Charles Finch

A Visual Tour of Oxford

2008-08-25T17:26:00.000-07:00

Much of my new book, The September Society, takes place at my alma mater, Oxford University. It's one of the most beautiful towns in the world, but as one reader, Noel, e-mailed me, not everyone has an idea of what it looks like. In particular she drew my attention to this wonderful slide show of Christ Church Meadow, where the first body in the book is found.

Here's a collection of virtual tours of Oxford, too. There's one of Lincoln, where much of the book takes place, and also of beautiful colleges such as Christ Church and Merton. I hope you enjoy looking at this wonderful city!

A starred review for The September Society

2008-08-14T09:41:00.000-07:00

My new book The September Society has been receiving good reviews prior to its publication, but today it received (just as A Beautiful Blue Death did) the highest pre-pub accolade there is - a starred review from Library Journal. Needless to say I'm delighted! They call the book "another triumph" and compare it to the work of two wonderful writers, Will Thomas and Caleb Carr.

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One quick announcement - for those of you with an Amazon Kindle, A Beautiful Blue Death has appeared in that format now. It's the cheapest way to buy the book.

Signed Copies of The September Society

2008-08-09T08:55:00.000-07:00

I often receive inquiries about signed copies of my second Charles Lenox mystery novel, The September Society. As someone who relishes finding a signed copy of a book by one of my favorite authors, I certainly understand.

At the moment they're available at nearly every Barnes and Noble in Manhattan, and also at The Mysterious Bookshop on Warren Street and The Poisoned Pen in Arizona. Alternatively, I am always happy to sign books through the mail. Just e-mail me at charles@charles-finch.com to arrange shipping and I will inscribe and return your book. The same is true of either hardcover or paperback copies of my first book, A Beautiful Blue Death, or its large print counterpart.

The September Society Comes Out Today!

2008-08-05T13:01:00.000-07:00

My new Charles Lenox historical mystery novel, The September Society, is in bookstores today. It's the tale of a student who vanishes from Oxford University, leaving behind a trail of perplexing clues which Lenox must decipher. There are new characters, plus the return of my favorite old ones - McConnell, Lady Jane, and Graham among them.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch made the day doubly happy by giving the book a rave:

'Charles Finch, the author of last year’s “A Beautiful Blue Death,” now returns with “The September Society” (320 pages, St. Martin’s Minotaur, $24.95), another period piece that combines the sensibilities of Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and Dorothy L. Sayers with the creative talents of its young author.
“A Beautiful Blue Death” was a remarkable debut mystery, set in England in 1865 and featuring Charles Lenox, a wealthy, aristocratic, amateur detective. He returns in “The September Society,” an equally fascinating puzzler with even more surprising twists. And in addition to the finely tuned plot, Finch invests his work with wonderful characters — Lenox and his close friend Lady Jane Grey top the list — and a detailed evocation of mid-Victorian London.
Finch’s second novel begins with a visit to Lenox from a frightened Lady Annabelle Payson, whose only child, George, has gone missing from Oxford. As Lenox investigates (and as Finch writes in an intriguing prologue), it becomes clear that George’s fate is tied to deaths that took place nearly 20 years ago in British-ruled India.
A creative storyline with some genuine surprises, well-drawn characters, a keen sense of place and time and refined prose combine to make “The September Society” an all-around winner.'

- Jay Strafford

I hope you like it too!

Moments in Crime

2008-07-12T11:46:00.001-07:00

My publisher, St. Martin's, has a great rotating guest blog called Moments in Crime, and this week I'll be writing long-form blog posts there. Head over to check it out!

A Recommendation

2008-06-26T15:48:00.000-07:00

For fans of traditional mysteries, including those who liked A Beautiful Blue Death, I heartily recommend GM Malliet's first novel. Great historical fun.

The Progressive Book Club, plus Kirkus Reviews

2008-06-24T18:58:00.001-07:00

I've mentioned in this space how much I admire George Orwell, not as much for his fiction (though Coming up for Air is a good book and 1984 did what falls to very few books and invented a language) as for his essays and memoirs. The best of these, his masterpiece Homage to Catalonia, is a moving long meditation on his role in the Spanish Civil War.

And yet anyone who has read Orwell's letters knows that in 1939 Victor Gollancz's well-meaning Left Book Club rejected it, because Orwell was (presciently and bravely) an anti-Stalinist when much of England's left fully embraced Russia's leader. Another of Orwell's greatest books, The Road to Wigan Pier, the Club only accepted after revision that downplayed the book's criticism of certain socialists.

The Left Book Club's checkered history ran through my mind when I read the other day about the new Progressive Book Club, which will apparently serve a similar purpose. In an age of fractured political movements, the people running the club would do well to remember that ideologies can infect and splinter the Left just as easily, perhaps even more easily, than the Right.

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The good early reviews for The September Society continue to pour in. Kirkus Reviews, notoriously the most astringent of the pre-publication reviewers, devoted most of their review to a summary of the plot, but also called it "exciting and cerebral." I'm really proud of this book and hope it will prove to be a great August read.

School Library Journal Review

2008-06-18T09:46:00.000-07:00

When I was in high school I read exactly three mystery writers: Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Elizabeth George. I expanded my tastes thereafter but I remember how nothing else would do it for me back then. Notwithstanding, I was very pleased that the School Library Journal, which reviews books for children and teens, gave my second book The September Society a positive review, calling it a good choice for older teens with "good writing, good plotting, an intriguing setting, and agreeable characters." I doubt I would have read it in when I was sixteen - but hopefully kids in high school now are more open-minded mystery readers than I was. Or at least their librarians may be!

Tim Russert

2008-06-16T11:21:00.001-07:00

I met Tim Russert once. I was working for Howard Dean's presidential campaign in Des Moines, Iowa, in a building the size of a Home Depot along one of the city's main streets. There were press everywhere, both in our headquarters and especially at the hotel bars and diners where the exhausted staffers from every campaign collected near the day's end. But only in the last few days did the big hitters (Brokaw, Jennings) show up in town. On election day itself I heard Russert was in the building, and I darted down from the upstairs office (where we were mostly speculating about whether there would be jobs for everyone in the White House - those were the days) to tell him I was a fan.

"Obviously I can't speak to any press," I said, "but just wanted to say hi."

"Thanks for coming over," he said as we shook hands. He had a reddish, good-natured face, and didn't seem as groomed or self-pleased as some of the other TV men and women, who never seemed quite as serious as the print journalists. "Good luck tonight."

"Thanks," I said, and started back upstairs.

"Back up to the secret lair," he said, and gave me a big grin. His whole crew laughed.

Doesn't sound like much, but it left me with the impression of those qualities of generosity and boyishness that have dominated the eulogies for him. I disagreed with Russert on his reporting (or lack of it) before the war in Iraq, and I sometimes felt exasperated at what he emphasized in this year's debates, but I loved watching him on Sunday. My friends and I were talking about who would replace him on Meet the Press, and it seems appropriate that nobody sounded right for the job.

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Working on a new book, I've taken a hiatus from writing on this blog. But I have two books coming out this summer, the paperback of A Beautiful Blue Death and the hardcover of the next Charles Lenox mystery, The September Society, and as I get ready for my second go around in publishing I'll update this space far more regularly. Look here for all the news.

Booklist Reviews 'The September Society'

2008-04-21T11:37:00.000-07:00

The months before a book goes out are always nerve-wracking, in some part because of the pre-publication reviews from the four big review journals: Booklist, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Kirkus. With my last book, A Beautiful Blue Death, I was lucky enough to get generally very good reviews (and in particular a coveted starred review from LJ). And now I'm pleased to say The September Society has received a very nice review from Booklist. They call it "reminiscent of Ruth Rendell and Elizabeth George" (two of my favorite mystery novelists, as probably goes without saying), cite the "author's masterfully expressive style" and conclude "One hopes to see more of Lenox and Lady Jane." I thought I'd pass on the good news to you - it's always nice to get positive early word for a book, and just makes me more excited for August, when it will finally come out.

Contest Winner

2008-04-02T18:18:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Rita R. for winning a signed copy of A Beautiful Blue Death! Thanks for all of your entries, and please be sure to look back here for more contests.

One of the best parts of being a writer is hearing from people in all the varied outposts of America. Rita is from Searcy, Arkansas, which I just looked up on Google Maps - a town toward the northeast part of the state, not far from Memphis. I may or may not ever get to Searcy, but I'll always remember the name.

ABBD Contest!

2008-03-31T08:29:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder: the contest to win a signed 1st edition of A Beautiful Blue Death ends this week; I'll be taking entries at charles@charles-finch.com up until Wednesday evening, and I'll send the winner their book on Thursday morning.

Many thanks to all who have entered so far! I appreciate the response.

The Trees

2008-03-27T10:07:00.000-07:00

It was nearly 60 degrees here in New York yesterday, and as I walked through Central Park I thought of Larkin's poem The Trees:

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Win a Signed Copy of A Beautiful Blue Death

2008-03-25T15:57:00.001-07:00

I haven't had a contest yet, but I really like the idea, so this week I'm offering a signed hardback copy of my first book, A Beautiful Blue Death. Please email charles@charles-finch.com to enter; I'll pick the winner at random next week. I'd be happy to inscribe the book too, if you let me know who it's for, whether there's an occasion, etc, in your e-mails.

Good luck!

Learning to Cook

2008-03-21T10:42:00.000-07:00

I've never been good at cooking anything more complex than corn flakes, but in the past few months I've started to learn with a friend. So far our greatest triumph has been a batch of Guinness cupcakes, but we've also made meringues, homemade pasta and sauce, oatmeal cookies, beignets with cafe au lait (inspired by my fantastically fun trip to New Orleans with a friend from England), mulled wine, and most speculatively, hot cider with buttered rum and cinnamon.

Part of what triggered this urge to cook for me was what has become one of my favorite websites: FX Cuisine, an endlessly entertaining roster of recipes shot step-by-step in beautiful, high-res photographs. If you like to cook, or even if you just like food, I would recommend spending about fifteen hours looking through every nook and cranny of the site, but for starters check out two of the recipes that most intrigue me, Swiss Apple Pasta and Scandinavian Sour Cream Apple Pie. They're both a little bit daunting, but I vow to try them anyway.

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Watch this space in the next week or so for a contest, my first one! There should be a couple of good prizes.

Paperback of ABBD

2008-03-17T12:47:00.000-07:00

The paperback of A Beautiful Blue Death is now available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble, though of course it doesn't come out until July, a few weeks before The September Society. Strangely, the idea of a paperback makes this whole enterprise seem somehow more real, separated from me. And I still love the cover.

One thing that puzzles me about Amazon is the pairings of books that they offer on sale together. For instance, the paperback version of ABBD is paired with (what I'm sure is a terrific) novel by C.S. Harris, rather than my - well, my second book, its sequel. Peculiar. But inconsequential; only all authors, I think, become Amazon watchers to some degree or other.

Alan Bennett

2008-03-13T12:47:00.000-07:00

Exactly thirteen months ago I was living in a small, cheerful apartment just by the Place des Vosges, in Paris, and reading Alan Bennett's miscellany Writing Home, a mix of diaries, essays, radio broadcasts, and other assorted odds and ends. Or bits and bobs, as he would say. Now I'm reading his second book of the same sort, the absolutely wonderful Untold Stories. As a writer Bennett may be closest in spirit to one of my other favorite memoirists, Bill Bryson. He has a wider angle than Bryson, though, and to be fair he's not as funny. Bennett is best known for his plays, I guess, which use glibness as a means of disavowing the depth they generally have.

But really I think he's best in the fragmentary style of these two books - which seem to point out that after all fragments might be the art form best suited to describing an entire life. Take the following passage, about his parents; his father has asked the vicar to marry them at 7:30 in the morning.

Lovell Clarke says that this is out of the question; the law does no permit him to marry anyone before eight in the morning. However, he has no objection to performing the ceremony beginning at eight o'clock, and surely if he is getting married the Co-op won't mind if he is half an hour late for work? Dad enquires: the Co-op does mind; he has to be at work by eight-fifteen.

There are occasions in life, often not in the least momentous, which nail one's colours to the mast. There was the morning, ten days before the end of my National Service, when a sergeant in the Intelligence Corps at Maresfield made me scrub out a urinal with my bare hands; another when a consultant at the Radcliffe Infirmary discussed my naked body without reference to me with a class of smirking medical students; and though it occurred years before I was born, this moment in St. Bartholomew's Vicarage when my father, baffled at every turn, tells Mr. Lovell Clarke that he cannot get a quarter of an hour off work in order to get married is another. Logic, education, upbringing leave such moments unshifted and unforgotten. They are the self at its core.

There's so much in this passage; it's a certain gift in some writers, for instance, to let the dead live on in their minds, gaining complexity. And I love and admire how Bennett tacitly aligns himself with his father, tacitly lets his father know that he isn't alone, all these years later, by recounting two of his own humiliations. And then there's the gift of language - that phrase "nail one's colours to the mast," or the two words "unshifted" and "unforgotten." (The "un-" construction reminiscent of Hardy, as Bennett himself points out in The History Boys.) Even in passages like this, which induce some strange, passing sorrow in me, it's good to have what the best books can give you: the sense of being with an old friend, whether you've met him before or not.

Win an Autographed Copy!

2008-03-10T10:23:00.000-07:00

I haven't had a contest on this site yet, though I'm cooking one up, but for anyone who'd like to win a free, signed copy of A Beautiful Blue Death, head on over to Lesa Holstine's great mystery blog, where she's giving one away. She also has a copy of the book's galley, or ARC, that she's handing out. It's worth sticking around to read her thoughts on current mystery fiction, too. She was one of the first people to spot my book and her recommendations often send me over to Amazon.

The Agatha Awards

2008-03-04T08:37:00.001-08:00

My young career as a mystery novelist has had a few definite high points - getting an agent, selling my first book, holding a copy of it in my hands for the first time, finding out that I was on the Library Journal's Best of 2007. A week or two ago I got a phone call which instantly took its place among those great moments when I found out that A Beautiful Blue Death was nominated for an Agatha Award, in the category of Best First Novel.

The Agathas are among the most prestigious mystery novel awards, along with the Edgars and the Anthonys, and I'll be on a panel with the other nominees at Malice Domestic at the end of April. I'm really excited.

One more note: my friend Louise Penny was nominated in the category of Best Novel. Her books, about a police inspector in Quebec, probably comprise my favorite mystery series right now.

A Financial Aid Update

2008-02-20T10:14:00.000-08:00

I won't post much more on this subject, but since I already have twice it's worth following up with the new information that Stanford, which in comparison with Yale has roughly $5 billion less in its endowment and a third more students, has now pledged never to charge tuition fees for anyone whose family makes less than $100,000 a year. I applaud them for it. Any time news like this breaks, as it seems to pretty often now that universities have begun to understand how bad their financial aid policies look, my alma mater falls in both the public's esteem and my own. Meanwhile we have to read about Yale's president angling after money in the New Yorker.

One of Schwarzman’s most controversial proposed gifts was to Yale, his alma mater, which, during the late nineties, agreed to name the freshman dining commons after Schwarzman in return for $17 million. Some people at Yale thought the commitment was in hand, but it emerged that Schwarzman’s gift would actually be a contribution to one of Blackstone’s investment partnerships on Yale’s behalf. No money would change hands until the fund was liquidated, and there was a risk that the investment might be worth far less than $17 million (although there was also the possibility that it would be worth more). Yale balked at trading a significant naming opportunity for what it considered a speculative commitment, and Schwarzman did not give the money. (The naming opportunity remains.)

The president of Yale, Richard C. Levin, won’t discuss the incident other than to say, “We’re still good friends.” He points out that Schwarzman has raised money for Yale as a member of the executive committee of the current fund-raising campaign and was co-chair of the New York region during the previous one. “He’s been supportive and enthusiastic.” Yale, of course, is hoping for generosity in the future. Levin says, “Now that he’s reached a new level of liquidity, we hope that he’ll become a world-class philanthropist.”

Has the dignity of Levin's office fallen so far that even with $22 billion in hand they prospect some minor titan's liquidity as if it were the Sacramento River during the Gold Rush?

The Paperback Cover for A Beautiful Blue Death

2008-02-18T15:39:00.000-08:00

I couldn't be more delighted with this cover, which fits so well with the book's subject and also ties in well with the cover of The September Society. The yellow is great too. Click on the image to see it in a larger size.

Super Tuesday

2008-02-05T10:35:00.000-08:00

It betrays my relative youth that I've never voted for a winning Presidential candidate, unless you count Al Gore in 2000. Or John Kerry in 2004, if you believe Mark Crispin Miller's claims about Ohio, which I'm rather inclined to.

I raise this point because I voted for Barack Obama today, and I hope he's the candidate who changes my losing streak. For the first time in my political life I feel that I have the chance to witness a genuine sea change in the way my country functions; all that I missed from being born after Selma, after The Great Society, after 1968 and Robert Kennedy. I'll be watching the returns tonight not simply with my natural curiosity about politics, but also with hope. It's exhilarating.

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This space has been quiet for some time. I'm working on a new book, and The September Society doesn't come out until August 5th, so I may blog irregularly until the publication process again draws my attention. Starting in May or so I'll write here much more consistently, and at some point after that it will be my honor to blog on Moments in Crime, which I highly recommend to all mystery lovers even before that time. In the meanwhile I will be adding posts here as the spirit moves me, and I urge people to e-mail me (at charles@charles-finch.com) if there's any particular aspect of writing or publishing that they're curious about. I'd be more than happy to oblige.

Kazuo Ishiguro

2008-02-05T09:06:00.001-08:00

If I have a favorite living writer, it's probably Philip Roth; but Kazuo Ishiguro, most famous for writing The Remains of the Day and then having the good fortune to see Anthony Hopkins star in a movie adaptation of it, runs Roth a close second. For Christmas I gave a friend my favorite of Ishiguro's novels, Never Let Me Go, and when she was too slow to start it I stole it back for another read.

Prose is perhaps the only form of art that cannot accommodate surrealism; but Ishiguro manages something close to surrealism by writing in the form of a scrupulous realist, in the mold of Henry James. The Remains of the Day is to me one of the genuinely misunderstood books of our age. It has generally been interpreted - and Merchant and Ivory probably bear the responsibility for this - as an elegy for Victorian England, or at least a book about English stoicism. I'm not sure that it's not in fact something like the reverse; remember that the chief aristocrat in the novel is a fascist, even a Nazi-sympathizer, and that the butler, Stevens, is emotionally hollow to the point of total blankness. It reminds me of people who quote the speech Polonius gives to Laertes in Hamlet ("And these few precepts...to thine own self be true," etc) which when one reads it in full seems less like an inspiring bestowal of wisdom than a stale precursor of the Successories poster.

I won't spoil the plot of Never Let Me Go, which relies on the slow pace of its revelations for so much of its tension, but I will say that I think it's Ishiguro's best novel, better even than The Unconsoled, and that it's subject is much wider than it initially appears: What begins as a mixture of science fiction and Tom Brown's Schooldays becomes, in the end, a fable about how difficult it is for all of us to be what we are; human.

Yale, Redux

2008-01-22T17:11:00.000-08:00

I've written here before about my disagreement with the financial aid policy of my alma mater, Yale. Now Harvard has made a bold step towards a more just policy, while Yale has this to show for itself. It's a shame.

Best of 2007

2007-12-29T15:13:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in an earlier post, A Beautiful Blue Death is on Library Journal's list of the Best Books of 2007, which is now online here. Only five mysteries made the list. For those who liked my book I would recommend another book on the list, A Treasury of Regrets by Susanne Alleyn. An excellent historical set in France after the revolution.

Excuse my long absence from this site - it's been a wonderful holiday season for me, and I certainly hope it has been for all of you too!