Dave Zeltserman will be talking with Pam Stack on Authors on the Air about his award-winning mysteries and his acclaimed crime and horror novels this Wednesday at 2 pm EST. Stop by if you have the chance!
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Monday, June 24, 2013
Joel Goldman dispenses wise and witty writing and publishing tips on "Pulp Friction with Paul Levine." Listen here.
Saturday, June 22, 2013
Sizzling Summer Sale
Our Summer Sale starts today! Check out our featured crime and mystery ebooks on sale now for $1.99.
Saturday, June 8, 2013
STRAWBERRY YELLOW is today's Nook Daily Find
Strawberry Yellow, the latest Mas Arai mystery by Edgar Award-winning author, Naomi Hirahara, is today's Barnes & Nobles Nook Find! And it's on sale for only $1.99!
Thursday, June 6, 2013
"Pulp Friction with Paul Levine" to Interview Lee Goldberg Sunday Night
Two Top Suspensers will be on the air Sunday June 9 LIVE at 8 p.m. Eastern. Lee Goldberg is the first guest on "Pulp Friction with Paul Levine." Expect Lee to talk about his new soon-to-be-megahit "The Heist," written with Janet Evanovich. Also, Lee will answer the longstanding question as to whether the "Most Interesting Man in the World" commercial is modeled after him.
Check out and join in the podcast. Preview and Link here.
Check out and join in the podcast. Preview and Link here.
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Let Top Suspense help you find your next kindle book to borrow free!
In
our never ending battle at Top Suspense to help suspense, mystery,
thriller and horror readers find the best ebooks, we've come up with a
very cool new feature to help Amazon Prime customers find their next
great kindle books to borrow free.
Friday, May 31, 2013
The Con is On!
Here's the national TV advertisement for THE HEIST, the new novel by Top Suspense author Lee Goldberg and internationally bestselling author Janet Evanovich.
Top Suspense would like to congratulate Lee Goldberg for making the NY Times Bestseller's list
Top Suspense would like to offer our own, Lee Goldberg, a hearty congratulations for Pros and Cons, co-written with Janet Evanovich, coming in #20 on the NY Times Ebook Fiction list, and #24 on the combined Print and Ebook Fiction list!
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Monster unleashed in London
Duckworth Publishers have released a trade paperback version of Monster in the UK. Included below is a sampling of what critics were saying about Monster when it was released last summer in the US.
"More impressively, Zeltserman's plot maps almost perfectly onto the plot of Shelley's novel — the key word being "almost." In its departures, the novel provides more than its cover price in entertainment. Vampyres abound, as do Satanic cults and the Marquis de Sade, preparing to enact the 120 Days of Sodom in a remote mountain castle. You don't get much more gothic bang for your buck." Los Angeles Times
"This is juicy material for Franken-fans, and Zeltserman is just faithful enough to the original that his many fresh contributions feel entirely normal. Well, abnormal, to be accurate, but deliciously so." Daniel Kraus, Booklist, Starred review
"This reworking of Frankenstein is chilling and captivating!...A tale of justice, true love, and ultimate forgiveness, this gruesome novel is perfect for fans of Stephen King and similar horror stories." ForeWord Magazine, Pick of the Week
"Magnificently horrific... a surprisingly profound reimagining of the Mary Shelley horror classic Frankenstein... The obvious recommendation here is for horror fans and readers who loved Frankenstein but I would suggest Zeltserman’s Monster to literary and mainstream fiction readers as well. It’s an homage to Shelley’s classic, yes, but it’s also a powerful parable about having the courage to be ourselves" Paul Goat Allen, Barnes & Noble
"MONSTER is Gothic horror that pulls no punches — a brutal ride through a hellish tale... likely one of the best books of 2012" Bruce Grossman, Bookgasm
"Zeltserman keeps the action moving relentlessly forward with minimal padding, either in terms of plot or prose. The action is tight and there’s no shade of purple in his style, but there’s plenty going on thematically." WBUR (NPR Boston), Best Books of 2012
Thursday, May 23, 2013
A Criminal History
The Devil in the White City is one of my all-time favourite nonfiction reads. Historian Erik Larson counterpoints the planning and staging of the 1893 World's Fair with the murderous activities of one "Dr H H Holmes". The fake doctor – real name Herman Webster Mudgett – was a plausible charmer who preyed upon young women drawn to Chicago by the prospect of work and the excitement of big-city life in changing times.
One of the most frequent arguments to be offered in praise of the book is that it 'reads like a novel'. So it does, and a particularly rich one at that. We look into a world that is not our own, distanced by time, to find a timeless drama of fear and conflict. The historical panorama fascinates but it's the crime, the crime that drives the tale.
Historical crime. Pick any era, and you'll find a crime writer working the ground. Margaret Doody's Aristotle Detective, the Falco novels of Lindsey Davis, Phil Rickman's Doctor Dee, the Victorian railway detectives of Edward Marston and Andrew Martin (working half a century apart). Alienists, playwrights, and celebrities of the day all take the investigator's role, with varying degrees of credibility and success. Anthologist Mike Ashley's collections of historical crime draw together stories from Ancient Egypt to 1930s New York, and just a glance down their contents pages is enough to show that there's far more to the field than yet another Sherlock pastiche or tale of Jack the Ripper.
For me the stories that work least well are those which impose modern methods or attitudes on their historical context, treating history as little more than a dressing-up box. The best of them recognise that the past is, indeed, another country, where it's part of the thrill not to feel at home.
When it comes to imaginative creation, historical fiction is a harder act than most to pull off. The rules for the Walter Scott Prize, one of the richest in the field, require that "the majority of the events described take place at least 60 years before the publication of the novel, and therefore stand outside any mature personal experience of the author."
What does that mean for the story? For the author it means putting in serious work to achieve a sense of authenticity, where nothing can be assumed or taken for granted in the creation of your fictional world. That still leaves plenty of room for the imagination. In skilled hands and with the right attitude, even the most improbable events can be made plausible. Conan Doyle did careful research on his Lost World, and then populated his plateau with believable dinosaurs. Publication of The Lost World in 1912 gave me the springboard for a work of my own, when I was inspired to look into the real lives of its Edwardian subjects. The result was The Bedlam Detective, in which a discredited explorer's fantasies may hold the key to the murders of young girls on his estate.
I've read other 'true crime historicals' since The Devil in the White City. Larson's own Thunderstruck counterpoints the Crippen case with the development of the technology that would play such a big part in its climax, while Howard Blum's American Lightning juxtaposes the birth of Hollywood with the bombing of the Los Angeles Times offices in 1910. But the balance is an elusive one. It's a rare dramatic crime that exactly fit the needs of a dramatic narrative.
Which means it's rare to find the factual history that really does read like a crime novel.
For that, you need a novel.
First published in The Weekly Lizard
One of the most frequent arguments to be offered in praise of the book is that it 'reads like a novel'. So it does, and a particularly rich one at that. We look into a world that is not our own, distanced by time, to find a timeless drama of fear and conflict. The historical panorama fascinates but it's the crime, the crime that drives the tale.
Historical crime. Pick any era, and you'll find a crime writer working the ground. Margaret Doody's Aristotle Detective, the Falco novels of Lindsey Davis, Phil Rickman's Doctor Dee, the Victorian railway detectives of Edward Marston and Andrew Martin (working half a century apart). Alienists, playwrights, and celebrities of the day all take the investigator's role, with varying degrees of credibility and success. Anthologist Mike Ashley's collections of historical crime draw together stories from Ancient Egypt to 1930s New York, and just a glance down their contents pages is enough to show that there's far more to the field than yet another Sherlock pastiche or tale of Jack the Ripper.
For me the stories that work least well are those which impose modern methods or attitudes on their historical context, treating history as little more than a dressing-up box. The best of them recognise that the past is, indeed, another country, where it's part of the thrill not to feel at home.
When it comes to imaginative creation, historical fiction is a harder act than most to pull off. The rules for the Walter Scott Prize, one of the richest in the field, require that "the majority of the events described take place at least 60 years before the publication of the novel, and therefore stand outside any mature personal experience of the author."
What does that mean for the story? For the author it means putting in serious work to achieve a sense of authenticity, where nothing can be assumed or taken for granted in the creation of your fictional world. That still leaves plenty of room for the imagination. In skilled hands and with the right attitude, even the most improbable events can be made plausible. Conan Doyle did careful research on his Lost World, and then populated his plateau with believable dinosaurs. Publication of The Lost World in 1912 gave me the springboard for a work of my own, when I was inspired to look into the real lives of its Edwardian subjects. The result was The Bedlam Detective, in which a discredited explorer's fantasies may hold the key to the murders of young girls on his estate.
I've read other 'true crime historicals' since The Devil in the White City. Larson's own Thunderstruck counterpoints the Crippen case with the development of the technology that would play such a big part in its climax, while Howard Blum's American Lightning juxtaposes the birth of Hollywood with the bombing of the Los Angeles Times offices in 1910. But the balance is an elusive one. It's a rare dramatic crime that exactly fit the needs of a dramatic narrative.
Which means it's rare to find the factual history that really does read like a crime novel.
For that, you need a novel.
First published in The Weekly Lizard
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Archie Solves the Case
ARCHIE SOLVES THE CASE features the latest novella in Zeltserman's award-winning Julius Katz mystery series. When the great detective finds himself stumped in proving his client didn't murder a rival chef over a stolen recipe, it's left up to Archie to save the day. Also in this collection are four additional stories including the amusing PINK WIGGLY THINGS and Zeltserman's ultra noir 'TIL DEATH DO YOU PART.
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Don't Make Fun of Renowned Dan Brown
From The Daily Telegraph:
Click here to read the complete piece by Michael Deacon.
Renowned author Dan Brown woke up in his luxurious four-poster bed in his expensive $10 million house – and immediately he felt angry. Most people would have thought that the 48-year-old man had no reason to be angry. After all, the famous writer had a new book coming out. But that was the problem. A new book meant an inevitable attack on the rich novelist by the wealthy wordsmith’s fiercest foes. The critics...
...The critics said his writing was clumsy, ungrammatical, repetitive and repetitive. They said it was full of unnecessary tautology. They said his prose was swamped in a sea of mixed metaphors. For some reason they found something funny in sentences such as “His eyes went white, like a shark about to attack.” They even say my books are packed with banal and superfluous description, thought the 5ft 9in man. He particularly hated it when they said his imagery was nonsensical. It made his insect eyes flash like a rocket.
Click here to read the complete piece by Michael Deacon.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)