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WORK TITLE: Suppose There Is Nothing: A Wall Street Mystery
WORK NOTES: under pseud James L. Ross
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.johncboland.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
“John C. Boland is the author of more than a dozen novels under his own name and a couple of others.” * http://www.thebigthrill.org/2012/01/death-in-budapest-by-james-l-ross/ * http://www.johncboland.com/novels.html
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married; wife’s name Mira.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist and writer. Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, MD, former editor; Baron’s Financial Weekly, former senior editor; former investment partnership manager.
WRITINGS
Contributor of short stories to magazines, including Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.
SIDELIGHTS
John C. Boland writes mystery fiction under his own name as well as the pseudonym James L. Ross. A former senior editor at Barron’s Financial Weekly and the former manager of an investment fund, he has published nonfiction about Wall Street under the pseudonym Douglas Frantz.
Easy Money and Rich Man's Blood
Boland’s first novel, Easy Money, focuses on greed, corruption, and murder in the high-stakes financial sector. Ben McCarthy, who has just joined a reputable Wall Street investment firm, is faced with several crises that include a burglary and the disappearance of the firm’s senior partner, Jack Canning, soon after Canning’s apparent investment in a failing company sparked rumors of an imminent takeover. Adding to the grim news that the company will likely face devastating insider-trading charges, a broker friend of Canning’s turns up dead, and McCarthy’s Manhattan townhouse, where he lives with his artist wife, is vandalized. Clearly, someone wants Ben out of the way, but he refuses to be cowed and eventually ends up outwitting his enemies. A writer for Publishers Weekly hailed the book as a “sparkling” debut and a “satisfying tale” that “hits pay dirt.”
Rich Man’s Blood features protagonist Richard Welles, whose father had founded one of Baltimore’s leading investment firms and is now determined to leave the company to his incompetent and greedy older son instead of Richard. Richard struggles to keep the company afloat after a disastrous transaction involving client Stu Harris, a Louisiana shipping magnate who has been conned into buying several vessels that were likely stolen. When the employee who organized this transaction is murdered, Richard hurries back to Baltimore only to discover that the firm has succumbed to a hostile takeover. A Publishers Weekly reviewer felt that Boland does not make the connections between events in Baltimore and Louisiana sufficiently clear in this “intriguing yet imperfect work,” but the writer admired the sympathy with which Boland develops Richard’s complex character.
Death in Jerusalem
Donald McCarry, a character in Rich Man’s Blood, stars in Death in Jerusalem as an investor unwittingly caught up on a kidnapping. McCarry agrees to go to Israel with Harry Brickman, a business friend, to take a look at Agritech, a start-up eager to attract investors. Soon after they arrive, Brickman is kidnapped. Palestinian terrorists become the prime suspects, but as McCarry learns more about Agritech, he begins to suspect that the reality is more complicated.
It turns out that the company is perpetrating fraud, and Brickman—who seems to have had an intimate relationship with Esther, the sexy assistant to Agritech’s president—may have known about the scam all along. Or is he a victim? McCarry’s search for answers leads him into Esther’s arms, and a contributor to Publishers Weekly observed that this brief but intense affair parallels the contrasts between the world of Wall Street and that of Israel, “both of which [the author] portrays with convincing authenticity.”
Homonid
The action in Homonid begins with an archaeological dig on a Chesapeake Bay island during which three sealed coffins are discovered, more than 300 years old. Researchers expect to find the remains of the island’s first settlers, suspected to have been Satan worshippers, in these coffins. One casket contains the bones of a young girl who had been murdered, but another turns out to be empty. The action quickly shifts to a research lab, talk of human cloning, and government interference in private research; meanwhile, scientist Roberta Gerson has fallen to her death in a flooded excavation pit, and circumstances suggest foul play.
Don Crinklaw, writing in Booklist, enjoyed the book’s tense atmosphere and engaging beginning, but pointed out that the novel loses focus midway, ending up as “more a blend of science fiction and fantasy than … mystery.” A Publishers Weekly contributor, on the other hand, expressed unequivocal admiration for Homonid. The reviewer especially admired the book’s “taut atmospherics” and its informative exploration of evolutionary themes.
The Man Who Knew Brecht and The Margin
Set in the Lake Rehoboth Community of Connecticut, The Man Who Knew Brecht follows the efforts of the community, whose members are mostly political radicals, old communists, and more recent arrivals from Russia, to find out who killed their board chairman. Booklist writer Barbara Bibel pegged the novel as a winner for “historical-mystery readers who enjoy political debates.”
Investment banker Richard Welles, introduced in Rich Man’s Blood, reappears in The Margin. He and his wife Anne have rescued the daughter of a major developer from a plane crash, and the developer, Harry Wollenschaft, insists on rewarding them for this deed. He offers Richard the chance to get involved with huge projects in Las Vegas and in Chesapeake Bay. Richard is tempted, but then receives an anonymous phone call warning him to avoid Harry at all costs. The point is underlined, as far as Richard is concerned, when Harry’s house is firebombed. Someone with considerable power wants to destroy Harry, and Richard decides to uncover his or her identity.
The Spy Who Knew Nothing and Death in Budapest
The nine short stories comprising The Spy Who Knew Nothing feature protagonist Charles Marley, a CIA officer famous for his ability to persuade enemy agents to collaborate with his agency. Though Booklist reviewer Don Crinklaw found Marley a rather “bland” espionage character, the reviewer enjoyed the collection’s entertaining use of spy tropes.
Writing as James L. Ross, Boland has published the suspense novels Death in Budapest: A Mystery, The Last Crimes of Charles Mistinguett, and Suppose There Is Nothing: A Wall Street Mystery. In the first of these novels, Patrick McCarry has been made to take the blame when his investment bank gets involved in a dodgy hedge-fund deal; to rehabilitate his reputation and career, he goes to London where he finds a job running a smaller investment firm. Among his first jobs is to meet American investor Chester Holt in Hungary, where Holt plans to open an engine factory. But McCarry soon learns that Holt’s real business is arms dealing, and he fears that the American may be funneling weapons to the dangerously unstable Balkans.
The Last Crimes of Charles Mistinguett and Suppose There Is Nothing
The titular protagonist of The Last Crimes of Charles Mistinguett is a fifty-six-year-old career criminal in France who is abducted on the Cote d’Azur and pressured by his captors into accepting an assassination assignment involving former generals who had participated on the administration of French colonies in North Africa. In Publishers Weekly, a reviewer described the novel as “a delight for anyone who enjoys French crime cinema from the 1970s.”
In Suppose There Is Nothing, stockbroker John McCarthy witnesses a woman fall to her death as he leaves a Manhattan Christmas party. Evidence points at first to suicide. But McCarthy later discovers a flash drive from her in his coat pocket that he suspects will contain the key to her death. Though the files are not much help, McCarthy cannot help searching for answers. The book received a positive review in Publishers Weekly, where a critic observed that the author has “crafted a fine puzzle” that readers unfamiliar with the details of the financial world can easily enjoy.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, October 15, 2011, Don Crinklaw, review of Hominid, p. 21; May 1, 2012, Barbara Bibel, review of The Man Who Knew Brecht, p. 36; May 1, 2013, Bill Ott, review of The Last Crimes of Charles Mistinguett, p. 31; July 1, 2015, Don Crinklaw, review of The Spy Who Knew Nothing, p. 40.
Publishers Weekly, May 24, 1991, review of Easy Money, p. 49; May 24, 1993, review of Rich Man’s Blood, p. 72; June 6, 1994, review of Death in Jerusalem, p. 59; August 15, 2011, review of Hominid, p. 51; January 2, 2012, review of Death in Budapest, p. 62; February 27, 2012, review of The Man Who Knew Brecht, p. 63; April 1, 2013, review of The Last Crimes of Charles Mistinguett, p. 45; April 24, 2017, review of Suppose There Is Nothing, p. 69.
ONLINE
The Big Thrill, http://www.thebigthrill.org/ (January 3, 2018), George Ebey, review of Death in Budapest; Ethan Cross, review of Homonid.
John C. Boland Website, http://johncboland.com (January 3, 2018).
Kirkus Reviews Online, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ (May 20, 2010), review of The Margin
Mystery Scene, https://mysteryscenemag.com/ (January 3, 2018), Ethan Cross, “The Competition: A Talk with John C. Boland.”
Besides writing novels and short stories, JOHN C. BOLAND has worked as a Senior Editor of Barron's Financial Weekly, contributed often to the Sunday New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and run a profitable hedge fund. He is the author of what Market Logic called "the best book ever written on insider trading"--Wall Street's Insiders (Morrow, 1985).
His story "Last Island South," from Ellery Queen's, gained two nominations for 2009 "Best Short Story": it was chosen as a finalist by the International Thriller Writers Association, and nominated for a Shamus by the Private Eye Writers. "Marley's Revolution," from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, was a 2012 Edgar nominee.
His previous novels, from St. Martin's Press and Pocket Books, were praised as "sparkling" (Publishers Weekly), "great fun" (USA Today), "tightly plotted" (Washington Times), "fast-paced" (Baltimore Sun), and "trenchant, sly--and cerebral fun throughout" (Kirkus).
The Competition: a Talk With John C. Boland Ethan Cross
Boland-John-C-copyBoland considers the consequences of evolutionary rivalry in his new science thriller
John C. Boland’s short fiction has been appearing in Alfred Hitchcock’s and other magazines for 35 years, and he is the author of almost a dozen mystery novels under his own name and pseudonyms. He has worked as a senior editor of Barron’s Financial Weekly, contributed often to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and run a profitable hedge fund.
Boland’s eclectic interests have always informed his work, and his new novel, Hominid, is no exception. It explores evolution, genetics, archaeology, and a centuries-old mystery.
In Hominid, archaeologist David Isaac joins a team excavating a crypt on a remote island where a colonial-era family lies buried. By local lore, the family members were “devils.” The expedition’s leader hopes to revive his career by proving they were murdered by neighbors in a burst of religious hysteria. But these cadavers harbor an older and deadlier secret–evidence that a new humanoid species has emerged.
ETHAN CROSS FOR MYSTERY SCENE: Many of your past books have been mysteries. How would you classify Hominid? Mystery, thriller?
JOHN C. BOLAND: Hominid is a science thriller that develops as a series of mysteries. What happened among early colonists on Ewell Island? Why were three of them buried in lead-shrouded coffins? Why were a four-year-old child and her father murdered? Why is the mother’s coffin empty? Who is sponsoring the island excavation and why? The big question comes a bit later, and it concerns deviations in the child’s DNA from the normal human genome.
boland_hominidIs Hominid entirely fictional or is it based upon actual local lore and legend?
It’s fiction with many factual reference points—starting with the discovery in St. Mary’s City, Maryland, 20 years ago of three lead coffins buried in a church dating from the 1660s. The use of lead coffins wasn’t uncommon in England, but it taxed the resources of an early American colony. So the reality was fascinating. I shifted the location to a nearby island, where St. Mary’s dissidents in fact had settled, and created the local lore that the buried family were viewed in 1700 as devils.
Where does “science fact” end and “science fiction” begin within the novel?
Publishers Weekly called it science fiction, but I don’t regard it as such. The science is well-grounded. The key speculation is fictional, but it’s also consistent with everything we know about Darwinian evolution. The pressure on scientific research by government is also factual—as is the misuse of science by government and other institutions, witness the eugenics movement in the United States that led to forced sterilizations. So there’s a very dangerous mix of competing interests and beliefs.
Hominid deals with the discovery of a new humanoid species through the unearthing of some colonialera cadavers. Is the book focused on the mystery of what happened in the past or are there current dangers that arise because of the discovery?
The dangers appear in the first chapter, when a young archaeologist is killed in the deep excavation and the main character almost loses his life. It gets worse. The story occurs entirely in the present. The role of the past is to provide evidence of what has been happening for perhaps millennia, unseen and unsuspected: the development of a human variant that threatens to supplant us. This raises the philosophical and moral question: Threatened by extinction, would we stand aside and let evolution take its course? Or would Homo sapiens launch an extermination campaign against the newcomer?
What kind of research did you do for your new book?
The research was fun. I visited genetic testing labs. In New York, I toured Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. I read dozens of books on evolution and speciation. The challenge was to keep the research out of the novel—the idea was to tell a good story that wasn’t inconsistent with what is known. There is a reading list at the back of the book in case anyone is interested in this fast-moving branch of science.
The key thing that intrigues me is how plausible the idea of a human mutation developing within an island population is, and secondly, how rapidly evolution occurs under strong selection. There’s a fellow at the University of Chicago whose work suggests that one very useful gene, the “lactase” gene that permits adults to metabolize milk, has penetrated most of the European population in about 7,000 years. I speeded things up for the novel, but I wonder by how much? We had a tiny hominid cousin, Homo floresiensis, living in Indonesia as recently as 13,000 years ago. I’d better add right now that Hominid isn’t a treatise on evolution: It’s a thriller full of immediate conflict, a love story, and a lot of mayhem. I really laid on the mayhem.
boland_out_of_her_depthWhat are you reading now? What are some of your favorite books and what authors have had the greatest influence on your own work?
Right now, in truth, for some reason I’m reading the old Perry Masons. They’re almost straightforward “story.” I can picture Della Street from the TV series, but Gardner sure doesn’t tell us what she looks like. I liked the early Dick Francis novels a great deal, probably for bad reasons: There was quite a dollop of sadism in them, but the hero always pushed ahead, and the romantic subplots appealed to me, especially in Nerve. I loved some of Geoffrey Household’s thrillers: The Courtesy of Death (which also has an archaeological aspect), and Dance of the Dwarfs. Intelligent, elegantly written thrillers. Among contemporary writers, I admire John Sandford and Lee Child, both of whom produce smooth, fast-moving prose. On the science front, I’m reading a superb book by Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth, which should be part of every high school science curriculum.
What’s something that you’ve learned about the publishing business that you weren’t expecting?
That 60 or more literary agents can decline to represent a novel that gets a starred review in Publishers Weekly.
Do you have any advice for aspiring (or struggling) writers out there?
They should read the answer to the preceding question. It cuts two ways. And for heaven’s sake, develop a good income outside this field.
Are you currently working on a new book? Can we get a sneak peek?
I spend a fair amount of time writing short stories for Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. One novel I’m tinkering with is altogether different from Hominid. It’s called The Man Who Knew Brecht, has an artist heroine, and deals with murder growing out of old far-left political activity. (And apropos the previous question: If you want to self-sabotage a writing career, write novels that explore widely different themes and settings. I’ve found this technique works very well.)
In recent years you’ve become a publisher yourself. How did that come about?
Like most bad ideas, this one took time to develop. St. Martin’s and Pocket Books had published a half-dozen of my financial mysteries in the ’90s. Then they stopped buying them. Linda Landrigan at Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine was taking my short stories, and one—which was in Ellery Queen’s—got nominated for a couple of awards. So it looked as though I was still writing things people would read. I got into publishing to ensure that a few novels I was picking away at would see print.
boland_rich_mans_bloodTell us a little bit about Perfect Crime Books.
Perfect Crime developed because I found there were quite a few other writers who had been at it for years, knew how to tell a good story, but had been dropped by their publishers. Plus there were writers who still had good publishing deals for their new books but whose old work was out of print. So our list includes Terence Faherty, Francis M. Nevins, Robert J. Randisi, Ed Gorman, Edward Cline, Stephen Mertz, Max Allan Collins. Some titles are new, some reprints. Plus we’ve published a handful of relative newcomers. We pay small advances, lay no claim to sub rights, and pay at least 50 percent of gross profits to the authors. We’ve done more than 30 books in the last two years and have 13 lined up for the first quarter of 2012. The new list includes six of Max Allan Collins’ crime novels about a gunman named Nolan, and Mike Nevins’ two novels about scam artist Milo Turner. We’re also bringing out a scholarly work: Joe Goodrich’s edition of letters by Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, who wrote as Ellery Queen. Any writer who ever dreamed of having a collaborator to lean on should read the letters of that partnership.
Has being a publisher and working with writers and bookstores changed your view of the business?
Writers tend to be pretty nice people, so that part of the business has been a pleasure. They work under sweatshop rules. The ones who are any good give away a lot of themselves. And they do this mostly for money you wouldn’t cross the street for if it were a purely commercial decision. As for bookstores, I love them. But the business model that lets a store return unsold copies puts a small publisher at considerable risk. I’ve tried to accommodate stores by offering larger-than-normal discounts, so if they can’t move a book at list they can mark it way down. Most of our sales, though, come on Amazon. If a title gets good trade reviews, then we get some library business. I’ve just started to publish Kindle editions, which in principle I detest. But that’s the market today: Newspapers and magazines are mere electronic “content,” and it seems that to many readers so are books, electronic consumables. It feels weird to me. I still have 35-cent paperbacks I bought 50 years ago, when every small-town drugstore had a book rack. But my house may collapse someday. A Kindle owner doesn’t have to worry about that.
A John C. Boland Reading List
Science Thriller
Hominid (2011)
Crime Novels
Long Pig (as James L. Ross, 2011)
The Margin (1995)
Death in Jerusalem (1994)
Rich Man’s Blood (1993)
The Seventh Bearer (1993)
Brokered Death (1992)
Easy Money (1991)
Key West Crime Novels
Out of Her Depth (2009)
Last Island South (2009)
Short Story Collection
30 Years in the Pulps (2009)
Nonfiction
Wall Street’s Insiders (1985)
Ethan Cross is the internationally bestselling author of The Cage and The Shepherd—and the pen name of a thriller author living and writing in Illinois with his wife, two daughters, and two Shih Tzus.
This article first appeared in Mystery Scene Holiday Issue #122.
Hominid by John C. Boland
SEPTEMBER 30, 2011 by ETHAN CROSS 0
By Ethan Cross
Publisher’s Weekly stated that author John C. Boland “excels in rendering epiphanies.” And his new novel, Hominid, is no exception as it explores evolution, genetics, archaeology, and a centuries-old mystery.
Evolution is Deadly. Archaeologist David Isaac joins a team excavating a crypt on a remote island where a colonial-era family lies buried. By local lore, the family were “devils.” The expedition’s leader hopes to revive his career by proving they were murdered by neighbors in a burst of religious hysteria. But these cadavers harbor an older and deadlier secret–evidence that a new humanoid species has emerged.
I recently had an opportunity to interview the author.
Many of your past books have been mysteries. How would you classify Hominid? Mystery, thriller, scientific thriller, etc?
Hominid is a science thriller that develops as a series of mysteries: what happened among early colonists on Ewell Island? why were three of them buried in lead-shrouded coffins? why were a four-year-old child and her father murdered? why is the mother’s coffin empty? who is sponsoring the island excavation and why? The big question comes a bit later, and it concerns deviations in the child’s DNA from the normal human genome.
Is Hominid entirely fictional or is it based upon actual local lore and legend?
It’s fiction with many factual reference points—starting with the discovery in St. Marys City, Maryland, twenty years ago of three lead coffins buried in a church dating from the 1660s. The use of lead coffins wasn’t uncommon in England, but it taxed the resources of an early American colony. So the reality was fascinating. I shifted the location to a nearby island, where St. Marys dissidents in fact had settled, and created the “local lore” that the buried family were viewed in 1700 as “devils.”
Where does “science faction” end and “science fiction” begin within the novel?
Publishers Weekly called the novel “science fiction,” but I don’t regard it as such. The science is well-grounded. The key speculation is fictional, but it’s also consistent with everything we know about Darwinian evolution. The pressure on scientific research by government is also factual—as is the misuse of science by government and other institutions, witness the eugenics movement in the United States that led to forced sterilizations. So there’s a very dangerous mix of competing interests and beliefs.
Hominid deals with the discovery of a new humanoid species through the unearthing of some colonial-era cadavers. Is the book focused upon the mystery of what happened in the past or are there current dangers that arise because of the discovery?
The dangers appear in the first chapter, when a young archaeologist is killed in the deep excavation and the main character almost loses his life. It gets worse. The story occurs entirely in the present. The role of the past is to provide evidence of what has been happening for perhaps millennia, unseen and unsuspected: the development of a human variant that threatens to supplant us. This raises the philosophical and moral question: Threatened by extinction, would we stand aside and let evolution take its course? Or would Homo sapiens sapiens launch an extermination campaign against the newcomer?
What kind of research did you do for your new book?
The research was fun. I visited genetic testing labs. In New York, I toured Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. I read dozens of books on evolution and speciation. The challenge was to keep the research OUT of the novel—the idea was to tell a good story that wasn’t inconsistent with what is known. There is a reading list at the back of the book in case anyone is interested in this fast-moving branch of science.
Was there anything particularly interesting that you discovered during your research that didn’t make it into the novel or something that you’d like to highlight?
The key thing made it in, and I’m intrigued by it. That is, how plausible the idea is of a human mutation developing within an island population, and secondly how rapidly evolution occurs under strong selection. There’s a fellow at the University of Chicago whose work suggests that one very useful gene, the “lactase” gene that permits adults to metabolize milk, has penetrated most of the European population in about seven thousand years. I speeded things up for the novel, but I wonder by how much? We had a tiny hominid cousin, Homo floresiensis, living in Indonesia as recently as thirteen thousand years ago. I’d better add right now that Hominid isn’t a treatise on evolution: it’s a thriller, full of immediate conflict, a love story, and a lot of mayhem. I really laid on the mayhem.
What are you reading now? What are some of your favorite books/authors and who has had the greatest influence upon your own work?
Right now, in truth, for some reason I’m reading the old Perry Masons. They’re almost straightforward “story.” I can picture Della Street from the TV series, but Gardner sure doesn’t tell us what she looks like. I liked the early Dick Francis novels a great deal, probably for bad reasons: there was quite a dollop of sadism in them, but the hero always pushed ahead, and the romantic subplots appealed to me, especially in Nerve. I loved some of Geoffrey Household’s thrillers: The Courtesy of Death (which also has an archaeological aspect) and Dance of the Dwarfs. Intelligent, elegantly written thrillers. Among contemporary writers, I admire John Sandford and Lee Child, both of whom produce smooth, fast-moving prose. On the science front, I’m reading a superb book by Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth, which should be part of every high school science curriculum.
What’s something that you’ve learned about the publishing business that you weren’t expecting?
That sixty or more literary agents can decline to represent a novel that gets a starred review in Publishers Weekly.
Do you have any advice for aspiring (or struggling) writers out there?
They should read the answer to the preceding question. It cuts two ways. And for heaven’s sake, develop a good income outside this field.
Are you currently working on a new book? Can we get a sneak peek?
I spend a fair amount of time writing short stories for Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. One novel I’m tinkering with is altogether different from Hominid. It’s called The Man Who Knew Brecht, has an artist heroine, and deals with murder growing out of old far-left political activity. (And apropos the previous question: if you want to self-sabotage a writing career, write novels that explore widely different themes and settings. I’ve found this technique works very well.)
*****
John C. Boland’s short fiction has been appearing in Alfred Hitchcock’s and other magazines for thirty-five years. He is the author of about a dozen novels, under his own name and pseudonyms, from St. Martin’s, Pocket, and Perfect Crime. A nonfiction book, Wall Street’s Insiders, was published by William Morrow. His shorter nonfiction appeared for a number of years in Barron’s, The (Sunday) New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
To learn more about John, please visit his website.
International Thriller Writers Interview:
Death in Budapest
George Ebey took time out from his other work to interview me on the publication of my pseudonymous novel Death in Budapest. The interview appeared in the International Thriller Writers' online bulletin on January 31, 2012.
____________________
George Ebey [quoting Publishers Weekly]: "When Wall Street banker Patrick McCarry’s firm makes him the scapegoat after a hedge fund disaster, he manages to find a new position in London running a small investment business. Assigned to handle Chester Holt, an American looking to open a factory making engines in Hungary, McCarry learns on arriving in Budapest that his new client is actually in the arms business. Members of the American intelligence community fear Holt may be pouring fuel on the continually combustible Balkans, sending McCarry down a dangerous path with twists straight out of a John le Carré novel.
I recently caught up with author James Ross to talk about his new espionage thriller, Death in Buapest.
What motivated you to set your story in the Balkans? Does this region hold a specific interest for you?
James L. Ross: I visited Budapest with two other journalists and had the comical pleasure of being accused on Hungarian TV of being “from Langley.” It was too absurd, and too much fun, not to work into a novel at some point. My accuser has a cameo as Folkestone or something like that. In fact he was a British newspaperman named Ecclestone. There are other bits of low-level reality in the book. The basement strip club, Dolce Vita, was much as described. The paranoia of the country reflects reality as closely as I could understand it. The nationalism seems pervasive. The economic disorder that serves as a backdrop to the novel is progressing nicely. Unlike my hero, I wasn’t shot at, and the only bureaucrats I met behaved themselves.
G.E.: The narrator of your story is described as having a sardonic wit. Can you talk a little about the virtues and challenges of molding humor into a thriller story?
J.L.R.: That’s a good question. I don’t think there’s much room in a serious novel for humor, even of the dry or sardonic sort. If I used it in a serious book, I would assign it to a character who is trying to evade some sort of reality, the drunken fool who hopes loud laughter will cover something up. Death in Budapest is meant as light entertainment. I tried to anchor it in the real world, but it’s for fun. My first model was Adam Hall, who wrote the high-speed Quiller novels. I wanted to see if I could propel a story fast enough that the reader would be well into a new chapter before understanding what had happened at the end of the previous one. So there are a lot of very fast cuts. The other model was a series of romps that Victor Canning wrote. I’ve forgotten his hero’s name, but he appeared in light thrillers such as The Melting Man. Dry, bitter humor can work in either of those type stories. And I also wanted the book to be very cold-blooded. The downside of that–you didn’t ask but I’ll say it–is that the rewards for the reader are limited. There’s no warm-fuzzy sense of justice done or any other value achieved.
Maybe I should back up to the issues of wit or humor. They’re different things, you know. There’s no humor–at least none intentional–in Death in Budapest. A couple of my books have been described as acerbic. That’s probably a good word here. My novel Long Pig, from 2011, which managed to avoid being reviewed, was acerbic in its depictions of movieland and politics, but the spirit was deliberately mean and nasty. It has one of my favorite character epiphanies, when the hero concludes that if he can’t help anyone, at least he can fuck someone up once in a while. In Death in Budapest, there’s something of that attitude when McCarry decides that “a [hypodermic] needle and soft music” are the usual treatment he can expect from the intelligence clowns on the scene. He doesn’t get the soft music.
G.E.: You’ve written numerous stories for Alfred Hitchcock, Ellery Queen, and others. Did you start off writing stories such as these before making the leap to full-length novels?
J.L.R.: Well, other writers have leapt. I move at an invalid’s pace. My first story appeared in Hitchcock’s in 1976. My first novel was published in 1991. So you see, no natural talent here just waiting to erupt.
G.E.: When Death in Budapest hits the shelves, what’s the best compliment you could hope to receive?
J.L.R.: Kirkus gave it to me in 1994, when they said Death in Jerusalem ”roars along like a BMW in heat.” The Publishers Weekly review of Budapest was heartening, and possibly generous.
G.E.: Publishers Weekly said, “Fans of hard-edged spy novels will hope that this outing for disgraced Wall Street banker Patrick McCarry is but the first of many from Ross.” Is this outing the first of many?
J.L.R.: Probably not. I don’t know how other writers can produce essentially the same story–or at least the same type story–in book after book. It’s absolutely necessary for branding, I know. But it would bore me. When I was eighteen, I spent a few months watching guys do piece work stamping out molds in an iron foundry. Why do that with a word processor?
International Thriller Writers Interview:
Hominid
Ethan Cross, one of those rare fellows who finds time both to write novels and to donate his skills to the International Thriller Writers Association, interviewed me in the late fall of 2011 in connection with the publication of my book HOMINID. Here is a slightly shortened text, from the ITW's on-line publication The Big Thrill.
______________
Publishers Weekly stated that author John C. Boland “excels in rendering epiphanies.” And his new novel, Hominid, is no exception as it explores evolution, genetics, archaeology, and a centuries-old mystery. I recently had an opportunity to interview the author.
Ethan Cross: Many of your past books have been mysteries. How would you classify Hominid? Mystery, thriller, scientific thriller, etc.?
John Boland: Hominid is a science thriller that develops as a series of mysteries: what happened among early colonists on Ewell Island? why were three of them buried in lead-shrouded coffins? why were a four-year-old child and her father murdered? why is the mother’s coffin empty? who is sponsoring the island excavation and why? The big question comes a bit later, and it concerns deviations in the child’s DNA from the normal human genome.
E.C.: Is Hominid entirely fictional or is it based upon actual local lore and legend?
J.B.: It’s fiction with many factual reference points—starting with the discovery in St. Marys City, Maryland, twenty years ago of three lead coffins buried in a church dating from the 1660s. The use of lead coffins wasn’t uncommon in England, but it taxed the resources of an early American colony. So the reality was fascinating. I shifted the location to a nearby island, where St. Marys dissidents in fact had settled, and created the “local lore” that the buried family were viewed in 1700 as “devils.”
E.C.: Where does “science faction” end and “science fiction” begin within the novel?
J.B.: Publishers Weekly called the novel “science fiction,” but I don’t regard it as such. The science is well-grounded. The key speculation is fictional, but it’s also consistent with what we know about Darwinian evolution. The pressure on scientific research by government is also factual—as is the misuse of science by government and other institutions, witness the eugenics movement in the United States that led to forced sterilizations. So there’s a very dangerous mix of competing interests and beliefs.
E.C.: Hominid deals with the discovery of a new humanoid species through the unearthing of some colonial-era cadavers. Is the book focused upon the mystery of what happened in the past or are there current dangers that arise because of the discovery?
J.B.: The dangers appear in the first chapter, when a young archaeologist is killed in the deep excavation and the main character almost loses his life. The role of the past is to provide evidence of what has been happening for perhaps millennia, unseen and unsuspected: the development of a human variant that threatens to supplant us. This raises the philosophical and moral question: Threatened by extinction, would we stand aside and let evolution take its course? Or would Homo sapiens sapiens launch an extermination campaign against the newcomer?
E.C.: What kind of research did you do for your new book?
J.B.: The research was fun. I visited genetic testing labs. In New York, I toured Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. I read dozens of books on evolution and speciation. The challenge was to keep the research OUT of the novel—the idea was to tell a good story that wasn’t inconsistent with what is known. There is a reading list at the back of the book in case anyone is interested in this fast-moving branch of science.
E.C.: Was there anything particularly interesting that you discovered during your research that didn’t make it into the novel or something that you’d like to highlight?
J.B.: The key thing made it in, and I’m intrigued by it. That is, how plausible the idea is of a human mutation developing within an island population, and secondly how rapidly evolution occurs under strong selection. There’s a fellow at the University of Chicago whose work suggests that one very useful gene, the “lactase” gene that permits adults to metabolize milk, has penetrated most of the European population in about seven thousand years. I speeded things up for the novel, but I wonder by how much? We had a tiny hominid cousin, Homo floresiensis, living in Indonesia as recently as thirteen thousand years ago. I’d better add right now that Hominid isn’t a treatise on evolution: it’s a thriller, full of immediate conflict, a love story, and a lot of mayhem. I really laid on the mayhem.
E.C.: What are you reading now? What are some of your favorite books/authors and who has had the greatest influence upon your own work?
J.B.: Right now, in truth, for some reason I’m reading the old Perry Masons. They’re almost straightforward “story.” I can picture Della Street from the TV series, but Gardner sure doesn’t tell us what she looks like. I liked the early Dick Francis novels a great deal, probably for bad reasons: there was quite a dollop of sadism in them, but the hero always pushed ahead, and the romantic subplots appealed to me, especially in Nerve. I loved some of Geoffrey Household’s thrillers: The Courtesy of Death (which also has an archaeological aspect) and Dance of the Dwarfs. Intelligent, elegantly written thrillers. Among contemporary writers, I admire John Sandford and Lee Child, both of whom produce smooth, fast-moving prose. On the science front, I’m reading a superb book by Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth, which should be part of every high school science curriculum.
E.C.: What’s something that you’ve learned about the publishing business that you weren’t expecting?
J.B.: That sixty or more literary agents can decline to represent a novel that gets a starred review in Publishers Weekly.
E.C.: Do you have any advice for aspiring (or struggling) writers out there?
J.B.: They should read the answer to the preceding question. It cuts two ways. And for heaven’s sake, develop a good income outside this field.
E.C.: Are you currently working on a new book? Can we get a sneak peek?
J.B.: I spend a fair amount of time writing short stories for Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. One novel I’m tinkering with is altogether different from Hominid. It’s called The Man Who Knew Brecht, has an artist heroine, and deals with murder growing out of old far-left political activity. (And apropos the previous question: if you want to self-sabotage a writing career, write novels that explore widely different themes and settings. I’ve found this works very well.)
New York Times Profile
Wall Street: Off the Beaten Bankruptcy Path
By Diana B. Henriques
March 24, 1991
John C. Boland, a former newspaperman, labors over his computer keyboard in a brick garret whose walls are lined with vintage paperback mystery novels, while tea cools in a lumpy pottery mug and four cats (one named Mouse) grumble in the cozy kitchen two floors below.
The result of all this homespun activity is Bankruptcy Values, one of the quirkiest institutional newsletters in the burgeoning field of bankruptcy investing.
Let others on Wall Street huff and puff over the prospect of investing in well-worn bankruptcies like Continental Holdings or Revco. As editor and publisher of Bankruptcy Values, Mr. Boland travels off the beaten path, seeking old-fashioned bargains among the most obscure veterans of Chapter 11. "I take a rigid value approach," he said, after hushing the cats and fielding the phone. "In fact, the popularity of a situation is a sure sign to me that it's getting dangerous."
And those signs are proliferating sharply these days, Mr. Boland warns, as more Wall Street players flock to the distressed securities game. "The business is attracting a lot of people whose very presence is lowering the returns. This business is a seesaw, and we are in a terrible swing downward right now."
Some of the companies Mr. Boland follows, while hardly household names, have had spectacular recoveries after leaving Chapter 11. He was an early investor in the various securities of the Todd Shipyards Corporation, which filed for bankruptcy protection in August 1987 and emerged on January 22 in reorganized form. As the company cleared the courthouse door, Mr. Boland continued to recommend its stock, which was trading around $4 a share. But the shares have traded as high as $5.875 in recent weeks, and Mr. Boland said last week that he now thinks they are a trifle expensive. "I wouldn't be an aggressive buyer here, unless I knew something was up," he said. "And I don't."
There have been duds in Mr. Boland's portfolio, too, companies that went from obscurity to oblivion. "This is a business where there is so much risk in everything you do that you have to be prepared to look like a fool for a long time before something works," he said. "And sometimes, you just stop and try something else."
In some ways, that is how Mr. Boland came to be producing Bankruptcy Values. An editor at the Baltimore Sun and then a senior editor at Barron's, he struck off on his own in 1983. First came a book on Wall Street personalities, and then his first newsletter, Value Investing in Special Situations. Through it all, he managed to work primarily from his attic office in the narrow brick townhouse he bought nearly 20 years ago in Baltimore's Fells Point section.
After the 1987 crash, Mr. Boland scrapped his first newsletter and focused on Bankruptcy Values. But his latest picks have already left bankruptcy behind. That's where the values are, he said.
Unfortunately, many of his favorites are low-priced and volatile stocks that trade infrequently and are largely ignored by analysts. Acknowledging those risks, Mr. Boland insists on an extremely diverse portfolio and does a lot of first-hand, albeit reluctant, research. He shuddered as he described a trip through the Nevada sandscape to check out the Mego Corporation, a recent pick.
But the trip confirmed that Mego, the successor to a bankrupt toy manufacturer, is "a real company, with real assets and real earnings." And real glitter, too: Mego's chairman and one of its large shareholders is Robert Nederlander of the Nederlander Group, whose investments include a big chunk of the Great White Way and the New York Yankees. Another big investor and board member is Wilbur L. Ross of Rothschild Inc., one of the best-known creditor negotiators in the bankruptcy game. With the company's share price roughly equal to its earnings, and considerably lower than book value, Mr. Boland has been buying the stock and advising clients to do likewise.
Mr. Boland is also recommending a casino company, the Elsinore Corporation, whose tattered past includes ownership of the failed Atlantis casino in Atlantic City. The company's chief asset now is the dowdy Four Queens casino in Las Vegas, but Mr. Boland thinks aggressive management could spruce up the share price considerably.
That happy prospect seemed likely last year when Elsinore caught the eye of Harold Goldsmith, the co-founder of Merry-Go-Round Enterprises, the retail clothing chain. After acquiring nearly 20 percent of Elsinore, Mr. Goldsmith announced in January that he planned to seek control. But on February 13, he was killed in the crash of a chartered jet approaching the Aspen, Colorado, airport.
That tragedy raises a host of uncertainties for Elsinore, Mr. Boland said. "The main question now is where his Elsinore shares will go." He added: "In aggressive hands, it could be positive. And the stock is very cheap on a cash-flow basis, so I'll stay with it and wait for a spark. But there aren't many Harold Goldsmiths around."
The management factor also figures in Mr. Boland's view of the Texscan Corporation of El Paso, a cable television equipment manufacturer. Mr. Boland recommended the stock last summer but grew cautious last month when William H. Lambert, the company's chairman, proposed a management buyout. No price has been disclosed, he noted, although the company's shares have climbed to nearly $8, from around $6. "It's an arbitrager's business from $8 on," he said. "I've been a seller at these prices."
Mr. Boland doesn't spend all his time poring through corporate casualty lists. He travels with his wife, Mira; to his astonishment, he loved Paris, he says. He fusses with the lawyer next door over the backyard landscaping. And somehow, between bankruptcies, he finds time to write mystery novels. His latest, due out soon from St. Martin's Press, is set on Wall Street but is obviously not autobiographical: it is called Easy Money.
James L. Ross, a former newspaperman, has written about politics and finance, subjects that have worked their way into his short stories and novels. His 2011 mystery Long Pig was nominated for a Shamus as best paperback original. The Last Crimes of Charles Mistinguett was praised by Booklist as a "slick thriller" that "combines the noirish cool of French cinema . . . with an almost jaunty, witty charm." His stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, including the Derringer nominated "Last Night in Cannes." Readers can check out The Big Thrill's interview with James L. Ross here.
Death in Budapest by James L. Ross
JANUARY 31, 2012 by GEORGE EBEY 2 0
By George Ebey
When Wall Street banker Patrick McCarry’s firm makes him the scapegoat after a hedge fund disaster, he manages to find a new position in London running a small investment business. Assigned to handle Chester Holt, an American looking to open a factory making engines in Hungary, McCarry learns on arriving in Budapest that his new client is actually in the arms business. Members of the American intelligence community fear Holt may be pouring fuel on the continually combustible Balkans, sending McCarry down a dangerous path with twists straight out of a John le Carré novel.
I recently caught up with author James Ross to talk about his new espionage thriller, DEATH IN BUDAPEST.
What motivated you to set your story in the Balkans? Does this region hold a specific interest for you?
My wife had an aunt, a poet named Evelyn Wexler, who was born in Hungary and was distressed by the treatment of Jews, although Hungary was among the last to deport during World War II. I visited Budapest with two other journalists and had the comical pleasure of being accused on Hungarian TV of being “from Langley.” It was too absurd, and too much fun, not to work into a novel at some point. My accuser has a cameo as Folkestone or something like that. In fact he was a British newspaperman named Ecclestone. There are other bits of low-level reality in the book. The basement strip club, Dolce Vita, was much as described. The paranoia of the country reflects reality as closely as I could understand it. The nationalism seems pervasive. The economic disorder that serves as a backdrop to the novel is progressing nicely. Unlike my hero, I wasn’t shot at, and the only bureaucrats I met behaved themselves.
The narrator of your story is described as having a sardonic wit. Can you talk a little about the virtues and challenges of molding humor into a thriller story?
That’s a good question. I don’t think there’s much room in a serious novel for humor, even of the dry or sardonic sort. If I used it in a serious book, I would assign it to a character who is trying to evade some sort of reality, the drunken fool who hopes loud laughter will cover something up. DEATH IN BUDAPEST is meant as light entertainment. I tried to anchor it in the real world, but it’s for fun. My first model was Adam Hall, who wrote the high-speed Quiller novels. I wanted to see if I could propel a story fast enough that the reader would be well into a new chapter before understanding what had happened at the end of the previous one. So there are a lot of very fast cuts. The other model was a series of romps that Victor Canning wrote. I’ve forgotten his hero’s name, but he appeared in light thrillers such as THE MELTING MAN. Dry, bitter humor can work in either of those type stories. And I also wanted the book to be very cold-blooded. The downside of that–you didn’t ask but I’ll say it–is that the rewards for the reader are limited. There’s no warm-fuzzy sense of justice done or any other value achieved.
Maybe I should back up to the issues of wit or humor. They’re different things, you know. There’s no humor–at least none intentional–in DEATH IN BUDAPEST. A couple of my books have been described as acerbic. That’s probably a good word here. My novel LONG PIG, from 2011, which managed to avoid being reviewed, was acerbic in its depictions of movieland and politics, but the spirit was deliberately mean and nasty. It has one of my favorite character epiphanies, when the hero concludes that if he can’t help anyone, at least he can fuck someone up once in a while. In DEATH AND BUDAPEST, there’s something of that attitude when McCarry decides that “a needle and soft music” are the usual treatment he can expect from the intelligence clowns on the scene. He doesn’t get the soft music.
You’ve written numerous stories for ALFRED HITCHCOCK, ELLERY QUEEN, and others. Did you start off writing stories such as these before making the leap to full-length novels?
Well, other writers have leapt. I move at an invalid’s pace. My first story appeared in Hitchcock’s in 1976. My first novel was published in 1991. So you see, no natural talent here just waiting to erupt.
When DEATH IN BUDAPEST hits the shelves, what’s the best compliment you could hope to receive?
KIRKUS gave it to me in 1994, when they said Death in Jerusalem”roars along like a BMW in heat.” The PUBLISHERS WEEKLY review of Budapest was heartening, and possibly generous.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY said, “Fans of hard-edged spy novels will hope that this outing for disgraced Wall Street banker Patrick McCarry is but the first of many from Ross.” Is this outing the first of many?
Probably not. I don’t know how other writers can produce essentially the same story–or at least the same type story–in book after book. It’s absolutely necessary for branding, I know. But it would bore me. When I was eighteen, I spent a few months watching guys do piece work stamping out molds in an iron foundry. Why do that with a word processor?
*****
James L. Ross, sometimes described as a former newspaperman who knows Washington and Wall Street first-hand, is other times admitted to be a pseudonym of John C. Boland. Ross is the author of “Bears in Mind” (Hitchcock’s Jan/Feb 2012) and an earlier novel, Long Pig. In the 25-year-old photos on his books, he is fairly good-looking.
To learn more about James, please visit his website.
In some ways, that is how Mr. Boland came to be producing Bankruptcy Values. An editor at the Baltimore Sun and then a senior editor at Barron's, he struck off on his own in 1983. First came a book on Wall Street personalities, and then his first newsletter, Value Investing in Special Situations. Through it all, he managed to work primarily from his attic office in the narrow brick townhouse he bought nearly 20 years ago in Baltimore's Fells Point section. ...
Mr. Boland doesn't spend all his time poring through corporate casualty lists. He travels with his wife, Mira; to his astonishment, he loved Paris, he says. He fusses with the lawyer next door over the backyard landscaping. And somehow, between bankruptcies, he finds time to write mystery novels. His latest, due out soon from St. Martin's Press, is set on Wall Street but is obviously not autobiographical: it is called Easy Money.
The Spy Who Knew Nothing
Don Crinklaw
111.21 (July 1, 2015): p40.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
The Spy Who Knew Nothing. By John C. Boland. July 2015. 166p. Perfect Crime, paper, $14.95 (9781935797289).
Charles Marley, the CIA case officer and star of these nine short stories, is known among the spooks for his ability to get enemy agents to switch sides. A priceless talent. What spies love best, we learn, is spying on each other, and Boland knows that game as well as John le Carre does. He knows, too, the deeper irony--that the dirty doings on the surface are often cover for the really nasty stuff. In one story, a couple offs a troublesome third party, calculating rightly that the world will shrug and say, "He was a spy. What did you expect?" But Marley is a little too bland a hero. "He knew that nothing he had done had made a difference ... all that had been in play was chance." Well, fine, but that's a fairly garden-variety sentiment; we're waiting for a stinger, something like, "But it had its moments." It never comes, though, so the stories, like Marley, tend to drone. It's as though his mind were elsewhere. But they have their moments. Pour a single malt and savor the occasional fine line, like the woman's smile "that hesitated before it decided to go ahead." --Don Crinklaw
Crinklaw, Don
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Crinklaw, Don. "The Spy Who Knew Nothing." Booklist, 1 July 2015, p. 40. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A429089896/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=2fbe990d. Accessed 12 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A429089896
The Man Who Knew Brecht
Barbara Bibel
108.17 (May 1, 2012): p36.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
The Man Who Knew Brecht. By John C. Boland. May 2012. 200p. Perfect Crime, paper, $15.95 (9781935797326).
Tamar Gillespie, a young artist with a disabled husband, lives in a rural Connecticut village in the early twentieth century and paints dog portraits for a living. The village population includes ultra-Orthodox Jews as well as old Communists and red-diaper babies who consider the Prague Spring a betrayal. When the town community board offers a run-down house to a family of Jewish refugees from the new Russia, old political feuds reappear. Ike Shapira, chair of the community board, receives a fatal blow to the head, leading Tamar and neighbors Cubby Stone and Henry Abramowitz to figure out why. The reader knows who did it, but the identity of the person cut out of a 50-year-old photograph stolen by the murderer remains a mystery. Historical-mystery readers who enjoy political debates will find much to appreciate here.--Barbara Bibel
Bibel, Barbara
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Bibel, Barbara. "The Man Who Knew Brecht." Booklist, 1 May 2012, p. 36. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A290065802/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=3130a52b. Accessed 12 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A290065802
The Man Who Knew Brecht
259.9 (Feb. 27, 2012): p63+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
The Man Who Knew Brecht
John C. Boland. Perfect Crime (www.perfectcrimebooks.com), $15.95 trade paper (200p) ISBN 978-1-935797-32-6
The Lake Rehoboth Community in Connecticut--originally a Jewish summer camp now home to a mix of old-line Commies, red-diaper babies, and more recent Russian emigres--serves as the backdrop for this engaging if slow-to-unfold mystery from Boland (Hominid). When the chairman of the community board, free-thinking former New York City shop teacher Ike Shapira, receives a fatal blow to the neck, the residents of Lake Rehoboth put on their sleuthing caps, notably board member Tamar Gillespie but also obstreperous Orthodox Jew Harry Abramovitz and retired NYU philosophy professor Cubby Stone, producer of a redoubtable anti-Soviet play, which Fedya Kargman, an elderly Russian emigre, ambiguously compares to Brecht's The Measures Taken. Since the reader is privy to who killed Shapira, the central puzzle revolves around the identity of an individual cut out of a 50-year-old photograph stolen by the murderer. Those who relish the intellectual political debates of an earlier era will be most rewarded. Agent:Jill Marsal, Marsal Lyon. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Man Who Knew Brecht." Publishers Weekly, 27 Feb. 2012, p. 63+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A282425276/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=9c96f38d. Accessed 12 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A282425276
Hominid
Don Crinklaw
108.4 (Oct. 15, 2011): p21.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Hominid. By John C. Boland. Oct. 2011. 350p. Perfect Crime, paper, $15.95 (9781935797166).
A fine, shuddery beginning here. A team of researchers, digging in a wave-swept little island in Chesapeake Bay, comes across sealed coffins three centuries old. One of them is empty. Another holds the remains of a murdered little girl. Wind howls, darkness closes in--we're up for a great time. The expectation holds as the scene shifts, and a federal agent grills a foundation spokesman about human cloning. We cheer as she nails that snotty preppie to the wall. But doubts emerge as the plot begins to move, or tries to. Likable characters walk on, never to be seen again. Action scenes are stopped midway for numbing disquisitions on thalassemia, methicillin, and alleles, and the heart yearns for Robin Cook. Then comes the last fourth of the novel, with telepathy and telekinesis, and it's clear that for all the gunfire and explosions, the tale is more a blend of science fiction and fantasy than it is a mystery. As such, it will appeal to genre-bending fans who enjoy yarns spun out of what-ifs.--Don Crinklaw
Crinklaw, Don
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Crinklaw, Don. "Hominid." Booklist, 15 Oct. 2011, p. 21. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A271049190/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4a218f6d. Accessed 12 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A271049190
Hominid
258.33 (Aug. 15, 2011): p51.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
* Hominid
John C. Boland. Perfect Crime (www.perfectcrimebooks.com), $15.95 trade paper (350p) ISBN 978-1-935797-16-6
At the start of this superior science fiction thriller from Boland (Out of Her Depth), archeologist David Isaac arrives on Chesapeake Bay's Ewell Island, once occupied by people driven out of the Maryland colony in 1670, to help his mentor, Noel Sprague. Sprague, the expedition's leader, hopes to unearth three coffins containing members of one of the island's first families, who were suspected by their contemporaries of being Satanists. Tragedy strikes after Roberta Gerson, a well-liked young scientist "developing a specialty in Colonial village life," is lost in a suddenly flooded excavation pit. When the receding waters allow Isaac to go below, he finds evidence that Gerson's death was no accident. Meanwhile, a dogged investigator from the National Institute of Science probes the organization behind the expedition, the shadowy St. Leger Foundation. Boland's taut atmospherics, especially in the scenes set on Ewell Island, are topnotch, and the evolutionary themes he explores are easily accessible to nonscientists. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Hominid." Publishers Weekly, 15 Aug. 2011, p. 51. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A265021976/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=aa4fa9d9. Accessed 12 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A265021976
Death in Jerusalem
241.23 (June 6, 1994): p59.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1994 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Stockholder Donald McCarry finds himself in the middle of a fishin financial deal in this wry, intelligent Wall Street mystery. McCarry, seen before in Rich Man's Blood, has a cordial business relationship with Harry Brickman, who is looking for investors to back Agritech, a start-up agricultural company in Israel. McCarry goes to Israel with Brickman to check Agritech out, and, almost immediately, Brickman is kidnapped, apparently by Palestinian terrorists. As he waits for either a ransom note or news of Brickman's death, MaCarry learns from Agritech president Dov Levy and his assistant Esther Sennesh, whose relationship with Brickman may have been more than professional, that Agritech is part of a financial scam. But he doesn't know Brickman's place in the scheme--originator or victim. With deft sleigh-offhand, Boland, a former editor at Barron's, keeps the real solution out of sight and, in the brief, passionate affair of McCarry and Sennesh, creates a microcosm of the broader union he sets up between the two wildly different worlds of Wall Street and Israel, both of which he portrays with convincing authenticity. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Death in Jerusalem." Publishers Weekly, 6 June 1994, p. 59. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A15426640/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b3899ee0. Accessed 12 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A15426640
Rich Man's Blood
240.21 (May 24, 1993): p72+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1993 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
John C. Boland. St. Martin's/Dunne, $17.95 (240p) ISBN 0-312-09371-3
Two separate sections of narrative fail to gel in this intriguing yet imperfect work by the author of Easy Money. Yet a resultant whole emerges as quite readable, benefiting from lean prose that allows familial warfare to simmer gently beneath the surface. If former Barrons' editor Boland chose to jettison the mystery trappings he only half-heartedly pursues, his writing style and his subplots packed with characters defined and emotionally disabled by corporate life would stand comparison with Ward Just and other chroniclers of the American businessman. Richard Welles works for the Baltimore investment firm founded by his autocratic father, who, if his waning influence remains resolute, will leave it all to Richard's wastrel older brother. The firm's tenuous position isn't helped by the floundering fortunes of Richard's client Stu Harris, whose Louisiana shipping company has purchased a fleet of vessels from a con man holding no clear title. The employee responsible for the bogus sale is murdered, at which point the author shifts gears by having Richard return to Baltimore in time to witness a hostile takeover of his father's company. The reader must asume events in Louisiana and Maryland are somehow linked, but plot connections are threadbare, and over-long explanations of financial matters, while often necessary, slow the narrative. Boland does far better when he explores Richard's inner workings; he excells in rendering epiphanies and, more impressively, in the painstaking creation of a sympathetic character from a dense tangle of inner conflicts.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Rich Man's Blood." Publishers Weekly, 24 May 1993, p. 72+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A13831784/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=eee72821. Accessed 12 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A13831784
Easy Money
238.23 (May 24, 1991): p49.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1991 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Financial writer Boland hits pay dirt with this sparkling first novel featuring greed, vengeance and murder on Wall Street. In short order, Ben McCarthy, new partner in the respected portfolio-management firm of Canning & McCarthy, confronts a rash of problems: the burglary of the firm's office (although nothing seems to have been stolen); the disappearance of wise, cautious senior partner Jack Canning; and the discovery that Jack seems to have invested heavily and uncharacteristically in a near-bankrupt company whose stock suddenly shoots up at rumors of a takeover bid. The likelihood of SEC insider-trading charges almost ruins the firm; a broker friend of Canning's is murdered; the West Village townhouse Ben shares with his artist wife is vandalized. And all that is just for starters. Likable Ben uses wits and courage to thwart his unknown tormentors, attempting to spoil the coup he suspects they're planning. The wild rise of the ticker tape in the penultimate scene adds a suspenseful climax to this satisfying tale. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Easy Money." Publishers Weekly, 24 May 1991, p. 49. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A10827745/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=40fee7e0. Accessed 12 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A10827745
Death in Budapest
259.1 (Jan. 2, 2012): p62.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Death in Budapest
James L. Ross. Perfect Crime (www.perfectcrimebooks.com), $9.95 trade paper
(182p) ISBN 978-1-935797-17-3
Fans of hard-edged spy novels will hope that this outing for disgraced Wall Street banker Patrick McCarry is but the first of many from Ross (Long Pig). When McCarry's firm makes him the scapegoat after a hedge fund disaster, he manages to find a new position in London running a small investment business. Assigned to handle Chester Holt, an American looking to open a factory making engines in Hungary, McCarry learns on arriving in Budapest that his new client is actually in the arms business. Members of the American intelligence community fear Holt may be pouring fuel on the continually combustible Balkans. Naturally, the job turns dangerous, with twists straight out of a John le Carre novel. The narrator's sardonic wit ("The skyway began to fill up with other nightcap drinkers, no more than half of them well-dressed prostitutes") helps keep the tone from getting too gloomy, despite the story's basic darkness. (Feb.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Death in Budapest." Publishers Weekly, 2 Jan. 2012, p. 62. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A276437010/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d8485fa3. Accessed 12 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A276437010
Suppose There Is Nothing: A Wall Street Mystery
264.17 (Apr. 24, 2017): p69.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Suppose There Is Nothing: A Wall Street Mystery
James L. Ross. Perfect Crime, $15 trade paper
(314p) ISBN 978-1-935797-76-0
Near the start of this snappy mystery from Ross (The Last Crimes of Charles Mistinguett), stockbroker John McCarthy, who works for the Wall Street firm of Magee & Temple, leaves a Christmas party in Manhattan's financial district just as a woman plummets to her death in front of him. Margaret Bird was a partner at a failed firm who had recently split from her fiance, so suicide seems entirely plausible, until John discovers a flash drive from her in his coat pocket. He's able to get the files from the drive decrypted, but they are only six large but unlabeled spreadsheets. John can't help digging deeper, involving Investor's Week editor Saul Kripsky and NYPD homicide detective Thomas Marcus. John's quest for answers also touches on the lives of his actress wife, Robin Miller, and some of her friends connected to the financial world. Ross generates an enjoyable noir vibe with his snarky hero. He has also crafted a fine puzzle that doesn't require a deep understanding of high finance to appreciate. Agent: Jill Marsal, Marsal Lyons Literary Agency. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Suppose There Is Nothing: A Wall Street Mystery." Publishers Weekly, 24 Apr. 2017, p. 69. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491250808/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=79a05946. Accessed 12 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491250808
The Last Crimes of Charles Mistinguett
260.13 (Apr. 1, 2013): p45.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
The Last Crimes of Charles Mistinguett
James L. Ross. Perfect Crime (www.perfectcrimebooks.com), $15.95 trade paper (202p) ISBN 978-1-935797-46-3
At the outset of this charming thriller from Ross (Death in Budapest), kidnappers seize 56-year-old career criminal Charles Mistinguett on France's Cote d'Azur. "Watching me in the mirror, he winked," Mistinguett says of one of his abductors. "I thought about asking if he had read Camus. Was there room in his brain to even consider absurdity?" To be sure, Mistinguett would prefer to relax and manage ill-gotten investment funds from the hotel he owns. But his new enemies insist they need him for an assassination job. Our reluctant hero looks into why generals who were involved in the administration of France's African colonies might want each other dead, and more specifically why they want his services. Is it because his father was North African? Events escalate from mere ear removal to chases across Europe and tightly written gun battles. A delight for anyone who enjoys French crime cinema from the 1970s--it feels that finely and perfectly aged. Agent: Jill Marsal, Marsal Lyons Literary Agency. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Last Crimes of Charles Mistinguett." Publishers Weekly, 1 Apr. 2013, p. 45. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A324980198/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a5b8e2de. Accessed 12 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A324980198
The Last Crimes of Charles Mistinguett
Bill Ott
109.17 (May 1, 2013): p31+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
The Last Crimes of Charles Mistinguett. 8y James L Ross. May 2013.202p. Perfect Crime, paper, $15.95 (9781935797463).
"I was abducted on Tuesday, the second evening of October, and became an accomplice to murder on Friday." So testifies fiftysomething Charles Mistinguett, a shady financial consultant, hotelier on the Cote d'Azur, and semiretired crook. Unfortunately, his past has come back to haunt him in the form of a visit from an aging thug, who hopes to blackmail Charles into committing a simple little murder. Charles demurs, and soon enough he has become the Ping-Pong ball in a spirited contest between several officials of the French government who have something to hide about their involvement with an African dictator. Charles is everybody's fall guy, but he's not quite ready to fall and definitely not ready to see his mistress, daughter, and son fall with him. This slick thriller combines the noirish cool of French cinema (think Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai) with an almost jaunty, witty charm (Cary Grant in 7b Catch a Thief and Charade). Stylishly written and cleverly plotted crime fiction.--Bill Ott
Ott, Bill
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Ott, Bill. "The Last Crimes of Charles Mistinguett." Booklist, 1 May 2013, p. 31+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A332021790/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=635faca8. Accessed 12 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A332021790
THE MARGIN
by John C. Boland
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KIRKUS REVIEW
No good deed goes unpunished. Barely working investment banker Richard Welles and his wife, Anne, still traumatized after being raped by a friend of Richard's, rescue mega-developer Harry Wollenschaft's daughter from a plane crash. Their reward: Harry's velvety invitation to Richard to look into a Las Vegas investment he's considering and his insistence that Richard check out an upscale housing community stalled by protestors on a Chesapeake island. Then it's time for the anonymous phone calls insinuating that Ambrose & Welles ought to keep far away from Harry Wollenschaft, and it's all downhill from thereuntil the collapse, not of Harry's financial empire but of his house, firebombed presumably by the same person who brought down his daughter's plane. As Richard burns up the phone lines trying to figure out who's got it in for Harry, he discovers, unsurprisingly, that the list is longer than a major corporation's annual report. Drier, too, in stretches, since the suspects clustered around Harry are a lot less interesting than Richard and his troubled wifeor than their own get-rich-quick schemes. Richard's second case (Rich Man's Blood, 1993) should do best with people who skip the O.J. headlines and go straight for the financial pages.
Pub Date: Sept. 13th, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-13120-8
Page count: 256pp
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 20th, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1st, 1995