On How to Be Lovely

"I love your funny face...." Fred Astaire

RO: Someone is standing in a bookstore. She's holding your book in her hot little hands, reading the flap copy. She smiles, good! She likes it, or at least something in the description has struck a chord. Then she turns to the inside back cover, reads for a minute and puts the book back on the shelf. Agony. What the hell happened?

Okay, does this scene really take place in bookstores and malls all over the country? Can it? Do readers make buying decisions based on a bio and/or a picture of the author? Did you ever buy a book based on either of those things?

JAN: Yikes, I don't think I've ever bought or not bought a book based on the author bio, or worse, what the author looked like in his/her photo, but I don't know, I suppose I could have been influenced without realizing it. Especially if the person had a really bad haircut. I'm kidding. Everyone knows bad haircuts make you look literary.
Anyway, I expect it's the back cover that influences most decisions -- the price of the book. But I suppose I could be turned off by a truly pretentious or overly poltical bio. Or if, say, the book was about how to nurse an infant, and I flipped open the back page to see the author was a man and perhaps not the expert I wanted in this field.
But I don't know, this is stuff I can't worry about. The real reason people don't buy your book, I suspect, is that they've never heard of you. Sigh....And that's what I worry about...

HANK: Confession. I ALWAYS look for the photo. If there isn't one, I wonder why. If the photo is poor quality, I wonder why. I'm not only interested in what the author looks like, although that's intriguing, but I'm fascinated by why they chose the photo they chose. I always envisioned my author photo (and ok, we'll skip the rest of the discussion on that phrase. I have also envisioned the dress I'll wear on the red carpet at the Oscars, it's just something some people do...)

But anyway, I'd always envisioned my author photo in a chunky black turtleneck and maybe pearls. With an expression like: Oh, yeah, this is great and I love my book and I'm pretty happy and confident but not TOO happy and confident, just in a realistic enough way that the potential reader knows I'm a good person and pretty serious but not TOO serious. And that the photo is probably pretty much what I actually look like. In good lighting. Then the person who took my photo said if I wore a black turtleneck, I'd look like a floating head. So much for that idea.

I actually saved a photo of one author--which, of course, I tossed last week in my latest "Some of this stuff has got to go" cleanup and now I forget who it was---and she had the look down perfectly. She was sitting on a stairway, inside what you had to imagine was her cozy house, and she has her wrists resting on her knees, back leaning against the wall. Just casual, in jeans. Like she was just sitting there, and someone said, you look nice, let me take a photo. In reality, there were probably a zillion lights, but it didn't look staged at all. (I shouldn't have tossed the photo.)

And looking through some books, Suzanne Brockmann has a photo somewhat like that. And her's looks great, too. I'm definitely going to swipe the idea.

Now: Cornelia Read? That's a terrific author photo. MJ Rose, love it. Lee Child. You know the good ones when you see em. Who do you think has an especially effective one? (And anyone you wish you could tell--hey, get a new one)

(Not that this is that important. We know. It's about the writing.)
Do I buy the books--or not--because of cover photos and bios? Um, I don't think so...

RO: I think the Lee Child photo is a hoot. He's definitely an attractive guy, but don't you think he was having a little fun with that collar thing? The photographers shot about 800 pix for my jacket, and I think if they'd just taken a few more...

(Hank: Yeah, I think the collar thing would be--off--if he weren't such a fabulous writer. But there's another photo, the one on Bad Luck and Trouble, that's the one I was talking about.)

HALLIE: I do look at author photos. Sometimes just to find out if the androgynously named author is a he or a she. And I do get turned off. First by an obviously amateurish photo - if you're an author, you should invest in a professional quality photo because it's your professional face to the world. I also get turned off by too much glitz. I warm to a photo of someone who looks like a PERSON not a movie star. And it's great when the photo has got something cool about it that echoes what the book is about. My sister Nora's jacket photo is brilliant for I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK...she's peering out over the collar of a black turtleneck that's pulled up to her nose.

RO: Love that picture, too...and the book. Great...now I'm worried about my neck. We could always go the JT Leroy route....mmm, maybe not. Know who that is in the picture? Any guesses?? Hint, it's not JT Leroy.

PS Oddly enough, I saw Lee Child walking down the street yesterday after I wrote this; I almost ran over and asked him about the collar thing.

Gender Quiz Part Deux: the Results Show

Jerry (as Daphne): "You don't understand, Osgood! Aaah... I'm a man!"
Osgood: "Well, nobody's perfect."

**the closing lines of Some Like It Hot

Okay, so we have no winners. Of the valuable prizes we offered, at least.

And yet aren't we all winners? Getting to share our thoughts in this cyber village?

NO, huh? Okay. So lets raise a glass to the beautiful-and-talented Nancy Pickard, who got 4 out of 5 right, and that's pretty terrific. (And goodness knows, she certainly wins her share of prizes when the stakes are higher and the decisions more meaningful.)

Anonymous--and you know who you are--got three right. And Alias Mo got two. Had I guessed, which I would have been to terrified to do, I would have gotten one right. Lisa, you let them win, right?

So what can we learn from this? Besides that the Jungle Red sisters (and their sister in crime Mo Walsh who offered two of her favorites as #2 and #3) are devious and tricky?

You tell us!

Meanwhile, we'll tell you the answers.

Considering that we all did our best to fool you, congratulations to all.

#1

"I want you to kiss me. I want you to hold me. I want you to take me upstairs and make love to me. I want you to do it with no expectations because I don't have any. I could dump you tomorrow and you could dump me. It doesn't matter. But I'm not fragile.....This is a no-obligation offer....All I want tonight is you."


Male! Harlan Coben's Promise Me.


#2"He looked much as usual: bulging piggy eyes, gargoyle face, unfashionably long hair. The pallor was a change from his usual boozy redness, though, and the stain on his shirt was definitely not Chivas Regal. Louis Warren kept staring at the body, idly wondering if he had two more wishes coming."

Female! Sharyn McCrumb's Bimbos of the Death Sun



#3"Nothing had prepared me for the shock of seeing death on the face of someone I loved. I looked at him and I realized what a great power, what a great presence, what a great life had ended. I kissed my fingertips and ran them over his hard cheek and walked outside.Tears swelled from my heart, and a cold passion for revenge rose up with them."

Male! T. Jefferson Parker's Silent Joe



#4 Peter collected souvenir copies of the wannabe A-bomber flyer as he walked back to his car on Dunster Street. The damned things were posted everywhere. Peter unlocked his car. Despite his detours for coffee and encounter with Harvard Harry, he had plenty of time to get back to the Pearce for his final appointment with Rudy Ravitch before discharging him. He got into his car. Her know he should have called the police the minute he spotted Harry. MacRae and Needleman had every right to be pissed at him. No, he wasn't a detective, as MacRae so helpfully pointed out.

Female! Our own Hallie Ephron's Guilt



#5 It wasn’t raining at the moment, but an on-again off-again drizzle was expected to rev up into a torrent. Eldridge had left a message on my cell phone that he was running late, but now it was seven thirty and he hadn’t shown up yet. I told myself that it was probably a moot point. This was no night to stage an accident. How could anyone predict the physics of a rash with a downpour lubricating the streets.

Female! Our own Jan Brogan's Yesterday's Fatal.

On Vive Le Difference (Part Deux)

"Things are seldom what they seem. Skim milk masquerades as cream."

**W. S. Gilbert

You asked for it. You get it from Jungle Red. Gender Quiz 2!


All of you who were too, um, chicken, to post your guesses to the last gender quiz? "Bawk bawk bawk," as my brother Chip used to say.


But you can redeem yourself from chickendom, and perhaps even wrest the crown from the oh so perceptive Lisa who pranced away with the honors last week. Or was it the week before? Blogs come and go so quickly around here.




Anyway. We promise these are toughies. One from Ro--and you know how tough she is. And two from Mo--Walsh, that is. Mo is a stalwart of Sisters in Crime, and Miss June on the SINC NE calendar.

(And one from me. And one from Jan. Sorry our names don't rhyme with Mo and Ro.)

And thinking about Miss June actually gives me good idea. The first person to correctly guess the genders of these snippets will get their very own collector's item 2007 SINC calendar. With photos galore. And lots of time left to use it. And, that's not all. The winner will also get a coupon (good at any bookstore) for 20 percent off the new Charlotte McNally mystery, Face Time, and a signed copy of Jan's impossible to find first mystery, Final Copy.



When was the last time you heard an offer that irresistible?



So here you go. Male author? Or female?





#1

"I want you to kiss me. I want you to hold me. I want you to take me upstairs and make love to me. I want you to do it with no expectations because I don't have any. I could dump you tomorrow and you could dump me. It doesn't matter. But I'm not fragile.....This is a no-obligation offer....All I want tonight is you."


#2
"He looked much as usual: bulging piggy eyes, gargoyle face, unfashionably long hair. The pallor was a change from his usual boozy redness, though, and the stain on his shirt was definitely not Chivas Regal. Louis Warren kept staring at the body, idly wondering if he had two more wishes coming."


#3
"Nothing had prepared me for the shock of seeing death on the face of someone I loved. I looked at him and I realized what a great power, what a great presence, what a great life had ended. I kissed my fingertips and ran them over his hard cheek and walked outside.
Tears swelled from my heart, and a cold passion for revenge rose up with them."



#4
"Peter collected souvenir copies of the wannabe A-bomber flyer as he walked back to his car on Dunster Street. The damned things were posted everywhere. Peter unlocked his car. Despite his detours for coffee and encounter with Harvard Harry, he had plenty of time to get back to the Pearce for his final appointment with Rudy Ravitch before discharging him. He got into his car. Her know he should have called the police the minute he spotted Harry. MacRae and Needleman had every right to be pissed at him. No, he wasn't a detective, as MacRae so helpfully pointed out.

#5
It wasn’t raining at the moment, but an on-again off-again drizzle was expected to rev up into a torrent. Eldridge had left a message on my cell phone that he was running late, but now it was seven thirty and he hadn’t shown up yet. I told myself that it was probably a moot point. This was no night to stage an accident. How could anyone predict the physics of a rash with a downpour lubricating the streets.

On Fantasy

"But I never let a fantasy get away, because I always stop to analyze it." Shelley Duvall

Charlie Bakst reading Yesterday's Fatal on a beach in Italy.

Jan: I'm not talking about sexual fantasy (sorry guys), but writer fantasy. It goes like this: You are walking through a crowded airport, or through a crowded beach, and all of a sudden you come across someone reading YOUR book.

The perfect fantasy, of course, is when you have no idea who the reader is. He/she is just one of the many fans you never knew existed. In this photo, the reader, who sent me the pic, is a friend of mine, Charlie Bakst, but he was reading my book on a beach in Italy -- so I figure that makes up for him not being a complete stranger.

Once, my daughter, who has experienced the highs and lows of my writing career, called me up from college screaming excitedly. It turned out that as she was leaving the cafeteria, she saw the clerk at the register reading my book, A Confidential Source. So although I didn't actually come across the reader myself, I get fantasy points, right?

A couple of years ago, I was speaking at a mystery brunch in on Martha's Vineyard (hosted by Edgartown Books) and Robin Cook -- yes, the best selling medical thriller writer -- made a joke of hoping to stumble across someone on South Beach reading his book. You'd figure for Robin Cook this would be an everyday reality.

So I'm curious about how widespread this fantasy thing is. Is it just Robin Cook and me (I doubt it) or do we all have a verson of this, not just writers, but artists, musicians, teachers and even lawyers??

RO: It's a rush, no doubt about it. I haven't had the book version yet, but some years ago I produced a video called Say it By Signing, for friends and family of hearing-impaired people who sign; also acquired a book on the same subject. Not a huge market, but if my book does as well, it will be champagne all around. I saw the book in the window of a small bookstore in Bar Harbor, and the video was picked up by a nationwide chain (anyone remember the dear departed Nature Company?) I was ecstatic. it didn't even matter that I didn't make a lot of dough on it...I was thrilled. I think it's the Sally Field, "you like me..you really like me" thing.

HALLIE: My fantasy was to find my books for sale at an airport or train station newsstand. One day, my daughter phoned me from the Los Angeles airport to say that she was looking at a copy of OBSESSED right there at the newsstand! Then I found out they change the book displays every 24 hours.

In a related be-careful-which-fantasy-you-wish-for scenario--I was chatting with a woman author I'd met at a conference a few years ago. I told her my book-at-the-aiport fantasy, she she told me this story. Her husband worked for Hudson News (they're the franchise that owns all the newsstands in airports, Grand Central...) and he was able to use his muscle to get HN to order up 300,000 copies of her first paperback novel. She was ECSTATIC. The publisher was ecstatic, too. 100,000 copies were sold. Pretty great, right? BUT (and this is a very big "but") 200,000 copies were returned. This was very bad news for the publisher because they lost a huge chunk of change, and it was the last novel she did with them.

HANK: Here's a fantasy come true: look at this photo of my Prime Time as one of the staff favorites at the wonderful Willow Books in Acton MA. (Whoo hoo. See it? Right in the middle, top shelf?) Now, as for my next big fantasy: please all of you take a moment to send good karma that I make the deadline for Air Time. I'm not even going to tell you when it is...it's all too scary. Back to to reality.

JAN: So aside from the obvious ones -- book gets made into Oscar-winning movie -or making the NYT bestsellers list - I'm curious to hear about other writer fantasies. Also, the comparable career fantasy in other fields! There must be a chef fantasy, salesman-of-the-year-fantasy, and dermatologist fantasy, right?

ON EARWORMS

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
******Percy Bysshe Shelley

HANK: I had an erudite and thoughtful idea for this week, I really did. All based on a Gail Caldwell column called Lingua Fracta. But then I read that RO's current favorite song is Walking After Midnight by Patsy Cline. A song I love, too. So I started humming it, and thinking about it. And that was days ago. And now it's in my way. I think they call them "earworms."

Now that you've heard that term, you can’t get it out of your head, right? And that’s exactly why I can’t listen to music when I write.

In the 60's I insisted I could not do my homework without listening to music. I had my little transistor radio, and I would put that plastic earpiece in, and bop around to Da Doo Ron Ron or I Get Around or It’s My Party. Dancing in the Street. Anything Beatles.

Today. I'm a TV reporter, have been for 30 years, and there’s not a moment of my workday when the television is not on. Sometimes three of them, all turned to different stations, all humming and buzzing in the background. And I ignore it, until my brain (is it the hypothalamus?) picks up on a word or phrase or sound that drags me to the remote to zap up the volume. Extraneous noise? Nope, it’s just the music of the news, and I’m used to it and embrace it.

But at home, writing, I cannot, cannot listen to music. It’s the earworm thing.

What’s an earworm? Let’s say you’re in the grocery, and that Muzak is on. Just in the background. And you have the misfortune to hear "It’s A Small World after All." Ahhhhh. That darn song is going to stick in your brain, humming over and over, forever. It’s an earworm.

How about Saturday in the Park by Chicago? (Saturday, in the park, I think it was the fourth of July…) Ah…stop. Oh Mickey, you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind… There’s a commercial for sour cream about "a dollop of daisy." Have you heard that? I heard it once, and sang it for about a week.

Hey, Macarena.

And so, I work in silence. If a song has words, they stick in my brain and play where my own words are supposed to be.
So can you manage music when you read or write?

JAN:
Not only can I NOT work with music on in the room, I can't work if the construction guys at my neighbor's house are blaring the radio as they install new garage doors. Really, the power tools don't bother me, but I've had to go next door and beg them to turn off the music.

I think it's called EASILY DISTRACTED. Or maybe -- Rather-be-listening-to-the-lyrics-than-writing-this-scene. But it's odd because I spent many years writing in a newsroom -- which is loud and chaotic. Of course, then I was on a tight deadline and there was a lot of peer pressure and editors on hand to help with the discipline.

I've never heard the term earworms, but its great. Perhaps its the pattern of melody that's the problem. Our brains want to keep track of the chorus - are ever-ready to chime in.

From watching too much baseball on NESN last year -- I had that god-awful Foxwoods jingle stuck in my head. The Wonder of It All -- and I HATED those commercials. When the kids were little we used to listen to Sesame Street tapes in the car and for years - it seemed-- I had PUT DOWN THE DUCKY and the MONSTER MASH worming their way though my ears.

I take two Pilates classes, in one, the music is wonderful, and I never think about it afterward, in the other, its one Euro-pop song after another. You can barely make out the lyrics for all the reverb, but these innane melodies get cemented into my head. Which leads me to another question for debate: does only the annoying music get stuck, or do we simply not mind if a good song continues to play and play and play?

HALLIE:
Earworms, ick. Sounds like earwigs, which I can easily imagine slithering into an ear. I wonder if you could turn them off by eating some really stinky cheese or listening to the Nixon tapes.

I don't get earworms so much as noseworms. Smells that haunt me. Fresh baked bread. Watermelon. Bar-b-que flavor potato chips. It usually haunts me until I'm driven into the kitchen to forage. This is a major disadvantage of working at home.

RO:
You guys are cracking me up. Sorry for having caused this but if you've got to have something stuck in your head, better to have Patsy Cline than the damn Foxwoods jingle. (Was it the playoffs last year? It drove me crazy..oh yeah, pop a cork, like those guys are all drinking champagne...)

I write longhand first, then put on computer. First time, I couldn't possibly listen to music, or anything. (Like my neighbor's children who don't know how lucky they are to still be alive.) Entering on computer, I'll sometimes have a game on in the background.

The good songs get stuck too. The Clash frequently take up residence in my little brain - "darlin' you got to let me know..." but more often it's the excruciating stuff. I had to stop taking my spin class because the instructor kept playing "My Humps" and it was unseemly for a grown woman to be walking around singing about her lovely lady lumps, which I found myself doing on Tuesday afternoons.

HANK:
Someone told me: if you get an earworm, the only cure is to sing Jingle Bell Rock. Okay, I know. It sounds weird. But it does seem to work.Do you have your personal earworms? Tell us—if you dare!

ON "THE ENVELOPE PLEASE"

I was better with you as a woman than I've ever been with a woman as a man!
*** Dustin Hoffman as "Tootsie"

Thanks to all our lovely contestants in the first but not last Jungle Red Gender Quiz!

The photos below are not our lovely contestants--though who knows, they may be those "Anonymous" entrants who were too chicken to own up to their guesses. But here are the talented authors who wrote those difficult-to-gender-match excerpts.

Anyway, drumroll please...and Hank will open the envelopes.

Quote #1














John Sandford
Invisible Prey

I chose it because I thought you might be fooled by the flower and architecture references, and the concern about children.


Quote #2

Laura Lippman
What the Dead Know


I chose this because she thought it sounded tough, And kind of--cold. That's not a bad thing. It's just not "feminine."

Quote #3

John Katzenbach

The Madman'sTale

Hallie chose this--maybe because it's through a woman's eyes? And seems compassionate?

Quote #4

Carol O'Connell
Find Me

Also Hallie's choice--maybe because it's gritty and gory, and has animals in danger? Not a "woman-y" thing to do.

Quote #5

Alafair Burke

Close Case

Rosemary's selection--because she thought it didn't sound "girly."

So how'd you do? And when you "missed," what made you choose the gender you chose?

And those of you who checked out the quiz but didn't enter--we have stat counter, so we can tell you're all out there, you know--Okay, you're shy. Or, as we said, chicken.

But did you get it right? Or were you surprised?

ON VIVE LA DIFFERENCE?

THE JUNGLE RED WRITERS "GUESS THE GENDER" QUIZ

Our latest blog sent us scuttling to our bookshelves and stacks, opening books at random to see if we could tell, from a few sentences, whether a man or woman had written them.

Here are four snippets from well-known, well-written mysteries. Do you think a man wrote them? Or a woman?

Why?

Post your answers in the comments...and on Saturday, we'll tell all. And hey--no Googling, gang. This is a supposed to be a thought-provoking experiment in the on-going discussion of whether there's an intrinsic male or female-ness. Not a pop quiz!

And if you have any gender-bending excerpts...let us know. We'd love to feature them next week!


#1
An anonymous van, some-kind-of-pale, cruised Summit Avenue, windows dark with the coming night. The killers inside watched three teenagers, two boys and a girl, hurrying along the sidewalk like wind-blown leaves. The kids were getting somewhere quick, finding shelter before the storm.
The killers trailed them, saw them off, then turned their faces toward Oak Walk.
The manison was an architectural remnant of the nineteeth century, red brick with green trim, gloomy and looming in the dying light. Along the wrought iron fence, well tended beds of blue and yellow iris, and clumps of pink peonies were going gray to the eye.

HOW ABOUT THIS ONE?
#2

He got out of the patrol car and attempted to take the purse to look for himself. Her scream shocked her even more than it did him. There was a fiery pain in her left forearm when he tried to slide the purse past her elbow. The patrolman spoke into his shoulder, calling for assistance. He pocketed her keys from her purse, walked back to her car, and poked around inside, then returned and stood with her in the sleeting rain that had finally started. He mumbled some familiar words to her, but was otherwise silent.
“Is it bad?” she asked him.

OR THIS ONE?
#3

Lucy saw that Peter's face was set, and that all his grinning insouciance had fled. He lifted his hands up, as if testing the limits of the restraints, and she thought she could see a great agony sweep throug him, before he turned and passively allowed Big Black to lead him down the corridor hobbled like a wild beast that could not be trusted.

OR THIS?
#4

The brakes were screeching, smoking, dust clouds rising around them. Mallory swerved to graze one animal, rocking the car onto two wheels. It slammed back to earth on all four tires, and she cut a hard right to miss the next cow. Riker was lurching the other way, and now back again toward Mallory, rolling as the car rolled over. The air bags imploded, massing up an instant and blinding him with white; it felt like a punch from a giant fist large enough to pound his chest and his gut with one mighty shot. Just as quickly, the bag deflated, and the last thing Riker saw was a fence pole coming through the windshield, missing Mallory and snapping his arm bone. A second bone hit his head.

OR THIS?
#5

Hotshot reporter Percy Crenshaw died on the last day of my thirty-second year.I'm crystal clear on the timing, because I remember precisely where I was when I got the word the following morning. I was slogging away in the misdemeanor intake unit, issuing criminal trespass after criminal trespass case, thinking to myself, This is a shitty way to spend my thirty-second birthday.

On "Visionary" Women in Crime Fiction

"...When it comes to killers and other criminals, the best visionaries these days are women, and foreign females in particular."
--Ed Siegel, Boston Globe

[Breaking News: Listen to WAMC, Northeast Public Radio, Tuesday August 7th at 10:07 a.m. to hear Neil Novack (Odyssey Books) talk about his five favorite summer reads (including Jan's "Yesterday's Fatal" or listen at wamc.org. See more at the end of this entry.]

HALLIE: Did anyone see book reviewer Ed Siegel's article in the Boston Globe, "Dial Ms. for Murder"? He extols the work of women(!) crime fiction writers who are bending the rules, writing more psychologically and sociologically complex characters, reaching less often for cliche.
In particular he praises the work of three foreign women authors--Natsuo Kirino, Zoe Heller, and Morag Joss. He says they are "so good that [Ruth] Rendell may no longer even be at the head of the class, even though all three are obviously indebted to her and the writer she's often paired with, the late Patricia Highsmith."

Such a pleasure to read his comments, after having been thoroughly discouraged by Patrick Anderson's "The Triumph of the Thriller," published in February, which devoted a scant 50 or so pages to women authors and classified Sue Grafton a thriller writer (huh?)

Do you think women approach the writing of crime fiction from a fundamentally different mindset than men? Are there American women crime fiction authors worthy of this kind of note? And what about Ruth Rendell, what makes her writing so exemplary? (When I interviewed Ian Rankin earlier this year, he said she's one of the authors he most admires precisely because of the complex characters she writes.)

JAN: I don't know. I've taken some heat from a few critics for my protaganist's dark side and her flawed character. Which, of course, has made me crazy. And another critic, a supporter of my work, told me she thought there was a double standard for mystery protagonists.

In other words, it was okay for male characters to be flawed and complex, but female sleuths had to above reproach. Just like women trying to break through in other fields, I guess. A few superficial flaws might be allowed, but nothing that went to the kinds of issues my poor Hallie Ahern struggles with.

I'm glad to hear someone is trumpeting complex female characters -- even if they are by foreign authors rather than homegrown. But I have to admit, for the most part, the complex mystery characters I've come across have been written by males. This may be because they have been better received. And I don't read the volume of mysteries you do, Hallie, so I (hopefully) am behind the times.

RO: So many issues have been raised here. I'm really not qualified to participate in this discussion (but I'll jump in anyway) because I don't read many thrillers - although we can write a whole other blog on the definition of thriller. We can also debate the definition of complex, and why some reviewers automatically give extra points to foreign writers. (Is it more complex to write "lorry" instead of "truck"? "Mac" instead of "raincoat"? Is Iceland intrinsically more complex than say, the Bronx?)

I write, and for the most part, read traditional mysteries.
In the last few books I've read the writer's focus is on the person solving the crime - professional or amateur - not the twisted SOB commiting the crime. For example, Julia Spencer Fleming does a brilliant job writing Clare and Russ that I feel I'm on a first-name basis with them. They are complex characters, no less complex because they live in a small New England town and aren't ferreting out terrorists, or deranged serial killers.

So is it progress that more women are writing twisted SOB killers? I guess. Does it make them more worthy of note? Maybe..to the guys who think women can only write lightweight yarns. But is there hope for those troglodytes anyway?

HANK: So let's take Lee Child. I've just finished two of his fantastically spare, smart, clever, taut and comandingly interesting thrillers. SO let's imagine you learned "Lee" is actually a woman. (It could happen, you know, like, um, Hank.)

Are you saying: oh, no, no way. Those books are clearly written by a man? I have to admit, don't kill me, just my opinion, I think they are obviously written by a man. (A man who can really write.)

Now let's take, and not only because Ro brought her up, the wonderful Julia. Another of my favorites. Okay, the conceit doesn't work as well here, but let's say you learned her real name was Spencer Fleming. A man. Would you be surprised that a man wrote the Clare and Russ books? I kind of think...you would.

More favorites as examples: If you didn't know the authors, could you think a man wrote the deeply complex The Virgin of Small Plains? Could you think a woman wrote the complicated and surprising The Accidental Spy?

So is there something intrinsically male or female about what comes out on the page? (Come on, I know you can hit me with a million examples of books where you absolutely could not tell. Love to hear them. And why is that?)

There used to be--still are?--people who suggested women should use initials so the male mystery-buying public would not be put off thinking they were going to get "girly" stuff. (Hallie uses G.H. Ephron for her Peter Zak series, but was that because it was a pseudonym to include both you and your co-author?)

On the other hand, my photo is on my book covers. One reason: so buyers will know "Hank" is female.

PS. And yes, Ro, maybe Iceland is more complex than the Bronx. Unless you're from Iceland. Then the Bronx undoubtedly wins.

HALLIE: Interesting point. I wonder if there's anyone out there who can come up with big name male authors whose books could have been written by a female, and vice versa. S. J. Rozan?

Ro asks: Is it progress that more women are writing twisted SOB killers? I agree, that's not the point. But what is true is that the women writers Siegel praises aren't writing puzzle-driven mysteries in which the character seems to be dragging the plot forward. They're writing more complex character-driven stories.

And if we're building a panoply of Americans who are breaking the mold, add Carol O'Connell, S. J. Rozan, and Gillian Flynn.

Breaking News: Neil Novak, owner of The Odyssey Bookshop in S. Hadley, Mass. (The Berkshires) talks up Hallie Ahern and Jan's "Yesterday's Fatal," on WAMC, Northeast Public Radio, Tuesday (August 7th) at 10:07 a.m. when he discusses his five favorite summer reads. You can listen on the web at wamc.org.