Lee Child

In Sunlight or In Shadow

Edward Hopper, that most American of artists: girlie shows, movie theaters, gas stations at night, that famous diner, strangers glimpsed in windows, the lonely streets, landscapes filled with yearning. Despite the isolation, or because of it, Hopper strikes a chord, touches us, draws us in. His subjects inhabit a world constructed entirely by the artist: lost in thought, still yet searching, his couples sit, stand, recline, sometimes side by side but never quite connected, the artist a master of isolation. I felt compelled to make drawings, this one of the artist and a few of his paintings. At first they were going to be two-minute sketches, but Hopper took hold of me and my pencil just kept going. I even added a touch of color. Of course Hopper is always about light and shadow, which brings me to the book, “In Sunlight or In Shadow, Stories Inspired By the Paintings of Edward Hopper,” brainchild of the legendary crime fiction writer, Lawrence Block, … Read more

The Plight of Crime Fiction Or Why Crime Fiction Writers Always Feel Bad

People often ask me why I choose to write crime fiction and I say it’s because it encompasses all the big human emotions – love, hate, greed, revenge, fear — as well as the basic moral questions of good and evil, and that’s more than enough for me. When people say, “I don’t read crime fiction at all,” as if they would not deign to waste their time or intelligence on something so trivial and clearly beneath them (it’s interesting to note that they have no problem saying this to me, a crime fiction writer), I say, “So, you’ve never read Crime & Punishment or An American Tragedy or Lolita or Poe or Chandler or Hammett or contemporary novels like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History or Richard Ford’s Canada or almost anything by Joyce Carol Oates, the “literary” list of crime fiction novels goes on and on. Frankly, I’m hard pressed to think of a … Read more