I met Leighton in Miami at the Bookfair. At the pool over drinks he seemed a willing victim, so together with his protagonist, Chief Inspector Mario Silva, who with his team pursue a ring of medical murderers in Buried Strangers I asked some questions from the Proust questionaire and a few I made up
Leighton, it’s not required but have you read Proust?

I confess to having tried and failed. I further confess to having a similar problem with James Joyce.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

It’s a myth. Nothing’s perfect.

What is your greatest fear?

Losing my wife.
Which living person do you most admire?

I can’t answer the question. There is no single person that I most admire.

What is the most overrated virtue?

Chastity

What is the trait you most deplore in others?

Duplicity

What is your greatest extravagance?
Travel.

What is your Favorite journey?

The next one.
On what occasion do you lie?
When the truth would do more harm.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

Pass the bottle.

Now a few questions for Mario Silva
What is your most treasured possession?

The album that contains photos of my son.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Losing a child.

What is your most marked characteristic?

Integrity.

What is the quality you like most in a man?

Compassion.

What is the quality you like most in a woman?

Again, compassion.

Who are your heroes in real life?

Luiz Martins de Souza Dantas, Dorothy Stang and Chico Mendes.
What is it that you most dislike?

Injustice.

How would you like to die?

Quickly, in full command of my faculties and together with my wife.

For both of you - What is your motto?

Dominus pascit me nihil mihi deerit.

Fans of Camilla Trinichieri’s The Price of Silence can meet the author in person next week at the Mid-Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library. Camilla will be speaking on a panel entitled “Literary Mysteries: Creating Order from Chaos,” moderated by Phillip Cioffari. Please join Camilla and fellow authors Cordelia Frances Biddle, Jane K. Cleland, Sharon (S.L.) Linnea, and Jonathan Santlofer on December 16th at 6:30 pm.

For more information, please visit http://www.nypl.org/events/breventsdetail.cfm?EventID=62789.733392.

Cara here and I thought I’d ask James Benn and his protagonist, Billy Boyle, questions from the Proust questionaire… and a few I made up!

Jim, its not required but have you read Proust?

Certainly. “In Search of Lost Time” is a requirement for any writer. I re-read it every year, in the original French, of course.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

On vacation with my wife, just the two of us, researching the setting for my next book. A perfect combination of love, sights, good food and wine.

What is you greatest fear?

That there’s not enough time. For it all.

Which living person do you most admire?

Joe Blow. He gets up every morning and gets it done. No whining, no celebrity. Anyone who has done anything virtuous and whose name is known probably is a narcissist.

What is the most overrated virtue?

Righteousness.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?

Righteous self-satisfaction.

What is your greatest extravagance?

The expenditure of vast quantities of time spent in writing, in addition to holding down a full-time day job. It’s ridiculous.

What is your Favourite journey?

Coming home.

On what occasion do you lie?

Anytime I am asked if I have read Proust. You gotta be kidding.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

Just…almost…any sort of qualifier that serves as an unintended pause while my brain catches up with my fingers. I just have no idea.

Now a few questiona for Billy Boyle

What is your most treasured possession, Billy?

My dad’s .38 Police Special. He gave it to me when I made Detective.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

A crime scene, especially in the victim’s home. A body surrounded by all the valued possessions of a life is a terrible, sad sight.

What is your most marked characteristic?

What, are you one of those Freud nut-jobs? Mind your own business.

What is the quality you like most in a man?

A stand up guy. Someone you can count on to keep their word and watch your back. A guy who buys the first round.

What is the quality you like most in a woman?

Well, she’s gotta be a looker, but she’s gotta have brains too. In my family, it would help if she was Irish, but I’ve gone and screwed that one up. I had to go and fall for an English gal. She’s solid in the looks and brains department, and she can take care of herself, too. But she’s a Brit. My Dad isn’t going to see this in Boston, is he?

Who are your heroes in real life?

Anyone who takes it on the chin for what they believe. Michael Collins, for one. Not that Dad and Uncle Dan were on his side when it came to the civil war, but you had to admire him.

What is it that you most dislike?

Being away from home and family. Not knowing how long this war is going to last, and who’s going to be left alive at the end of it. I’ve made a lot of good friends along the way, and I’d hate to lose any more of them. Don’t ask me any more depressing questions, okay? Life is hard enough.

How would you like to die?

Jeez, I just told you! At home, in Boston, after watching the Saint Patrick’s Day parade with my great-grandchildren.

For both of you - What is your motto?

“Never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
-Winston Churchill, 1941.

In all things, extraordinarily good advice.

Thanks Billy and no, your Dad won’t see this. Jim, I’m sending you A Remembrance of Things Past for Christmas.

-Cara

Perhaps because people confuse fact and fiction, particularly in the Middle East, my fictional detective Omar Yussef recently received an invitation to speak on a panel discussion at a conference in Jerusalem. The organizers requested he send a brief bio for his introduction. Here, including details not mentioned in my books, is what I sent them:

Omar Yussef is the hero of a series of crime novels by Welsh writer Matt Beynon Rees. The New York Times called The Collaborator of Bethlehem, the first of the Omar Yussef books, “an astonishing first novel.” Le Figaro called the book “a masterpiece” and The Independent (London) hailed Omar as “the next big sleuth in crime fiction.” The books have sold in 21 languages.

Omar Yussef Subhi Sirhan, who’s also known as Abu Ramiz (the father of Ramiz), was born early in 1948 in Malha, a Palestinian village south of Jerusalem. His father, the village mukhtar, or headman, fled with his family and the other villagers, on the foundation of the Israeli state in the late spring of 1948. The Sirhans went to the Dehaisha Refugee Camp, which was set up in fields south of Bethlehem. Omar’s father rented a home there and Omar continues to lease the same stone house.

Omar became involved in student politics and attended Damascus University, where he met Khamis Zeydan, a young Palestinian nationalist and a refugee from the coastal town of Jaffa who later became police chief in Bethlehem. Omar’s adherence to the Pan-Arab Baath Party earned him the suspicion of the Jordanian regime in the West Bank. He was arrested by Jordanian police early in 1967 in Bethlehem and accused of murder. Omar later said the charges were false and that he had been jailed by political opponents eager to smear him.

While traveling home at the end of the university semester in 1968, Omar met Maryam Hassan. Maryam was an educated young woman from a prominent family in the village of Mash’had outside Nazareth. She had relatives in the Bethlehem area and was on her way to visit them, when she encountered Omar in a taxi near the West Bank town of Jenin. They were married the following year.

On his return from university, Omar abandoned politics in favor of a quiet career as a history teacher. He taught at the school run by the Freres of St. John de la Salle in Bethlehem until the early 1990s. The school’s pupils were drawn from the local Muslim and Christian populations. He was forced out of the school after a confrontation with a local schools inspector who considered Omar too critical of the new Palestinian Authority. Omar took a job at the United Nations Relief and Works Basic School for Girls in Dehaisha camp. The job was a step down in prestige from the Freres School, but it drew Omar into closer contact with the poorest refugees of Bethlehem and alerted him to their sufferings. Eventually this led him to reject the quiet life he had led and to attempt to confront the corruption and violence that engulfed his town.

Omar and Maryam have three sons. Ramiz, the eldest, runs a cellphone business in Bethlehem. He’s married to Sara and has three children, Nadia (Omar’s favorite grandchild), Little Omar, and Reem. Omar’s second son, Zuheir, lived in Britain, where he taught Islamic history at the University of Wales, but recently moved to Beirut. The youngest son, Ala, is a computer salesman in New York.

Since his student days, Omar had been a heavy drinker and a compulsive smoker. Health problems in his mid-forties forced him to quit both. He continues to be in poor health, however, with shaking hands and arthritic joints.

The first of the Omar Yussef Mysteries is ”The Collaborator of Bethlehem”. The second is ”A Grave in Gaza”. The third, “The Samaritan’s Secret,” undoubtedly the only novel ever set in Nablus, is to be published in Feb. 2009.

During his visit to Gaza in “A Grave in Gaza,” Omar’s granddaughter Nadia built a website for The Palestine Agency for Detection and showed a photo of Omar as “Agent O”, the detective. Though Omar was largely unaware of the workings of the Internet, Nadia’s site now lives…on the Soho Press blog.