Rick,
Re your response to my comments below:
>> The traditional PI novel isn't dead. It's not
even slumbering.
It's
>> certainly much more ubiquitous and much more
healthy now than it
was
>> in the early '80's when Bob Randisi founded PWA
primarily to get
the
>> PI novel noticed again. At that time, virtually
no one was
getting
>> hardcovers published except Pronzini, Block, and
Michael Collins.
>> Suffice it to say that there are a lot more
now.>>
>> (NOTE: I should have said, Pronzini, Block,
PARKER, and Collins)
"I'd be the first to agree that the genre isn't dead. On the
other hand, my assertion stands. At this point in American
publishing, it is damned difficult to get a new, traditional,
male PI series sold to one of the major publishers. I applaud
what the folks at Five Star are doing. I've corresponded with
them on several occasions and have found them to be top shelf
folks, but at best Five Star has to be considered a large
small press, perhaps on the order of Poisoned Pen."
I'd say it's more correct to call Five Star a small large
press rather than a large small press, though I guess that's
a rather fine distinction. But after all, it's a subsidiary
of Gale, which also owns Thorndike, which is one of the
biggest large-print publishers. That's what gives them their
"in" with library sales. That's hardly the same as Poisoned
Pen which grew out of a specialty book store
"I'm also very happy to see John Connolly's success with the
Charlie Parker series. Well deserved, as is that of Ken
Bruen. On the other hand, I've also seen some damned fine PI
authors dropped by major houses, including Shamus winners
Daniel Judson and Andy Straka, and Edgar nominee Ken
Wishnia."
Yeah, but all KINDS of mystery writers, hell all kinds of
GENRE writers, are getting dropped by their major houses, not
just writers of traditional, male PI stories. This strikes me
as less a function of the market for hard-boiled PI fiction
than a function of how the publishing business has changed,
and not for the better, with all the corporate conglomeration
that has gone on in recent years, and the growing tendency to
swing for the stands with every published work instead of
going for a base hit.
It was precisely because of this tendency that Doubleday, for
example, dropped successful, but not best-selling, lines like
"Crime Club" and "Double D." Not because the market for genre
fiction in hardcover, a market largely dependant on library
sales, had dried up
(as Five Star's success proves), but because Doubleday's new
masters decided they wanted to hit a home run with every
novel they published, and modest but profitable genre lines
weren't part of that picture.
"As for St. Martin's, I was a judge for the Best First PI
Novel contest they sponsor with PWA. I'm the one who sent
Michael Kronenwetter's book up the line to eventually win. I
also know they didn't award the prize the next year. Having
slogged through dozens of manuscripts to find FIRST KILL, I
don't think for a second that this had anything to do with
St. Martin's commitment to the genre, but rather that it was
probably just an 'off' year for manuscripts. On the other
hand, how many "traditional" mystery series and standalones
did they launch that year compared to "traditional" PI
series?"
Well, there you DO have a point. But, if you talk to book
SELLERS, as opposed to writers, particularly those who
specialize in mysteries, you'll probably be told that
traditional mysteries generally sell better. Jim Huang of The
Mystery Company certainly maintains that "cozies" sell better
than hard-boiled.
As for stand-alones, well, who's to say? I know it's
difficult, but not impossible, to take an established series
from one publisher to another, so a lot of writers switch to
stand-alones to avoid the issue altogether.
Anyway, we can't KNOW that a book's a stand-alone until the
author dies without having written a sequel. There were 40
years or more between Geoffrey Household's classic ROGUE MALE
and its sequel ROGUE JUSTICE, but the publication of the
second rendered the first a non- stand-alone. There are all
kinds of books that were sequels to novels that the authors
said they had no plans to write sequels to. Larry McMurtry
said he had no plans to write a sequel to LONESOME DOVE, and
wound up writing one sequel and two prequels.
"What I reported came from the mouths and keyboards of people
buried deep in the business. The message was very clear. When
it comes to traditional, hardboiled, knuckles-and-know-how PI
stories, the market is largely supported by voices that have
been in the biz for ten years or more. The glass basement
ceiling for shiny new PI writers is a little thicker than it
is for other genres. I think this trend will continue until
there's a change in the reading culture, which will probably
result from a change in the general culture, or the emergence
of an exciting new twist in PI storytelling. In the interim,
the niche markets are going to have to continue to pick up
the slack."
Maybe the glass basement ceiling's thicker now than it
was four or five years ago, but it's a hell of a lot thinner
than it was 20 or so years ago.
Look at the Shamus awards over that period. For the first few
years there wasn't even a "First Novel" category. Now there
are always enough first-timers to insure four or five
top-notch nominees in the category.
I'm not, I admit, "deep in the business." I don't live or die
by my contemporary PI fiction. In fact, I've only got two PI
short stories in my resume (and one of them's actually a
western about a frontier Pinkerton man), so I don't have the
same perspective as a full-time pro who's trying to make a
living on his private eye novels, but, as a reader, it seems
to me that any slowdown that may be going on is probably
nothing more than a temporary bump on the road.
JIM DOHERTY
RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
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