I first met Ridley Pearson in 1988 on his tour for Undercurrents, as he, along with Lou Boldt and Daphne Matthews, made there way to Tower Books in east Portland. It was my first author signing and I was electrified as I stood in line waiting for him to sign my lone copy of Undercurrents. I still have that book. He inscribed it, “To John, watch out for The Angel Maker, Ridley Pearson.” From that day forward I have been a book collector, and as such have every book he has written since.
Boldt and Matthews became regular visitors to my house each year. In off years they would send others in their place, sometimes Chris Klick and more recently Walt Fleming. There was even an odd visit one year by Ellen Rimbauer.
John interviews Clive Cussler and Jack DuBrul about their newest (The Jungle) as well as interviews with Grant Blackwood and Kerry Frey from the Adventure Writer’s Competition.
Click to see the fun that was had in Arizona at the 2010 Cusslercon!
Today is the official laydown date for THE JUNGLE, so I thought I’d give Jack DuBrul a call and see how he feels about his latest collaboration with Clive Cussler. It seemed a shame to take him away from his writing, but I always enjoy talking with him.
Jack says that THE JUNGLE is probably his favorite Oregon Files book, and he sounds pleased with the twist he adds to the ending of the story.
From the “news fit to print” category, Phil Mercer lives! Jack is “hard” at work on the long awaited new Phil Mercer story. He is unwilling to share his working title, but did say that I can report that the story revolves around the global warming controversy, and starts with the long lost aviation pioneer, Amelia Earhart. As a long time fan of the series I was pleased to learn last fall that Jack would take a break from the Oregon Files to flesh out the Mercer tale that has been rattling around in his head for a couple of years.
So save a weekend sometime in the months ahead to head back to Tiny’s Bar, where you can slide onto a stool next to Harry White, order a Vodka Gimlet and wait for Phil Mercer to make an appearance.
I have it on good authority that he is on his way.
I was watching a piece on CBS News Sunday with the title of ‘based on a novel by . . . “
It featured none other than the master spymaker, John LeCarre. Few of us can forget the Cold War and the novelists whose stock-in-trade were those “spies” who applied their craft, and by doing so kept us safe.
LeCarre, in 22 novels, revealed the frailties of the human condition and exploited it, building up tension in the reader with characters that lived in the shadows, dark and mysterious. LeCarre, along with Len Deighton, Frederick Forsyth, and Ken Follett showed us the face of British counter intelligence.
Gradually, US spy novelists came to par in the genre created and dominated by British writers. The Scarlatti Inheritance caused Robert Ludlum to be regarded as the first American spymaster. In the 1970s, former CIA operative Charles McCarry began the Paul Christopher series with The Tears of Autumn. The first American techno-thriller was Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October. It introduced CIA analyst, turned field agent, Jack Ryan.
With the end of the Cold War the genre went on hiatus. Spies lost their luster and relevance. No secrets needed exposure, or so we thought . . .! To survive, the novelists had to re-invent (more…)
Author Signed Hardcover. February 2011 NY: Penguin First edition, first printing, mint, new/unread in a flawless dustjacket, signed by the author. Each dust jacket is protected in an acid-free archival quality acetate cover.
John Wells goes undercover in Saudi Arabia in a cutting-edge novel of modern suspense from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author.John Wells may have left the CIA, but it hasn’t left him. A mysterious call brings a surprise meeting with the aged monarch of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah. “My kingdom is on a precipice,” he tells Wells. “Powerful factions are plotting against me, and my own family is in danger. I don’t know who I can trust, but I’m told I can trust you.”
Reluctantly, and with the secret blessing of the CIA, Wells goes undercover; but the more he learns, the more complicated things become, and soon he, too, is unsure whom to trust, in Saudi Arabia or Washington. One thing, however, is clear: If the conspirators prevail, it will mean more than the fall of a monarch-it may be the beginning of the final conflagration between America and Islam.
Author Signed Hardcover. February 2011 NY: Knopf Doubleday Publishing First edition, first printing, mint, new/unread in a flawless dust jacket, signed by the author. Each dust jacket is protected in an acid-free archival quality acetate cover.
From the celebrated twenty-nine-year-old author of the everywhere-heralded short-story collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (“How I wish these were my own words, instead of the breakneck demon writer Karen Russell’s . . . Run for your life. This girl is on fire”—Los Angeles Times Book Review) comes a blazingly original debut novel that takes us back to the swamps of the Florida Everglades, and introduces us to Ava Bigtree, an unforgettable young heroine.
The Bigtree alligator-wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, formerly #1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, has just died; her sister, Ossie, has fallen in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, who may or may not be an actual ghost; and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, who dreams of becoming a scholar, has just defected to the World of Darkness in a last-ditch effort to keep their family business from going under. Ava’s father, affectionately known as Chief Bigtree, is AWOL; and that leaves Ava, a resourceful but terrified thirteen, to manage ninety-eight gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief.
Against a backdrop of hauntingly fecund plant life animated by ancient lizards and lawless hungers, Karen Russell has written an utterly singular novel about a family’s struggle to stay afloat in a world that is inexorably sinking. An arrestingly beautiful and inventive work from a vibrant new voice in fiction.
Author Signed Hardcover. February 2011 NY: Penguin First edition, first printing, mint, new/unread in a flawless dust jacket, signed by the author. Each dust jacket is protected in an acid-free archival quality acetate cover.
Doc Ford is on a collision course with death in this extraordinary new novel from the New York Times bestselling author.
A lot is going on in the trailer park known as Little Guadalajara, inhabited principally by illegal laborers. The park manager is the hired gun of a financial syndicate that wants to develop the property, and he’s prepared to do whatever it takes-but he can’t figure out what to do about the teenage girl, the one the laborers believe has some sort of gift.
When she witnesses him killing a man, though, and runs, there’s nothing left to figure: He’s got to find her fast and shut her up good. Her only hope for survival: a marine biologist (and sometimes more) named Doc Ford, who along with his friend Tomlinson, must undertake a search through an underground, invisible nation…and just hope he reaches her first.
Author Signed Hardcover. February 2011 NY: Simon & Schuster First edition, first printing, mint, new/unread in a flawless dustjacket, signed by the author. Each dust jacket is protected in an acid-free archival quality acetate cover.
New York Times bestselling author J.A. Jance delivers another pulse-pounding tale of suspense where no one is safe from a . . .FATAL ERROR.
Ali Reynolds begins the summer thinking her most difficult challenge will be surviving a six-week- long course as the lone forty-something female at the Arizona Police Academy—not to mention taking over the 6:00 AM shift at her family’s restaurant while her parents enjoy a long overdue Caribbean cruise. However, when Brenda Riley, a colleague from Ali’s old news broadcasting days in California, shows up in town with an alcohol problem and an unlikely story about a missing fiancé, Ali reluctantly agrees to help.
The man posing as Brenda’s fiancé is revealed to be Richard Lowensdale, a cyber-sociopath who has left a trail of broken hearts in his virtual wake. When he is viciously murdered, the women he once victimized are considered suspects. The police soon focus their investigation on Brenda, who is already known to have broken into Richard’s home and computer before vanishing without a trace. Attempting to clear her friend’s name, Ali is quickly drawn into a web of online intrigue that may lead to a real-world fatal error. With unerring skill, Jance delivers relentless suspense in what is surely her finest novel yet in this riveting and addictive series.
