You Would Never Know The Mysterious Affair at Styles Was a Debut Novel

by

Scott D. Parker

For the past four years, I’ve tried to read along with the reading plans hatched by the folks behind AgathaChristie.com. Each year I’ve not completed all twelve books but I’m always game for a themed list like this that carries a reader throughout the year so I'm giving this year’s list a try. Unlike past lists that were, say, arranged by styles of murders, this year is simply chronological, and it begins at the beginning.

The Time Period

The Mysterious Affair at Styles is not only the first time we’re introduced to famed detective, Hercule Poirot, and his friend, Arthur Hastings, but it also is the first book Christie ever wrote. Talk about coming out of the gate at full speed. I’m still a freshman when it comes to Christie’s works—as best as I can tell, this is about the fourth or fifth book of hers I’ve read—but how she weaves this plot through the entire book is very impressive.

I’ve been doing some reading on Christie and I learned that Styles was written to win a bet. Christie’s sister didn’t believe the new writer could come up with a story where the reader cannot guess the actual culprit in the novel. Like many of the then-contemporary reviews stated in late 1920 and early 1921, the bet was won. 

Christie started the novel in 1916, which is why the setting is still during wartime. We get a good sense of what it is like on the homefront, at least in terms of a large country manor. Hastings is on leave from the war and ends up at Styles manor to recuperate. Poirot is a part of a group of Belgian refugees living near Styles and he knew the rich owner, Emily Inglethorp. I particularly appreciated Poirot as a refugee and not some famous detective who has an office and solves crimes. 

The Plot

Well, let’s be honest: the plot is wonderfully convoluted. As a listener (I heard the audiobook) in 2024, I was keen to see if I could figure out the killer, what threads were red herrings, and who had motive. Turns out I couldn’t, I kinda did, and everyone.

Much like Sherlock Holmes, Poirot keeps Hastings and other characters in the dark as the investigation progresses. There is always a legitimate reason why this happens (after Poirot explains it all) but it’s also Christie using her skill as a writer to tease just enough to entice readers to keep turning pages. 

The murder in question is that of Emily Inglethorp. She is poisoned. Now the only question is who did it and why. 

Christie tosses eight people in the mix. Alfred Inglethrop, the younger man recently married to Emily. John and Lawrence Cavendish, stepsons from Emily’s first marriage. Mary Cavendish, John’s wife. Evelyn Howard, a companion of Emily’s. Cynthia Murdoch, a friend of the family who works at a hospital dispensary. Dr. Bauerstein, a toxicologist who lives nearby. Dorcas, the loyal maid at Styles.

There are moments in the book where Christie (via Poirot) purposely keep things away from readers (and Hastings). To be honest, it reminded me of the middle section of The Hound of the Baskervilles where Holmes has Watson accompany Henry Baskerville to that manor while the detective does his own thing. Every writer is a reader and we absorb so many moments from other stories so things like this are bound to happen. 

What this does, of course, is let Poirot have that final last chapter where he sums up everything, and it is immensely satisfying. While I don’t think Poirot is as smart as Holmes, there were still a few moments when I heard the explanation and I realized I should have caught a clue. Shrug. I’m too busy enjoying the story. 

I borrowed my mom’s edition of the novel and it includes a different version of the final chapter. Christie originally had Poirot deliver the summation as part of a trial. Her editors encouraged her to change it up and just have Poirot relate all the details in the manor house. Much more effective because the Belgian detective can deliver all the clues with the flourish that reader have now enjoyed for over a century.

The Murdered Banker

I've been reading the Pushkin Vertigo issued mystery novels for several years now, and most recently among their books, I finished one of their reprints, an Italian mystery called The Murdered Banker, first published in 1935. It was the first mystery of the Milan-based Augusto De Angelis, credited now as being among the first Italian writers to publish successful mystery fiction in Italy. As the afterward in my edition says, "In 1929, when the Italian publisher Mondadori launched their popular series of crime and thriller titles (clad in the yellow jackets that would later give their name to the wider giallo tradition of Italian books and films), there were no Italian authors on the list. Many thought Italy was inherently infertile ground for the thriller genre, with one critic claiming that a detective novel set in such a sleepy Mediterranean country was an "absurd hypothesis." Augusto De Angelis strongly disagreed. He saw crime fiction as the natural product of his fraught and violent times: "The detective novel is the fruit--the red, bloodied fruit of our age."

No surprise that he saw his surroundings as fraught and violent living in Italy under Mussolini. And the Fascist regime there had an ambivalent attitude toward the genre -- "on the one hand they approved of the triumph of the forces of order over degeneracy and chaos that most thriller plots involved; on the other hand they were wary of representations of their Italian homeland as anything less than a harmonious idyll." Among the populace, though, De Angelis' books were popular, and he went on to write 20 novels featuring his lead character, Inspector De Vincenzi.

De Angelis was a journalist as well as a novelist. I wonder what mystery fiction he read before he wrote The Murdered Banker. I would assume he'd read the English detective writers up to that point and the Americans working in the hardboiled style. But his character of Inspector De Vincenzi is neither a sleuth solving elaborate puzzles in the Golden Age fashion nor a Sam Spade or Continental Op private eye type. The closest analogue to De Vincenzi I see is Georges Simenon's Inspector Maigret, and I would assume De Angelis read some Maigret books because by 1935 Simenon had published a lot of them.

In The Murdered Banker, De Vincenzi handles the case involving the killing of the title character, and he proceeds much like Maigret often does, using a combination of deductive logic and intuition. In the apartment where the murder occurred, he questions several people and sort of soaks up the atmosphere of the place, a policeman who is determined and unrelenting but also attuned to his own feelings and the feelings of others. He is also, obviously, a professional investigator and has to answer to pressures from above.

The mystery is solid, and the book, about 160 pages, is all meat. There's nothing I could detect overtly political in the story, but I'm curious to read a couple more of his books to see if other ones do contain things that might have offended the Italian Fascists. His writing overall must have; at some point, he became a target they were watching. They censored his work. He wrote some anti-Fascist articles, and this got him arrested in 1943. He was released from prison three months later, but in 1944, a Fascist thug attacked him in the village of Bellagio, and the beating was so severe that he died from his injuries in the hospital. 

Duane Swierczynski Talks Moving Backstory of New Novel in Return to Houston’s Murder by the Book

by

Scott D. Parker

It’s been nine years since Philadelphia native Duane Swierczynski had a book signing at Houston’s Murder by the Book. In fact, as he told the folks who turned out last Friday night, this store was where he had his first book signing. What he appreciated, he told us, was how much the store had not changed. 

He, on the other hand, has.

Swierczynski is the author of over a dozen novels, numerous short stories, and dozens of comics. He is married and is the father of two children. One, however, his daughter, Evelyn, was diagnosed with leukemia back in 2018. Swierczynski and his wife took turns spending the night in the hospital so Evie wouldn’t be alone. It was during these difficult times that the genesis of his new novel California Bear, began.

Back in 2016, the Swierczynski family moved to Los Angeles, but it was Duane and Evie who scouted out the city. Father and daughter discovered great places to eat and fun and famous places they had only read about. As Duane told the story at the store in an interview format by owner McKenna Jordan Duffey, Evie loved food, and they ended up doing a food tour of LA. Food ended up permeating California Bear.

In October 2018, Evie succumbed to her illness and Duane set California Bear aside. In another recent interview, Duane stated “I thought, I’m not sure I can finish this.” He didn’t even pick it up for a long time. 

But when he did, Evie channeled her voice into the prose. One of the characters in the new novel is Matilda, a fifteen-year-old who is diagnosed with leukemia. She’s determined to find out the truth about her dad: was he a murderer or was he innocent?

There’s also a true crime aspect to California Bear, something McKenna asked Duane about. He answered honestly. Too much attention is focused on the sensationality of these stories and too little on the fact that real people are involved. “It’s someone’s bad day,” Duane said. “The focus should be on the people, the human beings behind the headlines.”

Working with James Patterson

Speaking of attention, Duane commented on the battle for the attention spans of people and how much effort a potential reader has to bring to the act of reading “symbols on a page to see the movie in your mind.” When it comes to TV, movies, or anything streaming, viewers don’t have to do anything. They just sit there and the story washes over them. Readers, however, are co-authors with the writer, and that takes work. 

One way to help people choose to be an active reader rather than a passive viewer is the pace of the prose, and there are few writers who write with such a propulsive pace as James Patterson. “He’s the hardest working guy in the business,” Duane said of Patterson, with whom he has collaborated a few times (including the wildly fun Lion and Lamb from last year). All the books that bear Patterson’s name pass through him.

Duane enjoyed working with Patterson, but he confessed that the small talk aspect of their relationship is vastly unequal. One time Patterson called up Duane and mentioned he was hanging out with Dolly Parton. Duane’s response was that he was walking his dog.

The Proust Questionnaire

McKenna ended the interview portion of the event with a few questions. Aside from the funnier ones (What’s an overrated virtue? “Chastity” and When do you lie? “I lie for a living”), it was Duane’s answer to “What do you most dislike?” that struck home for me. “Haters.” Empathy is important, Duane said. “You don’t know what people are going through.” Man, is that the truth.

Becoming Himself as a Writer Again

McKenna asked Duane about his writing process and schedule. He confessed that after Evie, he needed to ramp up his writerly skills and used short stories to do just that. He mentioned that last year, he actually wrote a novel in longhand, just him, a pen, and the paper. But through all the comics and short stories and the “roulette wheel” of grief, Duane said that California Bear is proof that he’s “back to myself.” 

I’m really looking forward to diving into Duane’s new novel, and I hope it won’t be another nine years before he returns to Houston.

The Evelyn Swierczynski Foundation

Evie was an avid reader and enjoyed the Literally Healing Program at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles where every patient is given a new book everyday. Every Christmas season, Murder by the Book and other independent bookstores participate in a book drive to keep the hospital filled with books. But you don’t have to wait until the holiday season to contribute. Head on over to the foundation's website to find out how you can help—including blood and bone marrow registry drive and the big goal of “Evie’s Bites”—and keep Evie’s spirit and Light bright.

Beau is back, baby

 

Beau is back

Can Anyone Get Away With Murder? Eight Perfect Murders Provides An Answer

by

Scott D. Parker

The last book I read in 2023 was the Christmas novella, The Christmas Guest, by a new-to-me writer, Peter Swanson. I thoroughly enjoyed the holiday-themed story—and the twist—that I wanted to read another novel by the author. So the first book of 2024 I read was another Swanson book.

But where to start? How about a novel featuring famous literary murders?

Eight Perfect Murders is Swanson’s sixth novel. It stars Malcolm Kershaw, the owner of a mystery bookstore in Boston. In first-person POV, Malcolm tells us the story of how an FBI agent, Gwen Mulvey, comes to ask Malcolm for his insight into a few murders that may or may not be connected. She thinks they are. Her bosses have other ideas. The connection, Gwen thinks, is that they are based on murders from books.

The eight literary murders in question comes from a blog entry Malcolm wrote years ago to promote the bookstore’s blog. The list is his take on “perfect” murders in novels. Here they are:

The Red House Mystery (1922) by A.A. Milne

Malice Aforethought (1931) by Anthony Berkeley Cox

The A.B.C. Murder (1936) by Agatha Christie

Double indemnity (1943) by James M. Cain

Strangers on a Train (1950) by Patricia Highsmith

The Drowner (1963) by John D. MacDonald

Deathtrap (1978) by Ira Levin

The Secret History (1992) by Donna Tartt

(Sidenote on Spoilers: I’ll be honest here and say that I’ve read none of these books and only seen the movie versions of Double Indemnity and Strangers on a Train. The plots of these books are discussed and revealed. I instantly had the idea that I should read all these books beforehand…but then realized I just didn’t care. I wanted to read this book here and now so, yeah, all eight books are spoiled. But I suspect a reader who has read all the books will get a kick out of it. Besides, a few of characters also say “I saw the movie, but I didn’t read the book.”)

Gwen asks Malcolm how he came up with the list and here—and throughout the book—we get lots of discussion about these and other mystery books. For aficionados of the genre, it’s pretty fun. It’s book nerd stuff, and it made me wonder if Swanson really enjoyed talking about books like these and figured out a way to write a novel around it.

Malcolm gives her a few details, but keeps other things to himself. In fact, as the story goes on, the layers of Malcolm’s character are revealed…and it’s pretty darn cool.

The Structure of the Book

You know how the movie, “The Blair Witch Project,” was marketed as actual found footage? There’s a lot of that here. In fact, the opening dedication reads “A Memoir” followed by a disclaimer about the events being true. It got me just curious enough to flip back to the copyright page and verify that yes, this was a work of fiction.

With this being a first-person POV, everything is from Malcolm’s eyes, including some curious, almost fourth-wall breaking moments. One—and this is not a spoiler—has him making readers question what they’ve read, and he does this by pointing out the little nuances of the writing itself that might make you kick yourself for not catching them. It’s quite clever, and it changed how I experienced what Malcolm said and did.

The Unveiling of Details

Swanson performs some seriously good writing magic as this book goes on. He’ll introduce a person or a concept and give you some pieces of information where you form an opinion on said person or concept. Sometimes, it’s an off-hand reference, but you start to build a story around what you think about Malcolm and his world.

Then Swanson lays down another literary card, and what you formed is flipped on its side. That’s fine because that’s what authors do. You take the new information and adjust your way of thinking. Only for Swanson to upend your expectations again. It’s devilishly clever, and I started to find myself hedging my bets on new characters or concepts.

The Narration

I have to give a shoutout to Graham Halstead, the narrator of the audiobook. Just as Swanson changes how you perceive Malcolm, Halstead’s narration performs a similar feat. The way he narrates Malcolm in the beginning of the book changes as the chapters increase. 

The Reveal

I’m certainly not going to give away the ending here—because I want you to read it—but it was nice to have things fully explained with no room for misunderstanding. The explanation was well earned.

The Discovery of a New-to-Me Author

When it comes to reading, it is so wonderful to discover a new-to-you author with other books already completed and waiting to be read. Two books into Peter Swanson’s bibliography and I’m eager to keep reading his books. With eight novels, I actually had the thought that I could get through all of Swanson’s books by the end of the year. Check back in December to see how it all turned out.

Have you read Swanson’s books? What are your favorites?

Beginning of a Great Adventure

It's not until fairly recently that I became aware of Percival Everett. Never mind that his first novel came out 40 years ago and that he's written over thirty books. Sometimes, somehow, you just don't come across a writer no matter how good that writer is. It was on some website a couple years ago that I happened across a piece on his novel Erasure, published in 2001, and the description of the book's plot so grabbed me that I kept it in my mind afterwards, and when I heard that a film adaptation of the novel was coming -- American Fiction -- I decided to read Erasure before seeing the film. I did both in the last month and was not disappointed in either. The book is a very funny look at race, stereotypes, the writing world, and a few other things, and it is also a sharp and poignant family drama. The film, with Jeffrey Wright as the main character, the novelist Thelonious Ellison, is an excellent adaptation. It's a film that is faithful to the book and that condenses some plot points from the novel well. It also, in one important character at least, adds a bit of nuance that is appropriate to a story taking place now, not twenty odd years ago. A success on all counts, in my view, as is the book. 

After finishing it, the book, I mean, I had that pleasing feeling you get when you've read someone who to you is new and who you want to explore further. And in this case, as I said, there's much to explore, since Everett has been and continues to be prolific. What's better for a reader than that? You've found an author you didn't know about, like that person's writing a lot, and see that you have so much more of their stuff to choose from. And Everett is nothing if not protean. You look through his list of titles and the descriptions of what the novels are about and you see a startling level of variety: satires, western-set stories, plots involving crime, fictional biography, and narratives derived from Greek mythology, to name a few. There's much genre mixing and, clearly, a refusal to hew to conventional forms and reader expectations. My only dilemma after Erasure was where among all this to start. But after a visit to a bookstore and some browsing among his books on the shelf there, I chose So Much Blue, a novel of his from 2017.

So Much Blue follows its narrator, Kevin Pace, a married middle-aged painter with two children, through three timelines. One, "Home", concerns his doings more or less in the present and with his family; the second, "Paris", is set in the near past where Kevin had an affair, and the third, "1979", is about something he and his best friend experienced while in war-torn El Salvador many years ago. The three timelines alternate in a flawlessly told story centered around, in each unfolding strand, secrets. Secrets of various types that Kevin holds from those close to him, including, of course, his wife, You have a combination of a domestic novel, a tense and grimy novel of adventure and intrigue, and a tale of a somewhat world-weary and highly self-critical artist. All this, and at the book's center you have something you do not see, a painting that Kevin has been working on for years and refuses to show anybody, including his best friend and his wife. What we do know about the painting is that it has a lot of blue in it, but that's about it. He gives a few clues as to what it looks like, and we understand that his reasons for not showing the painting to anyone has to do with events he's gone through that have affected him strongly. In each of the three plot threads, suspense develops very well from the drama Kevin is involved in, and each unfolds with utter verisimilitude. This is a person's complex life you are involved in, and you are absorbed fully. There's a good deal of wry wit in the telling as well, even in its darkest moments. It's a read I thoroughly enjoyed, and on finishing the book, I said to myself that Percival Everett is now two for two for me. Two for two, and there's a rich assortment of choices from him to go to next. Again, what better for a reader than that, to make for yourself this kind of "discovery".

As the saying goes, onward.

 

 

My Favorite Books of 2023

by

Scott D. Parker

One of the things I did in 2023 that really helped me remember what I read was my notecard habit. For everything I watched or read, I wrote down my thoughts on a 4x6 lined index card along with the date. I particularly appreciated the finite space of an index card. Granted, sometimes I’d write a review for a blog and the notecard would be “See blog” but those times were rare. 

Lots of Comics

I ended up reading quite a bit in 2023. Now, one of the things that really helped bump up the total was my decision in the summer to read a comic book per day from Memorial Day to Labor Day. As a result, I read over 99 comics during the summer and then just kept going until the steak was broken on 11 November. It was so much fun to rediscover old issues I hadn’t read in decades and get introduced to new ones.

I particularly enjoyed the Alan Grant/Norm Breyfogle run on Batman from the early 1990s. I own nearly every title from that run so I had the great pleasure of opening my long boxes and fishing out issues that most likely hadn’t been opened since I taped them up back in my college days. Grant’s way of telling a story that drew on then-current issues like drugs and terrorism was a nice bridge between the Bronze Age version of the character and the grim/dark version we now have. Grant kept reminding the reader that Batman was really a man. Breyfogle’s art is superb, and not just his way to drawing characters and scenes but his imaginative way of laying out the panels. 

A more modern comic title I really enjoyed was the current run on Nightwing by Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo. This pair remember something fundamental to the comic book medium: It’s supposed to be fun! They tell the story of the adult Dick Grayson from a point of view that basically makes you question why Bruce Wayne dresses up like a bat versus investing his money in other things that can help Gotham. And this title has heart. I was grinning the entire time I read these issues.

Favorite Books

But I also read “real” books (as my wife calls them). I’m in a science fiction/fantasy book club (we’re in Year 15 now) and I don’t often finish the books I didn’t select, so I’m not going to include them in my best estimate of started-but-not-finished books (approximately 10). As best as I can tell, I finished 24 fiction books in 2023 (and two non-fiction books), which might be the most number of books I’ve read in many years. 

DEAD SILENCE by S.A. Barnes - I gave this one an A in my book club. Think derelict “Titanic” space cruiser where salvagers have to enter the ship to retrieve things…but there might be something else on board. Super creepy, and the horror elements really worked for me.

THE NAZI CONSPIRACY by Brad Meltzer - All I need to know is that Meltzer wrote another history book. The fact that Scott Brick reads narrates is just gravy. There is an effortless quality to the prose and the narration about an alleged plot to kill FDR, Churchill, and Stalin at the Tehran Conference. Lots of great detail and it reads like a novel.

THE SPARE MAN by Mary Robinette Kowal - Five words sold me this book: “The Thin Man in Space.” Kowal narrates her own book that features two main protagonist that are more than worthy successors to Nick and Nora Charles.

FALLING by T.J. Newman - The cover is what snagged my attention, but the story of a pilot being blackmailed into crashing his plane kept my earbuds glued in my ears until it was over. Propulsive story that is suspenseful but not the breakneck pace of other thrillers. 

CHARM CITY ROCKS by Matthew Norman - If I had to pick my favorite book of the year, this is it. I read it (not audio) over four days, and I haven’t done that since forever. Here’s the premise. 

A single dad, Billy, is watching a rock and roll documentary with his high school senior son, Caleb, when the fictional band Burnt Flowers shows up. Billy confesses that he had a huge crush on the drummer, Margot Hammer, back in the day. With Caleb about to go off to college and with his mom married, he worries about his dad will be lonely when he moves away. When Caleb accidentally eats some “special” gummies, he sends an email to Margot who is a rock and roll recluse after a spectacular and public meltdown on stage two decades ago. Caleb invites Margot to come to Charm City Rocks, the record store in Baltimore over which his dad lives. He’s convinced that if the former rock star would just meet his dad, they’d hit it off.

But Caleb knows that Margot won’t just come down to Baltimore so he poses as if he’s a teenaged girl in an all-girl rock band. Margot’s publicist thinks it a great idea to get Margot’s name back out in the world and urges her to go. Reluctantly, she agrees, and then the truth hits the fan.

DROWNING by T.J. Newman - From the opening, harrowing moments of the first three chapters to the last 30 minutes of the audiobook, this book did not let up. In the book, a plane suffers mechanical failure two minutes after takeoff from Honolulu and crashes into the ocean. Unlike those famous airplane disaster movies from the 1970s that takes a quarter of the movie to introduce the characters and get the plane in the air, Newman puts you on the plane just after takeoff from the first sentence. By Chapter 3, the plane is down.

And those three chapters are incredibly harrowing and edge-of-your-seat suspenseful. How suspenseful you might ask? Suspenseful enough to elicit an emotional response. Heart pounding in the chest and a sting of tears in the eyes. And that was only the beginning.

PROJECT HAIL MARY by Andy Weir - The SF story of one man’s attempt to save all of humanity…as he works with an alien trying to save his planet. 

LION AND LAMB by James Patterson and Duane Swierczynski - Yet another “Nick and Nora”  type story with two utterly charming main characters. This book is so much fun. As I closed out my review: “When you find a book or characters that you instantly form a connection with, you just want more and more stories. As a writer, I know how long the process can take.

Which is why I’m requesting, on behalf of all the reading audience, that Patterson and Swierczynski write a new Lion and Lamb novel every year. Oh, and TV execs? Read this one. And then make the series. Call me. I’ve got some ideas on casting.

THE CHRISTMAS GUEST by Peter Swanson - I enjoyed reading seasonal books and this was the second Christmas book I read (after a re-read of THE CHRISTMAS THIEF by Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark). I had never heard of Swanson but this novella was quite good. I really appreciated the twist at the end, and the ultimate reveal. How much did I like it? The first book of 2024 I read was a Swanson book…but that’s a different post.

On the non-fiction side, my favorite was BE USEFUL by Arnold Schwarzenegger. His story, his rise from humble beginnings to what he became is a good one, and this slim volume boils down his philosophy down to seven things. Oh, and Arnold reads the audiobook so that’s a win-win.

So, those are my selections. What are some of your favorite books of 2023? And what are you looking forward to in 2024?

Bunny hugs and eBay orders: The Steve Weddle Interview

By Eryk Pruitt

When naming giants in the canon of rural/Southern crime fiction from the 21^st century will inevitably name Daniel Woodrell, Donald Ray Pollock, Bonnie Jo Campbell, and of course Steve Weddle, who, in 2013, published his debut novel-in-stories, Country Hardball. That masterpiece is often named as an influence to the next generation of authors who write rural settings, namely Jedidiah Ayres, SA Cosby, and myself.  

For ten long years, Weddle fans have waited for his follow-up novel. Often we’ve had to make due with a short fiction piece, such as the one published in Playboy in 2015, or by squinting at the Instagram posts he’d teased out while handwriting—handwriting—his next opus. 

 

Ladies and gentlemen, the wait is over. Amazon Reads customers can download THE COUNTY LINE right now and through the month of January. Folks who want the physical book in their hands will have to wait until February 1, but after the long ten years, what’s another four weeks? At any rate, Weddle returns to form with his latest, The County Line, and I’d argue he’s outdone himself. This new one takes us back to the early days of the 20^th century where—

 

You know what: None of y’all are here to listen to me jabber. How about we have the man himself talk about THE COUNTY LINE?

 

ERYK PRUITT:As you know, I am a big COUNTRY HARDBALL fan, so I could hardly wait for THE COUNTY LINE. What were the seeds to this story? 

 

STEVE WEDDLE: COUNTRY HARDBALL was populated with the Tomlins and Rudds and Pribbles of Columbia County, Arkansas. While the stories in that 2013 collection were set in that time, I was curious how those families had gotten there. That book ends with Roy Alison, whose kinfolks are Tomlins, working to find out what had happened to his grandfather, who may have been killed by Franklin Rudd back in the 1950s. I’d thought about having Roy Alison track down Franklin Rudd, who told him about what had happened in the 1950s, but Rudd had to carry the story back to the 1930s for some context. I had this David Mitchell CLOUD ATLAS thing all planned out. Well, when Playboy came calling after COUNTRY HARDBALL published and asked for a short story, I peeled off the 1950s portion of that, which left me walking around in the 1930s, a period that has fascinated me because of outlaw camps and prohibition and the Great Depression and early jazz and so much more.

 

EP: Your sense of place in THE COUNTY LINE is absolutely amazing. You drew us into this world and locked us in. What inspired you to write about that part of the world?

 

SW: I grew up in that region, and it’s pretty tough to get all that dirt out from under your fingernails, if you ever wanted to do so. As I’m sure you know, whether it’s east Texas or North Carolina or my own little corner of Arkansas, once you start digging around in the lives of these characters, pretend people or not, they get their hooks in you. I’ll read family histories and diaries and yearbooks from that time period or read a newspaper article about a pharmacy celebrating five decades and I’ll get to wondering. You let the movie play in your head and just walk around inside of it. 

 

EP:  You had a keen attention to detail in THE COUNTY LINE. There were so many random bits which kept us immersed in the time and culture of Depression-era Arkansas/Louisiana. From famous criminals to blues singers to sports interests and even a Bunny Hug cocktail. I could probably pick your brain for hours about research, so how did you go about researching the culture back then? How did you choose what to keep and what to leave out?

 

SW:  Had I known before I started what it was going to take to pull this off, I’d have bought stock in eBay. I’ve ordered so many out-of-print books and farmers’ magazines and catalogs that I’ve had to clear out a closet upstairs for everything. Leaving any of that out of the story was tough, because I’d read an article about local banker and I’d see so much detail I wanted to use, from his cufflinks to the way he sat in his car. Editing this story down, keeping it as tight as I could, that was tough. There’s just so much great material.

 

EP:  One of my favorite aspects of the book is the rich, tongue-in-cheek dialogue. It was very comparable to what I might read in books by William Gay, Daniel Woodrell, or Chris Offutt. Even the dumbest of characters you write speak in such a way that renders them smarter than the reader. How did you hone your dialogue in such a way? 

 

SW:  If you watch a movie that came out this year, you get a sense of how people talk, but just a sense. Same with movies from the 1930s, I think. Go back to, say, Gold Diggers of 1933. Most of us know the song, “We’re in the Money,” but not the movie. The way people talked on stage then was probably further from the way real people talked than the gulf between movie talk and real talk today. My sense is that today, filmmakers want their movies to sound more realistic, except Wes Anderson, of course. So I couldn’t rely on movies of that time, though that’s the first thing that comes to mind, because we have people from 1933 saying words and we can see and hear them. Ah, the magic of talkies. 

 

So for me, I read through diaries and newspaper articles and out-of-print novels and letters. Reading collections of letters is great because people sound different based on their recipient, so you get a variation of flavor even from the same writer. And I looked online for “slang from 1930s” and so forth, most of which I discounted because it just sounded too phony, though there were a few keepers.

 

Once I had the characters well formed, I got a sense of which of them would be saying which phrases, because not every outlaw sounded like James Cagney. I’d see a phrase or a rhythm of dialogue and know pretty quickly whose mouth that belonged in, you know? 

 

EP: There were ten long years between COUNTRY HARDBALL and THE COUNTY LINE. What was that journey like? Please tell me it won't be ten more years until the next one....

 

SW:  Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise.

 

EP:  You have teased in casual conversation that you will be revisiting this world in the future, namely with more Cottonmouth Tomlin. The ending (which absolutely stuck the landing BTW) certainly leaves it open for more trips to town. Can you share any information on that?

 

SW: THE COUNTY LINE mentions Cottonmouth’s time running guns and working for Sam “The Banana Man” Zemurray in Honduras. The next book, as it stands, features a friend of Cottonmouth’s from that time coming to Arkansas and following the trail of the Knights of the Golden Circle. In researching Honduras for THE COUNTY LINE, I kept running across stories of mercenary Lee Christmas, and I need to get a version of him into a book soon so I can write off some of these eBay purchases. 

 

EP:  Can you share a little of the process of bringing this book alive? Do you write every day? I saw several Instagram posts back in the day of pages written by hand. How much do you write by hand and how much did it change over the time it took to write it?

 

SW: I’m up pretty much every day around 4 a.m. to write. Some days it’s editing or reading or researching, but the goal is to write. I tend to draft by hand in a hardback notebook. The right-hand side is for the draft, and the left-hand side is for notes. I find that as I’m writing, I’ll think of plot points or character development I want to add in later, so I’ll jot a note to the left. Or I’ll drop in some research notes there on the left. For me, a solid day is filling a page of the 5 x 8.25 notebook, which is usually a couple hundred words or more.

Later, when the pages have been typed in Scrivener, I’ll be able to pop back and forth between scenes and can do a hundred words or a thousand words in a day. I write scenes, not chapters, so it’s usually still a little messy until I get to the point that I’m ready for someone else to read it. 

 

EP: This is your first book with Lake Union publishing. How was the experience working with them? 

 

SW: In addition to being thoughtful and organized, they’ve really helped carve this book into shape. They’re engaged in the book, sure, but they’re so astute in terms of getting the book into the hands of readers.

 

EP:  What are you hoping most that readers will take away from the book?

 

SW: I was listening to an interview David Remnick conducted a few months back with Salman Rushdie, and Rushdie said that the purpose of a novel is to bring joy to the reader.  That seems a very straightforward way of thinking about it. Sure, I want folks to be engaged with the characters, to roll around in the scenery, to be on the edge of their seats for the plot twists. But, you know, I really want the reader to come away from the book having experienced joy in the reading. Life is tough. Enjoy yourself, why don’t you? 

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The County Line is now available as an Amazon First Reads selection for January and will be published on Feb. 1, 2024.

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THE COUNTY LINE, in an early, hand-written draft.

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“At once wry, thrilling, and full of heart, The County Line evokes the Coen brothers at their period best, while staking out a voice and milieu all its own.” —Chris Holm, author of Child Zero 

“A book both wistful for the past but also brutally honest about it. Steve Weddle has crafted a bluegrass hymn with the notes written in blood.” —S.A. Cosby, author of All the Sinners Bleed 

“It’s like Faulkner had a love child with a couple of Elmore Leonard’s 1930s-set novels.” —Nick Kolakowski, author of Boise Longpig Hunting Club

“A slide into the American Abyss from one of our best fiction writers. Steve Weddle’s spectacular novel dramatizes how, in this country, all that glitters is only a gleam away from all that guilt.” — Aaron Gwyn, author of All God’s Children and Wynne’s War

“The County Line is downright biblical. In his latest novel, Steve Weddle follows his truly unforgettable protagonist, Cottonmouth Tomlin, on a lyrical journey through Great-Depression-era Arkansas. As an Arkansawyer who’s often struggled to reconcile my place in this world—this book hit home.” —Eli Cranor, author of Ozark Dogs

“This is the book I have been waiting for and it does not disappoint. Every word in every sentence on every page is jam-packed with pure TNT. Steve Weddle delivers cracking dialogue, tense action, and most of all: heart, to transport us to another time and place that you won’t want to leave. A perfect addition to the canon of Southern literature.” —Eryk Pruitt, author of Something Bad Wrong

“With wit sharp as viper fangs and characters whose pulses vibrate on each page, The County Line is hilarious, tragic, thought-provoking, and relentlessly entertaining. Even the dust rising off dirt roads to drift between cypress limbs is vivid enough to pierce the veil between 1933 and now. This is a storytelling feat.” —Chris Harding Thornton, author of Pickard County Atlas and Little Underworld

“I was lucky enough to get an early look at what is certain to be one of my favorite books of 2024. Cottonmouth Tomlin returns from running guns in Honduras to run the Arkansas outlaw camp left to him by his uncle. The camp is a safe place for criminals to lay low as long as their misdeeds take place over the county line. Cottonmouth has bigger plans, though author Steve Weddle keeps you guessing as to whether he has the brainpower to pull them off. There are echoes of Cormac McCarthy and Elmore Leonard in this drily witty tale, but Weddle’s colorful characters and savory dialogue are all his own. A hugely enjoyable read that builds to a tremendously satisfying conclusion.” —Scott Von Doviak, author of Lowdown Road