James Ellroy, Dan Brown, Ian Rankin, George Pelacanoes, Ken Bruen, Michael Connelly, Ridley Pearson . . . the roster of writers interviewed in these pages includes those who have won Edgar, Shamus, Anthony and Macavity awards. The interviews were conducted in person, or by phone, or both. Significantly, none of the interviews were placed before the authors for approval, massaging or tweaking of answers. The interviews were recorded on tape and are presented without rejuxtaposition or revision on the part of the novelists. This is how the writers spoke, what they said, casually, candidly and, more importantly, on the fly.

Art in the Blood

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Craig McDonald

Mystery

Point Blank

Head Games, Complete and Unabridged, Collector's and Library Edition, Recorded Books

RECORDED BOOKS^

Craig McDonald's debut, HeadGames, a relentlessly slick and action packed literary caper novel, was shortlisted for the Edgar, Anthony, Crimespress and Gumshoe awards for Best First Novel. Now, with Print the Legend, McDonald exceeds the extraordinary promise of his debut, delivering a consummate mystery about a conspiracy gone wrong, and the outer edges of creative jealousy and obsessive revenge. It was the shot heard around the world: On July 2, 1961, Ernest Hemingway died from a shotgun blast to the head... 4 years later, two men have come to Idaho to confront the widow Hemingway-men who have doubts about the circumstances of Hemingway's death. One is crime novelist Hector Lassiter, the oldest and best of Hem's friends...the last man standing of the Lost Generation. Hector has heard rumors of some surviving Hemingway manuscripts: a "lost" chapter of A Moveable Feast and a full-length novel written by a deluded Hemingway that Hector fears might compromise his own reputation. The other man is professor Richard Paulson, who along with his pregnant wife Hannah, herself an aspiring writer, is bent on proving that Mary Hemingway murdered Papa. As Hector digs into the mystery of Hemingway's lost writings, he uncovers an audacious, decades-long conspiracy tied to the emergent art movements of 1920's Paris, the most duplicitous of Cold War espionage tactics, and J. Edgar Hoover's FBI...

Print the Legend (Unabridged 12.75 hours)

Recorded Books,LLC

If you're a fan of George MacDonald of Frederick Buechner, you'll love this novel. What is it like to be a teacher-to see one's great aspirations for his or her students bent, broken, or re-fashioned by the twists and turns of fortune? Now at the very end of his life, Robert Henryson looks back on a time of great tumult. Based on an event from Scottish history--the hanging of certain retainers of King James III by disgruntled Scottish noblemen at Lauder Bridge in 1482-the novel follows the lives of four characters whose lives are inextricably linked to one another by the fatal event at Lauder and by their relationship to Henryson, their old schoolmaster.

Among His Personal Effects

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Capstone Pub Group Llc

Toros & Torsos

Hector Lassiter is a legendary crime novelist who writes what he lives and lives what he writes. But Hector frequently goes a step beyond, drawing friends and lovers into the tawdry and turbulent territory of his fiction. Now, the large-living pulp author has at last met his match in the ultimate performance artist: a phantom killer committed to the art of murder… a blood-thirsty provocateur who leaves a string of macabre tableaus modeled on famous works of surrealist painting and photography… Against the vivid backdrops of a killer hurricane that nearly destroyed the Florida Keys in 1935, the Spanish Civil War, post-war Hollywood and the first days of the Castro regime in Cuba, Hector engages in a decades-long duel against a cabal of killer artists… As in its Edgar-nominated predecessor Head Games, history and myth merge, drawing on recent scholarship pointing to the existence of a dark underground of artists, photographers and art collectors that flourished in Europe and United States through most of the Twentieth Century. In a blood-limned haze of love, deception, murderous metaphor and devastating betrayal, nothing is what it seems and obsession and creativity collide in a wicked and unexpected climax that will shake the art world to its foundations…

United States

Bleak House Books

Hector Lassiter is a legendary crime novelist who writes what he lives and lives what he writes. But Hector frequently goes a step beyond, drawing friends and lovers into the tawdry and turbulent territory of his fiction. Now, the large-living pulp author has at last met his match in the ultimate performance artist: a phantom killer committed to the art of murder… a blood-thirsty provocateur who leaves a string of macabre tableaus modeled on famous works of surrealist painting and photography… Against the vivid backdrops of a killer hurricane that nearly destroyed the Florida Keys in 1935, the Spanish Civil War, post-war Hollywood and the first days of the Castro regime in Cuba, Hector engages in a decades-long duel against a cabal of killer artists… As in its Edgar®-nominated predecessor Head Games, history and myth merge, drawing on recent scholarship pointing to the existence of a dark underground of artists, photographers and art collectors that flourished in Europe and United States through most of the Twentieth Century. In a blood-limned haze of love, deception, murderous metaphor and devastating betrayal, nothing is what it seems and obsession and creativity collide in a wicked and unexpected climax that will shake the art world to its foundations…

Toros and Torsos by Craig McDonald (2008, Hardcover)

Rogue Males

In 2006, Craig McDonald published Art in the Blood, a collection of probing, long-form interviews with 20 major crime writers that was immediately hailed as a definitive text in the study of modern crime and mystery fiction. Now McDonald a genuine expert on the history of crime fiction (Eddie Mueller, San Francisco Chronicle) returns with Rogue Males, a collection of no-holds-barred interviews with 16 authors who have shaped and defined narrative fiction and songwriting. Rogue Males includes conversations with crime fiction legends Elmore Leonard and James Crumley (in one of his last interviews); premier stylists James Sallis and Daniel Woodrell; noir kingpins James Ellroy and Ken Bruen, and top thriller writers Lee Child and Randy Wayne White. Stephen J. Cannell and Max Allan Collins hold forth on the intersection of crime novels and the silver screen while Andrew Vachss, Pete Dexter, Craig Holden, Alistair MacLeod, Tom Russell and Kinky Friedman round-out this one-of-a kind collection on the craft of writing an array of mavericks, trailblazers and the gadflies. Men of conscience, entrepreneurs and magnificent bastards, as McDonald puts it in his introduction.

Reference

Head Games

A dark comedy, historical tale of crime writer, Hector Lassiter is handed a carpet bag containing the long missing head of Mexican general Francisco "Pancho" Villa.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Craig McDonald. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Craig McDonald

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Craig McDonald. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Art in the Blood

Head Games, Complete and Unabridged, Collector's and Library Edition, Recorded Books

Print the Legend (Unabridged 12.75 hours)

Among His Personal Effects

Toros & Torsos

Toros & Torsos

Toros and Torsos by Craig McDonald (2008, Hardcover)

Rogue Males

Head Games

Head Games