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Burning Questions
Have you lost track of your favorite authors? If they're not in the Witness Protection Program, we'll find them. We never rest. Sometimes we even skip lunch. Write Burning Questions, 2501 21st Ave. South, Suite 5, Nashville TN 37212. Or e-mail us. Alas, no personal replies are possible. |
In pursuit of Elizabeth George
Dear Burning Questions,
Sherry Adams via the Internet Elizabeth George does indeed have a new book coming out, to be published by Bantam Doubleday Dell and currently scheduled for September. You almost have the title right; it's In Search of the Proper Sinner. (There is a new paperback called The Perfect Sinner, but it's by Penny Jordan.)
Wet highways
Dear Burning Questions,
Michele Ramirez
You have good timing with this question. Least Heat-Moon definitely didn't retire after his first big success. In 1991 he published Prairy Erth, a slice-of-life of American geography and history in the form of an in-depth analysis of a single Kansas county. Houghton Mifflin's trade paperback imprint, Mariner, reissued both PrairyErth and Blue Highways earlier this year. And a publicist at Houghton Mifflin informs us that in October they will publish Least Heat-Moon's new book River-Horse, about his adventures traveling the rivers and other waterways of the continental United States from east to west -- a voyage no one else has ever managed.
Move over, Sherlock
Dear Burning Questions,
Dayton Davis,
Perry's indomitable Victorian "private enquiry agent" William Monk, along with his investigative (and romantic) partner Hester Latterly, will reappear in Perry's very next book, The Twisted Root, which Ballantine will publish in October. The prolific Perry is also author of the well-loved series starring Charlotte and Thomas Pitt.
Butlers do it better
Dear Burning Questions,
John David Marshall
Well, we have yet to find out who was first to conceive of a bloodthirsty butler, but we can report that it was already a cliche when Rinehart used it. One of our favorite reference librarians, Chris Germino, uncovered a trail of homicidal household help leading back to the 1920s. At that time American detective story writer S.S. Van Dine, creator of Philo Vance (think of him as an ancestor of Ellery Queen), published his now-classic "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories." Rule #11 begins as follows: "Servants -- such as butlers, footmen, valets, game-keepers, cooks, and the like -- must not be chosen by the author as the culprit." By 1957 the English humorist P. G. Wodehouse was already lampooning the whole shtick in his novel The Butler Did It. As for the rest of your question -- books starring murderous menials -- we do not have a list of suggested titles that break Van Dine's rules. (Among movies, however, there is Neil Simon's 1976 Murder by Death, but it too is a parody.) Can anyone out there help?
A burning offer
Ultimate High:
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Would you like a sneak preview of an upcoming book -- long before it's in stores?
How could you resist? The first 25 readers who respond to this offer will receive
advance reading copies of Goran Kropp's upcoming book Ultimate High: My Solo
Ascent of Everest, which will be published in
October. In a future issue we will run brief reviews from the advance readers.
Just e-mail us at 
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