Chris's Blog

News On Upcoming Book

2012-01-16T15:21:00.001-08:00

For all of you fans who have been asking, I wanted to the name of the new book is called The Killing House. It features Malcolm Fletcher in the lead role. I'm planning on doing a series with him. I'll be posting the cover art soon along with a publishing date, but for now, I wanted to give you what they call the jacket blurb from the upcoming U.K. edition:

RULE #1: DON'T SCREAM

Four years ago, Theresa Herrera's ten-year-old-son Rico was abducted from his home. The police found little evidence and the case went cold. Theresa's husband has told her to move on, but she won't give up hope.

RULE #2: DON'T CALL THE POLICE

Today a mysterious woman invaded Theresa's home and told her that Rico is alive. Theresa talks on the phone to a young man who is, without question, her son.

RULE #3: DON'T RUN. DON'T FIGHT

The woman promises to reunite Theresa with Rico only if she will follow the rules. But it is the last rule that fills Theresa with horror ...

RULE #4: KILL YOUR HUSBAND AND YOUR SON WILL LIVE ...

Malcolm Fletcher - a former FBI profiler and now the nation's Most Wanted fugitive - arrives in Colorado to help Theresa and her husband find their son. But his arrival coincides with a dangerous and shocking twist in the case.

Barely surviving his first encounter with a suspect, Fletcher embarks on his own secret investigation, with the police just behind him every step of the way.

Stephen King's 11/22/63

2012-01-03T15:06:00.001-08:00

So glad to see that my favorite author, the man who not only inspired me to want to become a writer but also inspired a whole generation of writers, is still riding high in the #1 spot, after seven weeks, on the New York Times' bestseller list. I going to dive into it right after I finish Mike Connelly's The Drop (I can't put it down). Has anyone else read King's new book?

My Year of Reading: 2011

2012-01-01T10:38:00.001-08:00

I want to thank all of your for another year of amazing support. 2011 was a very busy year, having worked on a new book featuring Malcolm Fletcher (readers familiar with my earlier work will recognize Fletcher from Deviant Ways and the second Darby McCormick book, The Secret Friend). The book is called The Killing House and it features Fletcher in the lead role. I'll be posting more information shortly, but it looks like it will appear this fall in the UK.

A friend once asked me how many books I've read over a given year. I didn't have an answer. Two dozen? More? I honestly didn't know. So I thought it would be interesting to track the books I've read during 2011, and was surprised to find I read sixty-two books. The number surprised me because I consider myself a notoriously slow reader.

In any event, I wanted to share with you the books I read and throughly enjoyed. The list is a mix of fiction and non-fiction titles, listed in the order I've read them. My favorites - the ones that blew me away and, well, made me jealous that I didn't write them - were The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow, You're Next by Gregg Hurwitz, The Passage by Justin Cronin, A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, The Help by Kathryn Stockett, Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes, and Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith.

The Passage by Justin Cronin
Henry's Demons: Living with Schizophrenia, A Father and Son's Story by Patrick Cockburn
The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy by Bill Carter
Tick, Tock by James Patterson
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua
Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult
The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly
The Reversal by Michael Connelly
Townie by Andre Dubus III
Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris
Sixkill by Robert B. Parker (last Spenser book)
Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer
A Visit From the Good Squad by Jennifer Eagan
You're Next by Gregg Hurwitz
The Signal by Ron Carlson
SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper by Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin
The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality by Scott Belsky
Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes
Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson
Robopocalypse: A Novel by Daniel H. Wilson
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
One Day by David Nicholls
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
Adrenaline by Jeff Abbott
Now You See Her by James Patterson
Portrait of a Spy by Daniel Silva
Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion by Janet Reitman
Catching Fire: Hunger Games, Book #2 by Suzanne Collins
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave us Nightmares, Conqured Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror by Jason Zinoman
Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground by Kevin Poulsen
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan
Nothing to Lose by Lee Child
The Art of Breaking Glass by Matthew Hall
American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
The Affair by Lee Child
The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
God, If You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem by Darrell Hammond
Portrait of an Adddict as a Young Man by Bill Clegg

The Ending of The Soul Collectors

2011-10-20T08:15:00.001-07:00

I want to thank all of you who have taken the time to contact me via email, Twitter and Facebook regarding The Soul Collectors. Given the amount of responses and questions I've received about the ending, I feel as though I owe everyone an explanation.

First off - SPOILER ALERT - if you haven't read the book, please stop reading now.

Okay, for those of you still with me, let me tell you my thought process when I was writing The Soul Collectors. As I approached the ending, I wanted Darby to come up against something completely evil. I love the endings of movies like The Blair Witch Project and The Vanishing (the Dutch version, not the horrible American remake) - an ending that is completely unexpected and unsettling. Jack Casey and his daughter disappear, and Darby is forced to carry on. I thought this would be a unique twist, a great "holy shit" moment. I thought readers would love it.

And some of you did. Others hated it; you wanted to know what happened to Casey and his daughter. Fair enough. A small handful of readers accused me of setting up an ending that purposely left the reader "hanging" in order to sell the next book. Not true. I respect my readers too much to manipulate them in such a way. In my mind, the ending was the ending. It was never brought up in the editing process (and a lot of people read the ending and didn't comment). I went to work on the next book, The Killing House, the first book in what I hope to be a series featuring Malcolm Fletcher from Deviant Ways and The Secret Friend. (I can promise you the ending to The Killing House is quite clear).

I don't believe in "writing by committee" but I do believe in giving the fans what they want. I've never done a sequel, per se, but I don't want to leave readers hanging. I'm playing around with an idea that would bring Darby back into this world. In other words, do you want a resolution? Do you want to know what happened to Jack Casey and his daughter? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

The Best Thriller You're Not Reading

2011-07-05T09:23:00.001-07:00

While I'm an avid reader (it's part of the job description of being a writer), I'm embarrassed to admit I'm a painfully slow reader. I generally read a book a week, which allows me, on average, to read roughly fifty books a year. They range from okay to excellent. Above this "excellent" category exists are rare pantheon of thrillers that produce a narcotic, dream-like state where time stands still and the only thing I care about is finishing the damn story. No matter what's going on in my personal life - deadlines, social and family obligations, etc. - I need my next fix, damnit, and I will do anything short of murder to finish the book in rapid speed.

As I'm sure you know, such books are very, very rare. The first one I encountered was during high school when I read Stephen King's Misery. Then I lucked out and discovered Thomas Harris'sThe Silence of the Lambs followed by Red Dragon. After that came Pat Conroy's The Lords of Discipline (a work of literature, yes, but it reads like a thriller). Then I had to wait years for Dennis Lehane's Mystic River and Shutter Island. And now, this year, I was fortunate to discover Gregg Hurwitz's You're Next.

Hurwitz's book made an impression on me for two reasons: 1. I know Gregg well and have always secretly envied his talent as both a storyteller and writer; and 2. You're Next is one of the best thrillers I've ever read.

I'm not bullshitting you. You're Next is that good.

I'm not going to use publishing jargon and say that You're Next is a "thriller-ride extraordinaire" and a "masterful page-turner" and that you need to "lock all your doors, windows, etc." Sure, the book is all of these things, but much like the way Dennis Lehane's Mystic River transformed the mystery genre, You're Next proves that thrillers can be works of substance. Hurwtiz accomplishes what the grand-daddy of thriller writers, Thomas Harris, does so effortlessly in Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs: create an addictive page-turner that packs life into each and every scene, each and every line. And if that wasn't enough, You're Next accomplishes a major feat: the story and its characters continue to haunt and linger well after you've turned the last page. It's been about two months since I've read it and I'm still thinking about the characters and that perfect ending - one of the best I've read.

You're Next was, not surprisingly, a huge bestseller this past year in the U.K. (it spent five months on the bestseller's list). Thrillers like You're Next come around once every few years, so do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. You don't want to miss out on this one.

My Favorite Mistake

2011-05-01T08:18:00.001-07:00

I was twenty-two years old when I decided to write my first book. I wrote every day after work, during weekends, vacations and holidays. Three years later and a week shy of my twenty-fifth birthday, I finished.

Part of the reason why the book took so long had to do with the fact that I had no idea what the hell I was doing – or if what I was writing was any good. (Most of it wasn't.) I knew how the book began and how it would end, but I had absolutely no idea what would happen in between, that damn middle part I call the "vast wastelands." I spent many, many months there stumbling about, getting lost and taking wrong turns and detours that more often than not led to dead ends and deserted homes; the edges of cliffs.

The biggest problem was I didn't trust my tour guide and sole companion – my imagination. This was our first foray together, and I was often shocked and appalled at some of the places it wanted to take me. I refused to go. To write about all the creepy and disturbing things my imagination was so eager to show me would open me up to scrutiny. Someone who could make up such incredibly ugly and violent ideas had to be thinking such incredibly ugly and violent things and therefore was – to use one of my mother's favorite terms – "sick in the head." Worried that people would think I was sick in the head, I decided to reign in my imagination. I held back a lot of things. In other words, I decided to play it safe.

It took me another year to find an agent. After numerous rejections – about fifty or so – I finally found an agent who agreed to represent me, a wonderfully talented woman named Pam Bernstein. Pam liked the book but told me it had problems. She couldn't tell me what, exactly, they were – she wasn't an editor, she reminded me – but she offered some guidelines, and I rewrote the book. When she sent it out, the rejections were mixed. Some liked the characters, others like the story; many disliked both.

Pam wanted to submit the book to an "independent editor," a kind term for what some people call a "book doctor." She had one person in mind: Richard Marek. Dick had worked in publishing for a long time before going out on his own. In addition to discovering Robert Ludlum, Dick had edited my all-time favorite thriller, The Silence of the Lambs, and I jumped at the chance to work with him.

Dick agreed to read the book over the weekend. He promised to call me first thing Monday morning, and did.

The book didn't work. I'd have to start over.

Dick faxed me a detailed analysis of everything I did wrong. But what he wrote in the closing paragraph still resonates with me now, fifteen years later: "I don't believe you've really gone deeply enough into your own fear and your own pain; rather than facing them, I think you're using this book to run from them, and that won't work. (Forgive the glib psychology, but it's the way the book made me think.) . . . Writers expose themselves to themselves (it's a terrifying and brave act) and then use their books to disguise what it is they've discovered as a way to expunge their demons. This may sound melodramatic, but ask any writer. You too, I'm sorry to say, must do the spade work and experience the pain."

Dick, I knew, was right. I had turned away from my imagination – and Dick knew it. I was embarrassed and angry – at Dick for finding me out; at myself for not having the guts to write a book that scared me – and I decided, right then, to write a new book from scratch and not hold back a single fucking thing.

And I didn't. I worked with Dick for two years, and the end result was Deviant Ways, my first published book. Working with Dick taught me never to hold anything back. To put everything you see and feel down on paper even if it makes you uncomfortable. You have to give a book everything you've got.

The Year of Magical Reading – Autumn Edition

2009-11-09T15:21:00.000-08:00

Much to my good fortune, I’ve hit another streak of great books that I want to share. The first is a non-fiction piece for all you Clint Eastwood fans; the last – and my personal favorite – an “adult novel for children” featuring an eleven-year-old boy and his dog who have to stop their next-door neighbors from opening the gates of hell.

American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood by Marc Eliot. Growing up, my father watched westerns. I never had any use for them, but that changed the first time I saw Clint Eastwood in A Fist Full of Dollars. From that point on, I became a huge Eastwood fan, so much so that I wanted to name my son after him (my wife nixed that idea, unfortunately). I’ve always been intrigued by the man and have read book after book about enigmatic actor and director. The best of the lot was the biography written by Time magazine’s film critic and scholar, Richard Schickel. A lot of critics (and readers, for that matter) thought Schickel’s account – written in cooperation with Eastwood – was too fawning as it glossed over Eastwood’s personal life. Marc Eliot provides a gripping account for those fans looking for an unvarnished look at Eastwood’s personal and professional career choices. This book is more of a look at the man’s life rather than Schickel’s in-depth brilliant analysis of Eastwood’s films. American Rebel reads like a classic biography: a rags-to-riches tale about a complicated man who overcame all odds to become an international film icon.

Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly. A liquor-store owner is shot to death and Harry Bosch is called in to investigate the crime. Bosch quickly discovers that the dead man was paying weekly protection to a member of a Chinese triad. Bosch sinks his teeth into the investigation with his usual pit bull ferocity and refuses to back off when a mysterious caller threatens him to drop the case. That changes when Bosch receives a video showing his thirteen year-old daughter being kidnapped in Hong Kong, where she lives with her mother, a former FBI agent and Bosch’s ex-wife. What I loved – what I always love about the Bosch books – is watching Bosch’s tenacity in action. The man is an unstoppable machine of violence and brilliant deduction. Nine Dragon is full of action and ends with a twist I didn’t see coming.

The Defector by Daniel Silva. I’m not a big fan of espionage books. I think I’m the only guy on the planet who hasn’t devoured the immensely popular books by Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just not my thing. Yet Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon series definitely falls into the espionage category and I’ve gobbled up every one of these great stories in a couple of days. They’re highly addictive, well written and extremely clever; and Allon is one of the most interesting, compelling (and violent) series characters to come down the road in a long, long time. The Defector is a sequel to the previous Allon book, Moscow Rules. Although you don’t have to read Moscow Rules first – Silva is a pro at weaving in backstory – it wouldn’t hurt and, I think, make reading The Defector even that much more enjoyable. In this outing Gabriel is drawn out of semi-retirement when Russian defector Grigori disappears from London. Gabriel starts looking into how it happened and is put in the crosshairs of Ivan Kharkov, a former KGB agent and Russian oligarch. This fast-paced book is everything you want as a reader: great characters, clandestine meetings in exotic locales, clever twits and a study on the nature of violence.

The Gates by John Connolly. Quirky and slightly odd Samuel Johnson and his dachshund, Boswell, try to get a jumpstart on the Halloween competition when they decide to trick-or-treating three days before everyone else in Biddlecombe, England. Their first stop: 666 Crowley Road. It seems the owners of the home, the Abernathys, have accidentally opened the gates of hell and summoned Lord Satan himself, and it’s up to Samuel to stop the end of the world. Eoin Colfer, author of the popular Artemis Fowl series, blurbed this book as having “a voice that compares favorably with Stephen King and Monthy Python which is not an easy trick.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. This book is unbelievably funny.

And thanks to all of you who’ve sent your own recommendations along. Keep ‘em coming.

Take care and enjoy your Thanksgiving.

My Scariest Movies – Including Some Embarrassing Ones

2009-10-05T16:55:00.000-07:00

When you really think about it, wanting to see a horror movie or psychological thriller hints at some sort of pathology of the viewer. Not only are you, the viewer, willingly and deliberately subjecting yourself to seeing a movie with the hopes that it will scare the living shit out of you, more often than not you’re paying for this pleasure whether it be at your local multiplex or renting a DVD from Netflix or your local Blockbuster.

Why?

I can only try to explain my own reasons, since I normally watch this stuff to relax. You read that correctly. I watch these movies and read these kinds of books right before I nod off. Why, I don’t know, and if that confession wasn’t weird enough, I’ve devoted the good majority of my life and waking hours sitting in front of my MacBook trying to figure out ways to scare myself. As a reader once said to me, “What’s wrong with you?”

Nothing, as far as I can tell. I grew up in a loving household. I didn’t suffer any physical abuse. I’m not some dark and brooding person. I’m kind and calm. I do want the best for the people I’ve met over the years, but I’d be less than honest if I didn’t admit that there have been a handful of people, namely inept and sometimes cruel bosses from former jobs, that I secretly hoped would get run over by a truck (and yes, sometimes I wished I was the one in the driver’s seat). But beyond that, I feel I’m a normal person with the exception of wanting to see a good, frightening movie.

Thing is, those movies are rare. I’m not a huge fan of the slice-and-dice antics of Jason and Freddy Kruegar (although Wes Craven’s first Nightmare on Elm Street was extremely good stuff). I saw Hostel and its squeal; saw the first Saw movie (a good story) but none of the dozen sequels that followed. For me, they were just gory outings. I needed something more psychologically disturbing.

So here’s my list of movies that have made a lasting impact – or scars, maybe – on my psyche. What follows isn’t a movie review, synopsis or thesis. It’s just a list of movies that scared the living shit out of me. I’ve tried to put them in the order I saw them and explain what it was about them that terrified me. If you’re looking for a good fright this Halloween, you couldn’t go wrong with any movie from this list.

The Exorcist

I forget how old I was when I saw this – maybe ten. And no, my parents didn’t let me see it. But we had cable, and one night I set my alarm for three a.m. so I could see this movie. The TV was downstairs, next to my bedroom (my parents slept on the top floor). I had the volume turned low and was doing fine until the scene where Ellen Burstyn throws open the door to her daughter’s bedroom and sees Linda Blair stabbing herself in the crotch with a crucifix. At that point, a voice inside my head told me to turn the TV off right now, but I ignored the warning and kept watching. When Linda Blair’s head turned backwards, my screaming woke up the entire house. To this day, I remember my mother yelling, “Oh my God, someone’s inside the house, ohmygod!” I was grounded for two weeks.

The Shining

Over the years, Stephen King has voiced his displeasure at the movie. In the book, King’s Jack Torrence slowly descends into madness. With Stanley Kubrick’s casting of Jack Nicholson, you just know this guy has a few screws loose. That being said, it’s still one hell of a frightening movie (the musical score alone gives me the willies, which is why I listen to it while writing). The dead twins standing the hotel hallway, the dead woman rising from the tub, the elevators parting to a sea of blood . . . truly haunting stuff.

Salem’s Lot (the 1979 TV movie)

I’ve never been scared by vampires, nor have I had any particular interest in reading about them – the exception being Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot and Charlaine Harris’s excellent Sookie Stackhouse series. I’ll always remember watching this TV movie and cringing when James Mason, playing Mr. Barlow’s evil henchman, Straker, impales a man on a chair made of antlers; the “dead” boy scratching his friend’s window in the middle of the night; and, of course, when I got the first glimpse of the truly frightening Mr. Barlow. What I loved and still love about this made-for-TV movie is just how frightening it is without using gore and blood. And all that wonderful seventies clothing . . . yikes.

Halloween (1978)

That famous mask and watching Michael Myers as a non-speaking killing machine scared me to death. What cemented the horror for me was the scene where Myers, after stabbing a man through the chest with a machete-type knife and pinning him to a wall, cocks his head and looks quizzically at the dead man as though the body is a piece of art. At that point, I just couldn’t take it and screamed. I woke my parents up and got grounded again. Yes, I was watching this movie on cable late at night.

Alien

Interesting story: in my eighth grade class at St. Pius V, one of my classmates, Robert McMannus, said he had seen the movie and was so scared he couldn’t talk about it. So what did I do? I begged my father to allow me to watch it. Needless to say, after what happened when I watched The Exorcist and Halloween, it took me a looong time to wear the man down.

Fast forward to Thanksgiving Day: my father allows me to watch the movie on cable. I’m doing fine, watching Tom Skerritt crawling through one of the ship’s claustrophobic tunnels, a small flame parting a few feet of darkness . . . he’s crawling and my heart’s pumping so fast and hard I feel lightheaded. Then the camera turns sharply and I see, for the first time, the face of the full-grown alien and scream – much to the delight of my father, who says, “I told you so.”

The Silence of the Lambs

My favorite book of all time was beautifully made into one of my favorite movies of all time. Hopkins pegged Lector, and I loved Foster as Starling. And the scenes of Buffalo Bill standing in front of a video-camera, dressed in a “skin suit” and doing the “gina dance”; Buffalo Bill holding his little poodle and looking down the pit and calmly saying, “It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.” – I was glued to the chair. Like the book, it’s a perfect thriller. Nothing has ever come close to it. Well, one movie has, which is my next pick:

Seven

Probably the coolest – and scariest – serial killer movie ever made. The fantastic cast – Kevin Spacey, Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman and Gwyneth Paltrow – and David Fincher’s genius direction of Andrew Kevin Walker’s brilliantly written script elevate this from the standard slice-and-dice affair. I’ve watched it dozens of times now, and the gruesome spectacles still make me cringe. It rains throughout the entire movie until the end – and I’ll never forget that ending. Not for the faint of heart.

Audition

My friend John Connolly, writer of the wonderfully riveting Charlie Parker series, gave me this DVD as a gift. I’d never heard of it, and when I asked him what the movie was about, John grinned from ear to ear and said in his gentle Irish brogue: “Just watch it.” This Japanese horror flick, about a lonely widower who holds an audition to meet the woman of his dreams, is unbelievably gruesome. How bad it is, you say? The widower’s date brings a rubber apron and a medical bag stuffed with pins. I should have expected this of Mr. Connolly, as he wrote The Killing Kind, the only book to date that scared me so much I had to put it down. I’ll repay him by sending him a copy of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (see “Embarrassing Confessions” below).

Jaws

You’ve seen the movie – the original, not the awful sequels that followed – and like me, every time you enter the ocean I’m sure you hear that famous music: “Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum.” When I was a kid, we used to vacation in Maine, and when I’d go into the ocean, my father would sing that music to me and laugh when I bolted for the shore. I never thought they could make a scarier shark movie than Jaws until I saw:

Open Water

Two things I hate: spiders and sharks. The idea of being stranded alone in the ocean gives me the heebie-jeebies. The scene I’ll never forget is the one that forced me to close my eyes for the first time in a movie: the bobbing camera dunks underneath the water and for a split second you see what seems like hundreds of sharks circling the dark waters around the stranded couple.

And the movie that scared me the most.

The Vanishing (1988)

Just so there’s no confusion, I’m referring to the Dutch version and not the 1993 American remake with Kiefer Sutherland and Jeff Bridges (which, ironically, was directed by the same man who helmed the original). Here’s the story in a nutshell: guy’s wife goes missing and he begins an obsessive three-year search. The abductor contacts him, and the cat-and-mouse game unravels into a study of psychological horror. The ending, one of the most terrifying I’ve seen or read, haunted me for days. I own the movie on DVD and can’t bear to watch it for a second time: that’s how truly horrifying this movie is.

Honorable Mentions:

The Whicker Man (1973)

A British police officer travels to a remote island to investigate the disappearance of a young girl. As he talks to the people living in the small town, he uncovers evidence of a much larger deception and in the end becomes the offered sacrifice for a bizarre druidic ceremony. This isn’t a fast-paced thriller by any standards, but the ending pays off for the slow but creepy pace. Dennis Lehane has said this movie was the inspiration for one of my favorite novels, Shutter Island. If you’ve read the book and seen this movie, you’ll know why.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Families acting strange. Weird alien plants sprouting everywhere. People insisting that you go to sleep. Truly creepy. And the ending where Donald Sutherland points his finger and lets out that strange howl? If you know what that means, you, too, were as truly disturbed as I was.

The Mist

A mist covers a small town in Maine, and the people stranded in the small supermarket start getting attacked by various monsters both big and small. Think it’s just a monster movie? Guess again. I saw the movie before reading the book (one of the few Stephen King’s I’ve missed), and I’ll always remember the scene where a group of people decides to venture out into the midst to run to a drugstore. What they encounter is something that makes my stomach lurch in terror (hint: think aggressive spiders the size of phonebooks). But what truly disturbed me is how the movie ends. Not the feel-good movie of the year, which may explain why critics hated it, but the director, Frank Darabont, who helmed two other King adaptations, The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption, turned The Mist into both a horror movie and a psychological thriller.

Cloverfield

In a recent magazine interview about his remake of Star Trek, J.J. Abrams said the key to a successful movie was to take B material and do it in an A fashion. Case in point: Cloverfield, a Godzilla-type monster movie shot with that shaky handheld camera technique made famous in The Blair Witch Project. Abrams produced this creepy monster flick, and it had me glued to the screen. The secret to its success is the same reason many people didn’t care for it: you only get glimpses of the monster. I loved it from start to finish.

The Thing (1982)

John Carpenter’s second greatest horror flick, this one about a shape-shifting alien stalking an Antarctic base. Pure terror and pure gore, and I watched it at home – alone. The scene where insect legs sprouting out of a dead guy’s head made me turn of the TV and wonder, again, why I was drawn to these kinds of movies. I don’t scream or say anything to my parents, afraid that they might institutionalize me at this point.

And the ones I’m embarrassed to admit scared me as a kid:

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

What can I say? Gene Wilder was weird and disturbing and the Oompa Loompas freaked me out, as did their singing. The kid who takes over the company in the end lives in this tiny, squalid home with a leaky roof and sleeps with relatives in the same bed, and it made me want to turn off the TV. Not a kid’s movie, in my opinion.

Batman – the 1966 TV series

No, Adam West’s potbelly bulging from his bad-looking costume didn’t frighten me (although I kept wondering why Batman was in such bad shape). The villains did me in: Burgess Meredith as The Penguin and Cesar Romero’s Joker and that cackling laugh prevented me from watching the campy TV show.

Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)

A bad movie with bad acting and a bad script but those spiders, all those HUGE spiders crawling over William Shatner’s body and toupee . . . I still can’t watch it. I hate spiders.

So that’s my list. If you have some of your own, post them. I’d love to hear from you.

2009 – The Summer of Magical Reading (Well, at Least for Me)

2009-08-30T07:53:00.000-07:00

Summer is coming to a close – at least it feels that way here in Boston, where yesterday’s temperatures dipped into the low seventies. While I’ve always known about global warming, I’m now convinced it’s the real deal. The entire month of June was rainy and cold. July was a scattershot of weird weather: day after day of thundershowers; days when there wouldn’t be a cloud in the sky and then, boom, a violent thunderstorm. The most memorable day came on a Saturday afternoon in July. Eating and drinking with friends when, suddenly, we heard what sounded like thousands of light bulbs exploding in the street. We opened the front door and for the next twenty minutes I watched my first hailstorm. It didn’t get hot enough to go swimming until the first week in August and now the summer is coming to an abrupt stop. But I’ll always look back at this summer as the season of great books.

By nature, I’m not a fast reader (I read about as fast as one speaks). I always have a book going, and I read mostly at night these days, and to be completely honest, most of what I read is just okay. Fairly enjoyable but nothing that keeps me up past my bedtime. That changed at the end of May when, on a whim, I decided to pick up a copy of Charlaine Harris’s first Sookie Stackhouse novel, Dead Until Dark. I’d heard people gushing about HBO’s True Blood series, so I decided to pick up a copy even though I’m not a huge fan of vampires (unless it's a book written by Stephen King).

I’m glad I took a risk. That book marked the start of a summer of great reading. I’d blow off working out, TV shows, movies, meeting with friends. Any spare moment I had was spent reading a fantastic book, and I gobbled up each one in a matter of days. It’s an eclectic mix - vampires, serial killers, a love story. Some are written better than others, some more enjoyable, but they all share one common trait: I couldn’t put the damn book down. I wanted to pass along these recommendations to you, hoping you’ll enjoy them as much as I did. Here they are, in the order I read them:

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris
Club Dead by Charlaine Harris
Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris
Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris
Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris
All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris
From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris
Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris
The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly
The Lovers by John Connolly
Trust No One by Gregg Hurwitz
The Gate House by Nelson DeMille
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Vanished by Joseph Finder

Happy reading, and thanks to all the fans out there who helped make the new Darby McCormick book, The Dead Room, a UK bestseller.

Talk to you all soon.

Chris

What Makes Great Literature?

2009-06-11T14:40:00.000-07:00

The other night I went out to dinner with my friend John Connolly (author of the great Charlie Parker series) and a book buyer for Barnes & Noble, a wonderfully smart and passionate woman who had very strong opinions on what makes a great book. Our opinions differed greatly, which didn’t surprise me at all.

I’ve always been partial to Stephen King. Granted, I’m somewhat biased. When my parents wouldn’t let me see the movie version of The Shining, they allowed me to read the book. That experience cemented two things for me – the power of a great story and giving me that “light-bulb” moment when I realized this is what I wanted to do with my life. I’ve devoured every Stephen King book since and I truly believe that some of his books are, in fact, literature – books such as The Green Mile, The Shining, The Dead Zone and Misery. There, I said it. Those books, in my humble opinion, are great literature. How can I say such a thing?

Because they’re my definition of great literature.

And that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? The books that speak to us – the books that leave marks in our memories and hearts – are our definition of great literature. It’s a deeply personal thing, which is why I’m always dubious of those lists that come out of, say, “The Best Books of All Time.” There are books that I truly feel are classics – books such as William Brodrick’s The 6th Lamentation. It’s not an easy read – the prose is sometimes hard to understand and requires patience – but man oh man what a great story. And really, isn’t that why we all read? For a great story?

My wife and I don’t share the same reading tastes. She doesn’t read crime novels. She’s a Jane Austen fan and belongs to a book club whose tastes are more, say, “high-brow” than mine. But I thought it was interesting when my wife read Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight and devoured it over the course of two days. She then went out a bought the rest of the series and finished them off during an entire week. Why? Because she absolutely loved the story.

What the literary establishment fails to understand is that writers like Stephanie Meyer and James Patterson are important. First, they’re so widely popular that the income generated from their novels allows publishers to take chances on more literary fare. Second, I believe popular books are what I call “gateway drugs.” They hook you into reading. Because of my love of Stephen King, I have branched into other genres, and now my reading tastes are wide and varied to classics such as Sophie’s Choice to more commercial fare like Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse vampire series (basis for the HBO show True Blood). I’ve enjoyed these books equally. They couldn’t be more completely different, but their unifying element is a great story.

So, what do you think makes a great book? What are some books you feel are classics? Here are some of mine:

• Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
• The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy
• The 6th Lamentation by William Brodrick
• The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
• The Harry Potter series
• The Viper Tree by Joseph Monniger
• The Night Gardner by George Pelecanos
• The Hours by Michael Cunningham
• A Simple Plan by Scott Smith