2007 debut novel, HEAD GAMES, is available for free download exclusively for your Kindle right here.

This is the novel that introduced crime novelist Hector Lassiter, “the man who lives what he writes and writes what he lives”—the internationally critically acclaimed character who went on to headline TOROS & TORSOS, PRINT THE LEGEND and last year’s ONE TRUE SENTENCE.

HEAD GAMES WAS:

• 2008 Edgar® Nominee for Best First Novel

• 2008 Anthony Award Finalist

• 2011 Sélection du prix polar Saint-Maur En Poche

• 2008 Gumshoe Award nominee for Best First Novel

• Head Games shortlisted for 2008 CrimeSpree Magazine award for Best First Novel

"One of the great American road novels."
—Heirloom Books

"This slick caper novel touches chords of myth, history, loss and redemption just enough so you can hear echoes faintly under the gunfire."
—Publishers Weekly

ABOUT THE BOOK:
“In a dusty cantina on the far side of the Rio Grande, larger-than-life and recently widowed crime writer Hector Lassiter and Bud Fiske, a callow young poet sent by True Magazine to profile Hector, are handed a carpet bag. Inside they find the stolen head of Mexican general Francisco ‘Pancho’ Villa—a long missing relic that may point the way to a fortune in lost treasure or a blood-and-thunder death...

“In the dank, hallowed halls of Yale University creep the members of the Skull & Bones, a secret society shrouded in whispers. They are a fraternity whose members include media barons, über executives and politicians, including three generations of men called Bush—and their sanctum sanctorum's trophy cabinet is purportedly packed with the stolen bones of long-dead luminaries...

“In a '57 Bel Air, Hector, Bud, and the beautiful Alicia tear through the desert with a trunk full of human heads. Caught in a crazy crossfire, they lead all manner of headhunters on a breakneck chase across Lost America. U.S. intelligence services, murderous frat boys, the soldier of fortune who stole Pancho's head from its grave, and the specter of a dead Mexican legend all want Villa's head—though they might settle for Hector's...”

*********************
What some other authors have said about Head Games:

"Head Games is terrific, a real discovery, informed by—but never weighed down by—Craig McDonald's intimate knowledge of pulp fiction, politics, history, literature, film noir and all manner of frontiers. A truly original debut that leaves one eager to see what this writer will do next."
—LAURA LIPPMAN, author of What the Dead Know

"Moves like a bullet, like a trajectory of magnificent artistry and line-on-line of almost casual, throwaway description. The beautiful, understated humor running like a sad song all through the whole novel...I'm beyond impressed."
—KEN BRUEN, author of American Skin

"Reading Craig McDonald's Head Games was like reliving those wonderful and exciting, tequila-fired weekend border-town tours of my youth in the '50's. A different character, vivid and lively, waiting around every new corner of the artfully twisted plot. The time and place are captured perfectly, and story never falters as it dashes to the surprising ending. It made me homesick for El Paso the way it was."
—JAMES CRUMLEY, author of The Last Good Kiss

"Few writers can blend a contemporary feel with what drew us to old-style pulp and original paperbacks: that momentum, that craziness, the thrill of the downhill slide and crash. Head Games is smart, it's funny, and it moves like a roach when the lights go on—what's not to love?"
—JAMES SALLIS, author of Drive

"Head Games is fast, funny, furious, heart wrenching, real smart and totally unapologetic...a five-star page turning sizzler in a four-star world. Talk about nailing your debut...Head Games seals the deal and establishes McDonald as the new badass on the writing block. Kick back with a shot of Cuervo and a cold Tecate chaser. Enjoy the search for Pancho's missing head in this fast-paced thriller of lost and sorely missed Americana."
—CHARLIE STELLA, author of Shakedown

"Head Games is contemporary noir at its finest. Prose that bites like a guillotine blade. A voice that sings in your skull. And in aging pulpster/adventurer Hector Lassiter, a hero who's the real deal—morally complex and damned funny."
—ALLAN GUTHRIE, author of Hard Man

Selected as one of The San Francisco Chronicle's Top 10 crime books of the year: "Craig McDonald, a genuine expert on the history of crime fiction, gives free rein to all his obsessions in a debut novel that's a berserk 1957-based caper running roughshod through the politics and pop culture of the latter half of the 20th century. Strap in, hold on, enjoy the ride."
—EDDIE MULLER, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

"Head Games is a gravel and mescal cocktail, a one-day burn, a novel of genuine piss and vinegar, the kind of book you thrust on people with the wild eyes and intent of a PCP freak. It's Tom Russell singing ‘Tonight We Ride’ with a gut full of tequila and a loaded Colt. Craig McDonald knows the tough guy, has created one of the very finest, a pulp writer called Lassiter who knew Hemingway, Welles and Dietrich, and who I wish wasn't fucking fictional so I could hunt for his books. He spits in the eye of the pansy-ass authority hero that has glutted the crime market, reminiscent of Crumley at his best and with Ellroy's sick historical verve. Bottom line, McDonald's a talented bastard."
—RAY BANKS, author of Saturday's Child

"A booze-soaked tribute to those great gonzo noir writers of days gone by."
—ANTHONY NEIL SMITH, author of The Drummer

"Yeah, I'm late catching up to this guy, but damned if this 1950's set tale of a crime writer carrying the head of a Mexican rebel in a bag across some kind of crazy road trip didn't set my pulse racing. There's a strange switch at a late stage in the novel which might divide some readers in the way the ending of No Country For Old Men did its audience, but for my money it's a bold move that more or less works exactly as intended. This McDonald guy is definitely one to keep your eye on."
—RUSSEL D.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

FREE TOROS & TORSOS FOR KINDLE: AN UPDATE




More than 4,000 Kindle users downloaded a free copy of my novel TOROS & TORSOS yesterday. (You can still do so until sometime early Wednesday a.m. here.)

(HEAD GAMES, the first Hector Lassiter novel, remains available for just $2.99.)

At this writing, TOROS is hovering somewhere around the fifties in Kindle's Top 100 list (in the forties for just fiction). It's been #1 in historical mystery for most of a day, and it's about #3 in literary fiction (just behind Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities and something by some writer named Hawthorne).

To those who downloaded a free copy of T&T, or will today, my thanks for your interest. I would ask that thumbs up or down, you please consider posting a review of T&T to Amazon once you've read the book.

For those still considering taking a look, I'll direct you to one of the most amazing reviews I have ever received. The following assessment was written by Corey Wilde at the Drowning Machine. Someday, I aspire to actually write a novel as fine as the one he describes. You can read that review here.

Also, a couple of book trailers to give you the flavor of TOROS & TORSOS.



Monday, January 23, 2012

FREE ON KINDLE TODAY ONLY: TOROS & TORSOS




TOROS & TORSOS is available for free download as an eBook exclusively from Amazon.com just for today (Monday, January 23).

Although it is technically the second novel in the Hector Lassiter series, the book is set decades in advance of number one, HEAD GAMES, and so is a perfect starting point for first-timers.

Throughout the day, I'll be offering looks at some of the secret history and events that inform TOROS & TORSOS.

First up, the Great Keys Hurricane of 1935.

-----------------------------

Here's a bit more about the novel:

Hector Lassiter is a legendary crime novelist who writes what he lives and lives what he writes. But Hector frequently goes a step beyond, drawing friends and lovers into the tawdry and turbulent territory of his fiction. Now, the large-living pulp author has at last met his match in the ultimate performance artist: a phantom killer committed to the art of murder… a blood-thirsty provocateur who leaves a string of macabre tableaus modeled on famous works of surrealist painting and photography…

Against the vivid backdrops of a killer hurricane that nearly destroyed the Florida Keys in 1935, the Spanish Civil War, post-war Hollywood and the first days of the Castro regime in Cuba, Hector engages in a decades-long duel against a cabal of killer artists…

As in its Edgar®-nominated predecessor Head Games, history and myth merge, drawing on recent scholarship pointing to the existence of a dark underground of artists, photographers and art collectors that flourished in Europe and United States through most of the Twentieth Century.

In a blood-limned haze of love, deception, murderous metaphor and devastating betrayal, nothing is what it seems and obsession and creativity collide in a wicked and unexpected climax that will shake the art world to its foundations…

*********
TOROS & TORSOS was also:

• A 2009 Crimespree Award finalist for Favorite Book

• A 2009 Crimespree Award finalist for Best in an Ongoing Series

• One of Woody Hauts' Favorites of 2009 (You can read his take on the book here.)

You can also learn more at my official site, and view additional trailers, access interviews and various other extras related to TOROS & TORSOS, including an interview I gave in France regarding surrealism and serial murder, right here.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

TOROS & TORSOS FREE ON KINDLE ON MONDAY

"A bold, ambitious, genre-bending novel from the talented Craig McDonald."
— GEORGE PELECANOS, THE TURNAROUND




TOROS & TORSOS will be available for free download as an eBook exclusively from Amazon.com on Monday, January 23.

Although it is technically the second novel in the Hector Lassiter series, the book is set decades in advance of number one, HEAD GAMES, and so is a perfect starting point for first-timers.

Here's a bit about the novel:

Hector Lassiter is a legendary crime novelist who writes what he lives and lives what he writes. But Hector frequently goes a step beyond, drawing friends and lovers into the tawdry and turbulent territory of his fiction. Now, the large-living pulp author has at last met his match in the ultimate performance artist: a phantom killer committed to the art of murder… a blood-thirsty provocateur who leaves a string of macabre tableaus modeled on famous works of surrealist painting and photography…

Against the vivid backdrops of a killer hurricane that nearly destroyed the Florida Keys in 1935, the Spanish Civil War, post-war Hollywood and the first days of the Castro regime in Cuba, Hector engages in a decades-long duel against a cabal of killer artists…

As in its Edgar®-nominated predecessor Head Games, history and myth merge, drawing on recent scholarship pointing to the existence of a dark underground of artists, photographers and art collectors that flourished in Europe and United States through most of the Twentieth Century.

In a blood-limned haze of love, deception, murderous metaphor and devastating betrayal, nothing is what it seems and obsession and creativity collide in a wicked and unexpected climax that will shake the art world to its foundations…

*********
TOROS & TORSOS was also:

• A 2009 Crimespree Award finalist for Favorite Book

• A 2009 Crimespree Award finalist for Best in an Ongoing Series

• One of Woody Hauts' Favorites of 2009 (You can read his take on the book here.)

You can also learn more at my official site, and view additional trailers, access interviews and various other extras related to TOROS & TORSOS, including an interview I gave in France regarding surrealism and serial murder, right here.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER: THE 65TH ANNIVERSARY




Sixty-five years ago today, the body of Elizabeth Short, "The Black Dahlia," was found in a vacant lot in Los Angeles.

The case remains unsolved.

In 2008, I published my second Hector Lassiter novel, TOROS & TORSOS, incorporating the Black Dahlia murder as a key plot point.

The Hector Lassiter series is all about secret history — a blending of fact and fiction that aims to get at something like the hidden truth.


Toros & Torsos (aka, Hector Lassiter #2), spins on the premise that surrealist art and theory may have informed or inspired several bloody, unsolved crimes of the 20th Century — most notably the murder of Elizabeth Short, the so-called “Black Dahlia” as she was dubbed by panting L.A. journalists circa January 1947.

The correspondences between Elizabeth Short’s mutilation murder and photographs and paintings by Man Ray and Salvador Dali were first put forth by Steve Hodel in his 2003 nonfiction study Black Dahlia Avenger, a New York Times notable book and Edgar® Award finalist.

Hodel’s theories were greatly expanded upon by Mark Nelson and Sarah Hudson Bayliss in their excellent 2006 release, Exquisite Corpse: Surrealism and the Black Dahlia Murder.



Using the Nelson, Bayliss and Hodel works as a springboard, I extrapolated outward to construct a multi-decade saga that encompasses not only the Dahlia murder and the post-war Hollywood surrealist art circle (which included such diverse personalities as John Huston, Fanny Brice and Vincent Price), but also the Spanish Civil War in which the surrealists played a pivotal propaganda role.

Further research in that area uncovered jaw-dropping reports of Spanish torture chambers designed and constructed to surrealist aesthetics — a sort of crazy cross between Escher and Abu Ghraib.

It takes a strong stomach and a cold eye to confront the evidence put forward in the Hodel and Nelson/Bayliss books — particularly in Exquisite Corpse. But once key surrealist works are compared to Elizabeth Short’s autopsy photos (reproduced in graphic detail in the Nelson/Bayliss books) it’s difficult to shake the notion surrealist imagery was very much on the mind of Betty Short’s twisted, never-apprehended killer.

Life imitating art…art imitating death, and for some, it seems, it wasn’t truly art until somebody died.