He also talks about the Vincent Calvino novels as a partial exception to his thesis:

“Vinnie Calvino, Canadian author Christopher G. Moore's Bangkok-based private eye, would seem to be one of the few exceptions of Western characters still on the prowl; but when serious trouble strikes, the hard-boiled American frequently relies on an influential Thai police official to intervene on his behalf.”

Schreiber, who has his finger on the pulse of Asian crime fiction, thrillers and mysteries, may have come across a weeding out process in publishing. His website Steamy East Heroes and Villains is the best resource to explore past and present crime fiction set in Asia.

It is very difficult to get anything published by a traditional publisher. I suspect this may have stopped fresh blood arriving in Asia from writing novels. Though looking at the local bookstores the shelves have new locally published novels by the truckload. That secondary market is still going but the question of whether it is healthy is another question.

Schreiber is no doubt talking about international publishing and the larger commercial publishers in New York and London that buy books set around the world. Another factor—more Asians are writing fiction set in Asia those books are finding their way to the West. I can't prove it, but I would suspect (but can't prove) that most readers would prefer a noir novel set in China, Japan or Thailand, where the central characters are Asian, to be written by an Asian author, as it would appear to be more authentic than one penned by a non-Asian author. The luk-krueng or half-farang, half-Asian character is the “in between” two worlds hero, and since he or she is neither fish nor fowl, more liberties can be taken and readers can attribute shortcomings to the half of the character they are less familiar with.

There are a few other authors who have cast foreigners as heroes in thrillers or mysteries set in Asia. Dean Barrett, Stephen Leather and Timothy Hallinan. As far as I can tell, Timothy Hallinan is the only other author published by a major US publisher who has started a series in Asia with a farang character in the lead role, and his two novels have received acclaim from reviewers.

Gone are the days of broad stereotypes like Charlie Chan. Earl Derr Biggers American Chinese character who appeared in novels (starting in 1925) and films in the 1940s. The evolution of fiction about Asia shows how far writers have come since the early Chan novels, and illustrates the demands of readers for a more realistic contemporary setting and heroes who aren’t caricatures playing to type. 

Schreiber’s conclusion is a good one for aspiring writers. If you are going to set a book in Asia and use a foreigner as the central character, don’t make him a secret agent or spy.  He recommends a more fertile occupation for such a character would be: “Western diplomats, military attaches, investigative journalists, engineers, insurance claims investigators, researchers and scientists . . .”

The New York Times ran a good piece by Charles McGrath about Barney Rosset titled: Publisher Who Fought Puritanism, and Won.

“On Nov. 19 Mr. Rosset will receive a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Foundation in honor of his many contributions to American publishing, especially his groundbreaking legal battles to print uncensored versions of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer.” He is also the subject of “Obscene,” a documentary by Neil Ortenberg and Daniel O’Connor, which opens on Friday at Cinema Village.”

The first hurdle for any writer is to find an agent. Without an agent there is a slim to none chance that a publisher will consider you book. Thirty years ago, you could have submitted an over the transom manuscript. Today I doubt modern offices have transoms.

In August, Writer’s Digest published an article by Chuck Sambuchino titled: 28 Agents Who Want Your Work.

The article assembles an impressive list of literary agents who are open to submissions from new writers. You don’t need to have a “connection” or a “platform” or “celebrity status” to be considered. What you need is a really compelling book. If you have one, then here is a place to start in the publishing process.

A tip of the hat to Lee Goldberg creator of the Monk book/TV series.

Simenon’s most famous series beginning in 1931 and ending in 1972 ran for 75 novels; the series featured the French police detective, Inspector Julies Maigret.  Simenon also wrote literary novels. Dirty Snow falls in that category and is set in an unnamed country during the occupation by an enemy force. It is most likely drawn on Simenon’s experience of living in France during the Nazi occupation. (Simenon was accused of being a German collaborator during WWII and banned from writing for five years after the war ended.) The lead character named Frank, a nineteen year old, has killed his first man, ambushing him at night, sticking a knife in his ribs and stealing his service revolver. Frank lives with his mother who runs a brothel from her apartment in a building where the inhabitants are hostile to the occupiers and to Frank and his mother, who they suspect are collaborators. Given the soldiers and police who rule with an iron-fist in the occupation are the paying customers at the brothel, their suspicions about Frank and his mother ring true.

is a chilling example of noir fiction. Those in the black market seize their opportunities, do business with the enemy, enrich themselves with shady deals and murder, and soon act as if they are invincible. The dance between the Occupation authorities and Frank and his friends slowly reveals that behind the curtain of collaboration no one remains untainted or safe; that while fear corrodes the morale of many, leaving an exhausted few to draw upon the strength to resist the occupiers. As a story of occupation, terror, hubris, secrecy and how power causes people to lose their perspective, their sense of humanity and ultimately their life.

Dirty Snow answers the debate between what is noir and what is hardboiled fiction.

Nothing is fiction rolls us through gutter of alienation, throws dirt in our vision of pure white snow as this example of noir writing. Simenon reminds us, that in noir, there is no escape from the darkness of our doomed destiny.

The above piece will also run this Friday 14 November 2008 on the Forgotten Books column. Link: http://pattinase.blogspot.com

“THE central character of Christopher Moore’s debut crime novel is Vincent Calvino, a disgraced Italian-American lawyer who has decamped to Thailand and reinvented himself as a private investigator. But the word debut here does not mean that either the author or his character is a wet-behind-the-ears neophyte because Moore has written 18 books, all published in Thailand, of which this is the ninth to feature Calvino. Moore offers an explanation of sorts for this state of affairs which casts a not-entirely favourable light on the vagaries of international publishing. That aside, the important questions are can Moore write and is he worth reading? On the evidence of this novel, the answers are unequivocally yes.

“Calvino is a sympathetic, doubt-ridden character and Moore can pilot a twisting plot with skill and panache. . . .”

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The Internet has freed people from thinking. And instead has created a new commons for drive by shouters and crackpots, the Internet as their weapon of choice to machine-gun their opponents. Unfortunately we accept that their rants and screams as information. There is premise that every voice is equal; that every view deserves respect and discussion.

Our culture of reflection and critique is stalling. That much is clear no matter where you look, who is in power, whose economy is crashing, or who is spinning. We have the equivalent of a machine that is all spin, the wash cycle broken. Passion is easy to spin. It requires no hard numbers, no complex ideas, no reflection drawn from the hardscrabble lessons found in history.

“The problem of the Internet, according to Weizenbaum, is that it invites us to see it as a Delphic oracle. The Internet will provide the answer to all our questions and problems. But the Internet is not a vending machine in which you throw a coin and then get what you want. The key, here, is the acquisition of a proper education in order to formulate the right query. It's all about how one gets to pose the right question. For this one needs education and expertise. Higher standards of education are not attained by making it easier to publish. Weizenbaum: "The fact that anyone can put anything online does not mean a great deal. Randomly throwing something in achieves just as little as randomly fishing something out." Communication alone will not lead to useful and sustainable knowledge.”

Link: The society of the query and the Googlization of our lives

A tribute to Joseph Weizenbaum, by Geert Lovink

I propose a new law for the fictional world of private eye literature. Moore’s Chandler Law is:

As a P.I. series grows, the probability of a comparison involving Raymond Chandler or Philip Marlowe approaches one.

I have another connection with the film. One of my books appears in several shots.

The basic story is Nick Cage comes to Bangkok as a hitman with a mission.

In one scene, Cage is cleaning his handgun, in advance of action.

If you look carefully in the lower right hand corner you will see a copy of A Haunting Smile.

I have it on good authority that Nick Cage picked that book to be in the shot.

It is unclear whether he knew that A Haunting Smile was set in Bangkok during the 1992 coup. Bangkok Dangerous was shot as the 2006 coup unfolded, and has been released in 2008 as demonstrators have taken over Government House in an attempt to force out the government elected late last year. Having A Haunting Smile in the shot is appropriate for a gunman on his way to carry out a mission.

This morning and early afternoon driving on Bangkok streets everything appeared, on the surface, normal. People were shopping, eating in restaurants, walking on the streets. But  across town in the area around Government House, a different story unfolds. If the story were a noir novel, then it is at the point in the story, where the abject bleakness and despair descends as the main characters seek a final confrontation.

Final solution. Final confrontation. Words shoot overhead like flares. No one knows what happens next. Once a landscape has been bloodied, in the fog of battle, accusations and insults and threats fill the sky like circling birds, looking for prey or a place to land. No one can be sure. All a foreigner can do is hunker down, wait, and watch as deeper instincts, the ones that mark our species as dangerous, take flight. In times such as these, it seems that for all of our knowledge, technology and insights, there is an untamable nature that is raw, enraged, determined, and brutal. Isn’t that the definition of noir? The id breaks free and goes on a rampage. The psychic cauldron erupts destroying the illusion of civility; that under the surface, there is a beast waiting, fangs and claws showing, occupying the no-man’s land, where one man’s right becomes another’s wrong. 

In noir books and movies everyone is cast as a victim. They have no way out no matter what they do. They are doomed. The characters glide through the motions of an ordinary life—but it is anything but ordinary as it is shaded the colors of fear and uncertainty. People are served up with the daily bowl of rice not knowing if there will be another bowl in the evening. The waiting continues in early afternoon. A novelist would wish to write a different kind of thriller. One that was hard-boiled Bangkok. A tough place, but at the end there is the possibility of redemption; a thin ray of hope. Just enough to give the characters courage to believe that tomorrow might bring an end to the confrontation and violence. That tomorrow all sides remember that life matters. That’s the book people want to read about Bangkok. Noir between the pages is an entirely different experience than noir in the streets.