The Poacher's Son Gets Kirkus Starred Review

I haven't blogged about this before, but I'm utterly humbled that The Poacher's Son received a ★ starred review in the final issue of Kirkus Reviews:

A Maine Game Warden fights to clear his no-account father of murder charges in this deeply felt actioner...His decision leads to a series of disastrously self-destructive actions that Doiron makes perfectly credible, all interspersed with a series of flashbacks to Mike [Bowditch]'s childhood that are both tender and chilling. C.J. Box goes East. Like Box, Doiron will have his hands full trying to top his accomplished debut.

Last month, Nielsen Business Media made the decision to shut Kirkus down when it couldn't find a buyer for the seventy-six year-old publication. The January 1, 2010 was the magazine's very last issue, and I can't believe I'm in it. Thank God it was a glowing review.

How to Disappear Completely

On my pre-sell tour for The Poacher's Son, I picked up an interesting tidbit from a woman who owns a mystery bookstore. She told me that Agatha Christie's novels no longer sell very well. Buyers continued to pick up the used books, she said, but sales of the new edition trade paperbacks had fallen off precipitously in recent years, at least in her store. I found this report fascinating given that the Poirot TV adaptations continue to air regularly on PBS and cable networks.

It's interesting how authors fall in and out of fashion. I remember when the late Jim Thompson suddenly became a hot property after Black Lizard reissued his sensationally disturbing novels in the 1980s. Nobody would have been more surprised by that turn of events than Thompson himself, I bet. 

It would be shame if a new generation of readers is missing out on the fun of solving Christie's puzzles. Never having read a biography of Dame Agatha, I realize that all I know about the woman comes from her fiction. I know she "disappeared" for a few days in 1926 and later married an archeologist whose work took them to the Middle East, but that's about it. Most authors would probably prefer to be known for their books rather than their lives, I'm guessing. But that sentiment may also be a thing of the past.

PS. I've never seen Agatha, the 1979 film starring Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffman, but I know it offers a fictional explanation to Christie's disappearance. Maybe I should add it to my Netflix queue for the next time Maine gets a blizzard like the one howling out my window. 

The Poacher's Son in Writer's Digest

I just received the February issue of Writers Digest, and there's a profile on me in the Breaking In column titled "Debut Author Spotlight." It basically tells the tale of how I started writing and found my agent. I'm flattered to be included, and editor Chuck Sambuchino did a great job compacting a thousand words into a hundred plus.

When I was a young aspiring writer, working at Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, I pored over these sorts of how-to articles in the hope that I would discover a cantrip that would—poof!—magically make me a best-selling author. I have subsequently learned that success is mostly a matter of hard work, persistence, and luck. Then again, I have also come to believe that in life one tends to make one's own luck (by taking risks and being open to new people), so maybe we really are the masters of our fate and the captains of our souls.

The Writer's Digest feature isn't online yet, but if they upload it at some point, I'll post a link.

Sherlock Who?

I haven't seen Sherlock Holmes, director Guy Ritchie's big-screen "reimagination" of literature's most famous detective and, frankly, I have had no interest in seeing it. I was so appalled by the early trailers—the movie looked like it should have been titled Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Calabash Pipes—that I planned on boycotting the enterprise, despite my admiration for Robert Downey, Jr., whom Ritchie recruited to play Holmes, and Jude Law, who I thought was terrific in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Don't we have enough cinematic action heroes without turning Arthur Conan Doyle's "calculating machine" into a late Victorian James Bond?

That said, Matt Yglesias reminds us that Holmes could be a physically imposing dude when he chose to throw down (to use a term Guy Ritchie would approve):


Some people feel that this action-oriented version of Holmes is untrue to the original. I think this is wrong...The print Holmes is clearly described as an expert singlestick fighter and accomplished barenuckle boxer. He gets into fisticuffs and always wins...But bringing more emphasis to this kind of thing is exactly what a screen adaptation of a well-known print character should be for—elements of the character that are de-emphasized by the print medium are rightly brought into sharper focus for a movie.

So far, the critics have been all over the map on this flick. I'm not going to review a film I haven't seen, but if I do make it to the multiplex to see Holmes eventually, I'll certainly throw in my two shillings.