Quintin Jardine's blog

Thanks, Lynda. I’m sorry that you’re having difficulty in getting hold of Fatal Last Words through your local store. Actually, I’m more than sorry. I’m downright angry, and here’s why. A few months ago a decision was taken by my publisher’s parent company to replace the excellent McArthur  & Company of Toronto, as Canadian distributor of Headline and other titles, with a new, wholly owned, subsidiary, Hachette Canada. This has ripped up the close personal relationships with Kim McArthur and her colleagues that I and my fellow authors have built up over the years, but we’re nowhere near group board decisions, and no-one asked us whether we thought this was a good idea, or bothered to explain to us why it was being done.

The new arrangement takes effect on January 1, and as far as I can tell, while there were a few copies of FLW in Toronto at the time of the International Festival of Authors, (you may still be able to find one at Sleuth of Baker Street) general Canadian release has been held back until it’s in place. So Bob Skinner’s Maple Leaf Mates are six months behind the rest of the world in keeping up with his adventures. I’ll leave you to imagine how hacked off I am by that situation.

However there is one solution. If you go back to my website home page, and click on the ‘purchase’ link, you’ll be taken to my son’s on-line store, where you’ll find FLW listed, along with all the other Skinner titles, every copy signed by me. We will deliver to Canada, and we’ll keep the postage as tight as we can.

Here’s a question put to her audience by the elfin guide on a Toronto harbour tour that I took a couple of months ago. ‘Which sporting event set the record attendance at the Skydome, now known as the Rodgers Centre?’ Guesses included hockey, basketball, baseball, Gridiron football, rock concerts . . . none of them right. The highest, and second highest crowds ever logged in the arena were for . . . Wrestlemania, the annual headline event of the World Wrestling Entertainment. As the little guide put it, ‘Grown men in tights, pretending to fight.’ (I knew the answer all along, but I was too embarrassed to admit it.)

Yes, sports entertainment is huge. It’s made its leading magnate and promoter into a supposed billionaire, it’s prompted his wife and business partner to run for the US senate, it’s spawned video games and all manner of products, and it’s even made a few people believe that it’s for real. Recently, the WWE and Sky TV announced a long-term deal to continue showing the programming on satellite TV.

 Now let me ask you all another question. Do the following names mean anything to you? Richard Rood, (40), Brian Pillman, (35), Rodney Anioa, (34), David Smith, (39), Curt Henning, (44) Elizabeth Hulette, (42), Michael Hengstrand, (45), Michael Lockwood, (32), Hercules Hernandes, (46), Ray Traylor, (41), Eddie Guerrero, (38), Scott Bigelow, (45),  Sherri Martel, (49), Brian Adams, (44), Edward Fatu, (36). You’ve probably never heard of any of them, but they were all WWE ‘superstars’, and those are the ages at which they died, either from heart or drug problems. You may have heard of Chris Benoit, (40), who killed himself, after strangling his wife and son. Post-mortem examination suggested brain damage due to repeated concussions. It must be pointed out that the WWE takes a strict line with performers who are found to have taken prohibited drugs, but still, it’s a hell of a body count for something that describes itself as part of the entertainment industry.

So, should you ever tune in to Wrestlemania, or something similar, even as you’re being thrilled or amused by the ‘grown men in tights pretending to fight’, spare a thought for all of those who didn’t make it to fifty.

Thank you, John, sincerely, and the best of the season to you also.

I’ve read the link you sent me,

 http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/os-scott-maxwell-column-tiger-woods-justi20091208,0,3236643.column 

with interest, but I don’t see that it matches my comments. I referred to the way that the Tiger Woods case has been portrayed by the media, while Scott Lawton is discussing the actions of law enforcement in relation to it. However, having read the piece, it occurs to me that if the police in the UK went to a hospital and demanded blood test results for any patient, let alone one who had been involved in a very minor car accident within a gated community, with no third-party involvement, they would be told to go away until they had a court order. Even if they got one, and in Scotland that would be long odds against, those results would probably be useless in court because of the circumstances in which they were taken. I know that US law is different, and I’m not saying that it’s wrong, but I don’t really believe that Scott Lawton has a case.

To come back to my post of a couple of days ago, today I had the misfortune to read one of the most disgraceful pieces of journalism I have seen in many a moon, written by a man (I refrain from calling him a gentleman) named Mark Reason and published in the Daily Telegraph, a broadsheet that was highly regarded by many in the UK, before it lost its soul.  John, I hesitate to give this **** a wider audience, but I will, because I believe that it makes my point, that we are seeing the international media persecution of an individual on an almost unprecedented scale. How long will it be before he’s linked to Al Qaeda, and 9/11?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/golf/tigerwoods/6764344/Tiger-Woods-continues-his-descent-with-drug-overdose-suspicions.html

Finally, I read today that Gatorade has cancelled its deal with Tiger Woods. I’m still laughing at that one . . . although Gatorade won’t be in four months, when he wins the Masters drinking Lucozade isotonic. If anyone is stupid enough to give up a sports drink because the man promoting it has had an extramarital affair, they probably should anyway, and switch to something with a higher Omega 3 content. I doubt if the man will care too much. Consider this. How much is his endorsement worth to the makers of Viagra?

You are dead right; the internet has made the world a smaller place. Sadly it’s also made it nastier. I’ve never set out to offend anyone in this blog. I may say what I think from time to time, to time, to time . . . but I try not to dish out gratuitous abuse. It’s been said, by me among others, that the internet is man’s greatest invention since the wheel. The wheel can be pretty dangerous also, when used for evil rather than good.

Has your mailbox been going Tiger Woods crazy, like mine? Some of the stories are bizarre, for example the alleged long-term mistress is said to have sold her tale for $250,000, while the alleged one night stand in Australia is said to be getting $1m from Tiger for keeping her mouth shut.

Okay, it’s pretty clear that the world’s most famous athlete has been a bad boy, but . . . Where’s the surprise? Think about this: the PGA golf tour is all about 150 wealthy guys playing away from home, literally, week in, week out. It’s an environment that’s made for infidelity, yet if you watch the TV coverage you’ll find that it’s wrapped in a cloak of God and family values. So Tiger has a penchant for getting his leg over? Is he the only one? If he was a politician rather than a golfer it would be expected of him. But no, the media who have built him up are now trying, viciously, globally,  to pull him down. Why? The colour of his skin couldn’t have anything to do with it, could it?

I wonder if the media would be as vicious if Tiger was white, or if Elin was a  fat black girl instead of a blonde poppet. Nick Faldo has been divorced three times. When an American girlfriend trashed his Porsche, the media treated it as a joke. Greg Norman split from his wife, married Chris Evert, and now they’ve split up. Tom Watson divorced his wife of 25 years, then married the spouse of another pro golfer, also named Watson, coincidentally. As a young tour player Lee Trevino always wore a plaster on his arm while playing. It was to cover a tattoo bearing his ex-wife’s name. These guys are all still icons. None of them found their marital problems  spread gaudily over the world’s tabloids. So why should Tiger Woods?

You have been busy, and I thank you for it. To carry on the project, I’m afraid that you will have to wait, until June 2010, for ‘A Rush of Blood’.

God bless and keep Eddie Cobb, bon viveur, Hearts adherent, pillar of every community to which he belonged, and the best of companions.

God bless and keep Brian Baxter, my son-in-law’s dad, quiet man, loved his family, and the epitome of self-effacing niceness.

God bless and keep Joaquim Alay, the central figure of St Marti d’Empuries, without whom the village will be a little less beautiful. Gone fishing.

Wow indeed. I never saw it coming either, Martin, when it happened to me. It’s fixable, though.

Yes, go on George, thank me. I will say nothing about Tenerife, other than that it’s a box I’ve ticked a couple of times in the past, but I won’t be going for the hat-trick.

Short answer, John. Fatal Last Words is already available in ebook format. CampbellReadbooks.com doesn’t stock that format (yet) but if you dig into the Waterstones website you’ll find it.

Your presumption is correct. You may be assured that Oz is not going to regenerate like a Time Lord. However, he does have a nephew called Jonny, who’s a grown man now, and who looks remarkably like his uncle. Best wishes to you too, Martyn. (We had our first Christmas card a couple of days ago. Here’s a business idea for Royal Mail: discounts for cards posted in November.)

It really does, honest. It’s a wee cliff-hanger. Is Wilding serious, or is he winding Sammy up? Who knows? (I don’t.)

I don’t have a great track record as a compiler of air-miles, but over the last couple of years I’ve been building up a balance. Yesterday I decided to spend some, so I logged into British Airways Executive Club. I wasn’t after much, just a couple of one-ways from Edinburgh to Barcelona, and I had the miles to cover it, so no problem. When I hit the select button I found that my ‘reward flights’ were going to cost me £143, for that’s the catch, folks, air-miles only cover the fare itself, not the various add-ons.

So what did I do?  I logged on to Ryanair and booked from Edinburgh to Girona, which is around an hour closer to our ultimate destination. Saved myself £30.

Now I’m left wondering whether British Airways management actually understand the meaning of the phrase ‘customer loyalty. Is it any wonder that while Ryanair, unlikable as it may be in many ways, continues to expand, the major flag-carriers are swirling inexorably down the pan. (If you imagine that the BA take-over of Iberia . . . that’s what it is, not a merger, but the Spanish government wouldn’t want it described thus . . . will make any long-term difference, forget it.)

Not a lot as it happens, other than turn up the volume, and catch up with DVDs I might not watch if she was home. Her overnight trip to South Shields yesterday gave me a chance to view Perfect Square, a live REM concert recorded in Germany in 2003.

On the old-fashioned website I did an occasional review section, until I became handicapped by my reluctance to slag anything off. It’s my belief that anyone who sits down to do anything creative is giving of their absolute best. Only the individuals know if that’s true, but I’m usually prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. I told an audience in Toronto that I don’t read reviews of my own work. That’s true, because the good ones are bad for my ego, and the others are bad for my blood pressure, but it’s also the case that I have a problem with the whole industry. Every review you read in a newspaper, or worse on Amazon where any idiot can post his prejudices, is no more than that reader’s opinion of the work, and trust me, his or hers is irrelevant, set aside your own.

On that same Toronto platform I found myself discussing a quote by Saul Bellow which contained the phrase ‘an undeniably good book’. The theme puzzled all five of my fellow panelists as much as it did me, but what I found more remarkable was the notion that a Nobel prizewinner could write or say something so fundamentally stupid. Quality or its absence is entirely subjective; a book, a piece of music, a work of art, each one is what you make of it, personally.

All of that brings me back to REM and Perfect Square. In my eyes and to my ears it’s the best piece of recorded work that one of my favourite bands has ever done, and much as I missed my lovely wife last night I’d like to thank her and her friend Bet for giving me the opportunity to enjoy it on my big screen telly with my big sound system, as it’s meant to be played. She’s back now; I think I’ll go and play it again, to see if I can convert her.

I’m glad you’re getting into Primavera, even if you’re upset that she felt sorry for wee Frank, and extended him a little comfort in the night. Go on, cut her some slack; the truth is that she’s a one-man woman and she’ll never really get over Oz, so it’s tough for her. You’ll find her altogether more chaste in Blood Red. By the way, ‘boak’ is not a word that’s used in polite society, and I’ve never seen it in a text-book, but that’s how I was taught up to spell it. (And it’s just been passed as OK by my current soft-ware.)

News from the book sales front. After a promising beginning, http://www.campbellreadbooks.com, the only official source of signed Quintin Jardine novels, is expanding. Within the next few days, all of the Skinner titles will be listed on the site, signed by me, postage free in the UK, and subsided for overseas customers.

Look out too for Blood Red, the second Primavera Blackstone mystery. It’s scheduled for publication in hard-back and trade paperback on January 7, but it can be pre-ordered through CRB.

You can find the site by going back to the QJ homepage, or by clicking the link on the right.

Considering where you come from, that is a cracking email address. I would like to visit Oberon, New South Wales, preferably on a midsummer night, (how’s the donkey population?) as it might be cold in winter, that high above sea level. It looks to be approximately the same distance from Sydney as Wigtown is from Gullane, and every bit as worthy of a visit. Keep working on your local library. If that doesn’t work, have you ever thought of setting up a library of your own, with some like-minded friends? Set up a book group, build up a small fund, draw up a reading list, buy the books on-line, and circulate them. QJ titles won’t be a problem; Hachette Australia should be able to advise you, but if they can’t, I promise that  www.campbellreadbooks.com will.

No, I’m not going to plant a body in Wigtown. No disrespect to the charming place, but it’s in the wrong police area. Sorry you bottled out of asking your question at the Festival. The simple answer is that Stevie had to go because it was his time. I liked the lad too, and his demise wasn’t pre-planned, but when I reached that point in the story I knew it had to happen, and so, to my great regret, it did.

However, you can discard any notion that it had anything to do with a name clash. I’ve been around for a lot longer than the author you mention, and so, with all due respect to him, good guy that he is, if any character’s going to disappear for that reason, it ain’t going to be one of mine.

Yes, Eddie, yes. Do I like it when someone agrees with one of my wilder ideas? Do I ever. Peter Capaldi is a brilliant actor, who’s finally been given a job that lets him express all of his talents. I will go with your proposal of Gareth Thomas as Proud Jimmy, even though he’s at least five years too old for the part, because his brother Harvey is a very old and dear friend. For the same reason I will pass on Douglas Henshall as Andy Martin, in favour of my chum Scott Wilson, the most talented man on Scottish radio, who has a Taggart appearance in his cv.

You do not offer a suggestion for the casting of Alex. Let’s  hear it if you have one.

Yes, Tracey, they do. If you go back to the main site and click on each of the series, Bob Skinner, Oz Blackstone and Primavera Blackstone, you’ll find the books listed in order of publication.