Daphne Uviller

From a Q &A with Daphne Uviller about her new novel, Hotel No Tell:

Q: You used to work for a New York City law enforcement agency. How much of Zephyr’s adventures in Hotel No Tell come from your actual experience?

A: I worked for a watchdog group that investigates crime and corruption in the public school system. None of the cases that the fictional SIC handles is identical to any real one I worked on. But, certainly, I drew on the hubris of our perps and the astounding ability of people to deny to themselves that they’re committing a crime. For instance, I make mention of a school principal taking kickbacks, which was the theme of more than a few of our cases. I also borrowed from the enormous and enormously entertaining personalities of my former colleagues. One thing that is completely true: most of the investigators were named Tommy.

Q: Zephyr’s investigative skills could use a little honing. Is this the right career for her?

A: She’s definitely not the smooth, gun-slinging, clear-thinking cop of so much popular fiction. She fails to catch last names, she can’t describe what people look like, she’s a little rash in a lot of her actions. But she’s nosy, genuinely curious, and innately caring. She gets people to talk to her. I wanted to capture the reality of people having unusual talents, not uniform ones, of showing how people can have skills that can’t be described on a resume. She’s learning on the job and I love that about her. She’s who a lot of us would be if we were thrown into her position.

Q: Zephyr is adamant about her decision not to have children, so much so that, at the beginning of the book, she and Gregory have broken up over it. You have two kids; are you worried what they’ll read into this?

A: First of all, I hope...[read on]

Visit Daphne Uviller's website.

The Page 69 Test: Super in the City.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bryan Caplan

Bryan Caplan is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a blogger for EconLog, one of the Wall Street Journal’s Top 25 Economics Blogs. His first book, The Myth of the Rational Voter, was named “the best political book of the year” by the New York Times, and made the Financial Times list of the Best Books of 2007. Caplan's writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.

His new book is Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think.

From his Q & A about the new book with David Leonhardt of the New York Times:

Q. My sense of the research on nature and nurture is that both matter. On the one hand, genes clearly matter. On the other, young children of college graduates, for instance, know hundreds and hundreds more words on average than young children of high school dropouts. That difference is not mostly genetic.

You seem to have a different sense of the research. You write, “Adoption and twin research provides strong evidence that parents barely affect their children’s prospects.” What’s the brief version of how you try to persuade skeptics like me?

Mr. Caplan: The central idea of twin and adoption research is that disentangling nature from nurture is hard. Our intuition isn’t very helpful. Yes, kids of college-educated parents know more words. But why? Maybe their upbringing is the reason, as you suggest. But babies from college-educated families might excel even if raised by high school dropouts, by learning a higher fraction of the words they hear, or spending more time reading.

So what does the twin and adoption data say? Language fits a standard pattern. Consistent with your skepticism, upbringing has a noticeable effect on the vocabulary of young children. But as children mature, this effect largely fades away. The Colorado Adoption Project found, for example, that 2-year-olds adopted by high-vocabulary parents had noticeably larger vocabularies. But as the kids grew up, their vocabulary scores looked more and more like their biological parents’. By age 12, the effect of enriched upbringing on vocabulary was barely visible.

Admittedly, there’s a sense in which upbringing is all-important: If a baby is raised by wolves, he...[read on]

Writers Read: Bryan Caplan.

--Marshal Zeringue

Michael Barkun

From a Q & A with Michael Barkun, author of Chasing Phantoms: Reality, Imagination, and Homeland Security Since 9/11:

Q: Chasing Phantoms identifies the gaps between the realities of terrorism and the discourse about it among government officials and the general public. What led you to discover this discrepancy?

A: "Discover" may be too strong a word. But I will give you one example. During the years immediately after the 9/11 attacks, I attended terrorism conferences at which some of the participants were or had been high officials in state and federal government agencies. What struck me at the time was their extraordinary level of fear, bearing in mind that the United States was then and still is the most powerful country in the world and that Al Qaeda even at the height of its capacities, could hardly have numbered more than several hundred people at most. Yet, as I said, here were individuals with years of governmental experience terrified about the safety of the Republic. And that suggested to me the existence of a great gulf between what you term reality and discourse. And, to my mind at least, developments over the last ten years suggest that that gulf did in fact exist.

Q: How did you get interested in government homeland security policy?

A: If we think of homeland security in the broadest sense, it goes back to the mid-1990s, the years of the armed standoff at the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco, the growth of the militia movement, and the Oklahoma City bombing. The FBI had failed to grasp the importance of religion in the Waco standoff and was now trying to figure out how to factor religion into their decision-making process, an enterprise in which I was involved. In that period, of course, the emphasis was on domestic sources of violence, not foreign terrorism, a focus that didn't change until 9/11.

Q: You emphasize the climate of fear that is evoked by the presence of invisible adversaries and various unseen dangers. Do you believe that these "invisible" fears have driven the U.S. "war on terror?"

A: Well, one of the...[read on]

The Page 99 Test: Chasing Phantoms.

--Marshal Zeringue

Elly Griffiths

Elly Griffiths's books include the crime novels The Crossing Places and The Janus Stone. From her Q & A about the book with Amy Myers at Shots:

Q. I enjoyed The Crossing Places greatly, so my first question is an obvious one: after reading the novel, I’m very glad you turned to the crime field, but what influenced you into doing so?

I’ve wanted to write a crime novel for some time. I love crime fiction, particularly Victorian novels like The Moonstone or The Murders in the Rue Morgue where the detective was just starting to emerge as a literary figure. In my last ‘non-crime’ novel I had a mystery sub-plot which eventually threatened to engulf the whole book. When I was thinking about what to write next I realised that what I really wanted to do was write a ‘proper’ crime novel – dead bodies, detectives and all.

Q. Ruth Galloway was inspired by your husband decision to give up a city job to train as an archaeologist. However you write very naturally about the tools, methods, aims and the excitement of archaeology, yet without forcing information on to the reader, which is a frequent pitfall of writing in an area that one doesn’t experience at first hand. Do you go on digs with your husband, and have you done so in Norfolk?

He never lets me come on digs because I’m far too lazy! Digging is incredibly hard work and I would want a cappuccino break after about ten minutes. However he has been very helpful with the details and I do think living with an archaeologist has helped me understand a little of what it’s all about. I love the idea that you can read a landscape, make deductions based on the colour of the grass or the shape of the hills. It feels very magical to me though I do know that it involves hard physical work (and a lot of mud).

Q. Another theme of this novel is folklore and prehistoric ritual, and they are central to its mood and plot. Is this is a general interest of yours, or is it specific to the area you are writing about so skilfully? Is there one particular myth or ritual that you always link with the marshes?

Yes, one...[read on]

Visit Elly Griffiths' website.

The Page 69 Test: The Crossing Places.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kate Clifford Larson

Historian Kate Clifford Larson is the author of The Assassin's Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln. From her Q & A with Randy Dotinga at the Christian Science Monitor:

Q. Why don't more Americans know about the grand conspiracy to kill not only Abraham Lincoln but members of his cabinet too, even the vice president?

My suspicion is that the story of the conspiracy disappeared by the 1880s and certainly by the 1910s, partly because of this tremendous effort toward reunification of the North and South and the obliterating of the memory of why the Civil War happened in the first place. A lot of that just disappeared and that whole mythology of the Lost Cause took over: You can't keep talking about a conspiracy of Southerners who killed the president. It's better to have John Wilkes Booth as the lone gunman. It's easier to blame one crazy actor.

Q. That's in sharp contrast to how so many people refuse to believe that a lone gunman killed President Kennedy and flock to conspiracy theories. In regard to the murder of Lincoln, why should we take time to understand that conspiracy today?

It's really important that Americans know the real story rather than passing it over quickly and blaming it on John Wilkes Booth. There are real people who were involved. They did this for a reason, and it's all wrapped up in the causes of the Civil War.

Americans don't like to talk about why the Civil War happened in the first place. It's...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Ellen Prager

Ellen J. Prager is former chief scientist at the world’s only undersea research station, Aquarius Reef Base, in the Florida Keys and a freelance writer. Among her publications are Chasing Science at Sea and the new book, Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime.

Some highlights from her Fresh Air interview about the new release:

On the volcanic sexual activity of sea sponges

"A lot of the sponges release their sperm into the water. Other sponges will basically suck in that sperm and fertilize their egg. It looks like smoke coming out of the sponges and you look at it and go, 'What the heck is going on?' and they're broadcasting sponge sperm."

On the transgendered parrotfish

"If you have a harem of parrotfish — a group of female parrotfish, let's say — and it has one dominant male. Something happens to the dominant male and it dies. Amazingly, within several weeks, one of those females can change to a male. And, in fact, some of them change to what we call supermales — [and] become big and extremely colorful and aggressive. They then become the dominant male of the other female parrotfish in the harem. I like to say, 'It's not only transgender. It's transgender on-call.'"

On the well-endowed conch

"Turns out that in the conch, they call the penis its verge. The verge has been the thing of limericks and poems. The biologists know all about this. Not only is it exceptionally long, but because the queen conch is this really big snail, the male sidles up to a female on the seafloor and he has to get his verge outside of his shell and around and underneath the female shell. So that's why it's so long. But there's a little problem: When it's outside of his shell, crabs and eels are all too happy to take advantage of his vulnerabilities. Yum, yum, yum. Well, poor conch. But turns out, he loses one [and] he just grows another. He can regenerate his penis."

Listen to the complete interview.

The Page 99 Test: Chasing Science at Sea.

--Marshal Zeringue

T. C. Boyle

T. C. Boyle's many novels include World's End (winner of the PEN/FaulknerAward), Drop City (a New York Times bestseller and finalist for the National Book Award), and the newly released When the Killing's Done.

From his Q & A with Anna Metcalfe at the Financial Times:

What book changed your life?

The book that got me going as a writer was Robert Coover’s Pricksongs and Descants. It fractures stories and tries to find out what storytelling is.

* * *
What’s the strangest thing you’ve done when researching a book?

For The Inner Circle there were 418 pages of pure sex. So I took my wife to Bloomington [home of Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction] and we had sex.

* * *
Which literary character most resembles you?

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a Rudyard Kipling story about a mongoose who saves a family in India from evil cobras.

Read the complete Q & A.

See--T.C. Boyle's 4 favorite books to turn to for comfort.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult's latest novel is Sing You Home.

From her Q & A with Arifa Akbar for the Independent:

Choose a favourite author and say why you like her/him

Alice Hoffman because she can write about love like no-one else. My favourite book by her is 'Turtle Moon' but even a bad Alice Hoffman book is almost better than anyone else's. Her books didn't make me a writer but as an adult reader they gave me my first fan moment.

* * *
Which fictional character most resembles you?

I'm a nice combination of Elizabeth Bennet and Scarlett O'Hara – someone who is opinionated and knows what she wants.

* * *
Who is your hero/heroine from outside literature?

My son, Jake, who had 13 surgeries as a child because of tumours in his ears. He has compromised hearing but in spite of this, he is a beautiful tenor singer. To have so much against him and to see what he has achieved at 17 is amazing for me.

Read the complete Q & A.

--Marshal Zeringue

John Burdett

John Burdett is a nonpracticing lawyer who worked in Hong Kong for a British firm until he found his true vocation as a writer. He has also lived in France, Spain, and Thailand. He is the author of A Personal History of Thirst, The Last Six Million Seconds, Bangkok 8, Bangkok Tattoo, Bangkok Haunts and  The Godfather of Kathmandu.

From his Q & A with Amy Myers at Shots ezine:

Q. Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, who is the driving force of these novels, is memorable for far more than his powers of detection. He’s half-Asian, half Westerner, he treads the thin line between the law and crime with dexterity and juggles his career path with his spiritual Buddhist journey to the Far Shore. Was his original conception in your mind solely as a detective, from which his character then developed, or did you plan him as such a divided character at his conception?

A. I did not plan him at all. I think his Eurasian genes plus his mastery of the cultures of both East and West make him vulnerable to a kind of schizophrenia. It is not so much that he does not know who he is, but rather he could be almost anyone, depending on what language and culture he happens to be in at any particular moment.

Q. The most striking aspect of this novel for me is the way you have presented Thai life as an overall picture, so that its crime, sex and drugs aspects become an accepted part of everyday life, rather than separated as part of an underworld. You live in Bangkok, so did the novels follow from your life there, or did you move there after your novels and research made it irresistible?

A. I wanted to live in Thailand from the first visit in 1986. This was purely a consequence of Thai charm, however, since I knew almost nothing about the country until I came to live here in 2001. I had not lived full-time in a developing country before. I had no idea the extent to which the economy of the poor blends with the underworld in a land without social security. Also, the importance of the black economy is much more obvious in a developing country. In fact, a huge proportion of the funds sloshing around the world derive from the illegal drug industry, but in the West this reality is hardly referred to. If estimates are correct that one third of the world’s wealth is black money, then in reality there is hardly a large building project on earth that does not make use of funds which are tainted to some extent.

Q. You’ve given Sonchai a Western absentee father, and a Thai upbringing with his prostitute mother. Over the years Sonchai has developed a Western side, both in his likes (he’s an American thriller-buff, for example) and in his career (such as his relationship with Kimberley Jones). Tietsin, his guru, is the ‘Godfather’ of Kathmandu. Did you plan it this way because it opened up opportunities for Sonchai to see Asian life both as an outsider and as a native, or because it enabled Sonchai to bridge the divide between West and East for your readers?

A. From the start Sonchai...[read on]

The Page 69 Test: The Godfather of Kathmandu.

--Marshal Zeringue

Amanda Hodgkinson

From a Q & A with Amanda Hodgkinson about her new novel, 22 Britannia Road:

Q: What drew you to this particular story of Polish World War II survivors living in England?

A: As a child, I was always fascinated when the adults around me talked about World War II. These were older family members who had lived through it and I would try to stay quiet so I could listen without being discovered. Their voices changed to lower registers, there were weighted silences in the conversations, sad looks, secretive whispering and then somebody would notice me and send me out to play, their voice swinging up a register to convey a gaiety they probably didn’t feel. I would go to bed at night, sick at heart thinking about these stories, and wonder how the world ever managed to get back to the normal after that war.

Looking back, I think I never stopped wondering. Years later, I was standing in my kitchen and heard a Russian woman on the radio, describing her experiences of being a child during the war. “We were so hungry,” she said, “we ate the bark of the silver birch trees.” An image came to me, so clear and strong, it was more like a memory than an act of my imagination. I wrote down what I saw; a young woman in a silver birch forest. I had begun to write my novel.

Q: From Silvana’s exile in the forest to the petrol rations in post-war Ipswich, you paint a vivid picture of the novel’s historical settings and events. What sort of research did you do to get the details right?

A: I balanced my own imaginative input with research. I read social history books on the war and the postwar period, including a lot of oral histories on Polish immigrant experiences. I also read wonderful Polish poets like Zbigniew Herbert and Tadeusz Rózewicz, among others. I studied Polish fairytales and classic Polish literature from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. I discovered tango music had been very popular in Poland during the thirties, so I listened to some fabulous clips on YouTube and imagined myself there, in the 1930s, dancing at a club in Warsaw, just like Hanka, one of the characters in the book tells Silvana about. I immersed myself in books, music and literature and then I put aside all research and let my imagination go to work. Whenever I was unsure about a scene, I turned to my own thoughts and feelings, relying on my ability to imagine a moment and on my empathy for the characters, rather than history books, and I think this approach helped me really understand my characters and the time.

Q: What does the title, the address of the home Janusz chooses for his reunited family, represent to you symbolically? Why that particular address?

A: I wanted a very...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue