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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.