Reed, Graham
WORK TITLE: The Chairman’s Toys
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.grahamreed.info/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY: Canada
NATIONALITY: Canadian
Lives on an island in the Salish Sea.
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | no2018101531 |
|---|---|
| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/no2018101531 |
| HEADING: | Reed, Graham (Fiction writer) |
| 000 | 00896nz a2200205n 450 |
| 001 | 10815189 |
| 005 | 20180801073045.0 |
| 008 | 180731n| azannaabn |n aaa c |
| 010 | __ |a no2018101531 |
| 035 | __ |a (OCoLC)oca11475352 |
| 040 | __ |a UOr |b eng |e rda |c UOr |
| 100 | 1_ |a Reed, Graham |c (Fiction writer) |
| 370 | __ |a Winnipeg (Man.) |e Bowen Island (B.C.) |2 naf |
| 372 | __ |a Detective and mystery stories |2 lcsh |
| 374 | __ |a Novelists |2 lcsh |
| 375 | __ |a Males |2 lcdgt |
| 377 | __ |a eng |
| 670 | __ |a The chairman’s toys, 2018: |b title page (Graham Reed) back cover (Graham Reed is an award-winning author of crime fiction. He lives on a small island in the Salish Sea with his wife and two children.) |
| 670 | __ |a Facebook, 31 July 2018: |b (Graham Reed; lives in Bowen Island, British Columbia) |
| 670 | __ |a Personal website of Graham Reed, via WWW, 31 July 2018: |b (Graham Reed hails from Winnipeg, Manitoba.) |
PERSONAL
Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada; married; children: two.
ADDRESS
- Home - Bowen Island, BC, Canada.
CAREER
Author; formerly worked in the legal profession.
AWARDS:Freddie Award for writing excellence, Mystery Writers of America.
WRITINGS
- The Chairman's Toys (novel), Poisoned Pen Press (Scottsdale, AZ), 2018
SIDELIGHTS
Canadian mystery author Graham Reed’s debut novel, The Chairman’s Toys, is set in the British Columbia countryside where he now lives. Originally from Manitoba, he attended a variety of colleges and worked briefly in law before he came to BC to live on an island in the Salish Sea with his wife and two children. “These formative experiences,” concluded the contributor of a biographical blurb to the author’s home page, the Graham Reed website, “are engraved on his soul for all eternity.”
Reed’s change of profession to mystery writing grew out of a longstanding devotion to the genre. “I turned to a life of crime-fiction-reading before I learned to drive,” Reed said in an interview appearing in Bookreporter.com, “which was probably for the best since Lawrence Block’s novels had me aspiring to be a burglar (and/or a bookseller). Lacking a proper set of lock picks, I instead tried my hand at breaking into a few cars — possible because I was also a huge fan of Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder books (which usually featured some great getaway-car scenes).”
The Chairman’s Toy‘s protagonist is Jake Constable, a reformed drug-dealer who now makes a living house-sitting for millionaires who have bought mansions in British Columbia as a kind of tax-evasion exercise. As the novel begins, Jake landed a gig working for Chinese entrepreneur Mickey Wu—a businessman of questionable ethics and even more questionable taste, who has made a fortune marketing underwear. Constable is convinced by a couple of friends to host a party at Wu’s mansion, but the festive mood goes sour when the dealer he sold out to some time before (a giant of a man known as “the Norwegian”) shows up and begins making threats. In addition, one of the guests finds a dead man’s body in one of the restrooms. “Reed’s lively mystery debut may be overloaded with colorful characters and tricky subplots,” opined a Kirkus Reviews contributor, “but too much of a good thing is still a good thing.”
Critics enjoyed Reed’s debut and singled out Jake Constable as a character with the ability to carry a series of adventures. Jake, wrote a Publishers Weekly reviewer, “takes the reader on a fast, furious, and often hilarious tour.” “Constable is a likable loser,” assessed Karen Keefe in Booklist, “… [who] definitely belongs on your short list of amiable stoner sleuths.” Roz Shea, reviewing the novel for Bookreporter.com, called Constable “a beguiling character with a penchant for mayhem… We hope to see more of him. He turns out to be good at crime solving, so he could become a detective — or will he return to his old habits? In either case, he seems to know where a lot of bodies are buried.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, May 1, 2018, Karen Keefe, review of The Chairman’s Toys, p. 22.
Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2018, review of The Chairman’s Toys.
Publishers Weekly, April 9, 2018, review of The Chairman’s Toys, p. 52.
ONLINE
Bookreporter.com, https://www.bookreporter.com/ (July 10, 2018), “Author Talk”; (July 13, 2018), Roz Shea, review of The Chairman’s Toys.
Graham Reed website, https://www.grahamreed.info (September 5, 2018), author profile.
- Graham Reed - https://www.grahamreed.info/about
ABOUT
Graham Reed hails from Winnipeg, Manitoba - a little known cultural outpost in the windswept prairies that crystallizes into a forbidding ice fortress in the winter and vaporizes into a heat mirage in the summer. These formative experiences are engraved on his soul for all eternity (according to three top thoracic surgeons and a priest).
After studying language and arcane forms of mathematics, Graham skipped most of high school, dilly-dallied in various universities, and was self-disbarred from the legal profession. He now exercises his demons by hunting for Inner Peace with a crossbow in the misty forests of his island home in the Pacific Northwest. Graham brings tales of his adventures back to his wife and two kids, who believe not a word.
Reed, Graham: THE CHAIRMAN'S TOYS
Kirkus Reviews.
(May 1, 2018): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Reed, Graham THE CHAIRMAN'S TOYS Poisoned Pen (Adult Fiction) $15.95 7, 3 ISBN: 978-1-4642-1006-8
In Vancouver, an ex-drug dealer's plan to clean up his act is complicated by a vengeful former partner, a corpse in the bathroom, and other outrageous obstacles.
Jake Constable's housesitting gig for wealthy Mickey Wu, "the Underwear King of Beijing," is a good move in support of Jake's resolve to leave his criminal past behind. But when his friend Richard, who co-owns Buff, a cleaning business, with Dante, his partner in love and business, convinces Jake to throw a party, that's a bad move, because Jake's former criminal crony, "The Norwegian," shows up uninvited. Matters go from bad to worse when Richard finds an anonymous corpse in the bathroom. Arriving home unexpectedly, Wu throws the duo out, and Jake's ex-wife, Nina, a realtor who got him the housesitting job, offers no help. To top it all off, when Jake gets home, he finds that his place has been ransacked. The next day, The Norwegian shows up with a vague but not idle threat. The whole incident shines an unfortunate light on Wu, the chairman of the title, whose possibly less-than-legitimate business operations occasion a surprise visit from two officious Chinese men in suits. Then Dante goes missing. With such a long investigative to-do list, including identifying the corpse, it's hard to know where to begin. Is the addition of Dante's bubbly upstairs neighbor and bestie Wendy a help or a distraction?
Reed's lively mystery debut may be overloaded with colorful characters and tricky subplots, but too much of a good thing is still a good thing.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Reed, Graham: THE CHAIRMAN'S TOYS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2018. Book Review Index
Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A536571100/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&
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The Chairman's Toys
Karen Keefe
Booklist.
114.17 (May 1, 2018): p22. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
The Chairman's Toys.
By Graham Reed.
July 2018. 258p. Poisoned Pen, paper, $15.95 (9781464210068); e-book, $6.99 (9781464210075).
Weed-dealer-turned-housesitter Jake Constable has a little house party at the Vancouver, B.C., mansion where he's currently staying. He has bigger problems than a ransacked liquor cabinet when he finds a dead body in the bathroom. Just as he and his friends are about to remove the body, the homeowner returns and insists on taking care of disposal himself, leaving Jake to wonder if the dead man wasn't a random partygoer but rather someone there to see the supposedly-out-of-town owner, who, it turns out, has made a few enemies back in China with his profitable but culturally insensitive "MaoTseThong" underwear line. Constable is a likable loser, tight with his friends and still flirting with his ex-wife, and he definitely belongs on your short list of amiable stoner sleuths, along with Bart Schneider's Augie Boyer and Hal Ackerman's Harry Stein. The dark-comedy aspect of this debut will also appeal to fans of Chris Knopf, David Freed, and Tim Cockey.--Karen Keefe
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Keefe, Karen. "The Chairman's Toys." Booklist, 1 May 2018, p. 22. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A539647192/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=0a4604ff. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A539647192
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The Chairman's Toys
Publishers Weekly.
265.15 (Apr. 9, 2018): p52+. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Chairman's Toys
Graham Reed. Poisoned Pen, $15.95 trade paper (264p) ISBN 978-1-4642-1006-8
Set in Vancouver, B.C., Canadian author Reed's quirky first novel introduces Jake Constable, whom his ex-wife, Nina, describes as "a semi-employed, semireformed drug dealer coming up fast on his forties." A party that Jake is hosting at the $20-million mansion belonging to Chinese entrepreneur Mickey Wu, for whom he's housesitting, comes to an abrupt end when he receives a text from his pal Richard telling him "there's a dead guy in the bathroom." Soon Jake is chasing and being chased by his former marijuana distributor (known as the Norwegian), Mickey and his minions, agents from the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, and the deputy director of the Department of Infrastructure Development in the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, who happens to be Nina's uncle and business partner in her real estate firm. Jake, whose philosophy is "life is often less about making good decisions than figuring out how to live with bad ones," takes the reader on a fast, furious, and often hilarious tour. Watching him zigzag through the twisting plot is pure pleasure. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Chairman's Toys." Publishers Weekly, 9 Apr. 2018, p. 52+. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A535099938/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=2e57d549. Accessed 12 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A535099938
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- Book Reporter
https://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/the-chairmans-toys?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Bookreportercom%20Newsletter%20-%20July%2013%202018&utm_content=Bookreportercom%20Newsletter%20-%20July%2013%202018+CID_d7f6035b262fb6e92d3ca8696248b782&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=Click%20here
Word count: 654Review
The Chairman's Toys
by Graham Reed[Buy this book at IndieBound]
[Buy this book at Amazon]
[Buy this book at Barnes and Noble]Jake Constable is a 40-something, older but wiser former millionaire cannabis grower gone straight. Thanks to his former wife, a successful Vancouver realtor with links to offshore billionaires who find the booming housing industry on the British Columbia peninsula to be a prime money-laundering repository, he now house sits empty mansions and condos --- checking locks and alarm systems, fluffing pillows, sorting mail. It’s profitable but boring.
It’s so boring, in fact, that he decides to throw a party in one of the $50 million mansions he is hired to watch. The address for a small party for some friends goes viral, and events spin completely out of hand when friends of friends of friends make a turnstile out of the magnificent front door. Especially when word gets out that the mansion is owned by Mickey Wu, the Underwear King of Beijing, designer of the wildly popular Mao Tse Thong. Wu is known to be safely thousands of miles away on business in Shanghai.
"Graham Reed’s first novel introduces us --- through his wry, urbane and witty writing style --- to Jake, a naive young man who is up to his neck in trouble."
Jake is neither surprised nor pleased when former customers and their friends swarm through the massive hand-carved doors. Mickey’s dining room table has become an assembly line for partiers who are hoovering up lines of a suspicious white powder. Windows are shaking as the DJ cranks up the sound. Dawn is breaking when Jake decides the event is over. He is seeing the crowd out the door when he receives a text from Richard, his co-host: THERE’S A DEAD GUY IN THE BATHROOM. Upon checking the body, they see what appears to be a bag containing drugs under the man’s chest. Contacting the police is ruled out.
While Jake and Richard ponder what to do with the corpse, they look up from the floor of the small bathroom to see Mickey Wu. And looming in the doorway is Jake’s former distributor, The Norwegian. This once-successful purveyor of weed to the Vancouver social elite finds himself the target of the Chinese Secret Service, Interpol, the Canadian version of the FDA and the Canadian Coast Guard.
Graham Reed’s first novel introduces us --- through his wry, urbane and witty writing style --- to Jake, a naive young man who is up to his neck in trouble. Jake would prefer to live a quiet, normal life, but his early-20s escapades rule out that option. He thought he was through with The Norwegian after buying him off with $300,000 when he shut down his cannabis trade. But now he’s back --- an all-towering Viking of a man with ties to the Canadian underworld and the Chinese triads.
We look forward to Jake’s future adventures, especially now since marijuana recently has been legalized throughout Canada. This is not an issue in THE CHAIRMAN’S TOYS, but Jake is such a beguiling character with a penchant for mayhem that we hope to see more of him. He turns out to be good at crime solving, so he could become a detective --- or will he return to his old habits? In either case, he seems to know where a lot of bodies are buried.
Reviewed by Roz Shea on July 13, 2018
[Buy this book at IndieBound] [Buy this book at Amazon] [Buy this book at Barnes and Noble]
The Chairman's Toys
by Graham ReedPublication Date: July 3, 2018
Genres: Fiction, Mystery
Hardcover: 238 pages
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
ISBN-10: 1464211086
ISBN-13: 9781464211089 - Book Reporter
https://www.bookreporter.com/authors/graham-reed/news/talk-071018
Word count: 860Author Talk: July 10, 2018
Graham Reed’s debut novel, THE CHAIRMAN’S TOYS, introduces readers to Jake Constable, an ex-drug dealer who is determined to turn his life around --- but the discovery of a dead body may put those plans on hold. In this interview, Reed talks about the authors to whom he turned for inspiration as he prepared to write his first mystery and the “research” he conducted for it; his fascination with crime fiction, which started at an early age (before he learned to drive); and the important lesson he learned about the writing process that he is applying to the second book in the series, which is currently in the works.
Question: You didn't have as many examples of Canadian crime fiction authors to inspire you as your American brethren. Even so, to which Canadian writers did you turn for inspiration as you prepared to write this first novel?
Graham Reed: This may get my government-issued maple leaf revoked, but the truth is most of my inspiration came from writers such as Carl Hiaasen, Kinky Friedman and Elmore Leonard the first time around. Happily, though, as a resultof writing THE CHAIRMAN’S TOYS, I have come to know some excellent Canadian crime writers, including Sam Wiebe, Charlie Demers and Sheena Kamal --- all of whom are tremendous sources of inspiration as I work on book two.
Q: Having chosen Vancouver as the setting for THE CHAIRMAN’S TOYS, did you have to conduct any specific research to provide the details within the book?
GR: For my first book, the story wended through areas of the city that I know very well. This occurred naturally, rather than by any conscious decision. As a result, I didn't need to do much in the way of specific research beyond getting away from my desk to spend more time in the neighbourhoods and venues featured in the book (which fortunately included a couple of my favourite bars and coffee shops). In book two, Jake Constable ventures a little further afield and gets tangled up in some activities that I wasn't overly familiar with, so I haven't been able to pass off an evening in the pub as research this time around.
Q: How old were you when crime fiction first captured your attention? Did you have a few favorite authors during your formative years?
GR: I turned to a life of crime-fiction-reading before I learned to drive, which was probably for the best since Lawrence Block's novels had me aspiring to be a burglar (and/or a bookseller). Lacking a proper set of lock picks, I instead tried my hand at breaking into a few cars --- possible because I was also a huge fan of Donald Westlake's Dortmunder books (which usually featured some great getaway-car scenes). Since I hadn't learned to drive, hot wiring and absconding never crossed my adolescent mind. In my defence, I always used finesse (in the form of a coat hanger) rather than force, and did it (almost) exclusively for altruistic, or at least benign, motivations: liberating keys from a locked car, or simply popping the locks on my dad's Dodge Polara for fun.
Q: Along the way to being published, THE CHAIRMAN’S TOYS earned some promising attention. Tell us how that impacted the book ultimately landing at Poisoned Pen Press.
GR: My manuscript caught the attention of Annette Rogers, my fantastic editor at Poisoned Pen Press, when it won the Freddie Award for Writing Excellence from the Mystery Writers of America at Florida's Sleuthfest. For any aspiring writers out there, I highly recommend submitting your work to such competitions. It can be a great way to make contact with crime fiction publishers, and the (experienced and knowledgeable) judges provide very helpful feedback on your work.
Q: With your first novel now under your belt, what did you learn from writing it that will change your approach for book two?
GR: Don't edit as I go! For me, it turns the text into quicksand. I wrote THE CHAIRMAN’S TOYS shortly after the birth of our second child, which meant that a regular writing schedule wasn't an option. Days would slip by without me working on the book. To refresh my memory and get back into it, I would reread, and inevitably edit (and re-edit), the last chapter I had written. Totally inefficient. (At least for me. I have read that Kurt Vonnegut wrote and edited as he went, refusing to move on until he was totally happy with each page. Clearly it worked for him!)
I am currently working on the second book in the series, and life has normalized (at least to the extent it ever will with two young kids calling the shots). This time around, I have been able to maintain a very regular daily writing schedule. It keeps me immersed in the story, which enables me to better maintain my writing momentum. I'm finding it to be a much more effective and enjoyable approach.