About the Author:

“There is no such thing as human history,” according to the 19th century historian John Lothrop Motley. Addressing the New York Historical Society in 1868, he stated that all we possess is “a leaf or two from the great book of human fate as it flutters in stormwinds ever sweeping across the earth. We decipher them as best we can with purblind eyes, and endeavor to learn their mystery as we float along to the abyss; but it is all confused babble….”
Motley was referring to the inability of moderns to fully understand the past, to leave behind their own preconceptions of that past, as well as their own grounding in contemporary times. Motley, known for his in-depth histories of the Netherlands, was not surprisingly also the author of two popular novels about America’s colonial past.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr. referred to Motley in his famous paper “History and National Stupidity”, published in the New York Review of Books in 2006. “History is not self-executing,” Schlesinger said. “You do not put a coin in a slot and have history come out…the past is a chaos of events and personalities into which we cannot penetrate. It is beyond retrieval and it is beyond reconstruction.”
Beyond retrieval. Yet professional historians keep writing books about Lincoln, about Rome, the American Revolution, about the great devils of history and the fewer angels who inhabit the past.
Writers of fiction labor at history too, in their own way, illuminating the past not through footnotes and the global view, but from the viewpoint of characters, giving modern readers ancient eyes with which to see the through those stormwinds of history. Just as historians may bring their own biases and limitations to their work, so may writers of historical fiction. In historical fiction, I believe such mistakes can be more evident, giving the reader a clearer understanding of the writer’s faults and agenda.
A culture or society must know and come to understand its past, just as a person needs to know where they came from, the story of their life, their parent’s lives and the lives of others who came before. If we fail, as a society or a person, to understand our past, either as a legend or the objective truth, we stand on crumbling ground as we try to move forward.
As a writer of historical fiction, I make up a lot of things. But the core of the story, the sense of when at the heart of the novel, that remains sacred ground. That is the place I try to go and see with ancient eyes. It has happened to me once in my life, that I truly saw with those eyes. It was September 12, 2001. I stood outside, gazing up at the empty blue sky, and realized that for the first time in my life, I didn’t know what was going to happen next. I was adrift, and felt a kinship with my fictional character, Billy Boyle, going off to war in 1942. They didn’t know what was going to happen next, either. All the history I’d read had not prepared me for that simple truth. As a matter of fact, it disguised that truth by giving me the outcome to every great battle and struggle of history, telling me a story that blinded me to the essential human drama. The wondering, what will become of me? Of those I love? Of my country?
I always thought he was joking, but now I understand what Oscar Wilde meant when he said, “The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”

Rag And Bone, the fifth Billy Boyle mystery, will be released September 1, 2010.
For the full text of Arthur Schlesinger’s remarks, see: http://tiny.cc/dxfv3

The upcoming Billy Boyle novel (number 5), Rag and Bone, set to be released in September, is set against the background of the revelations concerning the Soviet massacre of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest. As it did when this became known in 1943, it raises uncomfortable questions about the morality of allying with one monster to slay another.
One of the plot points revolves around Article 58 of the Soviet Constitution, which details punishments for family members of those guilty of “counterrevolutionary crimes”. Family members, if they knew of the crime (which is defined as any action weakening the government of the USSR) and did not report it, are subject to confiscation of all belongings and imprisonment for 10 years. If they did not know about it, they got off lightly, by the standards of the Gulag, with five years exile in Siberia. Failure to properly denounce a counterrevolutionary crime of a family member was punishable by an additional six month imprisonment.
Those were our allies. Our enemies in Nazi Germany had a similar set of laws, formalized as “Sippenhaft” or kin liability. This allowed for the wives, brothers, sisters and other relatives of those officers involved in the plots against Hitler’s life to be imprisoned in concentration camps. Their children were taken to Nazi-run orphanages and renamed, to be brought up as proper little Nazis, as ready to denounce anyone as their Soviet brethren.
The Soviets also came up with a special law, NKVD Order No. 00486, to cover the wives of any “enemies of the people”. Knowledge of their husband’s activities was irrelevant. The women were sentenced to 5-8 years in labor camps. There were so many of them in the 1930s that the NKVD had to set up special breast-feeding camps for wives with newborn children. Children over the age of 15 were defined as “socially dangerous” and also imprisoned; younger children were sent to Soviet orphanages.
Both the intricacies of Article 58 and the need to turn a blind eye to the evil inherent within our Russian allies play a part in this upcoming mystery. In January 1944, hundreds of Soviet divisions are fighting the Germans, while only a handful of British and American divisions are struggling up the mountains of Italy. A Soviet official is found dead in London, and Billy is directed to solve the crime before it disrupts to Allied alliance…even when his good friend and Polish patriot Kaz is accused by Scotland Yard of the crime.
Once again the terrible mathematics of war come into play, as General Eisenhower plans for the invasion of France, knowing that the Soviets must keep the pressure on the German Army, and that any lessening of that pressure by the Red Army could result in a catastrophe on the beaches of Normandy.
The same Red Army that before the battle of Stalingrad, told its soldiers that the family of any man who surrendered would be immediately executed. If politics makes strange bedfellows, then war makes them bizarre and bloody both.

Mass grave at Katyn.

General Władysław Sikorski, Prime Minister of Poland, in Exile, 1939-1943.

While it’s a touch early to be promoting my next novel in the Billy Boyle World War II mystery series - EVIL FOR EVIL (Soho Press, September 1st) -  it is the eve of Saint Patrick’s Day after all, and the book is set in Northern Ireland, a place unfortunately still as dangerous today as it was in 1943 when Billy Boyle found himself there.

So raise a glass of the black stuff and check out my guest blog today at:
http://abookbloggersdiary.blogspot.com/

Fad saol agat, gob fliuch, agus bás in Eirinn.
Which translates as:
Long life to you, a wet mouth, and death in Ireland.
EVIL FOR EVIL will deliver one out of three; your health and your drinks are up to you.

Cheers,

Jim

I recently came across an essay written in 1944 by George Orwell, comparing the Raffles novels by E.W. Hornung, written at the turn of the last century, with a popular novel that had been published in 1939, No Orchids for Miss Blandish.

http://www.george-orwell.org/Raffles_and_Miss_Blandish/0.html

There were three Raffles novels, chronicling the adventures of an upper class amateur safecracker. Part of the appeal was the incongruity of Raffles as a thief, and his peculiar moral code, such as it was. He would think nothing of robbing a guest at a house where he had been invited to stay, but he would not steal from his host. Orwell uses Raffles, with his complex set of rules for at once being within society and at the same exterior to it, as a point of comparison to the amoral approach used by the author James H. Chase in No Orchids for Miss Blandish.

In describing that novel, Orwell says “Now for a header into the cesspool.” The narrative is devoid of any moral compass, and delves into murders, rape, torture, and other depravities. Chase’s work was extraordinarily popular, and the comparison between Raffles and his careful criminality and the fiendish amorality of the characters in No Orchids serves to mirror the societal and cultural shifts that took place as the 20th century moved into its middle period.

I stumbled upon this essay while researching what Londoners were reading during the Blitz years. I was struck by the image of British readers, holed up in a tube station while German bombs devastated their city, killing and maiming thousands, eagerly reading about sexual torture and death below ground. It serves as a curious counterpoint to the actual violence they were living through. Was it somehow easier to take if you could control the pace at which the violence was doled out, by opening and closing the book at will?

An interesting, unanswerable question. All I know is that in the 2010 Billy Boyle release (tentatively titled Rag and Bone), Billy will encounter one such Londoner, face buried in the corrupt cruelty of No Orchids for Miss Blandish, deep under the London streets, far removed from the suave Raffles and his vanished kind.

This is a brief post, since I can do no better than to point you to another writer’s comments on Murderati (Mysteries, Murder and Marketing) online:

http://murderati.typepad.com/murderati/2008/11/fatigue-failure-and-faith.html

I haven’t read any of Toni McGee Causey’s work, but I shall be correcting that omission very soon.

Cheers,

Jim

Book signings and appearances are winding down, after a busy first three months since the release of BLOOD ALONE.  On Saturday, November 22nd, I was at the Barnes and Noble store at Blue Back Square in West Hartford, Connecticut.  I had been invited to sign books there as part of an elementary school book fair which was held at the store.  This was one of the few confluences between my day job as head of information technology for the West Hartford Public Schools, and my mystery-writing self.   Both roles have such a firm and separate set of demands on my time and mental energies that it is not difficult to keep them compartmentalized.  But on Saturday, for a change, each combined for a happy outcome.  The B&N store sold out of the BILLY BOYLE paperbacks, and there were only of couple of THE FIRST WAVE trade paperbacks left after my two-hour signing stint.  BLOOD ALONE sold well also, but perhaps in a sign of the times, there were a dozen or so hardcovers left.  Overall, it was a great afternoon; a solid fundraiser for the Morley Elementary School, and a great signing event to draw the promotions season to a close!

One more event is left on my calendar.  Friday, December 5th is the annual holiday party at Kate’s Mystery Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  This evening is a not-to-be-missed event for mystery fans.   Kate brings in mystery authors by the boatload to chat, eat and drink (not to mention selling and signing books)with her customers.  Yours truly will be there, rubbing shoulders (it’s a small store) with Robert Parker, Dennis Lehane and many others.  Check it out at the website below.  For anyone in the area, it is a fantastic evening, and a chance to support a fabulous independent mystery bookstore. 

http://www.katesmysterybooks.com/

Cheers,

Jim

There comes a point in the writing process when you are really done with a manuscript.  You’ve revised so many times you have every page memorized.  Your editor has red-penciled it and you’ve dealt with all those changes, heart-breaking as they are.  You breath deeply when you send the final version off, and hope never to see the thing again until it’s between covers.

But then the copyeditor does her work (I always imagine it’s a her, but I have no idea).  More questions.  Some sound inane, others reasonable, but I hate them all.  Don’t they know I’m done with all this? 

But bless them.  Bless the kind of mind they possess (I did not say warped) which leads them to question everything.  I imagine they have authority issues.   They certainly don’t assume anything.  Case in point; in the book that has (thankfully) recently completed this process-Evil For Evil-I had my main character, circa 1943, use the phrase “Stop and smell the roses.”  Why not?  It’s one of those phrases that has always been around, right?  (Note: If you know who first said that, without peeking at the end of this post, well, maybe you have a promising career as a copyeditor.)

Copyeditors don’t think that way.  Maybe they don’t have authority issues, perhaps they are more like corporate lawyers, who want everything properly footnoted.  Maybe I have authority issues.  Of course, my copyeditor questioned the use of that phrase.  I couldn’t wait to find the origin of that time-worn quotation, I was going to show her.  Was it Emily Dickinson?  She spent a lot of time in the garden.  But no, she didn’t need to stop and smell the roses.  She never went anywhere.  How about that old reliable, Anonymous?  Nope.  Give up?

Ringo Starr.  Really.  No one in recorded history said “Stop and smell the roses” until Ringo released an album of that name in 1981.  Ringo Starr.  The copyeditor was right.  How do they know these things?  Bless them all.

Jim

I recently came across this poster, distributed at the start of the Second World War in 1939 by the British government, specifically the Ministry of Information.  It struck me as an example of calm determination, topped off with the authoritative Crown of King George VI.  As the Blitz began in 1940, these posters were put up in London, but apparently it was never officially released, and did not receive wide distribution.  Here’s a picture of an original poster discovered during renovations to a London building:

It’s still good advice, as we face an economic Blitz and other world-wide challenges.  So thanks to an unknown graphic artist and ministry official.  Your words and design live on!

Calmly carrying on,

Jim

It’s been a great start for BLOOD ALONE since the September 1st release of this third in the Billy Boyle World War II mysteries.  It was selected as the “Mystery of the Month” in the September issue of Bookpage, and as an Indie Next Pick for October.   The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association named it as a Killer Book for October, and it popped up as number 4 of their bestseller list for the same month.

With the Billy Boyle mysteries coming out in September, autumn brings a strange, disjointed sensation. I’m promoting the current book, doing final edits on the next, and starting the one to follow.  It’s mildy schizophrenic, and I sometimes have to remind myself which book I’m talking about to readers.  A saving grace is that many are interesting in what’s up next, and like hearing that there are more mysteries and adventures to come.

The 2009 release is titled EVIL FOR EVIL, from a biblical quotation, “Recompense to no man evil for evil.”  It’s set in Northern Ireland, where Billy Boyle is sent to investigate links between the Irish Republican Army and the Germans.  Of course, that sets him up for conflict between his pro-IRA upbringing, the call of duty, and of course Uncle Ike.  As an Irish-American myself, I found it fascinating to write from that prespective, if not somewhat disheartening.  I was brought up myself on the mystique of the “old” IRA, and it saddened me to find even more tragedy than seems fair in the research I did for this book.

EVIL FOR EVIL has gone through its last edits (I hope!) and work is proceeding on the next title.  As for that…well, let’s leave something for the next blog, eh?

Cheers,

Jim

http://www.jamesrbenn.com