Davis, J. Madison 1951- (James Madison Davis, Jr.)

PERSONAL:

Born February 10, 1951, in Charlottesville, VA; son of James Madison (a bus driver) and Alma Lucille (a local government employee) Davis; married Simonne Evelyn Eck (a homemaker), May 21, 1977 (divorced); married Melissa Anne Haymes, December 20, 1997; children (first marriage): James Madison III, Jonathan Tyler; (second marriage) Thomas Anthony. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: University of Maryland at College Park, B.A., 1973; Johns Hopkins University, M.A., 1975; University of Southern Mississippi, Ph.D., 1979. Politics: Liberal Democrat.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Norman, OK. Office—Professional Writing Program, Gaylord College of Journalism, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019-0270. E-mail—jmadisondavis@cox.net.

CAREER:

Government of Prince George's County, Hyattsville, MD, zoning inspector, 1972-74; Montgomery Ward, Bladensburg, MD, undercover security agent, 1975; Allegany Community College, Cumberland, MD, instructor in English, 1975-77; University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, instructor in English, 1977-79; Pennsylvania State University, Behrend College, Erie, 1979—, began as assistant professor, became professor of English. Fiction instructor, Maine Writers Workshop, 1983 and 1984; writer in residence, Mercyhurst College Summer Writers Institute, 1990 and 1991. Business manager and advisory editor, Studies in American Drama, 1945—, 1984—. Judge of many writing competitions; member of grants award panel, New Jersey State Arts Council, 1989, and Maryland Arts Council, 1993. Director of "Short Course on Professional Writing" (annual conference), 1991-2001.

MEMBER:

International Association of Crime Writers, Poets and Writers (president, North America branch, 1992-96; regional vice president, 2005—), Mystery Writers of America, Phi Kappa Phi.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fellow, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, 1974, 1981, 1988; prize for best fiction, Contemporary, 1978; resident fellow, Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences and Ragdale Foundation, both 1982; fellow, Pennsylvania Council of the Arts, 1984, 1989; travel grant, Canadian Embassy, Washington, DC, 1987-88; Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination, best first novel, Mystery Writers of America, 1988, for The Murder of Frau Schütz; Oklahoma Book Award nominations, 1992, for Red Knight, and 1996, for And the Angels Sing.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

The Murder of Frau Schütz, Walker and Co. (New York, NY, 1988.

White Rook, Walker and Co. (New York, NY), 1990.

Bloody Marko, Walker and Co. (New York, NY), 1991.

Red Knight, Walker and Co. (New York, NY), 1992.

And the Angels Sing, Permanent Press (Sag Harbor, NY), 1996.

The Vertigo Murders: An Alfred Hitchcock Mystery, ibooks (New York, NY), 2000.

Law & Order: Dead Line, ibooks (New York, NY), 2004.

The Van Gogh Conspiracy, ibooks (New York, NY), 2005.

NONFICTION

(With Philip C. Kolin) Critical Essays on Edward Albee, G.K. Hall (Boston, MA), 1986.

Dick Francis, Twayne (Boston, MA), 1989.

(Editor) Conversations with Robertson Davies, University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), 1989.

Stanislaw Lem: A Reader's Guide, Starmont House (Mercer Island, WA), 1990.

(Editor, with Daniel A. Frankforter) The Shakespeare Name Dictionary, Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1995, published as The Shakespeare Name and Place Dictionary, Fitzroy-Dearborn, 1995.

Novelist's Essential Guide to Creating Plot, Writer's Digest Books (Cincinnati, OH), 2000.

OTHER

The Rebel (television movie), produced by WETA-TV, 1971.

Try-Outs (one-act play), produced in Adelphi, MD, 1973.

The Encounter (screenplay), produced by New World Film Society, 1973.

(Fiction coeditor and author of introduction) Intro 14, Associated Writing Programs (Fairfax, VA), 1984.

(Editor, with Donald Westlake, and contributor) Murderous Schemes: An Anthology of Classic Detective Stories, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

Contributor to books, including The New York Times on The Sopranos, edited by Stephen Holden, ibooks (New York, NY), 2002; work represented in anthologies, including Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe: A Centennial Celebration, edited by Byron Preiss, ibooks (New York, NY), 1999; and Murder in Vegas: New Crime Tales of Gambling and Desperation, edited by Michael Connelly, Tom Doherty Associates (New York, NY), 2005. Contributor of articles, short stories, and reviews to periodicals, including Antietam Review, Piedmont Literary Review, Shakespeare Quarterly, Mississippi Folklore Register, Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, and Studies in the Novel. Assistant editor, Mississippi Review, 1977-79; contributing editor, World Literature Today, 2005—.

Some of Davis's writings have been translated into other languages.

SIDELIGHTS:

J. Madison Davis once told CA: "I did not write my novel, The Murder of Frau Schütz, thinking of it as a ‘mystery,’ nor did I try to shape it for a particular market. However, I was so well-treated by the critics and fans of that genre that I am quite pleased to be thought of as a mystery author. Mystery fans on the whole are intelligent, avid readers without much of the pomposity that I have seen in other genres. Mystery writers are also generous and friendly people, in my experience, and are much better at keeping their egos below deck than most writers. As a fox (who, according to the old proverb, is interested in many things), I feel sorry for all the hedgehogs in the world who snobbishly close themselves to its multiplicity of pleasures. Shakespeare pleases me, Hammett pleases me. I take each work for what it is and do not fret about the labels."

More recently Davis added: "Since I wrote my original comments for CA, not much has changed in my attitude and thinking about writing. I continue to have more ideas than I can deal with and not enough time to deal with the ones I do work on. I remain a person interested in many things, but I can see that the focus of my work tends to be the ability of humans to deceive themselves as to who they are and what they are actually doing. Jim Thompson once said that all literature states that things are not what they seem Absolutely. Nothing is what it seems, and it is the proper occupation of writers and artists to expose what they can."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 1, 1988, review of Dick Francis; April 1, 1989, review of Conversations with Robertson Davies; May 15, 1996, review of And the Angels Sing, p. 1572.

Choice, September 1, 1989, review of Dick Francis.

Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 1996, review of And the Angels Sing.

Library Journal, October 15, 1988, review of The Murder of Frau Schütz; November 1, 1988, review of The Murder of Frau Schütz, p. 108; June 15, 1991, review of Bloody Marko, p. 102; December 1, 1996, review of Murderous Schemes: An Anthology of Classic Detective Stories, p. 151.

New York Times Book Review, September 8, 1991, review of Bloody Marko; August 18, 1996, review of And the Angels Sing.

Publishers Weekly, September 2, 1988, review of The Murder of Frau Schütz; October 27, 1989, review of White Rook; May 10, 1991, review of Bloody Marko, p. 273; June 1, 1992, review of Red Knight; March 4, 1996, review of And the Angels Sing, p. 56; October 28, 1996, review of Murderous Schemes, p. 60; December 4, 2000, review of The Vertigo Murders: An Alfred Hitchcock Mystery, p. 57.

Wall Street Journal, December 19, 1996, review of Murderous Schemes.