US TOUR 2007, DAY FORTY-EIGHT:

After turning into a few one-way streets the wrong way, and missing the odd turn-off, we finally made it to the lobby of the CBS Radio/CNN650 building in downtown Houston to meet up with John DeMers for my live appearance on his Saturday morning "Delicious Mischief" show.

John is a colourful character, originally from New Orleans, whose show focuses on his twin passions of food and drink - with a little bit of mystery thrown in.

His other guest was a lovely big guy called Bear Dalton, a stetson-wearing cowboy whose passion is wine. Over the years he has become something of a cult figure around the vineyards of Bordeaux where he makes wine-tasting trips in full cowboy regalia to find new vintages to stock his SPEC's Liquor Stores in Houston. He had brought four bottles to taste on the show.

Happily, when he finished, he left them for the rest of us to drink. A glass or two of Californian red oiled my vocal cords for the twenty minute interview which lay ahead. Actually, it seemed like just five minutes, and then we were heading out again into the sunshine.

Our stay here has passed in a blur.

We had a strange moment of homesickness when we lunched in an Indian restaurant (the Indian food in Glasgow is just about the best you'll find outside of India).

Then on to "Murder by the Book", where a sizeable crowd turned out to hear my talk. One reader, Steven Sill, arrived with a sackful of my books, which he had acquired from various sources. He had read the entire China series, and wanted each and every one signed. Another reader, Fred Forschler, had bought all the books direct from us via the website, indulging in a lengthy exchange of emails with La Patronne in the process. He almost pinned me to the wall, demanding a follow-up to the sixth China book. "You can't just leave Li and Margaret like that," he said. "There has to be more."

The tour has been punctuated by similar requests, and along with the hundreds of emails I've had on the subject, I might have to return to China one of these days - just to see what has happened to the hapless pair since we last encountered them (I fully believe they have been getting on with their lives in my absence).

I finally met Barbara Douglas, who is quoted on the back of "Extraordinary People", describing it as her favourite book of 2006. The store's Dean James, a member of the committee which decides the prestigious Edgar Awards, puts it in his top five for the year. "Murder by the Book" had sold more than 100 copies in advance of my appearance there, and I signed a great many more during the course of my visit.

Our long-suffering minder, the incomparable Ginny Wilson, drove us back through a spectacular sunset and partial eclipse of the moon, to a barbecue dinner of grilled ribs in Huntsville, before dropping us off at the university hotel to pack and prepare for our flight tomorrow to Denver.

We will have a farewell breakfast at the Cafe Texan with Dick and Michelle in the morning - a last taste of Texan hospitality - before embarking on the home stretch of this long, long tour.


With staff and readers at "Murder by the Book"...


Typical Texan dining instructions at the Huntsville rib joint...

US TOUR 2007, DAY FORTY-SEVEN:

Life is crazy. It takes you to unexpected places at unforeseen times, stirs interesting thoughts, and throws up unanticipated events.

Like, for example, going through security at John Wayne airport in Orange Country, California. We were headed for Houston, Texas, and had allowed plenty of time at the airport - because the man with the kilt is always subject to special attention going through security, as regular readers of my blog will know.

I stripped down to essentials, as usual, and stepped through the metal detector. Not a peep. No alarm, nothing. I couldn't believe it. The buckles on the kilt always set it off. Always!! I almost said, "No, hang on, I'll go through again, it's bound to go off this time." But I didn't.

The female security officer looked at me sadly and shook her head, leaning forward to confide, "I was really hoping the alarm would go off. You know, the male security guys get so embarrassed when they have to search a guy in a skirt."

Okay, so we're travelling Wednesday, because our scheduled week in Huntsville, teaching creating writing at Sam Houston State University has been cut short. No one signed up for the course. But Dr. Richard Ward, former Dean of the university's College of Criminal Justice, still wanted us to come. He is an old friend and mentor, and the man who made the writing of the China Thrillers possible because of his contacts inside the Chinese police.

He is now the university's Associate Vice President for Research and Special Programs, and had arranged for us to give a talk to creative writing students at The Woodlands campus of the University of Houston. So we spent a couple of hours chatting with the students in a classroom in a space age building in the woods of Conroe - less than a mile away from where the denouement of "Snakehead" takes place.

Actually, that scene was set at Dick Ward's ranch just outside Huntsville, but for the purposes of the story I'd transplanted it to Conroe. Dick has never forgotten my description of the chaos inside his garage. Nor forgiven it. When we went to the ranch for dinner the following night, I discovered he had made a concerted effort to tidy it up for my benefit. His good lady wife, Michelle, had told him to bring us in the front door. But I sneaked around the side to take a peek in the garage.

It was... well, nearly tidy. Good job, Dick!

Dick is an extraordinary man of exceptional energy. He has made more than sixty trips to China, training the top five hundred cops there in the latest Western policing techniques. He is constantly globe-trotting, making connections, raising funds, placing students. Most of the major law enforcement agencies around the world are now populated by his former students. Talk about being well-connected!

Being around Dick is never dull. He sent one of his students to the airport to pick us up. A lad with a good Scots name, and sound Scottish heritage, Duncan McCallum. He was, however, a little nervous at driving the university's brand new white Ford Expedition with which Dick had charged him. He would not, he said, be able to face his mentor if he were to do it any damage. "If we have a wreck I'm afraid you're going to have to come with me to Mexico. I will simply have to disappear."

Thanks to Dick, we found ourselves, Thursday afternoon, at the George Bush Presidential Library, on the campus of Houston A & M University at College Station (popularly known as "The Aggies"), about an hour from Huntsville. I'm not talking here of George W Bush, the current President, but of his father, George Herbert Walker Bush, the former President.

Interestingly, I had been in the house set up in Beijing by Bush Senior when he was made special envoy to China in the 1970s. It is now the home of the US Ambassador, and I set a scene there at an ambassadorial party in "The Fourth Sacrifice".

I'm not sure I had ever really formed an opinion about George Bush Senior, but I found myself impressed, and even moved, by the public exhibit at the library. An eighteen-year-old war hero who flew bombing missions over the Pacific during World War Two - when he was shot down and very fortunate to be rescued; a father who suffered the tragedy of losing a daughter who was only four years old; a man who handled the rigours of running the CIA; a man with the wit and intelligence to make powerful speeches off the back of handwritten notes made minutes before getting up on the podium.

Both La Patronne and myself were moved, almost to tears, by a letter he had written to his mother reflecting on the loss of his daughter, and another written to his children on leaving Kennebunkport.

This is a man in his eighties who still makes parachute jumps, who lives by the old fashioned values taught him by his parents - values that seem all too scarce in today's society. I arrived at the library with an open mind, and left with the impression that here, perhaps, was one of the most unsung Presidents of recent times. A decent man.

Thanks also to Dick, we found ourselves today at the Houston Space Centre - chauffeured by our old friend, Ginny Wilson, a student of Dick's who had been assigned to babysit us during our last visit, and who was doing a wonderful job of babysitting once again. She is small, but perfectly formed, and has trouble reaching the pedals of the Expedition. But she is equally fearless and throws it around the freeways and the streets of Houston like a veteran truck driver.

It would probably not have occurred to us to visit the Space Centre. But I'm glad we did. They had the space capsules actually flown by astronauts of the various programmes that led, eventually, to the moon. Numerous artefacts of that extraordinary time of ingenuity and invention. How basic it all seemed. Clocks that told the time with mechanical counters, dials and knobs and switches that looked like a mock-up on a fifties film set. And yet it was all real. In unbelievably cramped conditions, brave men took extraordinary risks to push back the boundaries of space, with what was then cutting-edge, but untried, technology.

We looked at rocks from the moon, dust collected from it's surface, and touched a piece of moon stone more than one-and-a-half billion years old. We frolicked in the Sky Lab, and "flew" the shuttle. We ate the ice cream of the future - frozen granules that stuck to the palate.

And we wondered what had become of that spirit of adventure, the insatiable desire of man to push forward into the unknown. Somehow it seems to have turned inwards, got stalled by greed and complacency, in spite of all the technological advances.

In his speech given at Rice University in 1962, President John F. Kennedy said, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win." Fine words that launched a fabulous adventure that reached its conclusion a mere seven years later.

But that was nearly forty years ago. One wonders where the impetus and inspiration will come from to kick-start that ambition. To re-launch the great adventure. And it seems unlikely to come from today's crop of mediocre leaders.

I am reminded of a famous quotation, "Two men look out from behind the same bars, one sees the gutter, the other the stars" , and I can't help thinking that we need to lift our heads again.


The "Cafe Texan" where we breakfast with the Wards...


An interesting logo in this typical Texan cafe...


Dick's "pet" long-horned steer...


The Ward ranch...

US TOUR 2007, DAY FORTY-FOUR:

I'm watching the sun coruscating across the rippled surface of the harbour. A yacht cruises slowly by, its sails filled by the warm offshore breeze. The Stars and Stripes flap in the sunlight, tall palm trees sway listlessly, silhouetted against the ocean beyond.

I feel sad, because tomorrow is our last day here. Since returning from Vegas, time has slipped away through our fingers, like the sand on Newport Beach. On Saturday I did a small signing event at Martha's bookstore down on Balboa Island. It was a beautiful day, so they set up a table out on the sidewalk, and I spent two hours signing books and chatting to passers-by.

Among the first to buy a book was a family out for a morning stroll - Ma, Pa, son, daughter-in-law, grandson. Pa was looking curiously at my kilt, then the son approached. He was a good-looking young man in his twenties.

"Are you Scottish," he asked, in an unmistakeable Scottish accent.

Turned out he lived in Newport Beach with his American wife, and his parents were there on holiday from the east coast of Scotland, to visit their son and grandson.

These Scots are everywhere!

Next up was a real American. You could tell from his accent. Then it turned out his family was Scottish and his name was Donald Stewart. You cannae get much more Scottish than that!

Of course, they all bought books.

Then Mike and Barbara Monachino, our friends who live in Newport, New York, Jersey, Canada...I lose track... showed up, fresh from a holiday in St. Bart's in the Caribbean. They bought a couple of books and we agreed to meet for lunch at Chimayo's, our usual cycling destination at Huntington Beach.

Many margaritas later we returned to doze away a somnolent afternoon.

Sunday, we should have left for Houston, Texas, to teach a one-week writing course at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville. Unfortunately, the university had no take-up on the offered course, so we rearranged our flights to give ourselves a few more days here.

We leave on Wednesday to spend time with my friend and adviser, Dr. Richard Ward, who first opened doors for me in China with the Chinese police. I have a live radio interview on John DeMers' "Delicious Mischief" radio show on CNN650 in Houston on Saturday morning, followed by a book event that afternoon at "Murder by the Book".

Then on Sunday we head north to Denver and Boulder, Colorado, and cooler climes - the beginning of the long trek north and east, via Minnesota and Pennsylvania, and ending in New York City in two weeks' time.

Then home.

It feels like we've been a long time gone.


Susie and the Monachinos at Chimayo's...

US TOUR 2007, DAY FORTY:

Las Vegas is an experience everyone should have. Once.

It is the capital of tack, an assault on the senses - from the doubled over plastic figure outside a trinket store on The Strip blowing bubbles out of his backside (calm yourself, Gary), to Elton John, Celine Dion, and The Beatles.

Sadly, all we got to see were the bubbles.

We arrived mid-week, and all the major shows were "dark" - i.e. not playing. Even the standing exhibition we had wanted to see - a display of plasticised human body parts - was mysteriously closed... although it seemed to be on show everywhere else I've been; Seattle, Phoenix... And The Beatles tribute band, Rain, were away on tour.

We settled instead for a fabulous meal at the Aureole restaurant in Mandalay, where a girl on a pulley system flew up and down a vertical wine cellar housed in an air-conditioned glass column in the centre of the grande salle. We also sent her hurtling skyward - to fetch a bottle of chardonnay from Susie's own Ambullneo winery.

In a sense we were lucky. Because the previous weekend the whole city had been in gridlock - a combination of the NBA playoffs, St. Valentine's Day and President's Day, had brought unprecedented numbers of visitors to Las Vegas. "Worse than New Year's," a taxi driver told us. So although it seemed busy to us, apparently we had the place to ourselves.

Daytime Vegas is less impressive than the nightscape. The lights lend it glamour and glitz. Daylight reveals a certain tawdryiness. It is a city of gapsites and construction, a restless search for the next bigger thing. But in the casinos themselves you'd be forgiven for losing track of time. There are no windows, and so no daylight. Gamblers sit at tables in a constant twilight, long-legged girls feeding them endless free drinks to stay there and lose more money.

Land is cheap, property is readily available, there is no state income tax, and so Las Vegas has become the fastest growing city in the USA. The weather might also have something to do with it.

Before we left, we visited Caesar's Palace, wandering through ancient Rome, with domed skies going through twenty-four hour cycles in a matter of minutes. We ate near the Trevi fountain, pizzas at Spago's, before heading off into the dusty heat of Death Valley.

This is what the moon must look like, minus the craters. Rocky outcrops and stony mountain ranges rising out of the sand of the Mojave desert. Endless, blistering miles of it. It is 86 metres below sea level, and temperatures range from upwards of 130 degrees farenheit during the day, to below freezing at night.

A low pressure weather front was moving in off the Pacific as we headed west, colliding with a standing high pressure. The result, at first, was wind. We saw great clouds of sand whipped up into clouds in its hot, swirling breath. Then, as we rose up through the mountains to over 4000 feet, we met the rain. A thrashing, battering downpour.

And so it was, that we got back to Newport Beach on a blustery wet night, glad to be home. An early night, and a deep sleep, were rewarded by sunshine at dawn, and the fantasy that is Vegas seemed to vanish in the haze of our memories, like a mirage in the desert.


Dawn view from Susie's...

US TOUR 2007, DAY THIRTY-NINE:

Okay. No words this time (well, not many), just pics (click on the picture to enlarge, then the back button to return).

Let Vegas speak for itself...

Susie stands by a familiar address... in New York?


Eating Irish in the Big Apple


...served by Kelly from Calistoga, California (wearing the Black Watch)


...watched over by a free lady


Disney mean much to me...


And there's that lady again...


Ahhh, New York, New York!


Oops...


La Patronne gambles on a penny...


...while Susie figures out the odds


A lady with extraordinary nails tries her luck...


Vroom, vroom...


Big, bad bikers...


Hey, what happened? Paris!!!?


Speaks for itself...


Bit of an eyeful!


And more...


In the fading light...


The ladies of the night - Les Girls!


ONLY IN LAS VEGAS!!!

US TOUR 2007, DAY THIRTY-EIGHT:

It was dark by the time we got to the Hoover Dam, La Patronne, Susie and I. Earlier, we'd been burning up the tarmac on Route 66. The sun had taken forever to set beyond the mountains. The sky was incredible. Like the cover of "Snakehead".

And then there it was, floodlit, spectacular, an extraordinary feat of engineering accomplished in the nineteen-thirties to harness the power of the Colorado River and bring light to Las Vegas and Los Angeles. We felt dwarfed by it, as slowly we drove around its perimeter, rocks rising sheer around us.

A tower showed a clock set to Arizona time at one side of the dam. It was 8.25pm. On the far side, another clock showed Nevada time. It was 7.25pm. It had been a long drive since our early start in Phoenix more than twelve hours earlier. The hour-long TV interview I recorded with Barbara Peters at nine o'clock that morning, seemed like a week ago.

Since then we had braved barren desert scrubland, mountain roads climbing above the snowline, 5000 feet and more, the spectacular red rocks that rise out of the ground all around the little town of Sedona - rocks like cathedrals, stunning in scale and colour.

And now, as we crested the final ridge in the dark, there it was. Las Vegas. Laid out before us like some vast carpet of light, spread across the desert plain between jagged mountain ranges. If ever there was a way to enter Vegas, this was it, hurtling in on the freeway through a blaze of neon, then swooping down on to The Strip, Susie at the wheel, monuments to man's creative madness rising on all sides.

My antipathy for big cities is well-known. But this was an experience not to be missed. For those worshippers of mankind's most fabulous of follies, this is a must-make pilgrimage. It is crazy, but compulsive - escpecially for those gamblers among us.

Treasure Island, Caesar's Palace. And then - how crazy is this? - Paris, the Eiffel Tower. Across the road is Venice. Further along The Strip are Monte Carlo, New York, the Pyramids, Luxor.

We are in the Bellagio. A vast reception area leading into an even larger gambling floor. Row upon row of slot machines, croupiers turning wheels, flipping cards, gathering dice. You have to run the gauntlet of it all to get to the elevators. Clearly they hope to tempt you to lose money en route.

And then our room, on the 26th floor, with ceiling to carpet windows looking out on the Eiffel Tower, and a huge man-made lake with a spectacular water and light show that runs every fifteen minutes.

I stop to pinch myself. It's all so unreal - and at the same time so incredibly real. Because we are here.

A long way from the tiny South Pasadena bookstore of "Book 'Em" that we visited on Sunday to talk to customers and sign books. Or the afternoon drink we shared with our old French neighbours, John and Bettie Jensen in Beverly Hills, before dining at the Los Angeles Country Club - where the maitre d' made me wear a jacket and tie in an attempt to accomplish some veneer of presentability.

Or the long drive through barren moonscapes, punctuated by forests of wind turbines, and a dramatic desert thunderstorm, to the upscale town of Scottsdale on the edge of Phoenix. The vastness overhead on that Arizona desert drive had been extraordinary - a cistine sky of dark, bruising brushstrokes, smeared across a wet, purple fresco (that one's for Ian and Hilary).

Then rain pounding on the skylight as author Mary Anna Evans and myself were interviewed by our publisher, Barbara Peters, before an enthusiastic audience at the Poison Pen bookstore. The one place you don't expect to be cold, or rained upon, is Phoenix. But, then, nothing about this trip is conforming to the expected.

Barbara Peters prays for success...

And now we have a day to play, and I'll leave you to guess at what it is we might get up to in this original sin city. For, after all, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

See you in California.

Writing the Vegas blog...

US TOUR 2007, DAY THIRTY-FOUR:

As we sped down Interstate 5 heading south for San Diego, I watched the gauge charting the outside temperature rise and rise. In farenheit, of course. At one point it touched a staggering 86 degrees - which is an unbelievable 30 degrees Celsius. With twenty-four feet of heavy woolen plaid wrapped around my waist, you could say I was feeling the heat.

And when the holiday traffic on the freeway ground to a halt (it's Presidents Day on Monday), we all started cooking. It was hard to believe it was still mid-February.

We were headed for a book event at the "Mysterious Galaxy" bookstore in San Diego to sign some books. Because of the holiday weekend, we didn't really expect a crowd. As it happens, my good friend and pathology adviser, Dr. Steve Campman, turned up with his whole family - Trenda, Danielle, and Jacob - and staff and customers gathered round as we talked about how it was Steve who had made the writing of the China series possible - since one of the main characters is a pathologist, and I knew not the first thing about pathology when I began writing the books.

Steve, currently a medical examiner in San Diego, is the perfect adviser for a writer. He has an eye and an ear (and a nose) for those things that a writer is looking for when describing a scene - particularly an autopsy. He doesn't just answer my specific questions, but looks beyond them to their wider implications and always makes valuable suggestions.

When, in "The Killing Room", I was looking for my pathologist to find tiny clues towards establishing the identites of murder victims found on a building site, Steve came up with some great ideas. A slight groove between the front teeth of one, made by holding pins between them, suggested that she might have been a seamstress. Polyps on the vocal chords of another led to the thought that she might be a singer. Another had tiny stress fractures in the bones of her feet, suggesting that she might have been a dancer. In fact, she turns out to be an acrobat.

Other books dealt with blood spatter patterns, an accident during autopsy, getting DNA from ten-year-old bloodstained flagstones, and many other complex pathological and forensic issues.

It is all those tiny little insights that lead towards authenticity, and it is Steve that I must thank for them all.

We got back to Newport Beach in the early evening and went to the Chakra Indian restaurant on the UC Irvine Campus to, finally, satiate my desire for Indian food. It is just about the only thing we miss since we left Scotland. Our home town of Glasgow has some of the very best Indian restaurants in Europe. Indian cuisine is almost impossible to find in la France profonde, and it never tastes quite the same when you make it yourself.

But for now you'll have to excuse me. As usual, after a curry there is somewhere I have to go in a hurry.


La Patronne and Susie at lunch on the Lido at Newport Beach

US TOUR 2007, DAY THIRTY-THREE:

It's weird! I live in France, I wrestle with the language daily, and I think I've made some progress over the last few years.

I've been in the States for about four weeks, and whatever confidence I have in my French seems to have evaporated. A flurry of e-mails and iChats first thing this morning brought that realisation home with a bang.

I got two e-mails from my French publisher: one about my rail tickets to the Paris book fair in March, the other concerning my nomination for a literary prize awarded by prisoners.

It was the latter that made me question my understanding. The award is called the Prix Intramuros, and it is made as part of a festival of crime writing held in Cognac in October. I had already been shortlisted for the Prix International which is also awarded at that festival, so was surprised to find that I had been nominated for a second one.

But as I read on, I seriously began to question my comprehension of the French language. What the e-mail seemed to be saying was that six writers had been shortlisted for the "Intramuros", and if they agreed to be put forward for it, they would have to arrive at the festival a day early. Then first thing the next morning, they would be taken in twos to a nearby prison, where two juries of prisoners would quiz them on their work during a nearly twelve-hour day.

That night, at a dinner in the banquetting hall of a local chateau, the winner would be announced and the prize awarded.

In a panic, I e-mailed my French translator, Ariane, in Paris asking if I was understanding this right. We then had a lengthy iChat in French, via instant messaging, during which I struggled with both comprehension and expression, before finally arriving at the realisation that my first impressions had been correct.

This really is an award made by prisoners. The prize was first given in 2005, and is an attempt to bridge the gap between those on the inside and those on the outside through the medium of reading. I'm not sure if I'm the first foreigner to be nominated, but I know that last year's six writers were all French. I read their accounts of their prison visit and interrogation by the juries of prisoners, and it certainly seemed to have left an impression on them.

By coincidence (or maybe not), the book which has won me the nomination is "Snakehead" - "Cadavres Chinois a Houston" in French. And during the research for that book, which is set in the United States, I visited several prisons in Texas - including the so-called "Death House" in Huntsville, where prisoners are executed by lethal injection.

So we should have a lot to talk about, those French prisoners and I. But I'm going to have to brush up on my French prison vocabulary first!

When finally I broke the surface of this sea of French, I looked out of the window to reacquaint myself with my present reality - i.e. southern California - and was delighted to see that the sun was blazing out of a flawlessly blue sky. I was reminded, briefly, of a jet which had worked its gymnastic (and at the same time laborious) way across those blue acres the previous evening. Clever manipulation of an on/off smoke trail spelled the words WILL U MARRY ME above the setting sun. It was, after all, Valentine's Day. Awwww.



Of course, in a few years it will probably be GIMME A DIVORCE!

But with the morning sun now rising, and the temperature soaring into the mid-twenties centigrade, it was time to get on the bike and blow some of that French syntax out of my hair. So La Patronne and I cycled and ferried and cycled our way to a restaurant called the Crab Cooker near the ocean. We gorged ourselves on scallop and prawns before making our way to the beach, paddling in the Pacific, then dangling our legs from a lifeguard station as we let our feet dry in the breeze.



I looked up from the book I was reading, which was in English naturally, and got sudden butterflies at the thought of prisons and prizes in October. That, of course, is my reality. Not this. Not California. This is unreal. Sea and sunshine in February! I expect to wake up any minute to feel the cold French winter blowing around my ankles, and French words tumbling naturally from my lips.

With the distantly echoing words rattling around my head, 'And it was all a dream.'