Martin Walker is a senior fellow of a private think tank for CEOs of major corporations. He is also editor in chief emeritus and international affairs columnist for UPI and has been a journalist for the Guardian for many years. He has written five previous novels—all international best sellers—in the Bruno, Chief of Police mystery series. He lives in Washington, D.C. and the Dordogne region of France. His most recent Bruno novel is The Resistance Man.
“Graveyard of Memories”: A Talk with Barry Eisler
Barry Eisler’s John Rain novels are the “Tiffany” of assassin-oriented, suspense thrillers. The recently released Graveyard of Memories is a prequel to the other novels in the John Rain series. At the story’s outset, Rain, 20 years old and fresh from Vietnam, is a courier for the CIA. He suddenly finds himself threatened on all sides: he must survive the yakuza (the Japanese mob) and other imminent sources of danger. He falls in love with Sayaka, a beautiful wheelchair-bound young woman. Balancing love and the horror of what he must do to survive, John learns his trade craft to become a master assassin. We witness his unfolding maturity as he attempts to stay alive without totally losing the sensitive, soulful and remorseful aspects of his persona.
Quoting from Graveyard of Memories: “I was too young to know that some memories don’t fade, or age, or die. That the weight of some of what we do accumulates, expands, coheres, solidifies. That life means coming to grips with that ever-present weight, learning how to carry it with you wherever you go.”
My Day Behind Bars
It looked like something out of a nightmare—the Fishkill Correctional Facility at Beacon, NY. It was a huge, rambling series of buildings surrounded by chain link fences and concertina wire. I shivered at the thought of spending twenty years in this hellhole—amid society’s castaways, extruded from the world. It reminded me of the ninth level of Dante’s inferno.
I was patted down and wanded. I walked through a metal detector. I removed my shoes, which were examined. I was led by a guard down a long corridor.
Tortured Souls Tell Great Stories
Poisoned by his lustful quest for vengeance, his obsession carries his crew to their demise.
(Ahab, Moby Dick)
The king goes slowly insane because of his mistakes and his daughters’ perfidy.
(Lear, King Lear)
She was forced to make a choice between two unbearable, unthinkable options.
(Sophie, Sophie’s Choice)
Their marriage, finances and lives were bankrupt; and now he is suspected of her murder.
(Nick and Amy Dunne, Gone Girl)
She could not stop remembering the sound of the spring lambs being slaughtered.
(Clarice Starling, The Silence of the Lambs)
Take the character to hell (either physically or mentally), and if well-drawn, the reader will really care about this person. All of us can relate to the torture of being alive in an indifferent world.
Still Relevant? A Talk with a Librarian
Cynde Bloom Lahey began working in a library during high school. She received a Master’s Degree in Library Science from Southern Connecticut University in 1989 and has been a librarian throughout her professional life. She is now Programming Specialist at the Norwalk Public Library.
What changes have you seen in libraries over the last few years?
When I first became a librarian, we had a manual circulation system. Technology has changed everything and made things much easier in so many ways. There are myths about libraries no longer being warehouses of books, and librarians will have to find different ways of staying relevant. Historically, libraries have always been a cultural community center for people. Now, because of technology, the roles of libraries have expanded exponentially.
“I Have Forty Paid Enemies”
Hell would freeze over before I’d do any cooking back then—especially since I lived alone in Manhattan. So I ate out every night.
I got to be friendly with some restaurateurs. One in particular, Jerry, owned a fancy steak house. Jerry was always ready with a handshake and a slap on the back. I was a “regular” who hunkered down on New York strip steak at least twice a week. Jerry usually comped me a glass of wine or an after-dinner drink. You see, Jerry was a great guy—and he was “connected”
Plugged In and Feeling the Fiction
Imagine wearing a vest-like device while reading a book, so that when you come upon a scene brimming with heart-racing tension, the vest emits vibrations to increase your heart rate and compresses your ribcage to convey the tightness felt by the protagonist in the throes of his peril.
Sounds like the stuff of science-fiction, but it is not.
A Shot in the Dark
It was 5:00 PM on a cold winter evening. I’d testified at a Workers’ Compensation hearing and was walking toward my car with an attorney. We were the only two people on a lonely, narrow street. The stores were shuttered. The neighborhood was in a devastated section of Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Suddenly, coming from across the street and down the block, we heard the cracks of two shots from a small-caliber pistol.
Storytelling Makes Us Who We Are, Novelist Tells Rotarians: Article in the Westport Minuteman
Mark Rubinstein (Contributed photo)
“I always wanted to be a writer,” retired forensic psychiatrist Mark Rubinstein told Westport Sunrise Rotary last Friday. “People were telling me stories all the time … that’s partially why I went into psychiatry.”
Now he’s the storyteller, enjoying his second career, recalling 42 years of “listening to people’s tales of woe,” and working on his fifth novel.
Storytelling, he said, “makes us who we are … the novelist seeks to capture the reader, to take him from his prosaic world to one that gives him an experience he couldn’t hope to have in his daily life.”
Rubinstein spoke to his audience about his practice, about his genre, thrillers, and about writing.
Silence Once Begun: A Conversation with Jesse Ball
Jesse Ball’s new novel Silence Once Begun has just been released by Pantheon. His three previous novels are The Way Through Doors, Samedi the Deafness, and Curfew. He’s also written several works of verse. He won the 2008 Paris Review Plimpton Prize and is the recipient of a 2014 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. He teaches at the Art Institute of Chicago’s MFA Writing Program.
Silence Once Begun concerns a Japanese fishing village where eight elderly residents have disappeared. Although he didn’t commit a crime, Oda Sotatsu signs a written confession prepared by Sato Kakuzo. He’s arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to death, yet remains inexplicably silent throughout this ordeal. The novel is written as a series of transcripts of interviews with those who knew Oda, providing different versions of what may have happened.
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