Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed

Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed

Authors of hard-boiled, pulp, mystery, and suspense reveal secrets about their fiction, and the writing life. All interviews are conducted by Clute and Edwards, creators of the popular podcast "Out of the Past: Investigating Film Noir." More info at www.noircast.net

Episodes

Episode 28: Michael Connelly Revealed

October 14, 2008 • 44 mins

THE BRASS VERDICT, the nineteenth novel from #1 New York Times Bestselling author Michael Connelly, gives definitive proof that Connelly is the most gifted crime writer since Raymond Chandler. Those with a debt to Chandler typically lack either the research skills, the knowledge of Los Angeles, or the soul for the job. Connelly has it all. Utilizing his skills as a former journalist, he not only nails the facts of legal and police ...

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Episode 27: Scott Phillips Revealed

October 13, 2008 • 40 mins

It is hard to imagine a sequel that is any more tightly intertwined with, or distinct from, its predecessor than Scott Phillips's 2002 THE WALKAWAY. His 2000 debut novel THE ICE HARVEST was a tight tale of one day in the tragicomic life of small-time Wichita mobster Charlie Arglist. THE WALKAWAY is an ambitious prequel-sequel to that bestseller, a complex narrative that alternates between first and third person points of view, and ...

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Episode 26: George Pelecanos Revealed

August 16, 2008 • 49 mins
THE TURNAROUND, George Pelecanos's fifteenth novel, is the work of a mature writer at the top of his game. It is a thoughtful examination of one event that permanently alters the lives of six young men—three black, three white. The story is both as straightforward and as complex as the characters it involves, and pulls the reader in through their palpable suffering. By creating such intimacy with this ensemble cast, Pelecanos is ab...
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Episode 25: Mark Coggins Revealed

August 1, 2008 • 40 mins
That Coggins is a disciple of Chandler and Hammett is abundantly clear in his most recent August Riordan novel, RUNOFF. Riordan is in many ways analogous to Chandler's iconic Philip Marlowe. He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man, or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. Coggins turns his man loose in one of the most hard-boile...
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Episode 24: Jonathan Santlofer Revealed

July 1, 2008 • 43 mins
Jonathan Santlofer is an artist and author of exceptional talent, a master of virtually any visual or linguistic medium. His work has been displayed in fine galleries around the world,and his art-themed crime fiction has drawn comparisons to the work of Michael Connelly. He is the author of five novels, three starring NYPD detective turned art historian Kate McKinnon (THE KILLING ART, COLOR BLIND, THE DEATH ARTIST) and two featurin...
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Episode 23: Christa Faust Revealed

June 2, 2008 • 40 mins
Christa Faust's latest novel, MONEY SHOT, distills all the darkest and most addictive spirits of 1940's film noir and 1950's hard-boiled into a lethal elixir. Such a statement is necessarily contradictory, for Faust's unique blend of a noir atmosphere of inescapable doom with the campy, two-fisted action of Gold Medal-era pulp, gives us characters who die so that they might be reborn, and action that destroys in order to redeem. Pr...
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Episode 22: Seth Harwood Revealed

May 16, 2008 • 48 mins
Long before Seth Harwood's JACK WAKES UP went to print with Breakneck Books it came roaring into our homes as a series of expertly-produced podcasts, a serialized publication in the tradition of classic pulps, but with a throaty growl and lightening agility like that of Jack Palms's one true love—his 1966 Mustang Fastback K-Code GT. And in this car we find a fitting metaphor for Harwood's project: retro, but fit for today and the f...
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Noircon 2008: The Official Podcast Day 3: Cybernoir Panel

April 27, 2008 • 41 mins
Shannon Clute, Seth Harwood, and Richard Edwards presented this Cybernoir panel on April 5th, 2008, as part of the Noircon Conference in Philadelphia. Clute and Edwards kick things off with a discussion of how noir style and pulp publishing models seem to provide the fundamental structuring logics of emerging digital media—from blogs to podcasts, mashups to video games. Seth Harwood then relates his own experience of podcasting his...
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Noircon 2008: The Official Podcast Day 3: Wise Guys and Femmes Fatale

April 13, 2008 • 45 mins
Wise guys and femmes fatale form the central focus of these next panel discussions from Noircon 2008. In the first half of the podcast, Clute and Edwards talk with authors George Anastasia and Anthony Bruno. Anastasia and Bruno are two seasoned mob-watchers who uncover life on the mean streets-Philly style. Based on their Noircon panel, Wise Guy Noir, they give us an inside look into the Godfathers and Goodfellas of Philadelp...
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Noircon 2008: The Official Podcast Day 2: Editors and Publishers Tackle Noir

April 12, 2008 • 17 mins
Clute and Edwards discuss the editing and publishing of noir fiction with three members of this Day 2 Noircon panel: Charles Ardai, Stacia Decker, and Michael Langnas. Charles Ardai is the editor and publisher of the Hard Case Crime series. Stacia Decker is an editor who has worked with such writers as Ray Banks, Declan Burke, Allan Guthrie and John McFetridge. Michael Langnas is the editor-in-chief of Murdaland Magazine, a c...
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Noircon 2008: The Official Podcast Day 2: George Lippard and Philly Noir

April 12, 2008 • 42 mins
Philadelphia noir is the focus of two panels at Noircon 2008. The first panel presents the historical moment, cultural milieu and writings of the 19th century Philly writer George Lippard. Ed Petit and Robert Polito make a compelling case to consider Lippard an important proto-noir author, an author whose writings look back towards 1798's gothic novel WIELAND and forward towards 20th century hardboiled. The second panel addre...
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Noircon 2008: The Official Podcast Day One

April 4, 2008 • 21 mins
Day One: Opening Night. Noircon 2008 opens at the Society Hill Playhouse in Philadelphia, PA. Clute and Edwards kick off this special podcast mini-series coverage with short interviews from the opening night reception. They talk with film critic Irv Slifkin, authors Gary Phillips, Seth Harwood, Ken Bruen, “The Czar of Noir? Eddie Muller, publisher Dennis McMillan, conference organizer Lou Boxer, and author Duane Swierczynski. We fi...
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Episode 21: Ken Bruen Revealed

March 20, 2008 • 50 mins
Ken Bruen's PRIEST, the fifth entry in the award-winning Jack Taylor series, has been nominated for the 2008 Edgar for Best Novel, and that still may not be high enough praise. PRIEST is the story of Galway, Ireland, a city in transition from tradition to modernity, from impoverished but united community to cutthroat capitalistic individualism, from staunch Catholicism to a crisis of consciousness. When Jack Taylor is thrust back i...
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Episode 20: Laurie King Revealed

February 15, 2008 • 36 mins
Laurie King's TOUCHSTONE is set in England, 1926, in the tense atmosphere of impending labor strikes that threaten to tear the nation apart. It is the story of a remarkable WWI-scarred veteran whose injuries have stripped him of sensory filters, allowing him to feel the slightest emotional turmoil in those he encounters. He finds himself at the mercy of myriad political players who seek to harness his talents to impose their vision...
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Eddie Muller Interview: Noir City 6, and More!

January 23, 2008 • 16 mins
The Czar of Noir joins Clute and Edwards to discuss the upcoming Noir City film festival, and the various fiction and film projects he has in the works.
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Episode 19: David Fulmer Revealed

January 17, 2008 • 38 mins
David Fulmer's January 2008 Harcourt release, THE BLUE DOOR, will restore your faith in storytelling. In a digital world of slick production, inanely catchy and endlessly repeated refrains, and single tune download logic, Fulmer gives us a literary LP. THE BLUE DOOR recaptures the lost arts of letting the story unfold over time, of building it on fully composed characters rather than cheap hooks, and of playing it all over the stea...
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Episode 18: Max Allan Collins Revealed

December 20, 2007 • 63 mins
DEADLY BELOVED, released in December 2007 by Hard Case Crime, is the culmination of Max Allan Collins's eclectic and prolific career. Its tight pacing and razor-sharp scene cuts recall Max's talent as a filmmaker. Its visual prose speaks to his experience writing the Dick Tracy comic strip, the Ms. Tree comic book series, and the justly famous graphic novel THE ROAD TO PERDITION. The vivid evocation of the city of Chicago, and the ...
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Episode 17: Tim Maleeny Revealed

November 16, 2007 • 35 mins
Tim Maleeny's second Cape Weathers mystery, BEATING THE BABUSHKA, is nearly impossible to pigeonhole. Its literary predecessors run the gamut form Walter Gibson and Dashiell Hammett to Robert Crais and Elmore Leonard, and it seems to draw in equal measure on movies the likes of THE THIN MAN and THE BIG LEBOWSKI. That this multifarious, madcap pulp romp works at all owes much to Maleeny's craft: he has a gift for re-mastering old tu...
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Episode 16: Harry Hunsicker Revealed

October 29, 2007 • 31 mins
Harry Hunsicker's strong third installment to his Lee Henry Oswald series, CROSSHAIRS, is a hard book to categorize. Though set in the sprawling suburbs of modern Dallas, it often reads like throwback hard-boiled—in all the best ways. Oswald is a Chandler-esque creation, a reluctant but unflappable hero who tries to get out of the PI game but keeps being pulled back in by circumstances, and one unavoidable truth: he's simply too g...
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Episode 15: Chelsea Cain Revealed

September 16, 2007 • 34 mins
Chelsea Cain's HEARTSICK is at once a recognizable and very original addition to the serial killer genre. While the principal plot twist (a detective working to stop a serial killer must consult with another killer already behind bars) reminds us of Thomas Harris's RED DRAGON, Chelsea Cain's detective Archie Sheridan has suffered at the hands of killer Gretchen Lowell in ways that create a terrible intimacy exceeding any penned by ...
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