LISA BRACKMANN & DAVID CORBETT LITERARY SALON 9/26

Join Mystery Readers NorCal in Berkeley for an evening with award winning mystery authors Lisa Brackmann & David Corbett

When: Wednesday, September 26, 7 p.m.
Where: RSVP for venue address (Berkeley, CA)
This is a free evening, but YOU MUST RSVP to attend. Address sent with acceptance.
RSVP: janet @ mysteryreaders.org

LISA BRACKMANN
Lisa Brackmann has worked as an executive at a major motion picture studio, an issues researcher in a presidential campaign, and was the singer/songwriter/bassist in an LA rock band. Her debut novel, Rock Paper Tiger, set on the fringes of the Chinese art world, made several "Best of 2010" lists, including Amazon's Top 100 Novels and Top 10 Mystery/Thrillers, and was nominated for the Strand Magazine Critics Award for Best First Novel. Her second novel, Getaway, won the Los Angeles Book Festival Grand Prize and was nominated for the T. Jefferson Parker SCIBA award. Hour of the Rat, #2 in the Ellie McEnroe series, was short-listed for Left Coast's World Mystery award, as was Ellie #3, Dragon Day (and was a Seattle Times Top 10 Mystery Pic). Lisa lives in San Diego with a couple of cats, far too many books, and a bass ukulele.  

Black Swan Rising
Sarah Price who wants a career in politics. But she has a secret past that won’t stay past, threatening her job on a San Diego congressman’s reelection campaign. Casey Cheng wants a story. An ambitious local television reporter, Casey needs to get her career back on track after being seriously injured in a mass shooting. When she investigates the man who nearly killed her, she finds a connection to a group of online harassers called #TrueMen–and realizes her shooter may not be the only killer they have inspired. Casey’s investigation and Sarah’s secret put them both in the crosshairs of a hate group that targets anyone they’ve deemed to be against their cause, including Sarah’s boss, the congressman. Now Sarah and Casey have a choice to make–do they hide? Or do they fight back?

DAVID CORBETT
David Corbett worked for the San Francisco private investigation firm of Palladino & Sutherland, and played a significant part in a number of high-profile criminal and civil litigations, Ballantine purchased David's first novel, The Devil's Redhead. Widely praised, it was nominated for both the Anthony and Barry Awards for Best First Novel of 2002. His follow-up, Done for a Dime, was named a New York Times Notable Book, and was nominated for the Macavity Award for Best Novel of 2003. He followed up with 2007's Blood of Paradise and was selected one of the Top Ten Mysteries and Thrillers of 2007 by The Washington Post. His fourth novel, Do They Know I'm Running?, arrived in bookstores on March 1, 2010. He's also penned numerous articles and stories—one of which, "It Can Happen," from San Francisco Noir, was nominated for the Macavity Award for Best Short Story of 2005, and another, "Pretty Little Parasite" from Phoenix Noir, was included in Best American Mystery Stories 2009. He also contributed chapters to The Chopin Manuscript and The Copper Bracelet, serial audio thrillers that now have been combined in a single hard cover version titled Watchlist. He continues to reside in Northern California.

The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday 
The most notorious love letters in American history—supposedly destroyed a century ago—mysteriously reappear, and become the coveted prize in a fierce battle for possession that brings back to life the lawless world evoked in the letters themselves. Lisa Balamaro is an ambitious arts lawyer with a secret crush on her most intriguing client: former rodeo rider and reformed art forger, Tuck Mercer. In his newfound role as expert in Old West artifacts, Tuck gains possession of the supposedly destroyed correspondence between Doc Holliday and his cousin and childhood sweetheart, Mattie—who would become Sister Mary Melanie of the Sisters of Mercy.

Literary Salon: Cara Black & Lisa Brackmann June 8

Join Mystery Readers NorCal for a Literary Salon on Wednesday, June 8, in Berkeley, CA at 7 p.m. with Cara Black & Lisa Brackmann. Comment below or send email for location and to RSVP.

Cara Black is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of 14 books in the Private Investigator Aimée Leduc series, set in Paris. Cara has received multiple nominations for the Anthony and Macavity Awards, a Washington Post Book World Book of the Year citation, the Médaille de la Ville de Paris—the Paris City Medal, which is awarded in recognition of contribution to international culture—and invitations to be the Guest of Honor at conferences such as the Paris Polar Crime Festival and Left Coast Crime. With more than 400,000 books in print, the Aimée Leduc series has been translated into German, Norwegian, Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hebrew.

Her latest Aimee Leduc, Murder on the Quai, is a pre-quel to the series (June 14, 2016-Soho Press) 

November 1989: Aimée Leduc is in her first year of college at Paris’s preeminent medical school. She lives in a 17th-century apartment that overlooks the Seine with her father, who runs the family detective agency. But the week the Berlin Wall crumbles, so does Aimée’s life as she knows it. First, someone has sabotaged her lab work, putting her at risk of failing out of the program. Then, she finds out her aristo boyfriend is planning to get engaged to another woman. And finally, Aimée’s father takes off to Berlin on a mysterious errand. He asks Aimée to help out at the detective agency while he’s gone—as if she doesn’t already have enough to do. But the case Aimée finds herself investigating—a murder linked to a transport truck of Nazi gold that disappeared in the French countryside during the height of World War II—has gotten under her skin. Her heart may not lie in medicine after all—maybe it’s time to think harder about the family business.

Lisa Brackmann has worked as an executive at a major motion picture studio, an issues researcher in a presidential campaign, and was the singer/songwriter/bassist in an LA rock band. Her debut novel, ROCK PAPER TIGER, set on the fringes of the Chinese art world, made several “Best of 2010” lists, including Amazon’s Top 100 Novels and Top 10 Mystery/Thrillers, and was nominated for the Strand Magazine Critics Award for Best First Novel. Her second novel, GETAWAY, won the Los Angeles Book Festival Grand Prize and was nominated for the T. Jefferson Parker SCIBA award. HOUR OF THE RAT, #2 in the Ellie McEnroe series, was short-listed for Left Coast’s World Mystery award, as was Ellie #3, DRAGON DAY (and was a Seattle Times Top 10 Mystery Pic). Lisa lives in San Diego with a couple of cats, far too many books and a bass ukulele.

Her latest mystery is Go-Between (Soho Press).

An all-too-realistic thriller about for-profit prisons, big-money politics, shady non-profits, the war on drugs — and the people who would kill to keep the system intact

Emily runs a successful bistro in Humboldt County, California, where she lives with her boyfriend, Jeff, a volunteer firefighter. A lot of her best customers are in the cannabis business, but so what? It’s true, firefighting isn’t really Jeff’s main job — that would be flying Humboldt’s finest weed to out-of-state customers. And sure, he isn’t really Emily’s boyfriend, more like the guy she’s stuck with by circumstance. Actually, his name is Danny, not Jeff, and Emily’s real name is Michelle Mason, although no one can ever know that. She’s on the run from her past — which has just caught up with her. Gary, an ex-CIA agent who got her and Danny into this whole mess, has just shown up in Humboldt County. Michelle should have killed him when she had the chance, but now she’s stuck playing Gary’s game — and if she loses, she or someone close to her will pay the ultimate price.

Tim Hallinan & Lisa Brackmann: Literary Salon 8/27 Berkeley

International Mysteries Literary Salon with

TIMOTHY HALLINAN & LISA BRACKMANN

Thursday, August 27, 7 P.M.
BERKELEY, CA

RSVP to attend & for directions. Space limited.

Join Mystery Readers NorCal for a Literary Salon featuring international mysteries set in present day China and Thailand with Lisa Brackmann & Timothy Hallinan.

Timothy Hallinan is the author of the Poke Rafferty Thrillers set in Thailand, the Junior Bender Mysteries, the Simeon Grist Mysteries, and a host of other novels and works! The 7th Poke Rafferty thriller, The Hot Countries, will be released in October by Soho Crime. The 4th Junior Bender mystery, Herbie's Game, won the Lefty as Best Comic Crime in 2014.

Lisa Brackmann is the author of the Ellie McEnroe series set in today's China. Dragon Day is the concluding volume of the series and is just out. Rock Paper Tiger, set on the fringes of the Chinese art world was nominated for the Strand Magazine Critics Award for best first novel. Her second novel, Getaway, won the LA. Book Festival Grand Prize and was nomianted for the T. Jefferson Parker SCIBA award.

Potluck sweets & savories. Limited space. Make a comment below with your email to RSVP.

Lisa Brackmann & Tim Hallinan: Lit Salon, August 7

Literary Salon: August 7, 7 p.m. Berkeley, CA. Make a comment below for more info and to RSVP.

Lisa Brackmann has worked as an executive at a major motion picture studio, an issues researcher in a presidential campaign, and was the singer/songwriter/bassist in an LA rock band. Her debut novel, ROCK PAPER TIGER, set on the fringes of the Chinese art world, made several “Best of 2010″ lists, including Amazon’s Top 100 Novels and Top 10 Mystery/Thrillers, and was nominated for the Strand Magazine Critics Award for Best First Novel. Her second novel, GETAWAY, won the Los Angeles Book Festival Grand Prize and was nominated for the T. Jefferson Parker SCIBA award. Her third novel, HOUR OF THE RAT, “a light-hearted romp through environmental apocalypse,” features the return of ROCK PAPER TIGER’s Ellie McEnroe and a few other old friends (foes?) from ROCK PAPER TIGER.

Timothy Hallinan is the author of three fabulous series: the P.I. Poke Rafferty Thrillers, set in Thailand, the Simeon Grist mysteries, set in Los Angeles, and the Junior Bender comic mysteries, featuring a burglar who works as an investigator for other crooks. Hallinan, who has lived, on and off, in Southeast Asia for more than 25 years, began writing books while enjoying a successful career in the television industry. He wrote songs and sang in a rock band while in college, and many of his songs were recorded by by well-known artists, including the platinum-selling group Bread. For years he has taught a course on “Finishing the Novel” with great results—more than half his students complete their first novel and go on to a second, and several have been, or are about to be, published. Tim currently maintains a house in Santa Monica, California, and apartments in Bangkok, Thailand; and Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Looking for Snow Leopards: Lisa Brackmann

The latest issue of Mystery Readers Journal focuses on Environmental Mysteries (Volume 29:1). You'll want to check out the entire issue, but here's a great essay by Crime Writer Lisa Brackmann that appears in this issue.

Lisa Brackmann is the author of the critically acclaimed suspense novels, ROCK PAPER TIGER and GETAWAY, and the upcoming HOUR OF THE RAT (Soho). She is a California native and has lived and traveled extensively in China. 

LISA BRACKMANN:
LOOKING FOR SNOW LEOPARDS

Lately I’ve been a little obsessed with snow leopards. I’m not sure why. They’re beautiful and shy and endangered, living in a shrinking habitat threatened by human encroachment, by global warming. I’ll probably never see one in the wild, but I like knowing that they’re there, lurking in some remote Himalayan mountain wilderness.

To some extent my obsession with snow leopards is a lot like my environmentalism in general. I’m not really a big nature gal. I prefer wandering in cities to hiking up remote mountaintops. But I like knowing that unspoiled wilderness is out there.

I’ve been concerned about environmental issues since I was a kid. I think it was the oil spill off Santa Barbara that did it – that iconic LIFE MAGAZINE cover of the oil-soaked sea bird. Plus, that TV commercial, with the Indian weeping one single tear over trash-strewn wilderness. Even if he was actually Italian.

On a more rational level, seeing how in my own lifetime environmental regulations have greatly improved the air in my home state of California made me a believer. Also, my summer job of many years, working at the San Diego Zoo. The Zoo is a non-profit organization with a mission to preserve endangered species and protect the habitats necessary for those species to survive and thrive. You can’t help but absorb some of that, even if your job is flipping burgers or ringing up T-shirts and postcards.

And growing up by the ocean. Even if I’m not a nature gal, smelling the brine, digging my toes into the sand, watching the waves, the water that goes on forever, that is so overwhelmingly vast. We’re a part of nature. We need to be reminded of that.

I’ve belonged to so many environmental organizations that I lose count. I spend a lot of time every day signing online petitions. Reposting and retweeting them. Does this do any real good? I don’t know. But someone sends me an email to save wolves, or redwoods, or polar bears, or prairie chickens, or snow leopards, I sign it. Stop Keystone XL, I sign it. Save the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, signed. Tweeted. Reposted.

I drive a high-mileage car, when I actually drive it. Mostly, I walk. Where I’m living now, if it’s too far to walk, I take public transportation. That’s a luxury that a writer working from home has that others don’t, I realize.

These are all small things. I don’t know what the big thing I could do that would help might be. Except for one, and maybe it’s not that big either.

I write novels. Quirky suspense, with some humor. I include issues that I care about. Things that make me angry. Things that I think that are important.

For my third book, HOUR OF THE RAT, I decided that I wanted to deal with environmental issues.

HOUR OF THE RAT is a sequel to ROCK PAPER TIGER. Like RPT, HOUR OF THE RAT takes place in contemporary China and features the somewhat battered, at times self-medicating, PTSD suffering, perennially snarky heroine, Ellie McEnroe.

It’s no great stretch to work in environmental concerns in a book set in today’s China—just look at the horrific smog that blanketed northern China this past January, pollution that was so severe that it exceeded “hazardous” on the Air Quality Scale, going into levels of badness for which there are no labels on the monitors—just “Beyond Index.” China’s cities are some of the most polluted in the world. There are “cancer villages” throughout the country, drinking water contaminated with heavy metals, crops tainted with pesticides and adulterants, massive desertification, dead and dying rivers.

In many ways, China’s turbo-charged modernization has been an amazing success story. But for China’s environment, it’s largely been a disaster. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which was the attitude of the first Chairman of the People’s Republic, Mao Zedong. Mao believed that China’s people were a blank slate that he could write upon, and that the natural environment could be remade as well. It was all a matter of applying sufficient will. The slogan “Man must conquer nature” ruled the day.

Mass movements like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution greatly contributed to China’s ecological devastation, but one also could argue that the severe damage to China’s economy they inflicted slowed down the rush to “industrialize at any cost.” By the 90s, however, the brakes were off. Not only because of a desire on the part of the central government to lift China’s one billion citizens out of poverty and to create a modern, powerful state, but because a small number of people were able to get very, very rich in the process.

On paper, China has powerful and even progressive environmental regulations (and some admirable goals for renewable energy and green development, and a growing, serious commitment to greatly reduce the use of coal). On the ground, SEPA, China’s EPA, lacks the enforcement budget to go after polluters in any comprehensive way, and all across China, factories pollute with impunity. Local officials take kickbacks for permitting projects that don’t pass environmental reviews, and meanwhile, back in Beijing, the central government worries that throttling back unbridled growth will increase unemployment, and therefore, social unrest.

But unbreathable air and poisoned rivers also create unrest. Many of the approximately 180,000 “mass incidents” (e.g., protests) in China last year were provoked by pollution or other environmental concerns. From poor farmers protesting factories that destroy their crops to wealthy urban dwellers who would like to be able to breathe safely in their own cities, these issues cut across class, profession and location.

Also, across borders.

By setting a novel in China that deals with environmental issues, my intention is not to let the Western world off the hook. A major plot strand of HOUR OF THE RAT has to do with the outsourcing of “First World” pollution and the consequence of a U.S. “agricultural industrial complex” that has more in common with manufacturing than it does with farming. (I’ll leave the details for the book)

I realize that this all sounds pretty heavy. But when I was writing HOUR OF THE RAT, I referred to it as “a light-hearted romp through the environmental apocalypse,” and I like to think that’s true. It’s a suspense novel with a good dose of humor, and the last thing I want to do is to be didactic.

Also, in spite of China’s environmental crisis, the country still has some of most stunning landscapes on the planet, and I wanted to share a few of those with you: the surreal beauty of Yangshuo, the wildness of Guizhou, Dali’s combination of charming traditional architecture and gorgeous mountain scenery. Ellie may not be the most reliable tour-guide (she goes to a couple of places I’d recommend you avoid), but trust me, it’s hard to beat floating down the Yuelong River on a bamboo raft.

And snow leopards. I know they are there, hiding in China’s mountains. Even if I never see them.