Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "titles"

Guest blogging on A Book Blogger's Diary, I write about why my publishers like to have a new title for the same book in almost every country...Choosing one is almost as hard as writing the book itself... Almost.

Each of Cara Black’s titles takes her computer-security PI Aimee Leduc on the trail of a murder in a different quartier of Paris -- Montmartre, Clichy, Bastille. Aren't those names alone enough to make you want to read them? The latest is Murder in the Latin Quarter, where Aimee tries to trace a Haitian woman who turns up in her office to tell her that she’s her sister. One of the pleasures of a long, developing series like Black’s is that we’ve come to know the detective and her family backstory – radical mother and police detective father – over the course of eight previous books, giving the appearance of a putative sister an extra sting beyond the impetus it gives to the plot of Murder in the Latin Quarter. In much the same way, we’re getting a gradual underground tour of the real Paris. As Cara points out, she has 11 arrondissements (districts) to go. I hope that at that point she won't quit: Paris has a lot of suburbs.

How long did it take you to get published? Three and a half years.

Would you recommend any books on writing? Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey

What’s a typical writing day? Up early, coffee, feed the dog and hit the laptop for several hours. I take a break during the day then at four o'clock it's more coffee and back at the laptop. I re-read and revise the morning's work or often continue a scene working for as long as it takes.

Plug your latest book. What’s it about? Why’s it so great? Murder in the Latin Quarter takes place in September 1997 set against the aftermath of Princess Diana's death. A woman claiming to be Aimée's half sister disappears and in trying to find her Aimée discovers the body of a visiting Haitian professor at one of the Grands Ecole's surrounded by a ritual circle of salt. Her investigation leads to back door politics involving the World Bank, the IMF, human traffikers and personal insight into her own past. Murder in the Latin Quarter gave me a chance to explore and go deep into areas of the Left Bank I'd never known about before. The faded charm of the still intellectual center, the old Roman baths, the quarries under old Roman roads used and renamed today.

How much of what you do is: a) formula dictated by the genre within which you write? b) formula you developed yourself and stuck with? c) as close to complete originality as it’s possible to get each time? I'm not sure this is a strict answer but one of the reasons I love reading crime fiction stems from knowing that the framework, ie. an investigation, provides a map to follow in the story. The books I read use this framework in a different, fresh way and provide a resolution. Some form of justice is served. So that's what I aim for in my books, something we get so little of in real life. Since each of my nine books have Murder in the title, it's a bit of a given, that it's a murder investigation. Aimée works in computer security and it's a challenge for me to involve her with murder in each book and make it plausible. It helps that she's a licensed PI, has a background in criminal investigations previously, so she's got the skill set and background. She gave up criminal investigation after her father's death in a bombing during surveillance. In each book, she's on a journey - an inner one and solving the crime.

What’s your favorite sentence in all literature, and why? Well, one of my favorite beginning lines is: The camel died at noon. From The Key to Rebecca by Ken Follett. I mean after that one sentence how can you put that book down.

What’s the best descriptive image in all literature? Something Dostoyevski said about 'don't tell me the moon is shining, show me moon glinting on a piece of broken glass.'

Who’s the greatest stylist currently writing? Alan Furst Marguerite Duras when she was alive

Who’s the greatest plotter currently writing? Phillip Kerr knocks me out.

How much research is involved in each of your books? Tons. More than you want to know. But that's what I love about writing a book set in Paris. I need to know the weather, the politics, what's on sale in the newspaper that day, the street fashion, the music, the clubs, the new Vespa model, computer technology, what's in season at the market, everything for that time, that day in Paris in 1997. So it's semi-historical in a way given that it happened more than ten years ago. But then there's the older historical research I do in the archives of that quartier, this particular district of Paris; what happened here in the 1700's, which King built this, the origin of a street name, who built this Metro station, when did this sewer line connect, when did the quarries get sealed over, accounts of life here during the German Occupation, interviews with police, private detectives, the local café owner. It's endless because I'm always finding a piece of gold, - an overheard conversation, an old newspaper article, a 'nugget' at the last minute before I head to the airport that deepens the story, adds another layer or spins in a different plot direction or becomes the seed of the next book.

Where’d you get the idea for your main character? I knew I couldn't write as a French woman -- can't even tie my scarf properly -- but I'd met a female detective in Paris who ran her own agency. Through her I met several other female detectives of all ages who gave me unique insights. Let's face it, a detective in the traditional mold is a loner, an outsider to society and that's Aimée. In a way she's half-American, half-French neither fish nor fowl but being half-French gives her a unique fashion sense. She has elements of my friend, a Parisenne who wear heels even to the Commissariat after her apartment was burgled, the woman you see on the street rushing into a cafe, a contemporary woman living in a vibrant city layered by history. Paris has twenty arrondissements -- I've got eleven more to go.

What’s the strangest thing that happened to you on a book tour? I had a stalker. He attended several book signings in San Francisco where I live. He'd sit in the front row, close his eyes, then at the q+a ask detailed questions about Paris streets and before I could answer pull out his maps and answer the question himself. He'd follow me to the parking lot talking about Paris. Asking me where I stayed and foolishly I told him the street name one time. Lo and behold, he showed up in Paris at the Red Wheelbarrow bookstore in the Marais the night of my signing. He asked the bookstore owners how to reach me since he'd walked up and down the street and hadn't 'seen' me and acted so weird they almost cancelled the signing. He showed up later in the bookstore with his 80 year old mother, a bag of chocolates and no questions for once! We never could figure that out.

Writers live in their heads. What may be travel to you is location-scouting for me. In some ways, I’m never where I am. I’m imagining that place on the page in a future book. It won’t exist until I’ve written about it.

I was standing on a deserted bridge across the Rhine in the Swiss town of Rheinfelden a couple of weeks ago in the evening twilight. The river flowed very fast. The rain was steady. It patterned the field-grey surface of the water in scattered patches, so that it seemed as though the current slid beneath thin sheets of slow-moving, melting ice.

A woman went by on a bicycle, its tires making a subdued splatter in the puddles. Along one bank, a row of medieval buildings backed onto the river, overhanging it like the brighter constructions of Florence leaning toward the Arno. Somewhere on the other bank, a train went by. In the middle of the river, the 100-year-old bridge touched the head of a small wooded island. I went into the stand of pines.

“This is where they’ll meet,” I thought.

I don’t yet know who “they” are. I know that one of them is my father. Will be my father. I have in mind a plot, you see, for a thriller set in Italy and quiet points north. With the main character based on my father, who did secret work for the British government when I was growing up and traveled frequently in such places.

I don’t yet know quite how that plot will play out. In many respects, the places I find will build the plot for me. They’ll give me exciting spots that are spurs to action scenes. They’ll show me clandestine places that demand secret meetings. They’ll lead me to introspective moments for my characters.

Novels have to bubble like this for years. Just because I’m writing a book a year doesn’t mean that’s how long a book takes. Each of my Palestinian crime novels is based on ideas that fermented over more than a decade as a foreign correspondent here in Jerusalem. The novel I just shipped off to my agent, which is set in central Europe in 1791, was a seed planted in conversations with my wife while we traveled in Austria and the Czech Republic in 2003.

When my second novel, “A Grave in Gaza”, was published, people asked me if I’d been to Gaza especially for the book. Well, I made a couple of return trips to check that I remembered locations correctly. But I’d been in Gaza at least a few days a month – often more – for 11 years, by the time I wrote that book in 2006. If I hadn’t, a few days or even weeks scouting around Gaza wouldn’t have been enough.

Sometimes I see this fictionalizing of the reality around me as a psychological flaw. On the island in the Rhine, I might just as easily have thought “Oh, how peaceful. How lucky I am to be traveling at someone else’s expense in places I’d never otherwise have been. How wonderful that this is called work, that I can feel a creative surge here in this place.” I might also have looked at my watch and thought, “I’m lonely. At home now it’ll be the boy’s bathtime. Soon he’ll be in bed.”

I thought all of those things. But they won’t put words on the page or bread on the table.

I wandered up the main street of old Rheinfelden, cobbled and slick and empty. I stopped into a men’s store and bought a lightweight, blue raincoat.

“This is what he’ll wear.”

Back to the Hotel Schuetzen. I ate two little round steaks of Seeteufel. The frothy yellow vinegar sauce on the fish was one of the most delicious things I’ve ever tasted. I almost thought, “This is what he’ll eat.” But the character I envisage will be on a British government salary, so he’ll have to be a little more frugal. I was pleased, instead, to think: “This is the life, Matthew, my boy. This is the bloody life.”

(I posted this earlier today on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog.)

Thriller titles often seem designed to confuse prospective readers. Pick up a book by a well-known author, read the title which is something like “Better Off Dead,” and you’re likely to think: “Did I already read that one?

It seems to me titles in the thriller world have moved away from any kind of descriptive or even tangential link to the plot or characters of the book. They have become in many cases an adjunct to the cover design. A “blurb” (the laudatory comments dashed all over the jacket by other writers or reviewers) distilled to two or three words. As though the title were only there as encouragement to a purchase, rather than being part of the book itself.

There are plenty of examples among today’s top writers. But let’s take the example of Lee Child’s excellent Jack Reacher novels. I just caught up on a couple I’d missed. They’re called “Without Fail” and “Nothing to Lose.”

“Without Fail” is about a plot to assassinate the Vice President of the US. I couldn’t tell you why it’s called “Without Fail.” As far as I remember, no one says “without fail” or tells Reacher he has to do something “without fail.” He drinks coffee at every opportunity – without fail, you might say – but I don’t think that’s why Child called the book “Without Fail.”

In “Nothing to Lose” Reacher finds himself in rural Colorado investigating a dead body he stumbles across in the desert. I was left unsure which of the characters had “nothing to lose.” Perhaps it was Reacher, or the people (no spoilers here) who turn out to be involved in the thing he’s investigating. Or maybe it’s the reader in the airport bookshop…

In any case, these latest two come on the back of my earlier Reacher reading, where I pondered why “Running Blind” was called “Running Blind” (despite the tagline on the cover which said something like, “Reacher doesn’t know what the hells’ going on, in fact he’s RUNNING BLIND”. Even though Reacher seemed to know what was going to happen in that book a long time before everyone else.) I still don’t know why “Worth Dying For” was called “Worth Dying For,” because Reacher never seems about to die and the people who actually die do so for despicable reasons that aren’t worth dying for.

“61 Hours” was called “61 Hours” because it took the form of a countdown. But why 61 hours? Pretty arbitrary, but at least when I stand before a shelf of Child books in a store I’m able to remember that I’ve read that one. Otherwise I get confused. It’s almost as though publishers want thrillers to have such vague titles that befuddled readers will buy the same book twice.

My novels have titles related to the theme or events or characters of the book. If you’re looking at a shelf of my books and you’ve read some of them, you’ll recall that “A Grave in Gaza” was the one set in Gaza; that “The Collaborator of Bethlehem” was about a collaborator and was set in Bethlehem. “The Samaritan’s Secret” was about a secret held by a Samaritan. If you haven’t read “The Fourth Assassin,” you’ll run mentally through the books you have read and think: “They didn’t have four assassins in them, but this one does, so I haven’t read it yet. Let’s buy it.” And you wouldn’t come to the end of the book saying to yourself: “Hey, I only counted three assassins,” or “Hey, there weren’t any assassins in the book at all. Were there?”

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.