Rogue Males by Craig McDonald

From the Publisher

In 2006, Craig McDonald published Art in the Blood, a collection of probing, long-form interviews with 20 major crime writers that was immediately hailed as a definitive text in the study of modern crime and mystery fiction.

Now McDonald - "a genuine expert on the history of crime fiction" (Eddie Mueller, San Francisco Chronicle) - returns with Rogue Males, a collection of no-holds-barred interviews with 16 authors who have shaped and defined narrative fiction and songwriting.

Rogue Males includes conversations with crime fiction legends Elmore Leonard and James Crumley (in one of his last interviews); premier stylists James Sallis and Daniel Woodrell; noir kingpins James Ellroy and Ken Bruen, and top thriller writers Lee Child and Randy Wayne White.
Stephen J. Cannell and Max Allan Collins hold forth on the intersection of crime novels and the silver screen while Andrew Vachss, Pete Dexter, Craig Holden, Alistair MacLeod, Tom Russell and Kinky Friedman round-out this one-of-a kind collection on the craft of writing - an array of "mavericks, trailblazers and the gadflies. Men of conscience, entrepreneurs and magnificent bastards," as McDonald puts it in his introduction.

Publishers Weekly

A fascinating follow-up to the 2006 Art in the Blood dialogue with leading crime writers, this collection by journalist and fiction writer McDonald (Head Games) underlines the "rogue male" theme by putting some of the most influential crime fiction wizards under the spotlight. Among the personalities of murder and mayhem interviewed are Elmore Leonard, James Crumley, James Sallis, Daniel Woodrell, James Ellroy, Ken Bruen and Lee Child. There are choice nuggets in the chatter between MacDonald and the scribes, Leonard revealing the secret to James Patterson's profitable corporate brand, Andrew Vachss endorsing the merits of print journalism and Ellroy labeling the late poet Anne Sexton "hot but doomed." Wannabe writers will savor the various tidbits of information about novelization and screenwriting from veterans Max Allan Collins, Stephen J. Cannell and Pete Dexter. The troubadour section of the book has its crowning glory with a howling yuk-fest by singer/ writer Kinky Freedman and an insightful tit-for-tat by literary mavericks James Sallis and Ken Bruen. Informative, compulsively readable and mentally spicy. (May)

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