THRILLERFEST 2011
July 11, 2011
I’m just back from a weekend in New York City, where I received the “True Thriller” award at the sixth annual ThrillerFest, sponsored by the International Thriller Writers.
The photos are of Peter James about to present me the award and of my–very very brief–acceptance remarks.
I paid tribute to Brian Murtagh, the just-retired US Department of Justice attorney who for 41 years stayed on the case of Jeffrey MacDonald. If it weren’t for Brian, MacDonald never would have been brought to trial, much less convicted, and since that 1979 conviction Brian has been the man who’s thrown up the roadblocks every time new lawyers tried to find a way to help MacDonald weasel out of paying the life-sentence price for having murdered his pregnant wife and two daughters at Fort Bragg in 1970.
I also paid tribute to my wife, Nancy Doherty.
Nancy, for forty years, has been my best editor, and my worldwide traveling companion, but she has been so much more. Not least, the mother of two of my children. As for everything else, it’s too personal to get into here, but I can say with certainty that wherever I am today, without Nancy I’d be in a much worse place.
I’m told that a video of my interview with Kathleen Sharp and Q&A session, as well as my acceptance remarks will soon be posted at the Thrillerfest website.
It was a wonderful event, with eight hundred people in attendance. I made many new friends, including John Lescroat, whose work I’ve enjoyed and admired for years, and Douglas Preston, who, in addition to his many splendid thrillers, wrote a true crime book called The Monster of Florence, which caused him to be arrested in Italy and interrogated by the same crazed prosecutor who won a conviction against Amanda Knox (and I must give you all an advance tip on the book that finally gets to the heart of that bizarre story: The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Trials of Amanda Knox, by Nina Burleigh.)
I myself am a fugitive from the Italian criminal justice system, having been convicted in absentia on charges filed against me by Gabriele Gravina, president of the minor league soccer team that was the subject of The Miracle of Castel di Sangro. That story is too long to go into here, but Gravina filed criminal charges against me as part of a (largely, but not entirely) successful attempt to prevent publication of Miracle in Italy.
The actor Anthony LaPaglia, who now has his own production company, optioned The Miracle of Castel di Sangro and hired me to write the screenplay, which I did. Anthony then went to Italy to make sure there would be no, shall we say “problems” with filming there. He met personally with Gravina in Rome. Gravina told him, “Under no circumstances will this movie be filmed in Italy.”
Anthony was made to understand the amount of sabotage that could occur to all the expensive equipment on location in Castel di Sangro. Gravina explained to him that it would be a very serious mistake for him to attempt to make the movie at all. Anthony, a wonderful man who was a joy to work with and who taught me a lot about screenwriting, decided to focus on other projects and let his option on Miracle lapse.
So, yes, “those people” are alive and all too well in Italy today. They also caused my original Italian publisher, Garzanti, to cancel its contract to publish an Italian edition of Miracle.
Anyway, Doug Preston and I had a lot to talk about. I also reconnected with some very dear old friends.
OFF TOPIC: My Arizona trip is still pending. It’s amazing how complicated things can get in July when a publisher has such big plans for a book to be released on Sept. 20. All I can say is that there’s a lot of inside baseball being played right now and my goal is the same as that of Crown: to have the biggest and best possible rollout of THE ROGUE in September. Whatever helps that, I’ll do. Whatever doesn’t, I won’t. I’ll say more about Arizona in the next couple of days as questions are resolved.
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Tags: 40 Responses to “THRILLERFEST 2011”
Congratulations on your award! What an honor.
I’ll be so disappointed if you don’t make it to Arizona but I understand.
Let us know!
Congratulations!
Yes, of course, will do asap.
–Joe
Congratulations.
Congratulations. Hope you can make it to Ahwatukee.
I want to. Thorny issues about where & how I publish between now and Sept. 20.
We’ll see over next couple of days.
–Joe
Hmmm. I can see why your editors might not necessarily need you to be in Arizona for the GRAND OPENING or whatever it is. Maybe you should think about distancing yourself a bit from the double-breasted Alaskan Dingbat flying nightmare thing.
Congratulations Joe…What a honor..
Congratulations Joe! Hope The Rogue brings you more!!
Lisabeth, I’d like to encourage you to go ahead with your plans to live-tweet the Undefeated premiere (I hope I’m remembering correctly that this is you!) even if Joe can’t attend. We would all appreciate your take on the movie and the audience.
Congratulations on the award. That Knox story does seem like a nightmare. I haven’t followed it closely but it seems like she suffered the same fate as the Stranger in Camus’ book.
Regarding Phoenix, I went through the link on the Sea of Pee site to get to Movietickets. I clicked through the adult ticket order process on all the showings and stopped short of entering my credit card and I never got a warning that it was sold out. They may have the same problem getting asses in the seats as they have trying to get a line to form at a book signing.
Congrats on the award!
Congratulations, Joe! Nancy is lovely and you two sound like a great pair. Your tribute to her is touching and, I’m sure, well deserved.
Hope you can make it to Phoenix.
Congrats on the award Joe. You are a great writer.
Congratulations!
I’m a Douglas Preston fan too, and am eagerly awaiting the new Pendergast installment.
Many congratulations Joe. I’m a major fan – both of your books and Douglas Preston’s. Your wife is gorgeous. The Rogue has been my pre-order for months. Normally, I’d like for time to slow down a bit, but in this case, it can start slowing down AFTER Sept. 20th. Can’t wait. I expect awards for it too.
Loving how your publishers are taking you seriously and your work. Being protective of your release is a show of respect that what you have written is important with honest investigation not gossip. Sarah Palin ought to be very, truly, concerned.
Congrats, Joe.
Joe,while you were having “a thrill” of a lifetime the “shilla from wasilla”was rearing it’s ugly head. Interesting as Murdoch is under fire, up from the dead lake rises this sorry sight….in hopes of deflecting…..
Congratulations on your award,your lovely wife and a toast to best in class.
Italy is seriously messed up. The Gov is a joke and so is “justice.” but the food…
Congratulations Mr. McGinniss on the recognition and the award for your hard work and dedication.
Cheers & Applause!!!!
You expressed your sentiment in such beautiful terms. How lucky these people are to have you in their life as you are to have them bettering yours. I am looking forward to September and hope all of the logistics fall nicely into place and you suffer little or no angst regarding them.
Warm congratulations on your award.
Congrats Joe – your award was well deserved. Keep us posted on what happens w/Phoenix. We’re all waiting to hear.
I echo all sentiments here, Joe. Congratulations, well deserved, and your tribute to Nancy touched my heart.
Congratulations to you (and Nancy)!
I first read “Fatal Vision” years ago, and after I had finished it, I returned to page one and started reading it over again. It shocked me to the core to think that McDonald could have killed his children in such a brutal way. I’m sure it was a nightmare for you to come to realize that such a “golden boy” was the true killer.
I was so excited when I read that you would be doing a book about Sarah Palin. I feel your background makes you the perfect author for an extraordinary work. I thank you on behalf of future America; in hopes that such a creature never again makes it that close to the WH.
I think the frontal lobe of her brain just does not work. Perhaps she knows the difference between “right” and “wrong” but is incapable of understanding why those standards should apply to her behavior. I would be very curious about what a brain scan would reveal.
I add my agreement with several of the posts above; I am glad your publishing house is going to make an effort to help you launch “The Rogue”.
Awards that are well deserved. Congratulations and appreciation for giving us a personal glimpse of your family. Being bombarded as we are in all the news about murdered children, crazed parents and all other manner of broken down-ness of family in this country AND THEN the constant and very toxic barrage of family palin, its refreshing to see your news. Of all the places in the world I would choose to live, it would be Italy. I know there are no perfect people anywhere, but I always imagine other people lucky who get to live there. I’m naive about that I’m sure, never having been across any ocean, but I’ve seen the pictures of Tuscany….sports has never been any great interest to me and especially soccer, so I wouldn’t be dissuaded about any of that information. Maybe I should read that particular book of yours. I confess, I haven’t read all your books, but I AM SURE, they are all as excellent as “Fatal Vision”. I am so sure of that. I will make it a point to read the rest of your books. AFTER “THE ROGUE”. ( ONE MONTH TO GO!) We know she doesn’t read or is not well read. I wonder if her lovers (“all of ’em, any of ’em”) have informed her of your CLASS A investigative writing and research. I don’t believe SHE would read your books. If any of those confidantes of hers HAVE read your works and informed her, she should be jumping around like the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof. But I also believe she’s too crazily arrogant in her proud ignorance to have a clue as to what is going to hit her. Kind of like Jeffrey MacDonald’s arrogance. We all know where he is. While she is not a cookie cutter cut out of MacDonald in that his psychopathology appears more intelligent, they appear both cut from the same cloth in their attempts at deadly charm and the arrogance of thinking they fool everyone. Otherwise neither of them have the capacity for self-introspection. They don’t know who or what they are. Nor do they care: the total psychopathology of people with NO conscience. I will be hoping THE ROGUE will receive its own award. Its time for some GOOD KARMA to counter the phony “rogue” “valley trash” slanderous “devil-woman” who sloppily thieved political discourse in her adopted state of Alaska and in the year 2008, the country she uses as a false claim of patriotism for all that she could thieve from it – “until a judge tells me I can’t”. I can’t think of anyone BETTER to counter that less than zero person. I would like to see those words about the judge telling her “she can’t”, come right back to her – smack her down to the size of the mental, emotional and spiritual gnat she truly is. I am sure she understands “reaping what you sow”. Bring on THE ROGUE. Bring it on! (Getting really excited for your book Mr. McGinniss). I love rebuttal that can’t be rebutted – when it comes to TRUTH.
Yes! Congratulations!! And thank you for telling us about the evening and introducing us to your beautiful wife. I am re-reading “Selling of the President 1968” and I realize as I read that I have seen snippets of your work in lots of other places over the years. Someday, I hope you will tell us how you got the idea, how you made the start on this book (I mean beyond the Wiki info). But first, Full Speed Ahead with a huge splash of a book launch, which has just got to be a giant success because our country’s welfare will be vastly improved by it, esp now that Newsweak has wussed out on us. Go, Joe
Congratulations Joe on your award. I love the comments you make about your lovely wife; I am sure the relationship is mutually supportive and rewarding. I do hope you make it to AZ (not that you deserve to watch such a film as the one you have tickets to – that could in itself be a thrillerfest and not in a good way) but we would appreciate your feedback and review.
But, whatever must be done to properly roll out your book in September must be done; we are anxiously awaiting its publication. Thank you for all you have done.
Congratulations! And thank you for another lovely, civil post. The malicious machinations from Abruzzi don’t surprise me at all. Until the last of my mother’s generation died, I lived with the dread that any or all of them might invoke some unsuspected requirement from the old country and move into my home, making demands. All the singing, cooking, and charm are the sparkles under the bridge: the current is treacherous.
Congratulations on the well-deserved award! And your tribute to your lovely wife, Nancy, was beautiful and heartfelt. What a great couple! I eagerly await my birthday on September 21, which I will happily spend reading THE ROGUE!! Bless you for your valiant pursuit of TRUTH.
Congratulations, Joe. A job well done.
Congratulations on yet another well-deserved laurel and on a most beautiful wife. – Tom
I think Nancy looks like Meryl Streep. Lucky Joe!
Congratulations, Joe!
I remember reading “Fatal Vision”, and following the story in the media just drove me crazy to think lawyers were trying so hard to get him acquitted in the public arena. What a masterfully executed, well researched, and unforgettable book! I was completely blown away and read it several times over the years. To be acknowleged by your peers and readers for all the hours of hard work, expenses, and sacrifice for you and your family must be truly rewarding. It’s an honor you rightly deserve.
Thank you for telling us about the Amanda Knox book. The Italian Injustice System is a farce, and I believe she’s completely innocent of these charges. I was born there and visited often.
People seem to have a highly romaticized view of life there, but the justice system is full of corruption, you’re guilty until proven innocent, the media is owned by Mr “bunga bunga dance”, and the prosecutors in the Knox Case are as corrupt as they come.
I have “Rogue” on order. And I installed kindle app to my computer to get the single when it comes out.
Again, thanks so much for sharing this post with us!
Read the Monster of Florence quite some time ago. Thanks for the HT for the new book coming out on the Amanda Knox mess. Italy is Italy. Italian Justice, and I sure wouldn’t want to be mixed up in any foreign court for anything, much less a gruesome murder trial and the accused.
The American system is hard enough to navigate, and in English.
My regards to your lovely wife.
I sat with John Lescroart at dinner at a mystery writers conference last year. We had a grand time! He emailed me, and everyone at our table, within 24 hours. He was jovial, gracious and approachable for a writer of such fame. Congrats on the award!
This says George Clooney is on deck to play Mr. Preston in an upcoming film of that book:
http://corrierefiorentino.corriere.it/firenze/notizie/spettacoli/2011/5-gennaio-2011/george-clooney-tracce-mostro-firenze-181199126076.shtml
Script by Christopher McQuarrie of “The Usual Suspects”. (Cool!)
I have to say that when I first moved to Italy, I was amazed by the constant regurgitation of old cases. Every day (I’m talking about 1999, back when I was naïve enough to read the papers) there was something about the “Mostro” or “Ustica” or “il caso Moro” or “la strage di Piazza Fontana” or “[insert traumatic event here]”… Imagine a country that has at least a couple of crimes each year which rival the Kennedy assassination… and about which the speculation never really ends.
I used to think this was insane—pathological. Being AMERICAN, I expected a Cartesian, Anglo-Saxon, rational resolution to each of these events. But now I realize that there are always wheels within wheels…
That said, I have seen a decent amount of Amanda in the courtroom on Italian TV, and she seems like a textbook psychopath to me. I guess it’s possible that one could be a sociopath and also not guilty of a particular crime, but…
On the whole, Italian courts seem to me to be—generally speaking—in many ways more generous than American ones. Take a look around you in the US at the sentences people are serving for minor drug crimes. A huge number of sentences in Italy, instead, seem to be satisified by “arresto domiciliario” (house arrest)… even convicted murderers get given house arrest pending appeals!
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“Dietrologia” = the obvious thing cannot be the truth. There’s something else “behind” it all. Not a bad assumption in the main.
Now, in the Amanda Knox case, the initial “obvious truth” —like in the Charles Stuart case in Boston, and the Susan Smith case in S. Carolina—was that “the black guy did it”.
After watching Knox in the courtroom on Italian TV, there is no way that I could conclude that she is innocent. Of what she is guilty in every detail may be more difficult to pin down, but there is no way that she is innocent. Like with Sarah, there are just too many signals that this person is Not Normal. Turning cartwheels in the police station after your roommate has been gruesomely murdered, and you are a suspect says… what?
The recent calling into question of the DNA evidence (contaminated, of course!!) is very “OJ”.
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I’m intrigued by “The Fatal Gift of Beauty” but I distrust the tendentious title immensely. It screams to me that—somehow—The Powers That Be seek to punish attractive women inordinately, when the exact opposite is the case.
Charles Stuart was an especially attractive and seemingly upstanding person. So was Ted Bundy. So is Sarah Palin. OJ. Are people “out to get them” solely because of their “beauty”?
Rather, they get a pass for the longest time, and only under the most egregious of circumstances do they enter into the realm of being suspect. Almost unwillingly are we brought to understand that they may be guilty.
Far from being “adrift”, Knox was arrogant and narcissistic, insisting that she was capable of navigating the Italian legal system on her own, and refused an Italian interpreter at the outset, IIRC, despite offers of help. She’s not exactly the victim she claims to be.
From what I know of Italian society, nothing would have pleased people MORE than to have been able to put the blame onto a darker-skinned male non-national, rather than put an attractive white American female student on trial. I will have to look forward to the book, I suppose, to discover what motivation there would be to frame an innocent American in this way.
Knox’s claim that police struck her during questioning is to me incredibly suspect; I just cannot imagine that happening: Italian officials hitting 1.) a young woman 2.) an American. I just don’t think that the macho police/carabinieri would have that mindset. It’s a different kind of macho from American macho.
I don’t take the cops to be saints—many are undoubtedly corrupt, especially as to pecuniary crimes—but there’s an antique flip-side to their general patriarchal misogyny, which is that women are in many cases a “protected” species. A lesser species, but still “protected”. And Americans are given HUGE leeway as opposed to other immigrants. Let me tell you how I skipped an indefinitely long immigration line due to being 1.) white, 2.) female, and, most important, 3.) American. Italians know which side their bread is buttered on, and it’s not buttered by the folks from Somalia or Kosovo. The police were EMBARRASSED that I was standing in line with such people. (Democratically, I was just resigned to the long line).
“The all-night interrogation in which Ms Knox accused Mr Lumumba and described blocking her ears was ruled inadmissible by Italy’s Supreme Court because no lawyer was present. However a voluntary statement written by Ms Knox in English repeating this scenario has been accepted as court evidence despite defence protests. ”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5912206.ece
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Like with Sarah Palin, I see that US accounts of Knox’s trial assume that the protagonist is normal. She is not normal. Jeffrey MacDonald was not normal. Sarah Palin is not normal. OJ Simpson is not normal.
The DESIRE for these people to be regarded as normal has often outweighed the facts of their true disabilities.
I really have not been following the Knox case to any extent, but some interesting counters to her claims of innocence are to be found here:
http://nourishingobscurity.com/2011/02/18/knox-parents-false-claims/
“Amanda Knox’s mobile phone records, data recovered from Sollecito’s computer, and corroborative testimony of numerous witnesses, provide irrefutable proof that Amanda Knox has lied – again and again.
For example, her lies about him directly led to Diya Lumumba, an innocent man, spending two weeks in prison – even though as recorded in prison she told her mother Edda Mellas that her claims were not true. .”
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All I know about the “Mostro di Firenze” is that, in our Tuscan town, the “vox populi” has it that the guilty party is a well-off dentist, son of someone important, of course.
P.S. Congrats on the prize… and your story about the possible filming is frustrating but completely predictable.
How is it that you might have expected otherwise!?
I am a terribly, terribly cynical person.
My Italian husband says “it goes beyond any comprehension of the most cynical person”… “think of the worst you can think of… and it’s always worse than that”. He’s never really been wrong, I have to say.
He thought I was crazy and naïve for being upset about the recent Murdoch revelations. He said “YOU are the crazy one to think that this hasn’t always been the case: politicians blackmailed by the press, and powerful interests setting the pawn politicians into place to do their bidding”. This is the norm, not the exception, and we had better come to grips with this fact.
How funny… these people claim that Tom Cruise has bought the rights:
http://www.prestonchild.com/solonovels/preston/monsterofflorence/