Also known as the Season of Author Conferences and Book Festivals.
Blast from the Past – Killer Nashville 2019: R.G. Belsky, Carmen Amato, and conference founder Clay Stafford
This means that I’ll be introducing myself to lots of strangers. In noisy situations, dull situations, spur-of-the-moment situations.
But even if you aren’t an author at a bookish event, everyone wants to be able to introduce themselves with confidence.
Introduce yourself with a formula
Here’s my easy-to-remember formula: Present, Past, Future.
Here’s how it works:
Present: Say who you are and what you are doing right now.
Past: Share something from your past that is relevant to the present.
Future: What’s ahead for you.
Me as the example
If I was introducing myself to you right now, I’d say something like this:
Present: I’m Carmen Amato, author of the Detective Emilia Cruz series, the Galliano Club historical thrillers and standalone suspense.
Past: Mystery author is my second career. I was with the CIA for 30 years, focusing on technical collection and counterdrug issues.
Future: This summer, I’m working on the 10th title in the Detective Emilia Cruz series set in Acapulco, tentatively titled DRAGON CARTEL and I’m meeting up with book clubs that are reading my political thriller THE HIDDEN LIGHT OF MEXICO CITY.
Present: I’m Eduardo Cortez Castillo. My friends call me Eddo. I’m an attorney and the Mexican government’s top anti-corruption investigator. As presidential elections near, I’ve discovered disturbing links between my boss, the Secretary of Public Security and a notorious cartel kingpin called El Toro.
Past: I began my career in law enforcement where I formed a brotherhood of cops sworn to be incorruptible. We call ourselves los Hierros, The Iron Ones.
Future: I want a relationship with Luz de Maria, a woman from the opposite end of the social spectrum; not an easy thing to do in class-conscious Mexico. But unless I can shut down the conspiracy to buy the Mexican presidency with drug money, neither Luz de Maria nor myself will be alive much longer.
I’ve teamed with UK author Jane Harvey-Berrick, who writes the Cornish Crime Thriller series as Berrick Ford, in a new YouTube project!
Our Amato2Berrick Crime Conversations features short videos (7-10 minutes) in which we discuss what makes crime fiction so compelling. Not only do we share insider details about our own crime fiction, but we consider the reader’s point of view because we are both avid crime fiction fans as well as writers of the genre.
The videos are short and fun while offering a fresh perspective on what it means to read and write crime fiction.
Over the years, Rankin has put his iconic Edinburgh police detective John Rebus through the wringer. In the latest, MIDNIGHT AND BLUE, Rebus is 60-something and in jail for the murder of his longstanding frenemy, Morris Gerald Cafferty, one-time lord of the city’s criminal underworld.
Rebus maintains that he only meant to frighten Cafferty when the man died of a heart attack. His appeal is pending.
Although a cop’s chances of surviving the general prison population are low, Rebus is his usual salty self. He enjoys the fragile protection of Darryl Christie who took over Cafferty’s crime operations but is doing a stretch in jail himself. Christie runs his criminal enterprise from his jail cell despite pressure from an outsider who is making a play for Christie’s territory.
With tensions already running high in the prison, an inmate is stabbed to death on Rebus’s cell block. Rebus’s former police colleagues are called in to investigate.
Did a guard do it? Or another inmate? No murder weapon, no blood anywhere.
At the same time, his long-time partner Siobhan Clarke is looking for a missing girl, eventually tracing her to a soft porn site run by a famous athlete with ties to the dead inmate.
Everything ultimately connects in Ian Rankin’s usual brilliant way.
Take your time reading because there are many characters in this book. Two separate police investigations, a score of prison inmates, prison guards, criminals on the outside running amok, the soft porn website bunch, etc.
All of the secondary characters from previous books are back, including Malcolm Fox, the driven detective who started out in Internal Affairs (THE COMPLAINTS) and is never as good at his job as he wants to be.
The most intriguing character in MIDNIGHT AND BLUE might be Darryl Christie. We first met him as an ambitious teen 7 books ago. He’s older and more cunning now. Jail is hardly a setback.
After this, I re-read STANDING IN ANOTHER MAN’S GRAVE, the first book in which Christie appears. He’s a great foil to Rebus, younger and more calculating. He swims in and out of Cafferty’s dangerous wake as he takes control of Edinburgh’s underworld, making for a series-within-a-series.
Each Rebus-Christie book is better than the last. Here they are in order:
Carlota Montoya Perez, the fictional mayor of Acapulco in the Detective Emilia Cruz series, was “born” long before Claudia Sheinbaum became president of Mexico last year. (That’s her official presidential portrait.)
Yet the two women, one fictional and one real, are strikingly similar.
So much in common
They both wear their hair in the sleek ponytail popular with upper class Mexican woman.
Claudia Sheinbaum, official presidential portrait. Credit: Government of Mexico
They both wear classic skirt suits, although Sheinbaum also favors traditional Mexican embroidery.
They both embrace sports as a unifying vehicle.
In fiction, Carlota wants to bring the Summer Olympics to Acapulco and has convinced Emilia’s significant other, hotel manager Kurt Rucker, to join the exploratory committee.
In real life, Claudia hosted a National Boxing Class in Mexico City’s Zócalo square to promote youth sports, drawing a reported 42,000 participants including Mexican boxing greats like Canelo Alvarez (whose quote kicks off BARRACUDA BAY). The event was held simultaneously in public squares in every Mexican state, with a nationwide attendance of about 500,000, according to the president’s social media.
Finally, both Carlota and Claudia are grappling with the problem of organized crime and violence.
In the Detective Emilia Cruz books, Carlota is extremely self-motivated. She’s quite ruthless when it comes to her own power and prestige. For her, organized crime is viewed through that lens. If something makes her look bad, she’s against it. If it can be used to her advantage, well, there’s room for negotiation.
For example, did she take cartel money for her re-election campaign in BARRACUDA BAY?
A dose of reality
President Claudia Sheinbaum’s policy toward organized crime is still a work in progress, in my view. She inherited her predecessor’s “hugs not bullets” policy, which saw homicides skyrocket and the army take on a heightened law enforcement role. Now, fewer than one-third of poll respondents say she is doing a good job combating corruption and organized crime.
But in an unprecedented move, in February Claudia sent 29 drug cartel suspects to the US, including the man charged in the 1985 torture and murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. Not only did the handover bypass the glacial Mexican legal system, which generally fusses over extraditions as a threat to Mexican sovereignty (and tellingly Mexico City did not use the word extradition in this case), but the sheer logistical feat of moving so many cartel members without leaks to the bad guys was impressive and speaks of tighter control than in administrations past.
Moreover, Claudia has empowered her security chief, Omar García Harfuch, to create a civilian force under his direct command and take the military out of the security equation. The National Operations Unit will be staffed by veterans of the now-defunct Federal Police, where García Harfuch started his career before becoming Mexico City’s chief of police when Claudia was mayor.
What’s next for each?
In fiction, Carlota wants Emilia to find the teen-aged cartel sicario who killed her sister.
In reality, Claudia wants to keep a “cool head” in the face of President Trump’s bluster.
The master of spy fiction, is of course, John le Carré. TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY is the classic Cold War counterintelligence tale. There’s a Soviet mole within the Circus, the author euphemism for British Intelligence. George Smiley is the retired spymaster called out of retirement to hunt the mole, reporting to the chief who is known only as Control.
But the very first book in the Smiley saga was THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, a slim volume published while the author was still working for British Intelligence. The book was a monster hit and turned into a movie starring Richard Burton as doomed British intel officer Alec Leamas who goes behind the Iron Curtain in a risky operation and is killed at the Berlin Wall.
TINKER, TAILOR came next, but never really addressed the impact of Leamas’s death on George Smiley or any of the other Circus characters. Until now.
Nick Harkaway is le Carre’s son, who grew up having his father read portions of works-in-progress to him. So he was the perfect person to write a book that takes place between SPY and TINKER, TAILOR, showing how shaken everyone was by the failure of the Leamas operation and the missing backstory of Karla, the shadowy Soviet spy who is Smiley’s nemesis in TINKER, TAILOR and later in SMILEY’S PEOPLE.
Harkaway does all this in KARLA’S CHOICE while giving the story it’s own decisive plot. All the Circus characters from the other Smiley books—Toby Esterhase, Peter Guilliam, Bill Haydon, etc—are there, being positioned for what will happen later in his father’s books.
A Hungarian who escaped Communist rule alone at age 16, Susanna Gero is now secretary to László Bánáti, a fellow Hungarian who runs a publishing house in London. One day, Susanna is alone in the office when a strange man comes looking for Bánáti in order to assassinate him.
Susanna turns for help to the secretarial agency that placed her, which has ties to the Circus. The would-be assassin has had a change of heart and reveals that he’s been sent by Moscow. Bánáti is not a Hungarian after all, but a Soviet sleeper agent who has run afoul of his masters in Moscow. But why?
It’s up to Smiley to figure this out even as Bánáti is on an increasingly dangerous quest behind the Iron Curtain.
The book is filled with brilliant prose, with the kind of vocabulary that has gone out of style. Descriptions conjure mental images of the “unconvincing modern veneer” on a file cabinet. Cheap hotel beds: “Only the mattresses were traditional: flat, flaccid lozenges lying inert on their imported pine frames.” (I’m going to re-read and annotate as a lesson in better writing.)
As in TINKER, TAILOR, much of the story is told through passages in which someone is telling Smiley about past events, complete with slang terms and allusions to historical events. These voices are written so well, you can almost hear the conversation as dramatic events are retold, punctuated with drags on a cigarette or a boozy belch.
Smiley must piece together yet another Soviet puzzle, going both into the past and anticipating the future in order to resolve the present. Soviet evildoer Karla, whose true name no one knows, is an off-screen presence. Yet at the end his choice perfectly sets the stage for what is to come in TINKER, TAILOR.
KARLA’S CHOICE is a brilliant book that continues le Carré’s legacy in the best possible way.
My CIA career has come up several times lately, during new release promo events for BARRACUDA BAY, the latest Detective Emilia Cruz mystery.
House of Mystery podcast
When I was chatting with House of Mystery podcast co-hosts Alan Warren and Joe Goldberg, one of them asked that given my long CIA career, “Why don’t you write spy thrillers instead of police procedurals?”
It was a fair question. Many retired CIA officers go on to write spy thrillers, like Joe (DEVIL’S OWN DAY, etc) and Jason Matthews (RED SPARROW, etc). But I didn’t have anything clever or different to say that would make me stand out in that crowd.
I did, however, have something to say about how cartels and corruption are eroding Mexico’s rich culture and civil authority. The situation tugs at my heartstrings after years living in the region. Hence the Detective Emilia Cruz series set in Acapulco, otherwise known as Ground Zero for drug war violence.
In one of our first videos, I show off two CIA challenge coins.
Lived to tell the tale
Recently, I shared how my personal experiences have inspired more than one scene in the Detective Emilia Cruz books with fellow author Debra Goldstein. I know she can relate.
Debra is a former judge with meaningful professional experiences that lie behind her award-winning fiction. She left the bench to follow her passion for writing mysteries. Her novels and short stories have received Silver Falchion, IPPY, BWR, and AWC awards and been named as Agatha, Anthony, Derringer, and Claymore finalists.
Her most recent release is With Our Bellies Full and the Fire Dying, a collection of 18 award-winning short mysteries, from cozy to dark, centering around family and friends, their sins and sometimes redemption.
Here’s how my little “I lived to tell the tale” memoir for Debra began:
“If the police show up, make sure you’re holding the package.”
The fellow CIA officer prepping me to meet a deep cover agent wasn’t trying to scare me, although he sure succeeded.
No, he was simply being practical. I was expendable. The source wasn’t.
Meeting a CIA source in a foreign country involved a head-spinning number of variables, not least of which were avoiding local cops and hostile intelligence services like those from China and Russia.
As my heart hammered, I memorized the details of the upcoming rendezvous. I’d been a CIA officer for 12 years, but meeting agents was never my job.
In the language of modern espionage, the officer who was supposed to meet the agent had been “burned.” Basically, the bad guys knew who he was. With a hostile service on his tail, the compromised officer could not meet the agent, whose situation already simmered with danger.
Part of the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology, I wasn’t the kind of officer you read about in John Le Carré novels, furtively doing brush passes with agents or leaving coded messages in dead drops. I ran a technical collection platform which kept me behind a computer keyboard.
This meant that I was completely unknown to the opposition. Thus, the perfect candidate to replace the compromised officer.
MY BACKSTORY— I learned a few things about danger, deception and resilience during a 30-year career with the CIA focusing on counterdrug efforts and technical collection. Now a mystery author, those lessons play out on the page, especially in the Detective Emilia Cruz mystery series set in Acapulco. Starting with Cliff Diver, the series is a back-to-back winner of the Poison Cup Award for Outstanding Series from CrimeMasters of America. I’ve also written historical and political thrillers, essays about the craft of crime fiction, and live with a very large white dog named Bear.
Every other Sunday, my Mystery Review newsletter carries a review of a book I loved and think you will, too. Basically, I’m recommending what to read while you wait for my next book!
But if you’re a big reader like me, one book every two weeks is not going to cut it. So here are some fun mini-reviews of books by friends who also write in the thriller/mystery/crime fiction genre.
Click the image to find the book on Amazon. Most are quite reasonably priced for Kindle readers.
Goodreads is a great resource for readers. One part review platform, one part social sharing, all parts clunky and hard to navigate.
Yet it is worth taking the time to navigate the platform because you’ll discover great new reads and reader friends.
Putting books on lists in Goodreads’s Listopia section especially helps others find new books. You can put books on a list (although if you are an author you can’t add your own) and vote for books already on a list to increase its visibility and let others know your interests.
BUT navigating Listopia is not all that simple. There are literally thousands of lists and thousands of books on the popular lists. The terminology is confusing, with the word “vote” sometimes used in place of “put” and not much space between columns, making instructions run together.
Here’s the easiest way I’ve found to get a book on a themed list. Note–These instructions are for laptop/desktop screen, not a mobile device.
Step 1
Log into Goodreads. From the homepage, use the search box at the top of your profile to find the book you want to add. You can type in a title or an author name to find books. See how I’m using BARRACUDA BAY as the example.
Step 2
Click on the search result that shows the book you want. This will take you to the description page for the book.
Below the book cover you will see a button which is set to the default “Read.” This is your “bookshelf” section. Click to select from “Read” or “Want to Read” or “Currently Reading.” Choose any option as all will add the book to your profile’s book list.
Step 3
Now that the book is on your “bookshelves,” go to the top menu, click on Browse and select List.
This brings you into the Listopia section on Goodreads where thousands of lists reside and are waiting for your additions and votes. Click on one of the category links running across the middle of the screen.
Step 4
In this case, I chose the Mystery Tab, which brings me to the mystery book lists sub-section.You can also type in a keyword but that doesn’t seem to work as well to bring up relevant lists.
I’ll choose the list called Best Twists.
Step 5
To add a book to Best Twists, I have to click on the “Add books to this list” text on the right.
The books on my personal bookshelves will appear. Choose from that list showing the books you previously added to any of your bookshelves. I’m going to add DEAD WATER to the Best Twists list.
Step 6
Once you have added a book, a box will appear on the lower right of your screen giving you the option to say why you chose that book .Note–the screen won’t return you to the list, but stays on your bookshelves view, which is kind of irritating.
Type in a short note, such as Recommended to me or Book Club selection, etc. There is not room for a real review. Note–there’s no “Save” button. Just type and go. Use your browser back arrow to get back to the lists.
Step 7
If you see a book that is already on a list, you can “Vote” for it. Just click the box that says “Vote for this Book.” A text box will appear just the same as when you added a book, asking Why you added this book. Again, a short phrase is sufficient and there is no “Save” button.
Bonus: You can see what lists a book is already on by scrolling to the bottom of the book description page where you’ll see 3 lists and a link to all the rest of the lists where this book appears. So if you are adding that book to lists, pick different ones to add the book and/or choose an existing list to upvote the book.
That’s it!
Go forth and add books to Goodreads lists. Don’t forget to leave reviews, too.
All books are born alone . . . without any reviews.
Given that about 1% of readers actually take the time to write a review, those who do are truly rock stars.
BARRACUDA BAY, the latest Detective Emilia Cruz novel, came out last week. The first reviews are in, too.
Thanks to those early reviews, on Wednesday BARRACUDA BAY was #20 on Amazon’s VERY crowded list of Mystery Action Fiction titles, competing with authors like Lee Child and Steve Berry who always dominate that category. As of this writing it is #82 on Amazon’s International Mystery and Crime list, another highly competitive category stacked with authors like Louise Penny, Ann Cleeves, David Baldacci, etc.
One thing that always surprises me is how different aspects of a book resonate with different readers.
In his review of BARRACUDA BAY, thriller author David Bruns (THREAT AXIS, PROXY WAR, etc) had observations about place and plotting:
As with all of her books, Amato gives us two things in spades. First is an original plot, complex and full of rabbit holes to fall into. As a writer, there’s always a temptation to recycle a plot, especially one that worked well the first time around, but I have yet to see Amato pull that literary trick.
Second is her unerring sense of place. When you are in the barrio in Acapulco, you are IN the barrio. You see the facades of the buildings, feel the sticky heat, and smell the cologne of the guy sitting next to you.
Author, historian and educator Dr. Michael Hogan (ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND MEXICO, etc) focused on the authentic details:
The book is replete with authentic touches. We see the wedding cake facades of the coastal homes, as well as a classic edifice on the hillside by famous architect Luis Barragan. We hear the music of the popular group Maná and taste the delicious tapas from an upscale local restaurant. Unlike to so many books ostensibly set in Mexico with their misspelled words and fake background, Amato’s work bristles with authenticity. Her knowledge of the intricacies of police procedures, narcotics traffic, femicide, and US-Mexico relations also ring true, based Amato’s own experience in her former career as an intelligence officer.
Reviewer Carol F. pointed out the duality of the setting:
Let me set the scene: Emilia Cruz, the beleaguered and only female homicide detective in Acapulco, has a foot in both worlds – the glamour and four-star hospitality of a vacation playground, and the grit of its drug cartel activity, murders, mayhem, missing persons, dirty politicians and vengeful mobsters – all of which help shape this story.
Former police officer Rob H. focused on the law enforcement angle:
As a retired cop in the US, and a former resident of Mexico, I can tell you that every word Amato writes rings true. She knows the country, she knows corruption, and she knows human nature. She uses that knowledge to create novels that grab you and don’t let go through the last page . . . . Each novel is fresh and engaging – the throughline of the characters is there, but the plots vary as patrol shifts do in a big jurisdiction.
Every review is a little connection between me and the reviewer, and between all of us and the next reader. That’s how communities grow. I’m so proud to be sharing this experience with all of you!
Links
What’s your unique take on BARRACUDA BAY?
In case you haven’t posted your review yet, here are the links. I understand that you might not have accounts on all sales platforms but try to post in as many places as possible. Again, thank you so much for being part of the Detective Emilia Cruz worldwide team!
The long-awaited continuation of the award-winning Detective Emilia Cruz mystery series is out now, taking you into the dizzying, dangerous world of money laundering and cross-border intrigue.
BARRACUDA BAY is the 9th book with Emilia Cruz, the first female police detective and last honest cop in Acapulco.
The sister of the mayor of Acapulco is murdered in a derelict building. Emilia quickly has a solid lead because the victim’s ex-boyfriend has a suspiciously weak alibi. Moreover, the only person who can clear him is missing.
It looks like a double murder but is the crime scene the real key to finding the killer? The building was once used for a secret Mexican government operation targeting a ruthless drug lord.
Meanwhile, there’s a conspiracy within the police department to force Emilia out.
Before Emilia can save her job or arrest her prime suspect, she’s sent on an errand of mercy to Washington, DC that goes awry.
There, alone, desperate and on the run, Emilia turns for help to a man she once vowed to murder. He’s her only chance to survive a deadly game of political intrigue on the wrong side of the border.
*cue cinematic music*
A big thank-you to advance readers
It has been 3 years since NARCO NOIR, the last Detective Emilia Cruz book (due to the the Galliano Club series.) To bridge the gap, 28 advance reader book boxes went out earlier this month to a Cheer Squad.
The response has been tremendous. Reviewers like Carol F. posted pictures of their advance copy and themed swag.
Reader Edie W. even took her Detective Emilia Cruz tote on a cruise with the caption, “Posting from glorious St Lucia and sharing my tote bag story with fellow passengers.”
Meanwhile, Marie O. started her review like this:
I just love the Emilia Cruz novels and to have a new one in my hands was like sitting down to a five star restaurant dinner. The anticipation as I sat there and studied the blue and yellow cover filled me with a sense of excitement, kind of like seeing the towers of the roller coaster over the fence of the amusement park as I was buying my ticket.
To say that I’m grateful for readers like Carol, Edie and Marie is an understatement. Few readers make the effort to review books, whether on Amazon, Goodreads or BookBub, much participate in the actual release of a book with an author.
We haven’t met in real life, yet they are part of the Detective Emilia Cruz story. They love reading an exciting mystery but these readers are also there for the resilience, hope and positivity that Emilia represents.
My hat is off to all the readers and reviewers who are welcoming Emilia back after a long absence.
As the song says, you are simply the best!
And for those of you who are new to the world of Detective Emilia Cruz, welcome! You are in good company.
This is a Russian nesting doll of a book, with multiple literary devices nested inside a wider puzzle. The pundits have called it a thriller, which is stretching the definition in my view, but it sure drips with intrigue and deception!
The book has a mathematical theme, not surprising given the author’s PhD in the subject, but that’s secondary to the stellar craftsmanship and attention to detail.
Julia Hart is an ambitious book editor in conversation with Grant McAllister, a reclusive mathematician who once wrote a collection of 7 short stories called The White Murders. They’re on a remote Mediterranean island where he’s lived in seclusion for years. Julia’s publishing hour wants to republish the collection.
One by one, Julia reads the stories out loud to Grant and they discuss how each aligns with his mathematical theory of what constitutes detective fiction. Along the way, Julia grows suspicious that Grant is hiding something from her.
The narrative is delivered in slices. First Story #1, then a slice of Julia and Grant discussing theory, then Story #2, then another slice of discussion and so on. Julia and Grant are the only “real” characters, others merely serve Grant’s formula.
Each story stands alone. The only continuity is how a story correlates to Grant’s detective fiction formula. It’s fun to pick out the elements as you read.
Both the stories and the Julia and Grant sections are written in the same omniscient narration style. This gives the book a sense of cohesion and prevents what otherwise could have been a disjointed reading experience.
There are 7 stories with a character who acts as a detective. Julia herself is the 8th, which isn’t hard to guess, but the how and why creates a twist you never see coming.
Unique and compelling, THE 8th DETECTIVE is a real brain-teaser.
“Is Detective Emilia Cruz based on a real person?”
Yes, sort of.
Emilia is a composite of three different people. All contribute in unique ways to the character, including Emilia’s analytic skills, innate suspicion of others’ motives, and ability to role play.
The first is a woman who held a senior position in Mexico’s intelligence apparatus, whom I met during my CIA career. She was the only woman in that arena, just like Emilia, but more deferential and careful to toe the line, less inclined to buck culture.
The second was our housekeeper in Mexico, a brilliant woman trapped by Mexico’s social hierarchy and expectations for a woman of her class. Capable and observant, she knew how to get things done.
The third is me.
I was often the only woman in the room, too. (Why didn’t I choose an easier career?!) The scene in CLIFF DIVER when Silvio tells Emilia he’ll make her life miserable until she quits because he doesn’t want to work with a woman?
Exact same thing happened to me.
I told the colleague what Emilia says in the book: “Tell me something I don’t know” and got on with the job.
(That colleague left a few months later, following his wife who got a job in a different state. Ironic.)
I think characters that really resonate with us are authentic and relatable because we see our own strengths and weaknesses, resilience and hopes, in them.
A 30-year veteran of the CIA, Carmen Amato is the award-winning author of the Detective Emilia Cruz police series, the Galliano Club historical fiction thrillers and standalone suspense. Her bi-monthly Mystery Ahead newsletter is for mystery lovers like you.
