Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed

Clute and Edwards

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

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Top 10 Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

Episode 25: Mark Coggins Revealed

Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed

08/01/08 • 40 min

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-boiled of towns—San Francisco. The setting is no mistake. It's Coggins's home, and thus a place he can write of with authority. It was also Hammett's city, and Sam Spade's. Most importantly, it's a place that lends itself perfectly to a plot that is at once classic-hardboiled and thoroughly modern, a tale of real estate moguls and political hopefuls in collusion to rig elections and reap the profits. In other words, Coggins has the literary savvy to revisit Chandler and Hammett in order to develop character, place, and plot in a timeless fashion, but also has the storytelling smarts to realize the limitations of a simple nostalgia piece. RUNOFF structures an elegant bridge between the war years and today, somehow soaring above the murky pitfalls such a blend of eras should create. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on this episode, or make a donation to the podcast, please visit "Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed" at http://btbm.libsyn.com.

Noircon 2008: The Official Podcast Day One

Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed

04/04/08 • 21 min

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 finish with an interview of the first presenter of Noircon, Professor David Schmid, who gave a talk entitled “Noir and Its Heretics.?

Episode 15: Chelsea Cain Revealed

Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed

09/17/07 • 34 min

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 Harris. HEARTSICK is also atypical of serial killer books in its strong sense of place, and the fact that the investigation focuses almost entirely on insights into character. For these reasons the book often recalls the work of Raymond Chandler more than that of Harris or Bret Easton Ellis, and Gretchen Lowell is in many ways more typical of a film noir femme fatale than a literary serial killer. With its superbly crafted characters, taut pacing, and highly visual prose, HEARTSICK seems destined to become a pop culture phenomenon. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on this episode, or make a donation to the podcast, please visit "Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed" at btbm.libsyn.com.

Episode 11: Carol Higgins Clark Revealed

Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed

05/16/07 • 22 min

LACED is the tenth Regan Reilly mystery by New York Times bestselling author Carol Higgins Clark. Higgins Clark's training as an actress is everywhere apparent in this installment to the series: her visual prose allows us to see each scene, the action is blocked with precision, and the subplots involving the large ensemble cast are expertly laced to ensnare the reader. Moreover, her Irish heritage, and the many trips she has taken to the Emerald Isle, impart a strong sense of place--the romance of Ireland's castles, the warmth of it's pubs, and perhaps even the chill of it's ghosts. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on this episode, or make a donation to the podcast, please visit "Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed" at btbm.libsyn.com.

Episode 28: Michael Connelly Revealed

Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed

10/14/08 • 44 min

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 business, he captures the complex psychology of his characters. Defense lawyer Mickey Haller and detective Harry Bosch are not pure heroes, they are men: they are not lovable, but they are competent and often admirable. To paraphrase Chandler, they have a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to them by right, because it belongs to the world they live in. It is above all in this melding of characters and setting that Connelly excels. Los Angeles is not a scenic backdrop, it is the master force that shapes all else, and we could not imagine Haller or Bosch being a part of any other world. But what is most remarkable about THE BRASS VERDICT is the way Connelly is able to recompose these sonorous echoes of Chandler into his own composition, settle them into his own score—with this world. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on this episode, or make a donation to the podcast, please visit "Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed" at http://btbm.libsyn.com.

Episode 27: Scott Phillips Revealed

Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed

10/13/08 • 40 min

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 three different time frames. It opens in the immediate aftermath of the fateful accident that ended the first book, then traces the life of Gunther Fahnstiel, from his morally ambiguous young adulthood the prepared him for that fateful accident, to his current advanced age as he tries to remember how he became the man he is—and how he might still profit by it. If the first novel was the portrait of a man in his boudoir, THE WALKAWAY is like one of those vast tapestries you see on castle walls: caught in the weft and warp of fragile memory are entire genealogies of morally deficiently but somehow noble middle-America hoodlums. It is the Comédie humaine of Kansas, and establishes Phillips as a writer of vast talent and ambition who refuses to write the same type of story twice. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on this episode, or make a donation to the podcast, please visit "Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed" at http://btbm.libsyn.com.

Episode 26: George Pelecanos Revealed

Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed

08/16/08 • 49 min

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 able to explore some of the most pressing issues facing America today—race, class, and the foreign war that districts us from these domestic battles—with depth and nuance, and without any trace of artificiality or authorial tampering. A less experienced or less gifted writer would have been tempted, in handling such material, to deliver a message, and so would have ruined a story that is infinitely more rich because it stays focused on the people it involves. Pelecanos reveals how his youthful aspirations to be a filmmaker, his experience writing for HBO's THE WIRE, and his work on the Derek Strange and Terry Quinn books all prepared him to write this understated masterpiece that is THE TURNAROUND. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on this episode, or make a donation to the podcast, please visit Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed at http://btbm.libsyn.com.

Episode 24: Jonathan Santlofer Revealed

Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed

07/01/08 • 43 min

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 featuring NYPD sketch artist Nate Rodriquez (ANATOMY OF FEAR and THE MURDER NOTEBOOK). He joins Clute and Edwards in June to discuss this last title, a June release from William Marrow. For more information on his fiction, or to experience his stunning artwork (some of which is incorporated into his novels), visit Jonathan's elegant, flash-driven website: www.jonathansantlofer.com

Episode 23: Christa Faust Revealed

Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed

06/02/08 • 40 min

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. Protagonist Angel Dare, former porn star and savvy businesswoman, kind-hearted sucker and cold-hearted avenging angel, is the very embodiment of contradictions, yet makes so much sense she'll break your heart. She is the antidote to the uni-dimensionality of today's genre fiction, capable because of her flaws, vulnerable because of her toughness, and of a moral complexity few can touch and none can sully. Far from being anachronistic, MONEY SHOT is a thoroughly modern tale, the work of an author who brilliantly revisits the past in order to reinvigorate a literary tradition and create a new sort of femme fatale who can walk, or work, today's mean streets. No wonder Hard Case Crime chose it as the first title in the line by a female author. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on this episode, or make a donation to the podcast, please visit "Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed" at btbm.libsyn.com.

Episode 17: Tim Maleeny Revealed

Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed

11/16/07 • 35 min

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 tunes, an almost cinematic economy to his crafting of scenes, and a knack for piling up plot complications. That the novel manages to deliver characters of some depth and poignancy amidst such madness is nothing short of amazing. This podcast is brought to you by Clute and Edwards of www.noircast.net. To leave a comment on this episode, or make a donation to the podcast, please visit "Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed" at btbm.libsyn.com.

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FAQ

How many episodes does Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed have?

Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed currently has 36 episodes available.

What topics does Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed cover?

The podcast is about Mystery, Writers, Podcasts, Books, Crime, Noir, Arts and Interviews.

What is the most popular episode on Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed?

The episode title 'Episode 27: Scott Phillips Revealed' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed?

The average episode length on Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed is 39 minutes.

How often are episodes of Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed released?

Episodes of Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed are typically released every 27 days, 21 hours.

When was the first episode of Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed?

The first episode of Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed was released on Jul 15, 2006.

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Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed

Clute and Edwards

Top 10 Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed Episodes

FAQ

How many episodes does Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed have?

What topics does Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed cover?

What is the most popular episode on Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed?

What is the average episode length on Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed?

How often are episodes of Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed released?

When was the first episode of Behind the Black Mask: Mystery Writers Revealed?

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