Michael Connelly will say happy birthday to the Mystery Bookstore on Saturday

The Mystery Bookstore in Westwood celebrates its first birthday with new owners Pam Woods and Kirk Pasich on Saturday. All day, they promise food, drink, fun and authors.

Michael Connelly tops things off at 6 p.m. He'll be signing his latest Harry Bosch novel, "Nine Dragons," as long as you purchase your copy at the store.

"To say that 'Nine Dragons' is coiled tight with suspense understates Connelly's accomplishment in portraying Bosch at the cusp of a new world," our reviewer writes, "And though Connelly remains a master at detailing the intricacies of 'the job,' it is Harry's longing for reunion and connection with his ex-wife and daughter, the overwhelming vulnerability he feels as a father, that makes 'Nine Dragons' another standout."

At 5 p.m., James Ellroy will sign "Blood's A Rover," alongside the real-life Don Crutchfield, who appears, fictionalized, as a young wheel-man in the book. The adult Crutchfield, who became a private detective, will sign copies of his memoir "Confessions of a Hollywood Private Eye." Ask him about the drugs and the Beatles.

Things get underway at 10:30 a.m. with Joseph Kanon ("Stardust"), to be followed by Susan Kandel ("Dial H for Hitchcock"), Charlie Huston ("My Dead Body") and Frank Beddor, whose amped-up graphic-novel retellings of the Alice in Wonderland story are geared for young adults.

The Mystery Bookstore has been around in a couple of locations and under different ownership for 20 years. And if it was somewhat mysterious for Pasich and Woods to take over last year, during a particularly dark time for independent bookstores, this first birthday celebration shows that they're on the right track.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Michael Connelly in Echo Park. Credit: Terrill Lee Lankford / Little, Brown & Co.

Dennis Lehane's special edition of 'Boston Noir'

This fall, when the short-story anthology "Boston Noir" hits shelves, a few people will get a limited-edition hardcover of the book, autographed by editor Dennis ("Mystic River") Lehane. Although the series is published in paperback, 100 copies of the hardcover will be printed, with a specially designed black-and-silver cover. This special edition, which costs $100, is available for pre-order now directly from publisher Akashic Books.

Akashic, a Brooklyn-based independent press, started its city noir series five years ago with the close-to-home "Brooklyn Noir." The series -- anthologies of contemporary short crime fiction with a noir sensibility -- now includes Detroit; Miami; Baltimore; New Orleans; Washington, D.C.; Las Vegas; Toronto; Rome; Paris; Dublin; Havana; Istanbul; and more. Oh and Los Angeles, of course.

As many in publishing struggle to find ways to improve on an increasingly outdated business model, independents such as Akashic -- which are more nimble and less risk-averse than major publishing houses -- are innovators to watch. In this case, they're exploring the idea that some people will value the book as an object and pay a premium for a limited-run, particularly beautiful version of that object. A book like this might be seen as a collectible, not unlike limited-edition vinyl.

Editor Dennis Lehane selected new stories by Stewart O'Nan, Patricia Powell, John Dufresne, Don Lee and others for "Boston Noir," in addition to contributing one of his own. The book is due out Nov. 9.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Image: Akashic Books

Donald Westlake may be dead, but he keeps on publishing

News circulated widely among fans this weekend that Donald Westlake, who died Dec. 31, 2008, will publish a new book in 2010. "Memory," which follows a man whose memory has been destroyed as he tries to rebuild his life, was written in the early 1960s but didn't find a publisher then; Hard Case Crime thinks it will catch on now. Publisher Charles Ardai said in an e-mail:

It's a dark existential novel, and a long one, and I think these were the reasons his then literary agent at the time advised him to shelve it and concentrate instead on the more commercial sorts of crime fiction he was becoming known for. But it's a shame, because the book's really excellent -- a perfect example of noir fiction pushed to its limits -- and it deserved to have been published during his lifetime.

Thing is, Westlake's reputation has done nothing but build since his death. Today our Calendar section features a big piece -- even longer online, with illustrations -- on "The Hunter," the first of Westlake's novels to get graphic novel treatment (by artist Darwyn Cooke). Geoff Boucher writes:

The Cooke adaptation is already being hailed as a masterpiece by key tastemakers in the comics world, and next week it will meet the public in a major way as Cooke and [editor Scott] Dunbier take it to Comic-Con International in San Diego, the massive pop-culture expo that is a sort of Cannes for capes or a Sundance for sci-fi. Cooke will be on two panels, one of them a Thursday program titled “A Darker Shade of Ink: Crime and Noir in Comics.” That might conjure up memories of the infamously lurid EC Comics of the 1950s, but hard-boiled crime is heating up in the word-balloon medium.

Superheroes still dominate comics, but “The Hunter” is part of a surge in noir-minded projects that owe far more to the bloodied pulp of Westlake, James M. Cain and Jim Thompson than they do the cosmic melodramas of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee.

And in our Sunday books pages, Robert Crais reviewed the last novel Westlake completed before he died, "Get Real," in which his thieving protagonist agrees to let his gang be filmed -- in burglarizing action -- for a reality TV show.

Before Janet Evanovich brought us Stephanie Plum, Don Westlake was the Grand Master of Criminal Laughs with his hilarious novels about professional thief John Dortmunder. "Get Real" is the 14th Dortmunder novel and proves again that Westlake is the King of Clever....

Donald Westlake will not leave you hanging, my friends. Part of the great fun of these novels is watching Dortmunder (and Westlake) outsmart the people who think they're smarter than he is -- including readers like me. So, trust me, Dortmunder comes up with exactly the play to make this outrageous concept believable.

Westlake -- under various pseudonyms -- published about 80 books while he was alive. I wouldn't be surprised if these projects are not the last we hear of him.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Donald Westlake in 2001. Credit: Louis Lanzano / For The Times

Exposing Hancock Park: Can a 19-year-old touch James Ellroy?

Isabel Kaplan, who's just finished her freshman year at Harvard, wrote the new young adult novel "Hancock Park" while she was in the 11th and 12th grades at the private Marlborough School. She explains in the Daily Beast today:

For the young and glittery in L.A., party-promotion companies would rent out dance spaces and throw under-21 parties with names like “Seduction,” where tickets were at the very least $20, a bottle of water cost $5, and everyone was drunk upon arrival because alcohol wouldn’t be served inside. Think Gossip Girl with less preppiness, more blondes, and more sunscreen. It was because of these outrageous experiences that I decided to base my first novel in the private-school world of Los Angeles.

The protagonist of Hancock Park, Becky Miller, struggles to find her place in the City of Angels. I wanted to write a book that would explore adolescence through the lens of a girl in the Hollywood bubble.

The book, the Daily Beast writes, "exposes the excesses of L.A.’s wealthy high-school elite" -- particularly those who reside in Hancock Park. But for Hancock Park excesses, can anyone really rival James Ellroy?

"The genesis, in many ways, is this pervert peeper pad of mine," Ellroy says of "The Hilliker Curse," his four-part memoir-of-women serial for Playboy magazine. He points, in a video on the magazine's website, to an upstairs apartment on the outskirts of Hancock Park (he's also taken bus tours there).

In the video, Ellroy explains that after his mother's murder, when he was 10, he would walk his dog late at night, looking in the windows of the mansions of Hancock Park, with "freedom to peep, brood, read, skulk, stalk, and fantasize."

He later broke into those homes, looking to touch the fabric of the lives of people who lived there -- as well as the lingerie of some of his female classmates. Which may be a little more excessive than a well-bred Hancock Park teen would care to imagine.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo (left): James Ellroy. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

Photo (right): Isabel Kaplan with her new novel. Credit: Kristian Dowling / Getty Images

Raymond Chandler's creamy crime introduction

The folks at Esotouric are champions of the minutiae of L.A. literary history, and they've dug up some great stuff about the early days of Raymond Chandler.

Chandler, who had been born in Illinois and brought up in England, came back to America in 1913. According to Judith Freeman's book "The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved," it was the return trip to the U.S. that would determine Chandler's fate -- on the steamship, he met a friendly couple, the Lloyds, who lived in Los Angeles. Which then became his destination.

Once here, Warren Lloyd helped him get a job with his employer, the Los Angeles Creamery.

Esotouric details the events of 1912, when the head of the creamery, George E. Platt, was found guilty and fined for selling a mixture of milk and condensed milk as "cream." When he began work there, did Chandler know of his boss' legacy of corruption/ illegal penny pinching? It's hard to say; but when things got a little crazy for George E. Platt in 1914, Chandler would have had a hard time missing the headlines. Esotouric writes:

Platt was stalked and shot by a business associate who claimed he was being ripped off in a real estate deal. The aggrieved C.P. Deyoe drove from his Hollywood home to the intersection of Sixth and Ardmore, where he knew Platt (resident of 520 Ardmore) and contractor Frank O. Jean (452 Ardmore) caught the streetcar to work. Jean was late that day, lucky fellow. But Platt was waiting for the train, and accepted a ride from Deyoe.

It was not a pleasant trip. Deyoe immediately launched into the same old story about how Platt owed him $10,000 commission on Platt's purchase of the Scorpion Ranch in Owensmouth, and furthermore, Platt's friend and neighbor Frank O. Jean owed him money, too. When Deyoe asserted that if it hadn't been for the money he was owed, Jean wouldn't have been able to build Platt's new house on Ardmore for him, Platt objected. That's when Deyoe pulled out his gun.

George Platt jumped from the car at Sixth and Catalina, failing to yank the gun away as he ran, and Deyoe shot him in the back, then shot himself in the head. The assailant died instantly, and his victim lingered in terrible agonies at California Hospital with a bullet lodged in his abdomen. He survived.

Chandler surely had other things on his mind at the time: His mother had moved to California from England and he was renting the two of them an apartment in L.A.'s Bunker Hill. Plus, he was getting to know -- and perhaps  falling for -- Cissy Pascal, who was, at the time, married to Julian Pascal (she would later get a divorce and marry Chandler).

Nevertheless, it is tempting to imagine the young Raymond Chandler following the news of the attempted murder of his company's owner -- and, as a bookkeeper, idly unthreading exactly what might have happened with that land deal gone wrong -- as he formed an indelible impression of his adopted city. One where even a creamery owner might make corruption his business, and drive someone to a murderous rage.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: file

Angelina Jolie as Kay Scarpetta

Angelina Jolie will star as Kay Scarpetta, in a film -- or films -- based on the character created by Patricia Cornwell. Late last year, Cornwell told L.A. Times Dark Passages columnist Sarah Weinman that Cornwell viewed "Scarpetta," the 16th novel in her series, as something of a reset button, returning the focus to the characters and their interactions with each other. But there is also plenty of forensic science -- Scarpetta is a medical examiner -- which made the series' 1990 debut, "Postmortem," stand apart.

Variety reports that with all those books as a resource, "a franchise is hoped for," but, their report adds:

this film won't be tied to a specific Cornwell mystery title. Much the way that Jason Bourne morphed into an action hero in plots not rigidly locked into the Robert Ludlum book series, the opera-loving coroner Scarpetta will be the lead in a suspense thriller in the vein of "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Seven."

With all this attention, it's hard to believe that Kay Scarpetta almost never came to life at all. "Postmortem" was published by Scribner, "with a modest first printing and advance (6,000 copies and $6,000, respectively)," Weinman writes, "that came just when Cornwell was about to give up on writing fiction."

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: AP Photo/Matt Sayles

Getting to know Istanbul through its noir

President Obama had a lot to do to prep for his recent visit to Turkey -- brushing up on hundreds of years of history, learning the details of current political conflicts, finding out what you can and can't say about what happened to the nation's Armenians in 1915 and the years that followed. He probably didn't have time to read "Istanbul Noir," an anthology in Akashic Books' city-based noir series. Too bad.

It has been said that noir is deeply connected to place, and in this anthology, you get a sense of Istanbul -- a modern but also ancient city on two continents, both Europe and Asia, with the Bosporus River in between. It explores seedy neighborhoods and new developments, a resort island and the darkened river shore. In the excellent story "The Tongue of the Flames" by Ismail Guzelsoy, the weather possesses the city and its inhabitants:

a crazy, wayward wind kept the area convulsing for days on end, making the city slave to its whim. Though the majority suffered only mild headaches and a little shortness of breath in its aftermath, at the time, melancholy ran like a viscous liquid through the streets.

This is not the Istanbul of whirlwind diplomatic tours but the city as seen through the eyes of the criminal, the desperate and the corrupt. And also those who are lost or condemned, and who've made a wrong turn and are headed for a dead end.

The dark literary corners they explore may be a strange way to get to know the city, but no stranger than a glossy tourist guide. These feel like real inhabitants (or, in the case of Lydia Lunch, real visitors) who have worn paths through neighborhoods, have favorite stores and difficult memories, who are disoriented by new buildings that overlay a painful past.

Of course, you might not want to meet these characters: the untrustworthy narrator, the brutal toughs, the young man desperate for revenge. They exist in a world you might want to get to know, but wouldn't want to be trapped in. It's the best kind of dangerous literary tourism.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Bosporus River at twilight. Credit: Carolyn Kellogg

James Ellroy's Playboy extravaganza

Novelist, memoirist and alpha-dog crime writer James Ellroy has a new four-part serial appearing in Playboy, starting with the April issue. Scott Timberg spent time with the author as he shot an accompanying video for Playboy in Hancock Park, "stomping across that manicured lawn, sporting a Hawaiian shirt and golfer's cap," staring into windows as he did as a teen.

The serial, titled "The Hilliker Curse" (after his mother's maiden name), traces his romantic compulsions.

Whereas the first installment revisits his childhood, the unsolved murder and his teenage peeping, ensuing chapters look at how his mother's death drove him to search for the perfect woman, to seek out both prostitutes and (fruitlessly) women of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, to pass notes with his phone number in coffee shops, to send literally thousands of dollars in flowers.

Timberg described the style as a "mix of hyped-up prose and rapid storytelling that readers expect from Ellroy's novels, blended with a reflective quality he's rarely shown in the past." Ellroy calls it "a spiritual document" and continues:

There's never been a male memoir like this one. It was the desire to consistently update my state of mind and spiritual condition pertaining to women. To honor the women I've been with, to chart this journey of transcendence....

I'm made for obsessiveness. I'm built for it. I'm big and skinny, and I run at a high rev. I love to be alone most of the time. I'm emotionally hungry, I'm horny, I have a profound conscience.... Real guys love God, Beethoven and women.

"The Hilliker Curse" also sends up a flare to Ellroy fans that he's back; many have been waiting since 2001's "Cold Six Thousand" for a sequel. That novel, "Blood's a Rover," concludes the trilogy that began with "American Tabloid." It'll hit stores — all 656 pages of it — in September.

— Carolyn Kellogg

Photos: James Ellroy / Paul Fenton ZUMA KPA; the June 1956 cover Playboy magazine / courtesy of Magazineshoponline.com

The big sleep took Raymond Chandler 50 years ago today

It was 3:40 p.m., March 26, 1959, when Raymond Chandler passed away at the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, Judith Freeman told the assembled audience Wednesday night. If I had been sitting closer I could say for sure that she got misty-eyed saying it.

Freeman is the author of "The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved," a biography of the iconic mystery writer and his slightly odd marriage. His wife, Cissy, lied about her age but was in fact 18 years his elder, and despite an early bout of infidelity on his part, they stayed together for almost 30 years.

With Freeman on the panel were Kenneth Turan, film critic at the L.A. Times and former editor of our Books section; professor and cultural critic Leo Braudy (author of, most recently, "From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity"); and award-winning mystery writer Denise Hamilton ("The Last Embrace").

The panel was at its best when the group -- all well acquainted with Chandler's novels, short stories and collected letters -- riffed on the man and his legacy. Like this:

Kenneth Turan: The core of Chandler's appeal is the language ... that's why, for me, Chandler continues to stand out. I really believe he's the still best.

Leo Braudy responded that the short stories were "flat," but with "The Big Sleep," something changed. Chandler's language became "incandescent."

The panel talked about the corruption of Los Angeles in Chandler's time (pervasive, high-reaching), a critical mass of writers in his moment contemplating Hollywood (Nathanael West, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald and James M. Cain), the rootlessness of Chandler's life in and around LA (he and Cissy moved about once a year), his tetchy relationship with Billy Wilder (they co-wrote the screenplay for "Double Indemnity"), Philip Marlowe's vulnerability or loneliness or aloneness or romanticism and more.

Chandler remains a quintessential L.A. writer, but the claim, made early on, that he speaks to each generation went unproven last night. Despite the event being on USC's campus, judging by the looks of the crowd, the attendees' average age was on the mature side of 40.

Some in the audience knew as much about Chandler as those onstage and seemed to have come as a way to honor his memory. Tom Williams is working on a new Chandler biography (his blog posts about what's been expurgated from Chandler's published letters are very interesting). And one woman, who declined to talk to me after I told her I was with the press, had just moments before been speaking about attending Chandler's funeral in 1959 -- it drew a smaller crowd than the 2009 panel.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: File

Walter Mosley: from Easy to Leonid

Walter Mosley's new book, "The Long Fall," follows Leonid McGill, the 50ish African American son of a communist father, as he negotiates the troubles of mid-life in contemporary society. For Leonid, that means a wife, kids and stepkids, a mistress, a string of murders, a mystery. The book is set in contemporary New York, where Mosley has lived since 1979. "These new books that I've just started writing are very much about me," he told Josh Getlin.

Here in L.A., Mosley is fondly remembered for his Easy Rawlins mystery series, which he says are his father's stories. Like Easy, Mosley's father moved to Los Angeles from Houston. "Mosley was born four years after the year when his novel takes place," Digby Diehl wrote in 1990, reviewing "Devil in a Blue Dress," "but apparently he listened closely to the stories his father told when he was growing up in Watts." Diehl continued:

"Devil in a Blue Dress" honors the hard-boiled tradition of Hammett/Chandler/Cain in its storyline and attitude, but Mosley takes us down some mean streets that his spiritual predecessors never could have because they were white. The insightful scenes of black life in 1948 provide a sort of social history that doesn't exist in other detective fiction, and they lend an ambiance that heightens this story of crime and violence. Like the best of the "noir" storytellers, Mosley's strength is in his dialogue. He has a confident, perfect-pitch ear for nuances of speech that is astonishing in a first novel....

Mosley has published 33 books in the 19 years since "Devil in a Blue Dress," the range of which Getlin decsribes as "unpredictable ... including science fiction, erotica, sociopolitical essays and a how-to book for aspiring novelists." It should come as no surprise that Mosley didn't start out to write detective fiction. In 2003, he told PBS:

There's many things that I am. And all of those things come together at some point. If somebody wants to limit me, you know and they'll say, 'Well, this is Walter Mosley, the mystery writer.' I don't like that. Because I do many things. So why do you pick that one thing? And then it's always an economic reason. 'Well, you sell more of these books than you those books.' Not a good reason.

Mosley talks to Barnes & Noble's too-chipper-for-morning Molly Pesce about the new book: "It's the first time I've written about New York, and that's very exciting."

But he's welcome to return to L.A. and Easy Rawlins anytime.

— Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Walter Mosley in Brooklyn, N.Y. Credit: Robert Caplin