Timothy Hallinan
Tim Hallinan’s newest mystery featuring Junior Bender is Fields Where They Lay.
From the author's Q&A with John Wilkens for The San Diego Union-Tribune:
Q: How do you know when something is funny?Visit Timothy Hallinan's website and blog.
A: I laugh. Since I don’t know it’s coming, I will frequently write a sentence and laugh out loud. I think Junior has a fundamentally comic sensibility, by which I mean he pretty much refuses to go to tragedy. Originally that was the only dichotomy, the mask for tragedy and the mask for comedy. There was no mask for normal. He goes to comedy in many instances because he’s not really comfortable with who he is. He’s has problems with being the thief. It’s cost him his wife, it’s cost him his child, but as long as he can laugh he’s OK.
Q: What’s your feeling about the state of the crime novel these days?
A: I think we’re in a golden age. Some of the stuff that’s being written is just so good. Not only that, the reach is so broad at this point, and we’ve gotten through the post-’90s hangover where everybody had to be a recovering alcoholic and living in a Dumpster. There were all these tragic P.I.s. Now I think we’re back to the idea that a crime story is the chance to ask a lot of interesting questions and to do it in a form that readers instinctively understand. And because...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: A Nail Through the Heart.
The Page 69 Test: The Fourth Watcher.
My Book, The Movie: The Fourth Watcher.
The Page 69 Test: Breathing Water.
The Page 69 Test: Crashed.
My Book, The Movie: Crashed.
--Marshal Zeringue
