MYSTERIOUS MONDAY: Novelist Joyce Yarrow's Favorite Mystery Author

by Joyce Yarrow

 

When it comes to creating the antagonists in my books, I heartily agree with Somerset Maugham, who said: “Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.”

Today’s fiction writers are challenged to make our villains psychologically complex, without glorifying or totally damning them. Fortunately for us, we have Georges Simenon, my favorite mystery writer, to show us the way. A Belgian who wrote more than 200 books – many of them set in Paris – Simenon had a gift for portraying the most degenerate, desperate, and psychopathic individuals in the realistic light of ordinary circumstances.

In his stories, Simenon makes no attempt to “humanize,” his evildoers – at least not in the sentimental way implied by that term. Instead he uses the banality of their thinking to help us understand them. Take, for example, this passage from Dirty Snow, set in occupied France:

“Men in uniform were killed every week, and it was the patriotic organizations that got into trouble, the hostages, councilmen, notables, who were shot or taken God knows where. In any case, they were never heard of again. For Frank it was a question of killing his first man and breaking in Kromer’s Swedish knife.”

A knife that, in contrast to his abhorrence for people, Frank holds in high esteem:

“It was made in Sweden, a knife with a folding blade, so pure of line, so sharp, that you got the feeling the blade was actually intelligent and could find its way all by itself into someone’s flesh.”

Another masterful technique of Simenon’s – one that that draws readers in and keeps us spellbound to the very end – is his use of restraint. In the opening scenes of Dirty Snow, we are party to Frank’s plans to commit the murder, as well as his compulsion to reveal himself to a person with whom he will share a “secret bond.” But when the time comes for the bloody act, Simenon cuts away to Timo’s Bar, and all we are told is that, “The knife, carefully wiped, was in Frank’s pocket.” By that time we are so totally inside Frank’s head, that we feel the horror of the crime without having witnessed it.

Thanks to you, George Simenon, mystery writers like myself have a high bar to reach for when writing about the darker aspects of human nature.

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Joyce Yarrow’s complex, intelligent and satisfying mystery Code of Thieves has just been rereleased by Istoria Books in digital formats. The new edition features an essay by and interview with the author.

Read excerpts of Joyce’s books here: http://www.joyceyarrow.com/#/excerpts/4543751204

or

Hear Joyce read a snippet of CODE OF THIEVES in a book trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-3vUeuGLBA

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ABOUT JOYCE YARROW:

Joyce Yarrow was born in the SE Bronx, escaped to Manhattan as a teenager and now lives in Seattle with her husband and son. Along the way to becoming a full-time author, Joyce has worked as a screenwriter, singer-songwriter, multimedia performance artist and most recently, a member of the world music vocal ensemble, Abráce.

Joyce is a Pushcart nominee, whose stories and poems have been widely published. Her first book, Ask the Dead (Martin Brown 2005), was selected by The Poisoned Pen as a Recommended First Novel and hailed as “Bronx noir”. Her latest book, Code of Thieves, takes place in Brooklyn and Moscow. It was published in hardcover (as The Last Matryoshka) by Five Star/Cengage and is now available for Kindle and other ereaders through Istoria Books. (www.IstoriaBooks.com).

Joyce considers the setting of her books to be characters in their own right and teaches workshops on "The Place of Place in Mystery Writing."

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CODE OF THIEVES by Joyce Yarrow

Full-time private investigator/part-time poet Jo Epstein travels to New York and eventually to Russia to help clear her emigre stepfather—who is framing him for murder and who is sending him threatening messages in Russian nesting dolls (matryoshkas)? Her investigation takes her on a journey into her stepfather’s past and into the honor-bound code of the “vory,” a Russian criminal syndicate.

• "Intricately layered like the Russian nested doll of the title..." Library Journal
• "You'll want to discover the secrets buried in The Last Matryoshka..." Lesa Holstine, Lesa's Book Critiques
• "Joyce Yarrow....may very well prove herself to be the Mickey Spillane of the 21st century...." Seattle Post Intelligencer

Buy Code of Thieves by Joyce Yarrow for Kindle here.

It is also available at other major etailers.

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WIN A DIGITAL COPY OF CODE OF THIEVES!

Here's how:

Respond to this post, telling us who your favorite mystery character or author is. Make sure to put your email in the post.

By Tuesday, April 16, 2013, midnight, Eastern Time USA, Istoria Books will choose a winner at random from those who responded to this post.

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MYSTERIOUS MONDAY: Joyce Yarrow interview at Body in the Library blog

Joyce Yarrow, author of Code of Thieves, is interviewed today at the blog There's a Body in the Library. Stop on by and chat with Joyce. Here's a sample of the exchange:

MARY SUTTON: You said on your website that “settings are characters.” What do you mean by that?
JOYCE YARROW: Well, it is often said that a place ‘has character’ – and since our environment has such power to shape us, I would take it one step further. Cities and towns, suburbs and wilderness all share the qualities of a living organism, both symbolically and in reality. This is why streets are called arteries, mountains taunt us with their grandeur, and Billy Joel sings about being in a ‘New York’ state of mind.’
As I see it, my job as a writer is to bring to life the physical universe in which a story takes place, so that the border between character and setting blurs and the two merge in the reader’s mind to create an alternate reality. Raymond Chandler was a master at this, to the point where a mini-industry has sprung up in Los Angeles, taking mystery fans on tours of the settings portrayed in his books. Here’s a classic example: “The muzzle of the Luger looked like the mouth of the Second Street tunnel, but I didn't move. Not being bullet proof is an idea I had had to get used to.” From The Big Sleep.
When I traveled to Russia in search of settings for Code of Thieves, each place I visited—Vladimir Central Prison, the Moscow Metro, the Matryoshka Factory, et al—became a character in its own right, revealing its unique personality and inviting traumatic events to transpire there.
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Istoria Books is rereleasing Joyce's excellent mystery novel Code of Thieves this April. The new edition features an essay by and interview with the author. 

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 Code of Thieves by Joyce Yarrow

Full-time private investigator/part-time poet Jo Epstein travels to New York and eventually to Russia to help clear her emigre stepfather—who is framing him for murder and who is sending him threatening messages in Russian nesting dolls (matryoshkas)? Her investigation takes her on a journey into her stepfather’s past and into the honor-bound code of the “vory,” a Russian criminal syndicate.

• "Intricately layered like the Russian nested doll of the title..." Library Journal
• "You'll want to discover the secrets buried in The Last Matryoshka..." Lesa Holstine, Lesa's Book Critiques
• "Joyce Yarrow....may very well prove herself to be the Mickey Spillane of the 21st century...." Seattle Post Intelligencer

Buy Code of Thieves by Joyce Yarrow for Kindle here.

It is also available at other major etailers.

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Like Istoria Books on Facebook!

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Istoria Books's "Mysterious Monday" program features posts about mystery writing, reading, bookselling and more by writers from beyond the Istoria stable. Stop back on Mondays for insightful posts on the mystery genre. Check out Istoria Books's mystery offerings here.

Mysterious Monday posts from the past: 

• Jenny Milchman writes about Putting the MIST in mystery: obscuring facts
• Carola Dunn writes about her experiences with a mysterious bookstore display: Downton Abbey, Barnes & Noble, and Carola Dunn
• Mystery writers and readers' mystery pet peeves, part one
• Mystery writers and readers' mystery pet peeves, part deux
• A President's Day Mystery
• Whither the Hit Person by Gary Alexander
• To Review or Not by Marlyn Beebe
• Common mistakes mystery writers make about the law...by Leslie Budewitz

Joyce Yarrow Reads from CODE OF THIEVES

Read an interview with Joyce Yarrow ("From Crime-Ridden Bronx to Crime-Ridden Mystery Novels") here.

Joyce Yarrow: From the Crime-Ridden Bronx to Crime-Ridden Mystery Novels

Istoria Books is thrilled to release Joyce Yarrow's mystery,  Code of Thieves (originally titled The Last Matryoshka in hardcover), this March. Here Joyce talks about her life, her PI brother, her writing, and her thoughts on "place as character":


Tell us about your writing journey -- when you started, if you always wanted to write mystery, what led you to mystery writing.

Joyce: Ah, my writing journey. Most writers start as readers. The public library was just a few blocks from our apartment in the Bronx and was definitely the safest place in our crime-ridden neighborhood, where gangs rumbled every night and even walking to school could prove perilous.

My own writing juices began to flow when I discovered the music hidden within words. I set William Blake’s poem, “Infant Sorrow” to a melody with guitar accompaniment and went on to become a full-fledged singer-songwriter, with many side journeys into poetry published in short-lived magazines. Wonderful days!  When I moved to Los Angeles, I got caught up in the film world and was hired to script narration for a documentary (my first gig as a professional writer). This meant sitting in the editing room and “writing to picture,” a great discipline for a writer—you have to let the visuals speak for themselves and use words merely to enrich the viewer’s experience. 

I loved writing for film and TV, but the cleaner my prose grew the more I wanted to try my hand at writing a book in which words would be allowed to breathe. The gap between writing scripts and short stories to authoring novels seemed impossibly wide and I wondered if I could close the distance by writing a mystery novel. The mystery genre is highly structured and requires strong characters, a tight plot that builds suspense, and a satisfying solution at the end—at least I would not get lost in the wilderness of literary fiction (that came later). An avid mystery reader, I was a total neophyte when it came to mystery categories. So when my first book, Ask the Dead, was published and hailed as Bronx Noir, I had to look up noir to make sure I knew what that meant. 

You are a Bronx native. Can you tell me a little about what growing up there was like? How'd you land in Seattle?

Joyce: I vividly remember reading The Little Princess at the age of eight. Growing up in the Southeast Bronx, it was easy to relate to a heroine who survived by living entirely in her imagination. We lived on a street that had the highest crime rate in New York (no kidding!). Being observant was also a prerequisite for survival. I think this vigilance on my part gave me some foundational skills as a writer – I became a people watcher at an early age out of necessity.

I’ve sampled life in places all around the country and settled in Seattle because of the supportive scene here for artists of all kinds. The Northwest has much natural beauty and is also a great place to raise a family. Not to mention the plentiful micro-breweries…

A matryoshka
(pronounced ma-TROO-shkah)

You have a brother who was a P.I. Your protagonist, Jo Epstein, is a P.I. Did you rely on your brother heavily for background? 

Joyce: My brother Rick has carefully reviewed my books for accuracy about the P.I. lifestyle. It irks him that in so many books the P.I.’s end up not being paid. I was only 14 when Rick finished criminology school and was hired to conduct his first surveillance—a warehouse in New Jersey. I begged him to take me with him and we still laugh about that. Maybe that night was the genesis for my becoming a mystery writer – I wanted to find out what I had missed!

Can you tell us any funny/interesting stories your brother shared with you about being a P.I.?

Joyce: My brother is the soul of discretion – a prerequisite for staying employed as a P.I.  However, Rick did share the following story with me recently:

Many years ago, in Los Angeles, an elderly Italian man came to see me. He said he thought his wife was cheating on him. She was always late coming home from work and wouldn’t tell him where she’d been. He handed me a photo I assumed would show off his ‘trophy wife,’ some kind of blonde bombshell. Instead I saw a swarthy, short, very plump woman dressed in black.

The next evening, I waited at the sewing factory for end of the shift. When the doors opened, out came what seemed like hundreds of short, plump women, all dressed in black. It was impossible to pick out his wife.

The next day, I bought a box of chocolates and asked the security guard to give it to Mrs. __ when she came out. The strategy worked and I followed her out the gate. She went to a church where a bingo game was in progress. And as it turned out, she went to a different church every night to play bingo. Her husband disapproved of gambling but was immensely relieved to find out that bingo, rather than infidelity, was the reason for his wife’s strange behavior.

Code of Thieves takes place in Russia, as well as New York. Tell me a little about your trip to Russia for research, how much of it made its way into the book.

Joyce: I have been accused of becoming a novelist simply to justify my wanderlust.  The trip to Russia with my teenage son was the epitome of mind-expanding adventure. We stayed in what was once a communal apartment in Moscow and Ian never complained about the lumpy bed or the bland food. But when we entered Vladimir Central Prison and the doors clanged shut behind us , he turned to me and said, “Mom, this is not the usual tourist experience, is it?”

In addition to the prison, almost every place we visited in Russia made its way into Code of Thieves. Lena’s apartment in Moscow, the Monastery of St. Euthimius and the Matryoshka factory in Suzdal, the headquarters of the Moscow Criminal Police at 38 Petrovka Street, the chaos at Sheremetyevo International Airport, even the disco of the Vladimir Hotel. The trip was invaluable . So was Google Earth, which I used to explore many settings in Code of Thieves that I did not visit personally. 

The settings in Code of Thieves -- both Russia and New York, but especially Russia -- are so strongly portrayed you can almost hear balalaika music in the background! Tell me a little about why such strong settings are important to you as a writer, how they almost become a separate character in your books.

Joyce: Like a bass player in a band, a story’s setting plays an essential role that is often not fully appreciated. How can one tell a credible tale without including geographical and cultural details that reveal personality and create atmosphere?  

Scandals, the New York nightclub where Jo Epstein exchanges security services for rent, is a “person” as much as a place. As Jo puts it:

Scandal’s was like a woman who dressed down every night, progressively shedding her layers of respectability. For dinner she wore her business clothes—hosting those who were out to impress a client with trendy insider dining and phony “I bumped into so-and-so” stories. The poetry slam loosened things up—definitely casual—but some basic coherence was still required to deliver words from the stage. It was after hours when Scandal’s jettisoned her inhibitions and stripped to her undies, sleek lingerie, thongs, whatever was handy. At that point it was my job to prevent bad things from happening—to keep an eye on what went on in the bathrooms that wasn’t related to hygiene, to listen for voices that crossed the boundary from boisterous to confrontational, and to make sure it was the drinks, and not the police, that kept coming.

Why did you decide to make Jo a poet? It's such an unusual combination -- poet and P.I. Were you tipping your hat to other famous investigators with unusual hobbies (Sherlock Holmes and the violin, for example)?

Joyce: I had no idea I was going to write about a poet/detective. Until one night at the Sit ‘n Spin (a bar in Seattle that shared space with a Laundromat), the Slam MC started ad-libbing on stage. Her street-smart wisecracks, mixed with erudite comments on performance poetry and rabble-rousing quips, got me to thinking. What if she were actually a private investigator moonlighting as a poet? I got out my notebook and Jo Epstein was born.

Who are your favorite mystery writers/series?

Joyce: I teach workshops on The Place of Place in Mystery Writing, and some of the mystery writers I feature who consistently create memorable settings are Raymond Chandler, John D. MacDonald, and Kate Atkinson. And of course Georges Simenon—Inspector Maigret is Paris. I also read a lot of non-genre fiction and lately many Indian authors, such as Kiran Desai, whose sense of place is so palpable you can touch, taste and smell the atmosphere in every paragraph.

Will readers be seeing more of Jo Epstein?

Joyce: Maybe.

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Code of Thieves by Joyce Yarrow (Istoria Books, March 2012)

Full-time private investigator/part-time poet Jo Epstein travels to New York and eventually to Russia to help clear her emigre stepfather of a murder rap and to discover who is sending him threatening messages in the form of Russian nesting dolls (mastryoshkas). Her journey takes her to dark places in her stepfather's background and in Russia's history as it shrugged off the weight of communism and embraced a frightening new freedom. Hear Joyce read a snippet from the book here.

• "Intricately layered like the Russian nested doll..."  Library Journal
• "You'll want to discover the secrets buried in (Code of Thieves)..." Lesa Holstine, Lesa's Book Critiques
• "Joyce Yarrow....may very well prove herself to be the Mickey Spillane of the 21st century...." Seattle Post Intelligencer

PRESS RELEASE: Two Russian-Themed Novels Acquired!

January 31, 2012

ISTORIA BOOKS ACQUIRES DIGITAL RIGHTS

TO TWO RUSSIAN-THEMED NOVELS:

Joyce Yarrow’s mystery: The Last Matryoshka

and

Russian native Mary Fisherov's historical love story: Love’s Destiny Foretold

Istoria Books, a digital publisher dedicated to releasing “eBooks You Want to Read at Prices You Want to Pay” ™ has recently acquired digital rights to two novels, both with Russian elements.

Istoria will publish Joyce Yarrow’s mystery, The Last Matryoshka, in early March 2012. The Last Matryoshka was released in hardcover by Five Star/Cengage in December 2010. A mystery as layered as the Russian nesting doll of its title, The Last Matryoshka follows a poetry-writing P.I. as she attempts to keep her Russian émigré stepfather from being fingered for murder. Action in the book takes place in both Brooklyn and Moscow. Library Journal has praised The Last Matryoshka, calling it an “intricately layered tale of vengeance and hatred flavored with a Russian cultural backdrop…”

Yarrow is a Pushcart nominee, whose stories and poems have been widely published. Her first book, Ask the Dead (Martin Brown 2005) was selected by The Poisoned Pen as a Recommended First Novel and hailed as “Bronx noir.” A Bronx native, she now lives in Seattle and gives regular workshops on the use of place in novels. Yarrow is represented by Stephanie Rostan of Levine and Greenberg Literary Agency. 

In May 2012, Istoria will release Love’s Destiny Foretold by Russian native Mary Fisherov. A sweeping historical love story that brings together an exiled Russian countess, an opera singer, and a world-traveling playboy in the slums and mansions of late nineteenth-century New York City, Love’s Destiny Foretold is a combination of delicious action and witty surprises, for fans of larger-than-life storytelling, epic romance, and some sly satires of contemporary Russian government. Fisherov lampoons Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev through two Russian agents in her novel.

Fisherov is an internationally published writer of literary fiction whose novels have been translated into German, Spanish, and French. She has been awarded several literary prizes in her native Russia. Love’s Destiny Foretold is her first work in English.

Fisherov, who comes from a literary family, is on the Classics faculty of a California state university.

ABOUT ISTORIA:

Istoria Books, founded in 2010, publishes fiction in a variety of genres: romance, women’s fiction, historical, literary, mystery, thriller, sci-fi, fantasy, young adult. Submission guidelines are available at their website--www.IstoriaBooks.com

Istoria Books releases are available on all major ebook etailers, most notably Amazon’s Kindle store, Smashwords.com and Bn.com, in addition to others.

A humorous piece by Istoria Editor-in-Chief Libby Sternberg about the evolution to the Kindle (“From Papyrus to Gutenberg to Kindle”) was published by the Wall Street Journal on January 5, 2011.

Reviewers interested in Istoria Books offerings should contact Libby Sternberg at LibbyMalinSternberg@gmail.com or IstoriaBks@gmail.com

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