Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: IQ
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.joeide.com/
CITY: Santa Monica
STATE: CA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.npr.org/2016/10/20/497840066/in-iq-a-sherlock-for-south-central
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Los Angeles, CA; married.
EDUCATION:Holds a graduate degree.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Joe Ide is a Japanese-American writer who was raised in South Central Los Angeles. He is the author of the “IQ” mystery series. In the first volume in the series, called IQ, Ide introduces his protagonist, Isaiah Quintabe. Isaiah, whose street name is IQ, is an African American man living in South Central Los Angeles. Despite his intelligence and talents, IQ did not graduate from high school and has a difficult time holding down a job. He begins working as a private investigator, though he has no license, and his intense perceptiveness works well for him in that position. For one of his first investigator jobs, he receives payment in the form of a chicken called Alejandro. Despite his initial reluctance, IQ agrees to investigate threats against Calvin “Black the Knife” Wright, a popular rapper. Among those who could be responsible for the threats are Noelle, who was once married to Cal, and members of Cal’s own posse. IQ’s friend and former classmate, Dodson, helps him with the investigation. The volume contains flashbacks from IQ’s early days.
In an interview with a contributor to the Mysteristas Web site, Ide commented on his writing process for IQ, stating: “It was my first novel so I thought it best to follow the old adage, write what you know. My favorite books were the original Sherlock Holmes stories. By the time I was twelve, I’d read all fifty-six stories and four novels multiple times. … I grew up in South Central LA where walking home from school could be life threatening so that was very powerful idea. When it came time to write the book, Sherlock and my early days converged all by themselves.” Describing the character of IQ, Ide told Ben H. Winters, writer on the Los Angeles Review of Books Web site: “He is a lot of who I’d like to be. He’s very cool. He’s very calm. He’s very quick on his feet. He has a lot of expertise in all kinds of things. He’s very brave. … I really don’t resemble him. I mean, he really is someone I would like to be.” In an interview with Gina Prescott, contributor to the Rumpus Web site, Ide stated: “I wanted to create a character who didn’t routinely resort to violence and wasn’t courageous by virtue of wielding a gun. I wanted to show someone who was powerful and incisive who could face down the bad guys without becoming a bad guy himself. I wanted a hero who was ethical, thoughtful, and just.” In the same interview with Prescott, Ide discussed the theme of vigilante justice in the book. He stated: “Almost everyone, at one time or another, has been bullied, harassed, put down, hurt or suffered prejudice with no means of striking back. The vigilante gives us a vicarious way of getting justice. Of retaliating. Of getting revenge. The latter are perhaps not politically correct or realistically possible, but in our fantasies and in our fiction, they’re righteous, and satisfying. At least they are for me.”
IQ received favorable reviews. Library Journal critic Amy Nolan suggested: “Ide’s freshman novel introduces an intriguing new detective with staying power who will be a certain hit.” “Ide successfully makes his detective’s brilliance plausible in this gripping and moving debut,” asserted a writer in Publishers Weekly. Bill Ott, contributor to Booklist, commented: “This is one of those rare debuts that leaves us panting for more—and soon.” Reviewing the book in the New York Times, Janet Maslin remarked: “Mr. Ide packs a lot of action and scenery into the book’s investigation scenes. But he has also built and bolstered Isaiah as a fine, durable character for the long run.” Patrick Anderson, critic on the Washington Post Web site, opined: “It’s a mad world that late-blooming Joe Ide has brought forth from his past, a spicy mix of urban horror, youthful striving and show-business absurdity. His IQ is an original and welcome creation.” Writing on the National Public Radio Web site, Jason Sheehan suggested: “IQ is a small story in the way the best of Conan Doyle’s were. It’s like one of the cases that Sherlock would reference as a sidenote to the main action of the story, humblebragging to Watson about his prowess. It’s a detective story that plays out very close to home, on the streets and corners that Ide … knows best. And Isaiah fits into those streets like they were made for him. A consulting detective for a time and a place that needs one.” “The roughhousing energy, vivid language, and serrated wit Ide displays throughout this maiden effort make Isaiah Quintabe seem a potential rejuvenator of a grand literary tradition,” asserted a contributor to the Kirkus Reviews Web site. Ben East, reviewer on the Abu Dhabi National Web site, remarked: “IQ feels like a combination of an entertaining TV crime drama, page-turning thriller and, on occasion, social commentary.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, July 1, 2016, Bill Ott, review of IQ, p. 35.
Library Journal, September 1, 2016, Amy Nolan, review of IQ, p. 99.
New York Times, November 1, 2016, Janet Maslin, “A Quirky, Street-Smart Sherlock, Cleverly Righting Wrongs,” review of IQ, p. C4.
Publishers Weekly, August 8, 2016, review of IQ, p. 43.
ONLINE
Joe Ide Home Page, https://www.joeide.com/ (April 21, 2017).
Kirkus Reviews Online, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ (July 27, 2016), review of IQ.
Los Angeles Review of Books, https://lareviewofbooks.org/ (November 7, 2016), Ben H. Winters, author interview.
Mysteristas, https://mysteristas.wordpress.com/ (October 21, 2016), author interview.
National (Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates), http://www.thenational.ae/ (November 8, 2016), Ben East, review of IQ.
National Public Radio Online, http://www.npr.org/ (October 20, 2016), Jason Sheehan, review of IQ.
Rumpus, http://therumpus.net/ (March 15, 2017), Gina Prescott, author interview.
Washington Post Online, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ (October 9, 2016), Patrick Anderson, review of IQ.
JOE IDE
...is of Japanese American descent. He grew up in South Central Los Angeles. Joe’s favorite books were the Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories. The idea that a person could face the world and vanquish his enemies with just his intelligence fascinated him. Joe went on to earn a graduate degree and had several careers before writing his debut novel, IQ, inspired by his early experiences and love of Sherlock. Joe lives in Santa Monica, California.
QUOTED: "He is a lot of who I’d like to be. He’s very cool. He’s very calm. He’s very quick on his feet. He has a lot of expertise in all kinds of things. He’s very brave … I really don’t resemble him. I mean, he really is someone I would like to be."
The Smartest Guy in the Room
Ben H. Winters interviews Joe Ide
7 0 1
NOVEMBER 7, 2016
WHEN WE THINK about mystery novels, we tend to draw a distinction between the more classically Sherlockian heroes (the intellectual, the analyst, idiosyncratic and deductive, solving cases like crossword puzzles, clue by clue) and the Dirty Harry types, physically impressive and more inclined to smash through to their solutions with brawling and gunplay. The truth is, these two strands have been interwoven since the beginning; there’s a turning point in The Maltese Falcon where Sam Spade divines obscure intelligence from a newspaper page, and another one where he punches a policeman in the face. IQ, the debut novel from Los Angeles native Joe Ide — who is new to fiction after a career in film — features a protagonist who will please fans of both traditions, as well as those crime fiction readers who like it both ways. There are spots within the novel where Isaiah Quintabe makes dazzling leaps of reasoning, and there is a spot where he literally fires a grenade launcher. At the heart of the book, though, is the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual growth of its hero, a boy who grows quickly into a man (and a private investigator) after the death of his brother. I loved the comic sequences and the sensibility of IQ, but what stuck with me most of all was that sadness and sense of seeking.
I had Joe Ide over to my house to drink a beer and talk about his life and his book.
¤
BEN H. WINTERS: When I heard about this novel, written by a Japanese-American guy who grew up in South Central Los Angeles, I presumed, like an idiot, that the hero of the book was someone with that exact background. But he’s not: Isaiah is African-American.
JOE IDE: Yes.
How much of you is in this character?
He is a lot of who I’d like to be. He’s very cool. He’s very calm. He’s very quick on his feet. He has a lot of expertise in all kinds of things. He’s very brave … I really don’t resemble him. I mean, he really is someone I would like to be.
Where do you think he came from? Is it just all aspirational? “This is a guy I want to be?”
There were all kinds of sort of boyhood influences. One was Sherlock Holmes. But the other was movies. I mean, like Steve McQueen in Bullitt, Sydney Poitier in In the Heat of the Night. All those kinds of things. That sort of quiet, watchful, intense, inward guy, who’s got all this stuff in his head, you know? All these skills and all this intelligence. And how he’s always the smartest guy in the room, and nobody else knows it. That kind of character always intrigued me. But it was — you know, it was a mash-up of all kinds of stuff.
Did you ever see action like that when you were growing up, or is that more from the movies?
That was from the movies. That was from being a screenwriter. Thinking visually, thinking set piece. That’s where a lot of that came from. I mean, seeing eight trillion movies. The kind of book it was, it needed action. He had to be more than cerebral, you know? He had to be more than Sherlock Holmes.
What do you mean, “the kind of book it was”? How would you categorize the book?
I saw it as an action comedy, that was — it wasn’t a procedural. I mean, there’s procedural stuff in it. It’s really a hybrid, you know? There are thriller aspects to it. There are procedural aspects to it. There’s caper aspects to it. But it doesn’t really fit neatly into any of those slots.
I definitely got some of that caper. It was pleasing that it had a little bit of that Elmore Leonard feel. What other crime writers come into it for you?
I put John le Carré as a crime writer. He had a heavy influence on me. As well as Elmore Leonard. Elmore Leonard’s my guy. And Walter Mosley. And — who else? Don Winslow. I mean, really, the usual suspects. There’s nobody particularly unusual. You know, I’ve read everybody in crime fiction. But I think I’ve stolen the most from Elmore Leonard. I mean, I’ve just — I’ve lifted things from him whole hog. His — the way he can characterize people, make them jump off the page. It’s deceptively simple. Really deceptively simple. He can reveal character, push the story forward, tell you where you are, tell you what the person looks like. All these layers, in a simple conversation. It’s fantastic stuff.
We oftentimes feel like we have to write a ton to get somebody across. When in fact, it’s — as you say — it’s a question of finding just the perfect detail.
It’s that relevant detail. There are whole passages in Elmore’s books where a character talks, and Leonard never tells you what the guy looks like. But you know it. You know who he is, you know how old he is, where he’s from. All that stuff. It’s really remarkable.
The book gets heavily into the world of rap music. Is that a world that you spent time in, that you knew about? Or is that a world that you thought would be fun to set the book in?
It was a number of things. I’m not a rap aficionado. You know, I have like three rap albums in my collection, and they’re all 20 years old. Biggie and Tupac. But I had this sort of random fact that I had learned: that Tupac had sold more albums dead than when he was alive. And then it struck me that if his record company had killed him, they would have made a ton of money. And that just stuck with me … And then, when I was putting IQ together, I wanted him to do something that was — that had this layer of satire, where I could take some cultural phenomenon, and use it as a component to the story, but make fun of it at the same time. Rap music is just such a juicy target, you know? And it’s sort of sacred. I mean, nobody actually really makes fun of it, really sort of takes it apart and looks at its components and says, “This is ridiculous.” And so, it both sort of fit the environment and the story, and it gave me room to slip in a little commentary: to make fun of all the wretched excess, to make fun of all the kind of ridiculous lyrics. All that kind of stuff. And I could channel it through Isaiah.
The characters are quite heightened in IQ: the rapper, the entourage, the record company executives. But then, I guess, in real life, in the music industry, people are often self-consciously heightened.
I’m pretty tame, actually. The rap world is outrageously outsized. And it is larger than life. I mean, you know, when rappers are at home, they’re just as ridiculous as anybody else. But it is a larger-than-life industry. And they all — not all, but they go out of their way to present larger-than-life images. And when I was writing the book — it didn’t even occur to me until I was writing, that: What is the guy like at home? What is his personal life like? What if he got tired of it? What if he got tired of rapping about guns and women? What if he just ran out of gas, like many of us do, and just got depressed?
A part of the book that I like is that you find a way, even amid all the crazy action stuff, and the satirical material, to find some moments of real poignancy, which do come with some of the secondary characters, but most often come through IQ himself. I wondered if that came naturally in inventing the character? He is kind of a sad guy, and he’s working through his grief throughout the book.
Part of it is calculated. I wanted the character to be emotionally driven. I didn’t want him to be driven by someone handing him some money and a problem, and saying, “Go solve it.” I wanted it to come from inside of him. Because those are the kinds of things that interest me as a reader: a character who’s emotionally driven, who has an emotional life, who is flawed. And he may have skills, but as a person, he’s like everybody else. He has his own constellation of fears and vulnerabilities. I like that kind of character. So I wanted to keep him grounded to the degree that I could, given the rest of the book. And probably the toughest thing was tone. It was trying to walk that line between making him feel grounded, and at the same time, doing outrageous things. That was the hard part. I frequently wrote — I must have as many pages as the book is long of stuff I threw away.
Oh, god. That’s a good ratio! I also wondered about the formal choice: the book is sort of spliced between what I would call his “origin story” and this most recent case. It felt to me, at times, like the book could have been one or the other. Was it always both of these stories?
It evolved into two stories. I was going to write a 250-page Elmore Leonard–type crime novel. That was my goal. But as I wrote it, I began to see more possibilities. And what has always bugged me about many of the Sherlockian characters is that they show up fully formed. They just — there they are.
Certainly Sherlock does. We get much more about Watson’s past than we ever do about Sherlock’s.
Yes. They just show up. They have all these skills, and they have all these things they can do, but we never know how they got there. We never know how they formed their personalities, or why they’re doing what they’re doing, why somebody so smart isn’t a brain surgeon … I wanted to see myself. I didn’t really know. I mean, I made all that stuff up, thinking, Why would he be so observant? Where did he get those powers? He wasn’t just born that way. I mean, he was naturally observant, but how did he get so keen at it?
I like the scene where he spends an hour, two hours, watching the cars go by, trying to memorize everything he can about those individuals.
That kind of thing, I didn’t want to make it quirky, or idiosyncratic. He had a reason. He was looking for his brother’s killer. So it was that question always driving him, emotionally. Whatever he was doing, he did it for something that came within him, as opposed to just this kind of obsessive studying that most of the Sherlocks do.
With this book, I can feel some research in there: in the fighting dogs, some of the guns, some of the details about the music industry. I’m wondering: How much research did you do? Were you making phone calls? Were you taking trips?
It was mostly phone calls and the internet, because I wanted specific details. I wanted really specific information. Sort of subculture stuff. Like, about dogs, and selling crack, and those kinds of things. To make those worlds alive. To make them like you’re in a real place, and this is how it actually works. But, you know, not to do a treatise on these things. But just enough to make that place feel real. Like, this is really how they breed dogs. That kind of thing. So I did a lot of spot research. I knew what the scene was, and I knew what kind of information I wanted. So, I didn’t read a bunch of stuff and find what I was looking for. I didn’t read great treatises on dog breeding; I went after: “How do you breed a big dog?” And then I’d call around, and I’d talk to people. And I talked to people who bred dogs, and knew about genetics, and that kind of thing. And so, I could bring those details to bear, and give it authenticity and color … Most of the stuff in there is, of course, a combination of what I remember, what I researched, and a whole bunch of stuff I made up.
What do you mean, “what you remember”? Just stuff you remember from your life that you’ve lived?
I remember a lot about gang behavior. I remember a lot about selling drugs.
Did you sell drugs?
My brother did. My brother was a career drug dealer.
Was he in a gang, or was he solo?
He was much more of a badass than me. When we were kids, he was in a gang. In an all-black gang. He was, like, five feet tall at the time. But he was a little bad motherfucker, boy. He had this thing about fighting, where if he got into a fight, he would try and kill you. I mean, kill you. At the very least, maim you and put you in the hospital. This is before guns, you know? When it was just, sort of, you do your little Muhammad Ali impression, you know, somebody gets a busted nose, and everybody goes home. Nobody wants to fight somebody who wants to kill you. Even if he’s five feet tall!
So this is the Asian kid in the all-black gang?
Yeah.
Do you think that there was an element of, “I gotta prove that I’m the craziest guy out here, I’m the toughest guy out here”?
No. I mean, he had to do that to actually survive. I mean, both me and my brother got picked on because we were small, not because we were Asian … After he got into a few fights, even though he got his ass kicked, nobody really wanted to fuck with him. Nobody wants to fight you if you’re insane. I mean, it might be a chihuahua, but the son of a bitch has rabies, and he’ll fucking bite you.
I noted in your acknowledgments — what did you say? “A reluctant nod to my brothers.” Is there anything in the relationship between you and your brothers that informs the relationship between IQ and his brother?
No. The relationship between IQ and his older brother is just wishful thinking, you know? That’s the older brother I wish I had. Me and my three brothers fought like savages. We were constantly at each other. We were largely unsupervised. My mom and dad were working all day. My mom was a secretary. My dad worked at a community center. We were inordinately poor. We were intensely poor. And we were just on our own a lot. Four boys, and we’re all about four years apart. It’s a wonder we all came through. My younger brother threw a brick at me from a second-story window. He tried to stab me with scissors. I threw a hatchet at my older brother and tried to crush his head with a pipe. These were things that just happened … I mean, me and my older brother pinned my younger brother down on a bed and tried to burn the hair out of his nose with a lighter. I don’t know why. We didn’t really need a reason.
So at least some of the violence in the novel you come to honestly.
Yeah. Violence was pretty normal.
So then, later in life, you did a bunch of jobs. You worked as a screenwriter for a long time. What are the other jobs that you did?
My first job was a schoolteacher. Why are you laughing?
I don’t know. After all that hitting people with a pipe, it just struck me as funny.
I didn’t know what else to do. I mean, it’s one of those things people do if they don’t know what to do. I taught for a semester. Well, I knew right off that I didn’t like kids. I mean, I learned that right away. I don’t like these kids. I was popular, but I was a terrible teacher. And so I fled back to graduate school, and did that for — got a master’s in education for no reason I can think of, except my friends were in the program. And then I taught — they had a position called “lecturer” at this particular university, and you could hold that job while you were getting a PhD. And then, I joined a business consulting firm. I did that for maybe a year. I was a middle manager at a huge corporation. I was director of an NGO that serviced abused women. I worked for a French entrepreneur, who turned out to be a crook.
So you had all the jobs.
I started everything, you know, with a good heart.
So then, did you start writing screenplays? Is that what happened? You started writing screenplays?
Yeah. Everybody starts with screenplays, I think, because they think they’re easy. And I saw a lot of movies, you know?
You watch a movie, and you go, “I can do that.”
Yeah. I had a friend of a friend who was an agent. And I wrote exactly one dozen lousy, embarrassingly bad screenplays. And I would send them to him. And he was a very kind man; he’d send them back — he’d read them! — send them back and say, “This is shit. This is boring.” Literally, a dozen screenplays, which I worked hard on. And I finally got the hang of it and wrote a good one. And he sold it. It was called Lawfully Wedded Wife. It was about a woman who didn’t want to get married, but she had to get married, because she was going to inherit a huge amount of money. So she married a convict that was in for life. And then he got out.
That’s great.
Yeah. It is. That fell through, but I started to work. And I got good at it. Even for a guy who’s not produced, you make a good living as a screenwriter. And I was selling specs and stuff. It’s hard to give up the lifestyle. Even though you’re not getting anything made, you know, you’re living good. At least for a kid from the hood, you know? I’m doing okay. But eventually, it just got so demoralizing.
What got demoralizing? Just watching things go out in the world and not happen?
Yeah. I’d work really hard on something for months and months, and then, you know, the studio head got fired, or the budget’s too big, or the star dropped out. And so, a total of maybe 11 people would have read it. And then it’s on a shelf. And do that time after time, after time, after time, and it just got so humiliating. It got to a point where sitting down at the computer — so much futility was associated with just that act. I could not open the screenwriting program without feeling sort of a physical revulsion … I literally got ill. I mean, I got seriously depressed.
The universe was telling you it was time to try something else.
I mean, I literally could not go on, even if I had wanted to … I didn’t do anything for two years. Nothing. I was so sick of writing that I traveled. You know, I brooded. I walked my dog. I mean, I read a lot. That kind of stuff. But I was really lost. I didn’t know what I was going to do. But then, it got time to, you know, “You’re gonna have to buy some groceries here, pal.” You know? And so, the only thing I knew how to do, sadly, was write. I had no other marketable skills. None.
That’s what happens to writers. After a certain point, there’s no turning back. Which is a little glib to say, because of course, there’re jobs out there. But I think it’s a sense of, “I never got a graduate degree. I never went to military school. I never learned a trade. This is what I know how to do.”
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everything on my resume was so old, it was useless. And once I get outside my imagination, I’m so incompetent. It’s frightening. Actually, there’s a saying in my family: “If your plane crashes in the Amazon, and you need to survive, Joe would be the one that you’d kill and eat.”
First day. Don’t even wait until you’re hungry.
So, you know, I had to write something. I couldn’t write a screenplay, and so I thought I’d write a book. And writing the book was just so liberating. I really got in touch with why I love writing, because I could do anything I wanted. No producers, no studio executives, no three acts. I could just write what I wanted, how I wanted to write. And it was terrific. It was joyful, but it was intense. It was the kind of work where, you know, you’re not laughing out loud or anything. But it’s the kind of work where you’re not looking over your shoulder. You’re not talking to yourself. It was terrific, you know? And what I said to myself was: “Finish the fucking book. You don’t think about who’s going to buy it. You don’t think about agents. You don’t think about any of that shit. Write the fucking book.” And so, every day, I would sit down, and say: “Okay. Write the fucking paragraph. Finish the fucking chapter.” It was glorious.
And you did it. You wrote the fucking book.
I wrote the fucking book. Shit.
Sometimes it’s hard to not think about who’s gonna read it, and what they’re gonna think about it, and what’s gonna happen to it. Will it sell? You gotta put all that stuff aside and just live with the characters. See what happens.
And of course, when I finished the book, that’s exactly what I worried about: “Who’s gonna buy this piece of shit?” Actually, the thought of giving it to somebody who knows about books, and having them read it, was fucking terrifying. First thing, I sent it out to readers. People I know. You know how things in your life never work out? Or, at least the way you think? Even if they do, they’re not the way you think, or whatever. So I’m thinking, I have a cousin. Frank Fukuyama. World-famous political scientist. He’s a chair at Stanford, he’s on the board at RAND, all that shit. And the question was, would I send it to him?
Are you close with him?
No. I hadn’t seen or talked to him for years. On a whim, I called him, and I said, “Will you read my book?” And he’s a kind and generous man; he said, “Sure.” So I didn’t hear from him in a long time, and I’m figuring, “Well, sure. He’s on the board at RAND.” And then he called me and said he liked the book. I’m like, “Holy shit! Really?” And then he asked me, “Do you have an agent?” I said, “No. But I’m gonna go look for one.” He said, “Let me hook you up with mine.” It was Esther Newberg. And Esther’s fierce. She’s just fierce. She read the book over the weekend, because Francis had sent it to her. And then she called me up, and the first words out of her mouth were, “I want to sell your book.” So after I got my tongue out of my throat, I said “Sure!” She sold it in a matter of weeks. And then sold it to TV a few weeks later.
What’s going on with the TV? Who optioned it? Who’s the studio, or production company?
Atlas. Chuck Roven. He does the Batman movies, and DC Comics, all that stuff. He’s a big dude. So they hired Matt Carnahan, who was the writer/producer on House of Lies. And we’ll see. He’s about finished with the pilot. They’re gonna send it to me. We’ll see. I’ve met him. He’s a good guy.
You didn’t want to write it?
Oh. No.
That was a nice shudder.
Oh my god, to go through that process. I’d have to open Final Draft, you know? I just couldn’t do it.
All right, this is the last thing I’m going to ask you about. My work this year — a big, big part of it, both in terms of writing and then in the presentation of the book to the world — had to do with racial dynamics. The fact that I’m white, and I was writing about a black character, and I was writing about race. So it’s been very much in the forefront of my mind, and something I’ve tried to approach with a lot of respect, and a lot of humility and thought. And there’s been a lot of conversation about it for me. I wondered if that was something, given that you’re not African American, and that most of your characters are — then again, unlike me, you’re not white, either. And you grew up in a much more black community than I did. And I just wondered if it was something that ever gave you pause? How did you approach that? Or was it something that was a nonissue for you?
It was a nonissue.
Zero percent?
I wrote them as characters that happened to be black. That was how I felt about the people who I grew up with. I mean, they’re people; they’re black. It was like, “Well, you know, they’re people, and they have brown hair.” So I just wrote them as people. And you know, the vernacular, and all that stuff, is just window dressing, really. I tried to stay true to them as just people. They have a certain cultural background, a context, and certain defined behaviors, in that particular world, but that’s window dressing. It’s really being emotionally true … It was really about: Is this an honest portrayal of this particular guy? You know, the black part notwithstanding, it was just, “Is that an honest portrayal of him”?
Of that guy. Of IQ, or of Cal, or whomever.
Yeah. And it’s the emotional life. From that character’s point of view, is he saying what he would say? Is he doing what he would do? Which, for me, is honest. That covers that, for me. And that was it.
¤
Ben H. Winters is the author of nine novels, most recently Underground Airlines.
QUOTED: "I wanted to create a character who didn’t routinely resort to violence and wasn’t courageous by virtue of wielding a gun. I wanted to show someone who was powerful and incisive who could face down the bad guys without becoming a bad guy himself. I wanted a hero who was ethical, thoughtful, and just."
"Almost everyone, at one time or another, has been bullied, harassed, put down, hurt or suffered prejudice with no means of striking back. The vigilante gives us a vicarious way of getting justice. Of retaliating. Of getting revenge. The latter are perhaps not politically correct or realistically possible, but in our fantasies and in our fiction, they’re righteous, and satisfying. At least they are for me."
THE RUMPUS INTERVIEW WITH JOE IDE
BY GINA PRESCOTT
March 15th, 2017
At fifty-eight, Joe Ide has published his first novel, IQ. It is a mystery crime thriller that Ide based on his own experiences growing up as a child in South Central Los Angeles, and it is inspired by Ide’s favorite childhood stories and character, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.
IQ is the first in a planned series that follows Isaiah Quintabe (IQ for short), a young African-American man and high school dropout living in a rough area of Long Beach. He solves the crimes that the police seem incapable–or unwilling–to solve. Like Sherlock Holmes, Isaiah uses his intellect and powers of deduction to figure out the crimes. In the first book, Isaiah, who is struggling to make ends meet, is hired by the rap mogul, Black the Knife, to discover who is trying to kill him. Dodson, the man who brings Isaiah the case, is his Watson-like compatriot.
Ide, who is Japanese-American, fell in love with African-American culture as a young man. After bouncing around from job to job and then working hard but failing to become a successful screenwriter, Joe decided to try writing a novel instead. In IQ, he harnesses the skills he learned as a screenwriter, creating sharp, realistic dialogue. It is a humorous, entertaining book that reimagines the legacy of Sherlock Holmes in a refreshing way. It also honors the experiences of people living in communities that are run-down, poor, and crime-ridden. Ultimately, Ide has created a modern-day hero for those that feel powerless and forgotten.
I talked with Joe over email in the time leading up to and after the release of IQ from Mulholland Books last fall.
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The Rumpus: IQ is loosely based on experiences you had growing up. What’s interesting to me is that you could have made Isaiah Japanese-American, like you, but instead you chose to make him African-American. What was your reasoning behind this decision? Was this something you struggled with? Or did this choice just feel natural to you?
Joe Ide: As a kid, I didn’t know any Japanese kids that weren’t in my family. Japanese-American wasn’t a term I used or thought about. My friends were black, and I co-opted their speech, style, attitudes, and musical tastes. My freshman year in high school I got transferred to a school in West LA. The student body was middle class, mostly white and Asian, with only smattering of black and Hispanic kids. It took me a year to make a friend.
It was there I was introduced to white kids and their horrible music, where I tried but never quite fit in with the Asian crowd. I was separated by demeanor and background but at least I had a place to sit in the cafeteria. The best part of high school though? I met the girl who would, some years later, become my wife. I was a murky fringe kid; she was popular and a cheerleader—how I got her attention remains an enduring mystery. When it came time to write IQ, my friends from the neighborhood were the most memorable and meaningful, and, as you say, the choice felt natural.
Rumpus: It is so charming to me that you met your wife in high school. I met my husband in high school, too. We were good friends and started dating each other in college. Do you have a fond memory of your wife from back then that you would like to share?
Ide: My future wife was one of the cool kids. She was a cheerleader, she belonged to different clubs and she had a very busy social life which, unfortunately, didn’t leave much time for studying. We were not yet girlfriend and boyfriend, but I was completely smitten. I sat behind her in history class. The tests were always multiple choice so I would “write” the answers on her back with my finger, similar to the way Anne Sullivan taught Helen Keller the letters of the alphabet, except a lot sillier. An odd way to start a romance, but it worked.
Rumpus: I was really looking forward to reading your novel, because I have been reading a lot of serious nonfiction lately. I needed a good old-fashioned entertaining novel in my life. Also, I read Ghettoside, Jill Leovy’s nonfiction book about South Central LA this past Summer, so I was especially interested to read a fictionalized version of some of the topics she covers in her book. It makes wonder, what do you see as the purpose of fiction? And maybe more specifically, what value, if any, do you see in novels that are written to be entertaining but also engage the reader in important and serious issues that exist in contemporary society?
Ide: I think entertaining novels can deal with serious issues as part of the story. John Sanford’s latest, Escape Clause, happens in the illicit world of trading endangered species. Tana French’s main character in The Trespasser, a woman detective, deals with discrimination by her male colleagues. And there are other ways an entertaining novel can contribute to the common good. Violence can be portrayed but not glorified. Vicious characters don’t have to be cool. Kindness and ethical behavior can be virtues instead of vulnerabilities. Intelligence can triumph over guns. Cruelty, misogyny, drug use, violence, sociopathic tendencies don’t have to be celebrated.
Rumpus: Isaiah stops criminals with his intellect, rather than through any physical prowess. Why was it important to you for Isaiah to have this characteristic?
Ide: I wanted to create a character who didn’t routinely resort to violence and wasn’t courageous by virtue of wielding a gun. I wanted to show someone who was powerful and incisive who could face down the bad guys without becoming a bad guy himself. I wanted a hero who was ethical, thoughtful, and just.
Rumpus: IQ has been optioned to be made into a television show. Congratulations, I think it will make a great show. I have to ask you, do you have an actor that you see in the role of Isaiah? Or maybe you think a fresh, new face would be best?
Ide: I’d like to see a someone new. A known actor defines the character to a degree. We know what to expect from him and we’ve seen it before. I want Isaiah to be fresh, someone who intrigues and challenges us, someone we’ll have to watch to unravel.
Rumpus: Outside of Isaiah, did you have a character that you were especially fond of writing and creating?
Ide: The rapper, Cal, a.k.a, Black the Knife. The idea that a celebrity could be depressed by his own success and that one could actually get tired of wretched excess was really fun to write about.
Rumpus: In part, your book is about vigilante justice—or that space where formal systems of law have broken down, requiring individuals to dole out their own justice and create their own rules of conduct and order within their communities. This trope is a perennial favorite among audiences. Why do you think audiences enjoy it so much?
Ide: Almost everyone, at one time or another, has been bullied, harassed, put down, hurt or suffered prejudice with no means of striking back. The vigilante gives us a vicarious way of getting justice. Of retaliating. Of getting revenge. The latter are perhaps not politically correct or realistically possible, but in our fantasies and in our fiction, they’re righteous, and satisfying. At least they are for me.
Rumpus: What is the last book you read that you loved?
Ide: The last book I loved was Mischling by Affinity Konar. It’s about twin twelve-year old girls who survive the atrocities at Auschwitz. Konar writes about the most harrowing, brutal experiences in such a haunting and lyrical way. Somehow, she finds hope and humanity in the most hopeless and inhumane of circumstances. It’s a remarkable accomplishment. I was truly awed by it.
Rumpus: Who are some of your favorite musicians?
Ide: The Temptations, Taj Mahal, Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Wynton Marsallis, Otis Redding, Snoop Dog, Lucinda Williams. And if you haven’t heard Marvin Gaye sing the national anthem at the Lakers playoff game, you’re missing out.
Rumpus: I love all of these musicians so much. We have extremely similar taste in music, and I will definitely have to check out Marvin Gaye singing the national anthem. Because he just won the Nobel Prize in Literature, I want to focus on Bob Dylan though. First, do you have a favorite song or songs of his? Second, how do you feel about him winning the Nobel Prize?
Ide: I’m glad Dylan won the Nobel. Dylan stood folk music on its head and elevated rock. He made the genres mean something, with his evocative songs that made you think and imagine. His songs are artful and sophisticated and challenging, and even if you don’t understand them, the sounds of the words were mesmerizing.
That said, I don’t think his songs are really poetry, not like Allen Ginsberg or Langston Hughes. Recite the lyrics aloud and many of them lose their dynamism. They’re another form of literature that needs music to make them go, but go they do, and they’re no less compelling. Highway 61 was the first Dylan album I actually owned, and “Desolation Row” is the song I remember most but I couldn’t tell you why. Something about Dr. Filth keeping his world inside a leather cup and the nurse in charge of the cyanide that, to this day, still strums inside my head.
Rumpus: Do you have any hobbies? If so, what are they and why do you enjoy them?
Ide: Fly fishing. I’m terrible at it, but it’s a good excuse to be somewhere remote and beautiful. Catching something hardly matters and when you do, it can seem like an interruption. Fly fishing also commands just enough of your attention so that you can’t think of anything else. You’re not sitting on your own shoulder worrying about the chapter you didn’t finish. An added bonus, your phone doesn’t work.
Rumpus: Do you have any new projects that you are currently working on that you would like to share?
Ide: The second IQ book.
Rumpus: What is your writing process like?
Ide: It’s very disorganized and non-linear. I’ll start with maybe a page of beat notes and a vague idea of where I’m going. And then I’ll start writing. The opening two pages are very important. They begin defining the world, setting the tone, and they introduce us to the main character. If I have page one down in some detail, that informs page two. After that, I write as fast as I can. If I get stuck on something, I move on until I finish a rough draft. It helps me to have a framework, something to work on and experiment with. From there, it’s like a pointillist painting. I’ll make dots of character, story, dialogue, a set piece—whatever, and wherever they occur, which might be in chapter four, fifteen, twenty-seven, or the prologue. When I have a reasonably coherent draft, I start from the beginning and rewrite it line by line. And then I do it again. And then I do it again. And again. Until at some point, I feel good about it.
Rumpus: Going more specifically into it, what is your least favorite part?
Ide: The blank page. A very daunting thing to make something out of nothing when your only source material is in your head—which, on some days, contains very little or nothing at all. All you can do is keep writing, no matter how badly, and not let up until you reconnect with the story or inspiration comes to the rescue.
Rumpus: Alternatively, what is your favorite part of the writing process?
Ide: Rewriting. The agony of the blank page is over. It’s as if the house is built and now I get to fix it up. Make that turn of phrase snappier, that joke funnier, the character more interesting, the scene more emotional and revealing. And I also get to throw out all the crap I’ve written which is always considerable. With IQ, I threw out at least as many pages as ended up in the book.
Rumpus: Prior to writing this novel, you wrote screenplays. What was the transition like moving from writing a screenplay to a novel? Do you feel it helped you or hampered you in any way?
Ide: Screenwriting helped me in the sense that it demands precision, brevity, and the ability to think visually. It taught me how to write dialogue, how to ratchet up the suspense and write set pieces. On the other hand, it was limiting. Screenplay structure is very defined, and there are also the demands of the producers and studio executives, which may or may not make sense. When I started writing IQ I was appalled to discover my long form prose was terrible. It was stilted, cluttered, and self-indulgent—and there were many things I just plain didn’t know how to do. If, in a screenplay, you’re describing a nice house in the suburbs, you write, EXT. A NICE HOUSE IN SUBURBS. In a novel, that doesn’t quite cut it. I had to go back to the basics. I read Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, William Zinnser’s On Writing Well, and Sol Stein’s Stein on Writing. I studied books on grammar, sentence structure, and punctuation. It took a year before I could write decent, clear prose.
Rumpus: Other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, do you have any other authors that you feel influence your writing or that you admire and look to for guidance?
Ide: My biggest influence is Elmore Leonard. I loved his quirky, low-life characters and how real they feel. I love how they lead the plot instead of the other way around. I love his mixture of pathos and comedy. And I love the writing. Simple, rich, exciting and economical all at the same time. I think his dialogue is the best in the genre and ranks at the top across the literary board. Other influences include John LeCarre, Walter Mosley, Hunter S. Thompson, William Styron, Chester Himes, William Gibson, and many more have contributed to the mash-up that is my writing.
Rumpus: How do you deal with rejection?
Ide: As a screenwriter, you get used to it. For every project you audition for, you’re doing well if you get one out of three.
Rumpus: If you could give advice to an aspiring writer, what would it be?
Ide: I am not a great believer in pursuing your dreams at any cost, primarily because your dreams may not be connected to reality. Witness the kids on American Idol who get humiliated because they simply can’t sing. And what do they invariably say as they’re leaving the studio in tears? “But singing is my dream!” I think for things like singing and painting and writing, it’s important to start off with a modicum of talent. I suppose it’s possible to write a good novel with no aptitude for writing, but you’re starting with an enormous deficit. My advice echoes Marcus, a character in the book: Follow your talent, he says. Follow the gifts that already yours and make a dream out of those.
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Author photograph © Craig Takahashi.
QUOTED: "It was my first novel so I thought it best to follow the old adage, write what you know. My favorite books were the original Sherlock Holmes stories. By the time I was twelve, I’d read all fifty-six stories and four novels multiple times. … I grew up in South Central LA where walking home from school could be life threatening so that was very powerful idea. When it came time to write the book, Sherlock and my early days converged all by themselves."
Interview: Joe Ide
Today we welcome Joe Ide, author of IQ.
What is your idea of a perfect day?
My perfect day would be fly fishing on Ruby Creek in Five Rivers, Montana, in late September. Then a medium rare rib eye and a decent bottle of Pinot, followed by good conversation, a Patron Maduro and watching the storm clouds roll in over the hills and the lightning storms flash and crackle in the sky.
Do you have a signature accessory, color, fragrance, phrase/expression, or meal?
My signature expressions are all swear words, said frequently and in a loud voice.
iqcoverphotoWhich books/authors influenced you the most?
Aside from Conan Coyle, my biggest influence was Elmore Leonard. I loved his vivid, low life characters and how real they felt. I loved how they led the plot instead of the other way around. I loved the mixture of pathos and comedy. And I loved the writing. So rich, entertaining and economical at the same time. I think his dialogue is the best in crime fiction and ranks at the top across the board.
Other early influences include, John LeCarre, Walter Mosely, William Gibson, Hunter S. Thompson, Louise Penny, James Baldwin, Cormac McCarthy, and many others.
Do you listen to music when you write?
On the contrary, I shut off of my phone, draw the drapes and lock the door. I even wear ear plugs to enhance the feeling that I’m alone with my characters.
If your latest book were chocolate, what would it be and why?
A Hershey Dark Chocolate Mini. A fun treat you can have anytime.
What made you interested in writing this particular story?
It was my first novel so I thought it best to follow the old adage, write what you know. My favorite books were the original Sherlock Holmes stories. By the time I was twelve, I’d read all fifty-six stories and four novels multiple times. Like me, Sherlock was introverted, a misfit, and he wasn’t a tough guy. But unlike me, he was able to defeat his enemies and control his world with only the powers of his intelligence. I grew up in South Central LA where walking home from school could be life threatening so that was very powerful idea. When it came time to write the book, Sherlock and my early days converged all by themselves.
What themes do you regularly (re)visit in your writing?
Many mystery/thrillers tend to treat the victims of crime as props. They’re moved around like chess pieces to add suspense, pathos, terror, or whatever the story requires, legitimate techniques I utilize myself. What I’d like to do in future books, is give more focus to the victims as characters and explore the consequences crime has had on their lives, relationships and futures. To make them more human. More like us.
Tell us about your main character.
Isaiah Quintabe is twenty five years old and a high school droput. He lives in East Long Beach; the crime-ridden area Snoop rapped about in The Chronic. Isaiah is a loner and a misfit. He wears no bling, no tattoos, there are no rims on his car and he doesn’t listen to hip hop. He is quiet, watchful and assumming. His reasoning skills are near genius levels and he posseses extraordinary powers of observation. He makes his living as an unlicensed, underground private detective. He is Sherlock in the hood. An African American Columbo, and he takes the cases the police can’t or won’t handle. My daughter ran away with a drug dealer. My son did not commit suicide. I know who killed my friend but there’s not enough evidence.
Isaiah doesn’t have a convenient friend on the police force or access to law enforcement data bases and he doesn’t know how to hack. I like to think of him as a latter day Hugh Glass or Jerimiah Johnson. He knows what he knows from long experience and studying his enviroment. He charges whatever his clients can afford, which more times than not is something like a sweet potato pie, a hand-knitted potholders or a free oil change.
What drives Isaiah is his past. He’s done terrible things in his life and he’s hurt people. Much of that is irrepairable so case he takes is penance. Every case is a way to pay down a debt that can never really be paid off. Isaiah’s story is about redemption. It’s about a young man who overcomes his terrible past and transforms himself into someone who seeks justice for people who cannot seek it for themselves.
Describe your protagonist as a mash-up of three famous people or characters.
— Sherlock Holmes
— Steve McQueen
— Sidney Potier’s Mister Tibbs in The Heat of the Night
If you could host a mystery-author dinner party, who are the six writers (living or otherwise) you’d include?
I wouldn’t restrict the guest list to mystery writers at any dinner party of mine. I’d invite: Conan Doyle, Anne Coulter, Hunter S. Thompson, Richard Pryor, Affinity Konar and Malcolm X. Now that’s a dinner party.
What’s next for you?
I’m editing the second book in the series.
*****
Joe Ide is of Japanese American descent. He grew up in South Central Los Angeles. He earned a Master’s Degree and had several careers before writing his first novel, IQ. He lives in Santa Monica, California.
QUOTED: "Ide's freshman novel introduces an intriguing new detective with staying power who will be a certain hit."
Ide, Joe. IQ
Amy Nolan
Library Journal. 141.14 (Sept. 1, 2016): p99.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Ide, Joe. IQ. Mulholland: Little, Brown. Oct. 2016. 336p. ISBN 9780316267724. $26; ebk. ISBN 9780316267717. F
Isaiah Quintabe, known as IQ, is a preternaturally smart misanthrope who has made a name for himself solving mysteries. Raised in East Long Beach, one of L.A.'s toughest neighborhoods, he's no stranger to tragedy and has a violent history that he is desperately trying to make right. When Dodson, a figure from his past he'd rather forget, shows up at his apartment offering a new case, Isaiah is dubious. It's a high-paying assignment involving a notorious rap star who just barely escaped an assassination attempt by a monstrous dog. Desperate for money and intrigued by the method of the attack, Isaiah agrees to track down the would-be killer with Dodson acting as partner. Deftly weaving back and forth between past and present, the novel slowly reveals the complex relationship between the two men as well as the inner machinations of a hired madman and his killer dog. VERDICT With a definite nod to Sherlock Holmes and the wonders of inductive reasoning, Ide's freshman novel introduces an intriguing new detective with staying power who will be a certain hit with fans of urban-set crime fiction. [See Prepub Alert, 4/25/16.]--Amy Nolan, St. Joseph, MI
QUOTED: "Ide successfully makes his detective's brilliance plausible in this gripping and moving debut."
IQ.
Publishers Weekly. 263.32 (Aug. 8, 2016): p43.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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IQ
Joe Ide. Mulholland, $26 (336p) ISBN 978-0-316-26772-4
Ide successfully makes his detective's brilliance plausible in this gripping and moving debut, which makes effective use of flashbacks. Isaiah Quintabe, whose reasoning scores on the Stanford-Binet intelligence test are near genius levels, has his life upended while in high school in East Long Beach, Calif. His beloved older brother and surrogate parent, Marcus, is killed by a hit-and-run driver, a tragedy that Isaiah witnesses firsthand. Isaiah, who becomes known by his initials because of his intellect, devotes himself to trying to identify the man who killed Marcus. With money running short, Isaiah takes in an unlikely roommate, schoolmate Juanell Dodson, who leads him into a life of crime. Eventually, Isaiah finds his calling on the right side of the law. He develops a reputation as an expert problem solver and takes on a high-profile assignment, to identify the person who ordered an unusual hit on Calvin Wright, the rapper known as Black the Knife. The plot has some over-the-top aspects, but overall the concept works. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM. (Oct.)
QUOTED: "This is one of those rare debuts that leaves us panting for more–and soon."
IQ.
Bill Ott
Booklist. 112.21 (July 1, 2016): p35.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
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* IQ. By Joe Ide. Oct. 2016. 336p. Little, Brown/Mulholland, paper, $26 (9780316267724); e-book, $13.99 (9780316267717).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Isaiah Quintabe, known as IQ on the mean streets of his East Long Beach neighborhood, is a Sherlock-inspired sleuth (brains over brawn) who takes the cases the cops won't touch. Yet Isaiah's off-the-grid status ("unlicensed and underground") and adjustable-rate billing system translate to poor cash flow, which drives him to accept a case he wants no part of: finding out who is trying to kill a superstar rapper--and not just any rapper, but one who seems to be going a little bit crazy. First-novelist Ide, whose own background is similar to Isaiah's (bright kid growing up in the ghetto and loving Sherlock for his ability to triumph on intelligence alone), does here what few first novelists can manage: dexterously juggling multiple styles and tones to create a seamless, utterly entertaining blend of coming-of-age saga, old-school detective story, and comic caper novel. Flashbacks reprise IQ's early years--including his adored brother's death and IQ's temporary descent into a life of crime--and nicely integrated subplots flesh out IQ's relationship with would-be Watson and former partner in crime, Dodson, whose impressive comic chops are sure to be a major draw as this series develops. Best of all, though, is Ide's deft touch with his richly diverse cast of characters, all of whom are capable of stealing scenes with just the right mix of bravado, sly intelligence, sparkling wit, and deeply felt emotion. This is one of those rare debuts that leaves us panting for more--and soon.--Bill Ott
QUOTED: "Mr. Ide packs a lot of action and scenery into the book's investigation scenes. But he has also built and bolstered Isaiah as a fine, durable character for the long run."
A Quirky, Street-Smart Sherlock, Cleverly Righting Wrongs
Janet Maslin
The New York Times. (Nov. 1, 2016): Arts and Entertainment: pC4(L).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com
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Isaiah Quintabe, a self-made Sherlock operating out of the same part of Long Beach, Calif., that produced Snoop Dogg, is the completely original star of ''IQ,'' Joe Ide's debut novel. It kicks off what is apt to be a madly lovable new detective series about this smart guy and the vibrantly drawn criminal culture that surrounds him.
Mr. Ide, who grew up in South Central Los Angeles, has a terrific ear for language. Almost all of the book's characters speak fluent brag and dis, with the exceptions of strait-laced Isaiah and his beloved older brother, Marcus. They were orphaned early, and Isaiah grew up listening to both his big brother's advice and his favorite music (Motown). These are a far cry from the world in which he is immersed in ''IQ.''
Mr. Ide has worked as a screenwriter, and he's said that he is no quiet, brilliant Isaiah type. He told Publishers Weekly that his family's opinion of him is this: ''If your plane crashes in the Amazon, and you needed to survive? Joe is the one you'd kill and eat.'' Everything about ''IQ'' contradicts those appraisals.
Nonetheless, Mr. Ide retains a screenwriter's storytelling habits. ''IQ'' therefore begins with an unrelated intro crime. It features a duct-tape-carrying creep, an innocent teenage girl and Isaiah, a bystander who picks up enough clues to know instantly that an abduction is in the works. Now we get a frantic chase scene in which Isaiah, showing why IQ might have been his nickname even if he'd been born with different initials, knows exactly where the kidnapper is going and thwarts him. With the help of the grenade launcher he keeps in his car. Because you never know.
''Who is this guy?'' the kidnapper manages to ask, just before being clobbered. It's the kind of question bad guys ask about Superman. And, like Superman, Isaiah doesn't stick around to be a hero. That's not his thing. As a local newspaper has just put it, ''Isaiah Quintabe is Unlicensed and Undaground.''
The year is 2013, and Isaiah has cobbled together just enough of a business to keep his bills paid and a lot of local wrongs righted. But he is still living under the weight of two life-altering events from 2005. The first was the death of Marcus, who was mowed down by a hit-and-run driver when Isaiah was just a kid. The second was the arrival of another lost boy, a budding little con man named Juanell Dodson, who had nowhere to live and took Marcus's place as Isaiah's apartment-mate, sans adult supervision. It's the fast-talking, ever-hustling Dodson who is the best of this novel's many comic highlights.
For an interesting stretch of their teen years, when this duo can't pay their rent, Dodson suggests that they move into burglary. Isaiah can hear Marcus's imagined scolding, but he's drawn to break-ins because they require ingenuity. What are the most valuable, portable things to steal from storerooms in a hurry? To watch Isaiah reel off targets -- high-end fishing rods, hair extensions and pet medicines are among them -- is to watch a pragmatic wizard at work.
But Mr. Ide knows he has to give ''IQ'' some major bling early on. So he flashes the prospect of an ultra-famous rapper named Calvin Wright, a.k.a. Black the Knife, who has been experiencing some serious mental difficulties. Although Cal (as he's known to his staff of managers and flunkies) lives in what is supposed to be extreme fabulousness -- he has a life-size portrait of Michael Corleone in his living room -- he is miserable. And not himself. And unproductive. And terrified. IQ and Dodson are summoned after Cal is attacked by one of the awfulest hit-critters imaginable.
It turns out that Cal isn't crazy in thinking that someone wants to kill him. And since he hasn't left his humongous home in weeks and keeps the drapes drawn, there's no normal way to get at him. So in comes Mr. Ide's version of the Hound of the Baskervilles: a pit bull that weighs as much as a Great Dane. Cal evades him only by winding up in his swimming pool and nearly dies there because he can't swim. Genius needed. Urgently.
''IQ'' becomes a detective story about the attack on Cal and Cal's crew. That and the dog's story are big enough to take up a good part of the book -- a really good part. Consider these details from Cal's divorce: While the fights were on, Cal's wife, Noelle, airfreighted Cal's Rottweiler to a rival rapper. He had her shoe collection frozen in concrete. They went public with anatomical insults, comparing each other's body parts to cottage cheese and a knitting needle. One of Cal's cronies said that the tabloids owed them an award.
Mr. Ide packs a lot of action and scenery into the book's investigation scenes. But he has also built and bolstered Isaiah as a fine, durable character for the long run. The guy doesn't always show off the deductive talent for which he's praised -- he gets things too easily, usually on the first guess -- but he has an enormous range of skills. He can solve a problem or fix a car with equal ease. He's sane and orderly, but he's also excited by the thrill of the hunt. As a tribute to the Motown-loving Marcus, he names his dog Ruffin. And Mr. Ide ends the book with a meaningful jolt. It gives this story closure but does nothing to suggest that Mr. Ide and his canny hero won't be back again.
IQ
By Joe Ide
321 pages. Mulholland Books. $26.
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PHOTO (PHOTOGRAPH BY CRAIG TAKAHASHI)
QUOTED: "It's a mad world that late-blooming Joe Ide has brought forth from his past, a spicy mix of urban horror, youthful striving and show-business absurdity. His IQ is an original and welcome creation."
'IQ': One of the most original thrillers of the year
Patrick Anderson
Washingtonpost.com. (Oct. 9, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 The Washington Post
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Byline: Patrick Anderson
Joe Ide, one of this year's more unlikely first novelists, has produced one of its most enjoyable, offbeat thrillers.
Ide (pronounced E-day), who is 58, is a bit late to take up the fiction game. He has said that he finds inspiration in his colorful past: He's Japanese American and grew up in an African American section of South Central Los Angeles. In a biographical sketch included with "IQ" he recalls the neighborhood in terms of run-down houses, pool halls, bars, drug deals, hookers, crime and rampant gangs. He didn't like school but made it through college. He tried teaching high school but found his students obnoxious, whereupon he bounced from job to job until he took up screenwriting, without success.
Finally he set out to write a novel about a youngster he says is much like his early self and -- Bingo! -- here's this sometimes scary, often whimsical, off-the-wall delight.
The letters IQ are the initials of the book's African American hero, Isaiah Quintabe. We see him in 2005, as a teenager, and 2013, in his 20s. In the early scenes, he seems destined for college -- tests rate him "near genius" -- but after his beloved older brother is killed by a hit-and-run driver, IQ quits high school, searches for his brother's killer and finally, angrily, turns to crime.
He's good at it because he's smart. He and a partner break into stores in the middle of the night, move in and out far more quickly than the police can arrive, and find safe ways to dispose of the loot. Unfortunately, the partner is a fool we fear will land IQ in prison before he regains his senses.
When we revisit IQ in his 20s, he has been reborn as an "unlicensed and underground" private detective in South Central. People come to him with problems the police won't touch but that IQ -- a big fan of Sherlock Holmes -- solves with Holmes-style analysis.
One day he's offered big money to protect a celebrated rapper called Black the Knife -- Cal to his friends. Someone is trying to kill the rapper, probably someone working for his estranged wife, Noelle. Their once-torrid romance is over: "At a Thanksgiving dinner, Cal cooked Noelle's Stella McCartney shoulder bag in the microwave and she slapped him with a turkey leg." She says of her ex: "He's part megalomaniac and part pervert. If he's not telling you how great he is he's trying to get you to do something -nasty."
We're treated to Cal's rap lyrics, which are clever and mostly unprintable. The superstar has sunk deep into drugs and depression and rarely leaves his mansion: "Cal was bloated, unshaven, his cornrows undone." He glimpses salvation in a book that tells him happiness can be found by ridding oneself of pointless possessions. Inspired, Cal makes a huge pile of jewelry, a white ermine Cossack hat, a python-skin bomber jacket, sharkskin cowboy boots, a full-length overcoat made from six endangered cheetah hides and other luxury goods and sets it ablaze, muttering, "Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. " Alas, his bonfire brings not happiness but the police.
Cal's refusal to leave home has made it impossible for a professional hit man called Skip to shoot him from afar. However, Skip raises pit bulls and has bred a 130-pound monster called Goliath that he sends racing into Cal's home. IQ routs the creature, whereupon Skip sets out to kill him, too.
Strange characters populate the novel. IQ is being pursued by a stripper who was once crowned Miss Big Meaty Burger and offers to trade sex for an introduction to a rapper she thinks can make her a Kardashian-style star. ("You're looking for a baby daddy and you know that's not me," he tells her.) We meet a hapless reporter who is assigned to write about a pig that could say "I love you." Later, covering a fire, "she broke a heel and had to interview the fire captain barefoot and stepped on an anthill." IQ is menaced by a surly drug lord who tells his bodyguard, "Terminate this peon with prejudice."
It's a mad world that late-blooming Joe Ide has brought forth from his past, a spicy mix of urban horror, youthful striving and show-business absurdity. His IQ is an original and welcome creation.
Patrick Andersonregularly reviews mysteries and thrillers for The Washington Post.
QUOTED: "IQ is a small story in the way the best of Conan Doyle's were. It's like one of the cases that Sherlock would reference as a sidenote to the main action of the story, humblebragging to Watson about his prowess. It's a detective story that plays out very close to home, on the streets and corners that Ide ... knows best. And Isaiah fits into those streets like they were made for him. A consulting detective for a time and a place that needs one."
In 'IQ,' A Sherlock For South Central
October 20, 20167:00 AM ET
JASON SHEEHAN
IQ
IQ
by Joe Ide
Hardcover, 321 pages purchase
We have so many Sherlocks these days.
Books, multiple TV shows, movies — the world (particularly the modern world) is so rich with touchy, cold, brilliant consulting detectives that it's a wonder there are any crimes left for the police to solve. I mean, with such a profusion of Holmeses running around, why would anyone bother calling 911?
And yet the character model polished to such a high and perfect gloss by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle more than a hundred years ago is so deep and so elastic that it somehow stretches to contain these multitudes. Most of the time the strain doesn't even show because these Holmesian characters? We want them in our world. We want to believe that there will always be a Sherlock in our neighborhood when we need him most. And Isaiah Quintabe, the protagonist of Joe Ide's debut novel, IQ, is a Sherlock for a very specific neighborhood: South Central L.A.
First off, a few things I love about this. One, IQ (Isaiah's somewhat on-the-nose nickname) is angry. He has a simmering rage that is purer and less didactic than Sherlock's. Two, he's rooted in his community in a way that his inspiration never was. IQ does not solve problems for the Queen of England or the King of Bohemia. He tracks down blackmailers and rescues neighborhood girls from kidnappers.
As a result, he's always broke. Smart as hell, sure, but when your entire clientele is made up of poor folks from the block who can only pay with one new tire, a nice casserole or weeding the lawn, what can you do? He has a chicken named Alejandro running around the house which (along with a recipe for arroz con pollo) was payment from a neighbor. It's a tiny detail that grounds IQ's circumstances in a reality he has lived with for years. He started out poor (a young black man whose only family — his brother Marcus — was killed by a hit-and-run driver, leaving him alone and furious). Even locally famous, he remains poor. His financial situation (not entirely unlike Sherlock's) drives a lot of the rising action. IQ needs a job. He has bills to pay. And when the man comes knocking, sometimes even the very smart make bad choices.
IQ does not solve problems for the Queen of England or the King of Bohemia. He tracks down blackmailers and rescues neighborhood girls from kidnappers.
Jason Sheehan
The novel runs with parallel narratives — IQ in 2013, doing a "payday job" for famous rapper Black The Knife, trying to figure out who tried to murder him with a monstrous pitbull, and IQ in 2005, living his backstory as an effortlessly brilliant young teenager forced into bad circumstances by the death of his brother. He takes in a roommate, Dodson (rhymes with Watson, get it?), a low-level drug dealer and natural-born street hustler. IQ drops out of high school. He hones his talents for inductive reasoning (not deductive, which Ide makes a big point of) by searching for the driver of the car that killed Marcus and, broke as always, Dodson introduces him to a life of crime — which IQ has a talent for, but not really a taste.
But it's the reasoning part that leads me to one of the things about the book I didn't love. One of the big draws of the Sherlock Holmes stories was Holmes's ability to make these huge logical leaps that depended only on his powers of observation and encyclopedic knowledge of different muds, tobacco varieties, and everything else. It became such a thing — such an intrinsic part of the Sherlock Holmes canon — that it was almost a joke, the number of highly specific monographs Holmes had written.
IQ, on the other hand, seems to have pure observation as his primary superpower. He's just a guy that notices things. Who can focus on details (bonus points to Ide for showing where this came from in a sort of training montage that's very skillfully done) and shut out all distractions. He is smart, absolutely. He knows things. But the leaps he makes (where a man was hiding to avoid security cameras, for example) are more modest than those epic Sherlockian jumps.
And yet, they're also somehow apt. IQ is a small story in the way the best of Conan Doyle's were. It's like one of the cases that Sherlock would reference as a sidenote to the main action of the story, humblebragging to Watson about his prowess. It's a detective story that plays out very close to home, on the streets and corners that Ide (who grew up in South Central) knows best.
And Isaiah fits into those streets like they were made for him. A consulting detective for a time and a place that needs one.
Jason Sheehan is an ex-chef, a former restaurant critic and the current food editor of Philadelphia magazine. But when no one is looking, he spends his time writing books about spaceships, aliens, giant robots and ray guns. Tales From the Radiation Age is his latest book.
QUOTED: "The roughhousing energy, vivid language, and serrated wit Ide displays throughout this maiden effort make Isaiah Quintabe seem a potential rejuvenator of a grand literary tradition."
IQ
by Joe Ide
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KIRKUS REVIEW
Sherlock Holmes comes to South Central Los Angeles. Only he’s black, never finished high school, and can’t seem to hold on to a regular job.
Unlike Holmes or other flamboyant “consulting detectives” whose powers of ratiocination have held readers’ imaginations captive since the Victorian era, Isaiah Quintabe, young, gifted, and nonchalantly brilliant, displays few distinguishable quirks beyond a formidable attention span that misses nothing. Well, having a live chicken named Alejandro wandering around his crib may be a little eccentric. But IQ, as he’s appropriately known, earned that bird for services rendered as a discreet, unlicensed investigator who finds missing people, recovers stolen property, and unravels puzzles too delicate or perplexing for the LAPD to handle. Business is steady but sluggish, and IQ, goaded by a one-time high school frenemy named Dodson (rhymes with “Watson,” get it?), agrees to go for bigger bucks in helping to find out who’s trying to murder rap idol Calvin “Black the Knife” Wright, who’s undergoing something of an emotional crisis. The list of suspects is, to say the least, eclectic, beginning with Cal’s ex-wife, Noelle, an ambitious pop diva, and a posse of hangers-on and moneymen, any one of whom might be greedy or vicious enough to sic upon Cal the most monstrously lethal attack dog since the Hound of the Baskervilles. In his debut novel, Ide, a Japanese-American who grew up in the same neighborhood as his mercurial characters, flashes agility with streetwise lingo, facility with local color, and empathy with even the most dissolute of his characters. If there’s a problem, it’s that IQ, for all his brilliance at inductive reasoning (as opposed to “deductive”; apparently there is a difference), seems at once too removed and too moody for readers to connect with. His origin story, alternating with the main investigation, at times reads like the usual gang-violence melodrama. But the roughhousing energy, vivid language, and serrated wit Ide displays throughout this maiden effort make Isaiah Quintabe seem a potential rejuvenator of a grand literary tradition.
The present day, with its high-strung social media and emotional overload, could use a contemporary hero like Ide's, more inclined to use his brain than his mouth (or fists) to vanquish evil and subdue dread.
Pub Date: Oct. 18th, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-26772-4
Page count: 336pp
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 27th, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1st, 2016
QUOTED: "IQ feels like a combination of an entertaining TV crime drama, page-turning thriller and, on occasion, social commentary."
Book review: Joe Ide’s IQ brings Californian crime fiction to the 21st-century
Ben East
November 8, 2016 Updated: November 8, 2016 03:28 PM
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When he was growing up in South Central Los Angeles, Japanese-American author Joe Ide’s favourite stories were from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series. It’s a long way from California to Baker Street, so for his debut, Ide has brought Sherlock Holmes to the mean streets of East Long Beach, in the guise of charismatic loner and unlicensed detective Isaiah Quintabe. IQ. Get it?
For all Quintabe uses familiarly Sherlock-style quick-witted powers of logic and deduction to solve – or prevent – crimes, Ide quickly sets up a world distinct and engrossing enough for this to be more than pure homage.
From the first chapter, in which Quintabe only needs a whiff of chloroform to work out that a man "missing a white tooth and shiny with sunburn" has kidnapped a girl – and chases him to a brilliantly explosive climax – IQ feels like a combination of an entertaining TV crime drama, page-turning thriller and, on occasion, social commentary.
It is pushing it to suggest IQ is a companion piece to fellow Californian Paul Beatty’s Booker Prize-winning satire, The Sellout.
It is too bound by genre convention for that. But it is promising that new crime fiction of this standard can come out of this community. Even if James Ellroy’s LA Confidential or Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep remain by some distance the gold standard for Californian crime fiction, IQ is a 21st-century tale for mainstream, modern audiences.
The main case in IQ is about a rap mogul in mortal danger from someone with a grudge. Naturally, the supporting cast are not exactly people anyone would want to spend time with: there is a psychopathic hitman and, in a slightly ham-fisted nod to The Hound of the Baskervilles, a huge attack dog. Quintabe navigates the clues to the killer’s identity with sharp wit, intelligence and not a little energy.
In short, he is fun to be around, even if the world he inhabits certainly isn’t.
It is not spoiling anything to suggest IQ feels set up to be the first in a series, much like that featuring Ide’s hero, Sherlock Holmes.
If that sounds a little too strategic, then at least Quintabe’s back story reveals a character with genuine depth.
artslife@thentional.ae