Matt Rees's Blog – October 2009 Archive (16)

Review: The year's best Police procedural

Strange Things Happen: A Life with The Police, Polo and Pygmies

By Stewart Copeland

Publisher UK: The Friday Project US: HarperStudio

Just because I write crime fiction doesn’t make me obsessed by The Police. However, this new memoir by The Police drummer is absolutely the most… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 30, 2009 at 6:11pm — No Comments

Jerusalem reading Nov. 16

I'll be talking about my Palestinian crime novels in Jerusalem on Monday, Nov. 16 at 10 a.m. The location is Beit Frankforter, 80 Bethlehem Road, in Baka. So call in sick (if you still have a job) and come along.

Added by Matt Rees on October 30, 2009 at 5:48pm — No Comments

Israel's new weapon: water?

Yet another report accuses Israel of human rights abuses, this time for denying Palestinians water. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost

JERUSALEM — Human-rights reports condemning Israel’s dealings with the Palestinians have become so frequent of late they’re like the dripping of Chinese water torture.

In the last few… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 30, 2009 at 1:17am — 2 Comments

No more Mister Nice Guy

This is where it gets ugly.

Last week I zapped off the manuscript of my new novel to my agent in New York. My wife told me to get working on the next book. It’s not because she’s worried about me slacking off and failing to pay the rent. No, it’s because she knows what happens when I’m not writing.

Ever read “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”? When I’m writing, I’m Dr Jekyll. All my unloveable urges are intellectualized and subsumed to a pleasure in the creative… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 29, 2009 at 4:43pm — No Comments

The Real Iraq War: Michael Anthony’s Writing Life

By now it’s no secret that the Iraq War has been a disillusioning experience for many of the U.S. servicemen sent there. The literature on the war has, so far, been mostly written by journalists. There’s plenty of it, and like most journalism it runs pretty mainstream and inoffensive, no matter how bloody the scenes depicted. But… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 28, 2009 at 8:01pm — No Comments

That's my boy

I started to feel recently that my bio on www.mattbeynonrees.com was a bit over-serious. First of all, it was in the third person. I honestly never refer to myself in the third person (except when I'm shopping and I ask my wife "Would Matt Beynon Rees wear a shirt in this shade of pink?") Then I saw that the bio took my writing and -- worse still -- me, rather seriously. I prefer to make it clear that I can laugh at myself. So I changed the whole bio,… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 27, 2009 at 9:42pm — 1 Comment

All rise for the Palestinian anthem

A parody of a nationalistic Palestinian song ridicules the intractable dispute between Hamas and Fatah leaders. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Last week, Hamas and Fatah were on the verge of an agreement to end more than two years of civil strife. Then Hamas tore it up, and both sides went back to tearing… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 24, 2009 at 12:17am — No Comments

“ME” doesn’t stand for Middle East

One of the advantages of being an author in an “exotic” locale is that people visit and want to hear from you as someone who knows the place well. It’s also one of the disadvantages.

Last Friday night, I drove out to Ein Kerem to meet one such group of visitors from Reboot, a U.S. organization that brings together mostly liberal – and certainly not conventional-thinking – Jews to discuss issues related to Judaism and Israel. It turned out to be… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 22, 2009 at 5:48pm — 3 Comments

Affable and trim

The last couple of articles about me and my books focus on the fact that I'm rather happy. In this month's Hadassah Magazine, I'm "affable and trim." High school friends reading this on Facebook may wonder where the affability was back then...

Profile: Hadassah Magazine October 2009 Matt Beynon Rees By Leora Eren Frucht…

Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 16, 2009 at 6:18pm — 1 Comment

Location, location

Writers live in their heads. What may be travel to you is location-scouting for me. In some ways, I’m never where I am. I’m imagining that place on the page in a future book. It won’t exist until I’ve written about it.

I was standing on a deserted bridge across the Rhine in the Swiss town of Rheinfelden a couple of weeks ago in the evening twilight. The river flowed very fast. The rain was steady. It patterned the field-grey surface of the water in scattered patches, so that it… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 15, 2009 at 6:29pm — 1 Comment

US unhappy over Hamas-Fatah deal

The planned agreement goes some way toward validating Hamas control of the Gaza Strip. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Warring Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah have drafted an agreement to end their two-year civil war. But U.S. diplomats oppose the deal. Here’s why.

The planned… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 15, 2009 at 6:21pm — No Comments

Those disorganized Swiss

You know the reputation. "Swiss" isn't a nationality. It's really an adjective meaning highly organized and perhaps even a little too punctilious.

That's a myth. The place is just like the Middle East... (Look, I write fiction, but I may be onto something. Read on.)

On my recent reading tour, I stopped in Basel as a guest of the superb Literaturhaus Basel. Everyone told me to go the city's main art museum for an exhibition of… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 15, 2009 at 12:00am — 6 Comments

Let's do the time warp again

A brouhaha over who can pray at the Temple Mount recalls a similar disagreement ... that became known as the second intifada. by Matt Beynon Rees on GlobalPost

JERUSALEM — I just returned to Jerusalem after a month away. Or at least I thought I did.

I suspect I entered a cosmic wormhole that popped me out in the right place — the Israeli capital — only nine years… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 9, 2009 at 11:47pm — No Comments

Leselust! Reading to Germans

Here's my latest post on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog:

When authors travel to promote their books in the US and UK, they’ve given up on referring to their appearances as “readings.” Now they’re “events.” Because no one wants to hear an author read.

It could be because authors aren’t such compelling readers or because many of the biggest-selling authors don’t actually write their own books (I… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 8, 2009 at 6:13pm — 3 Comments

Moore's new Thailand noir

Christopher G. Moore has book 10 in his terrific Vincent Calvino crime series out this week. "Paying Back Jack", which will be out in December in the UK. I love the Calvino series for the way it leads the reader into the underbelly of Bangkok in the company of its Italian-Jewish New Yorker private eye. PBJ gives us that… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 7, 2009 at 5:29pm — No Comments

Neon pee on the Reeperbahn, and other travels

The whole point of travel is to see Red Light districts around the world. That’s what I assume my German publisher C.H. Beck thinks. Or maybe that's what they think I'll like. Anyway, they keep sending me to Hamburg, which has one of the most famous naughty neighborhoods in the world.

At the invitation of the extremely professional Harbour Front… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 3, 2009 at 1:08am — No Comments