One True Sentence Book TRAILER

5 faves 4 2010: Stella, Bruen, Rudolph, Badal & The Boss

Jed Ayres kindly asked for a list of 2010 favorites several weeks back for posting by Barnes & Noble at the Ransom Notes site.

That list is now up.



Check it out for my take on books: Charlie Stella's first historical crime novel, JOHNNY PORNO, and Ken Bruen's latest in the Jack Taylor series that skirts the supernatural.

Also, a gripping piece of True Crime reportage from James Jessen Badal regarding a vintage Cleveland serial killer cycle.

A classic neo-noir film by Alan Rudolph and tunes from The Boss round out my five selections.

LIBRARY JOURNAL ON ONE TRUE SENTENCE

Library Journal has weighed in with its take on ONE TRUE SENTENCE (Minotaur Books, February 16, 2011):

LIBRARY JOURNAL
When crime novelist Hector Lassiter (Head Games; Print the Legend; Toros & Torsos) sees a body fall into the Seine from the Pont Neuf in 1924 Paris, Gertrude Stein rallies the troops, and Lassiter and pal Ernest Hemingway pair up to find out who is killing the city's literary editors. Edgar-nominated author McDonald takes such care to describe the American literary expatriate community in Paris in the years after World War I that readers will feel as if they are walking alongside Hemingway and his buddies as they look for a vicious killer. VERDICT Certain to attract Hemingway afficionados and readers who enjoy hard-boiled historical crime fiction. [Six-city author tour.]

THE YEAR AHEAD: ONE TRUE SENTENCE & MORE

First up in 2011 is the release of ONE TRUE SENTENCE (Minotaur, February 2010). Given the novel centers on a pivotal romantic relationship in the life of series character Hector Lassiter, that Valentine's-time lay-down date seems particularly appropriate.

The novel also is set in one week in Paris, February 1924, and while in publication sequence the fourth novel in the Lassiter series, in terms of chronology, this one is theoretically the first, and, so, a perfect place for new readers to get on board.

Booklist has just weighed in on the novel:

"This time out, crime writer Hec Lassiter and best friend Ernest Hemingway are young members of the Lost Generation in Paris in 1924. Someone is murdering editors of the city’s many literary reviews, and Gertrude Stein assigns Hec, Hem, and two female mystery writers to track down the murderers, a nihilistic cult called the Nadaists. It’s another juicy setting for McDonald to mix real people, well-known parts of the Hemingway legend, invented characters, and murders most foul. Gertrude Stein, Alice and her brownies, Ford Maddox Ford, William Carlos Williams, Man Ray, and Aleister Crowley all play parts of varying sizes, and McDonald paints a vivid picture of Lost Gen life in Paris. He tweaks Papa by giving credit for several of his best-known lines to Hec and a Paris cop. And he creates Brinke Devlin, a stunning mystery novelist with whom Hec falls in love, even though he suspects her of evil deeds. Sadly, the preface reports that Papa will be retired from the Lassiter novels. But fans will always have Paris." — Thomas Gaughan

In addition to its hardcover release, ONE TRUE SENTENCE will also be available as an eBook, and in unabridged audio from Recorded Books. ONE TRUE SENTENCE is also a Mystery Guild Alternate Selection.

Tour dates are being finalized now; stops will include Austin, Texas; Scottsdale, Arizona; Dayton, Ohio and in-and-around Columbus, Ohio, among others, sometime in late February.



About that same time, PRINT THE LEGEND will be given its French release by Belfond, under the alternate title, ONE ONLY DIES ONCE. As that book makes its way to French bookstores, I'm tentatively scheduled to appear at the 2011 Festival Quai du polar in Lyon, France in late-March.

Steps are also underway to at last release HEAD GAMES as an eBook (TOROS & TORSOS became available in that format late last year). Once that is done, all of the Hector Lassiter novels so far published will finally be available in electronic format.

Stay tuned for more announcements regarding future projects, including the possible release of a standalone novel about a trio of Midwest cops later this year.

PRINT THE LEGEND ON A DOZEN-PLUS YEAR'S BEST LISTS

PRINT THE LEGEND, the third novel in the Hector Lassiter series, made a humbling number of year's best lists and garnered several honorable mentions, as well.

I'm grateful to each critic and fellow writer who singled out the novel for recognition at year's end. A round up of those lists follows, and, later today, some words about what's to come in 2011.



• Barnes & Noble/Ransom Notes on PRINT THE LEGEND: "Chapter three of a proposed eight installment series featuring the fictional 20th century pulp writer Hector Lassiter. This one focuses on the death of Ernest Hemingway. Notice I didn’t say suicide. McDonald has created a three-dimensional character in Lassiter and an intricately layered mythology of the twentieth century for him to inhabit. Print is the third Hector Lassiter book - catch up with HEAD GAMES and TOROS & TORSOS."

• The Rap Sheet/January Magazine: "The Hector Lassiter series took a significant step forward in 2010 when author Craig McDonald released his third book about the renegade hard-boiled writer...Like the previous entries in the Lassiter series, HEAD GAMES (2007) and TOROS & TORSOS (2008), in PRINT THE LEGEND McDonald pulls from the archives of conspiracies and skullduggery to compose a rollicking yarn, taking no prisoners and never letting up on the adrenaline."

• Things I'd Rather Be Doing/John Kenyon on PRINT THE LEGEND (and others): "What set these books apart was not simply having a great story or compelling characters. It was the fact that the authors were daring and adventurous. Every book here is evidence of an author taking chances, and in each case, those experiments and leaps of faith paid off handsomely."

• Crime Factory/Keith Rawson on PRINT THE LEGEND: "My favorite ongoing series. Each entry in the Lassiter series keeps getting better and better. I can't wait for ONE TRUE SENTENCE."

• The Paperback Dolls (a Day pick for PRINT THE LEGEND for her top 5).

• Jen's Book Thoughts/Jen Forbus: "Why I don't hear McDonald's name mentioned more often is one of the great wonders of this world. PRINT THE LEGEND is extraordinary. It's unique, masterfully blending fact with fiction. McDonald refused to be confined by any conventions. He's paving his own road, and I'm gladly traveling along enjoying the fruits of his labors."

• Book People/Scott Montgomery: "A unique thriller that has McDonald’s pistol-toting crime writer, Hector Lassiter, a shady government agent, and Ernest Hemingway’s widow circling around some lost manuscripts. Smart, slow burn suspense as well as a deft meditation on literary culture."

• Naomi Johnson on PRINT THE LEGEND: "It's no secret how much I love the Hector Lassiter series. I can't even think about this book without wanting to re-read it."

• Charlie Stella names PRINT THE LEGEND as a 2010 favorite.

• Vince Keenan on PRINT THE LEGEND: "Yes, technically I read it in 2009. But I remembered it."

• Lazy Thoughts From A Boomer: A Top 10 list with nice mentions of PRINT THE LEGEND and kudos for narrator/actor Tom Stechschulte.

• The Mystery Bookshelf picks PRINT THE LEGEND as a top read.

Also, to make it a baker's dozen, and then some:

• Hilary Davidson's best of list includes Thuglit's anthology, BLOOD, GUTS & WHISKEY, including the short story, "These Two Guys..."

• The Drowning Machine More kind words for PRINT THE LEGEND, and its linked short story, "Colt."

PRINT THE LEGEND MAKES YEAR'S BEST LISTS

PRINT THE LEGEND, the third novel in the Hector Lassiter series cropped up on three different year's best lists overnight.

I'm very grateful to the critics and booksellers who singled out PTL among the hundreds of books published in 2010.

January Magazine/The Rap Sheet's Stephen Miller wrote:

"The Hector Lassiter series took a significant step forward in 2010 when author Craig McDonald released his third book about the renegade hard-boiled writer, Print the Legend. Set in Ketchum, Idaho, in 1965, four years after Ernest Hemingway’s suicide, old Papa pal Lassiter finds himself the keynote speaker at a symposium about his drinking and writing rival and fellow spirit. Hemingway is on the verge of becoming the literary cottage industry that we know today with dissertations, journals, and academic jealousies. On top of it all, Mary Hemingway, the black widow herself, is still ensconced in the Ketchum home where she is said to be ready to release a posthumous memoir Hemingway wrote about his experiences in 1920s Paris, a book familiar to us today as A Moveable Feast. Yet all is clearly not right, since a rogue CIA agent named Donovan Creedy is lurking about the symposium, apparently hell-bent on destroying Papa’s reputation -- and take Lassiter out in the process. Meanwhile, Lassiter is trying to subdue the widow Hemingway, retrieve some long-lost papers, and keep Creedy from screwing Papa over once and for all. McDonald helps to keep this story timely by dovetailing it nicely into the recent controversy surrounding a re-editing of A Moveable Feast by one of the great author’s grandson, Sean Hemingway -- a “restored” version that received significant criticism from Hemingway loyalists. Like the previous entries in the Lassiter series, Head Games (2007) and Toros and Torsos (2008), in Print the Legend McDonald pulls from the archives of conspiracies and skullduggery to compose a rollicking yarn, taking no prisoners and never letting up on the adrenaline. One can’t help but be reminded, when reading several sections of this novel, of that old joke about why battles in academia are so vicious: because the stakes are so modest." -- Stephen Miller

Scott Montgomery, of Austin, Texas' Book People writes:
"A unique thriller that has McDonald’s pistol-toting crime writer, Hector Lassiter, a shady government agent, and Ernest Hemingway’s widow circling around some lost manuscripts. Smart, slow burn suspense as well as a deft meditation on literary culture."

(By the by, Book People's crime fiction club will be reading TOROS & TORSOS in January and I'll be visiting via speaker phone; hope to make an in person visit during the ONE TRUE SENTENCE tour early next year, too.)

And Jen Forbus at Jen's Book Thoughts writes:

"Why I don't hear McDonald's name mentioned more often is one of the great wonders of this world. PRINT THE LEGEND is extraordinary. It's unique, masterfully blending fact with fiction. McDonald refused to be confined by any conventions. He's paving his own road, and I'm gladly traveling along enjoying the fruits of his labors."

TOROS & TORSOS: A NEW FRENCH VERSION, AND EBOOK COMING

TOROS & TORSOS: Number two in the Hector Lassiter series, is now two years old.

This week, it debuts in France from Belfond with a new title, RHAPSODIE EN NOIR (translation by Pierre Reignier), which is, in a very meta-twist, the title of Hector Lassiter's own first novel — a novel he will be seen composing in the forthcoming ONE TRUE SENTENCE (coming February 2011, from Minotaur).

Belfond recently released HEAD GAMES in mass market paperback to help promote the launch of TOROS/RHAPSODIE. (Belfond will also be publishing PRINT THE LEGEND and ONE TRUE SENTENCE in translation.)



HEAD GAMES introduced the character of crime author Hector Lassiter. My debut was part pulp-lit, part road novel and a study of old-world masculinity under multi-front assault.

TOROS was a change up. Hector narrated the first book; TOROS moved to limited third-person point of view and was spread across multiple decades. In the novel, Hector chases a phantom killer inspired by surrealist art. We're on the scene of the devastating 1935 Florida Keys Hurricane with Hector and Hemingway... We're the Spanish Civil War in 1937 where an increasingly erratic Hemingway burns bridges with John Dos Passos and others against a backdrop of an under-siege Madrid... We're in Hollywood in 1947 with Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth, caught in a crossfire from the Black Dahlia murder... And we're in Cuba at the dawn of the Castro regime.

Apart from its American hardcover (in sold-out limited edition format, and trade hardcover) and trade paperback release from Bleak House Books, T&T was also recorded in unabridged audio by Recorded Books (check Audible or your local public library).



Before such things were on many people's radar, I elected to retain my eBook rights for HEAD GAMES and TOROS. In a few days, I'll be releasing TOROS in eBook format. That version will include samples of the other novels, including a preview of ONE TRUE SENTENCE.

More details on TOROS& TORSOS, the eBook, coming soon...





• 2009 Crimespree Award finalist for Favorite Book

• 2009 Crimespree Award finalist for Best in an Ongoing Series

• One of Woody Hauts' Favorites of 2009

"Nothing short of a surrealistic masterwork."
— PAUL GOAT ALLEN, CHICAGO TRIBUNE

"This is granite poetry in all its stone glory."
— KEN BRUEN, PRIEST

"Deftly mixes myth, history... McDonald's imaginative tale takes an enjoyably different approach to art and murder."
— PUBLISHERS WEEKLY