Friday's Forgotten Books, February 3, 2012

February 17th is Donald Westlake Day to celebrate the publication of his last book, THE COMEDY IS OVER, by Hard Case Crime. If you don't regularly review but would like to do a Westlake novel for this occasion, just let me know and I will link to your blog or publish it here.

Ed Gorman is the author of the Sam McCain series and the Dev Conrad series along with many other books. The latest BAD MOON RISING is right here.

WALPURGIS III, Mike Resnick

Mike Resnick is one of science fiction/fantasy's great storytellers. I've been reading him for thirty years and I have to say he gets more accomplished and polished every time out. In addition to being a fine writer he's a fine idea man. I'd compare him to Max Allan Collins and Bob Randisi in crime fiction. The three of them have more good ideas before breakfast than I have in a week of Sundays. True. Alas.

Resnick's fiction is generally robust in its narrative but almost always thoughtful. He can take the tropes of action fiction and instill in them the themes of more reflective work. One of my favorite examples of this is his novel Walpuris 111. In form it's a thriller. An assassin named Sable is hired to kill Conrad Bland a man who has turned genocide into an ugly art form. He has practiced his talents throughout the Republic of planets and is thus sought by everyone.

The planet Jericho lands on has been settled by Satanists (planets can be settled by every kind of group) who protect Bland because they believe him to be the Dark Messiah (he will of course murder all of the before he eventually leaves). This is where Resnick shows his true mastery.

Jericho, the most successful killer in the galaxy, is pitted against John Sable, the police chief of the city where Bland resides. Sable is straight out of Joseph Conrad, a man who has become accustomed to enforcing the political agenda of his planet. He has long felt conflicted about his duties and his own morality. Now that he is faced with the assassin he begins to wonder--does Bland deserve to live? Is Jericho just a killer or a savior?

The cat-and-mouse of killer and cop drives the book but it is the moral dilemma that enriches the book. Mike Resnick always gives his readers a terrific story and many times, as here, he takes on themes that have bedeviled mankind for its entire history.
A knock-out read and chilling look at evil.

Patti Abbott

Lost in the City, Edward P. Jones

I am thinking a lot about short stories just now because I agreed to read 365 stories this year. And as I rummaged through the endless story collections I own, I found this one.

LOST IN THE CITY was published in 1992. The stories take place in Washington D.C. but not the one we usually think about. These are stories about people who drive a cab, clean houses, take drugs, get killed. They are as dark as any story you will read although Jones always remembers to buttress his grimness with irony, humor, gentleness. These are at heart stories about people who are making ends meet.

This collection won the Pen-Hemmingway Award but not enough money to make Jones' feel he could give up his day job.

Ten years go by and then he publishes THE KNOWN WORLD, which wins a slew of prizes. It's about a black slave-owner. His next work, AUNT HAGGAR'S CHILDREN, is his third book and another collection which harkens back on minor characters in his first book. For a good article on Jones, go here. But if you want to see a natural writer at work, someone who knows just what detail to include, how to write dialog and how to weave a plot, how to say something in a story, look no further. He's your guy.

Yvette Banek
Joe Barone
Brian Busby
Bill Crider
Martin Edwards
Cullen Gallagher
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
Margot Kinberg
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
Eric Peterson
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Richard Robinson
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang
TomCat

My Life at the Theater-Fiddler on the Roof

We saw Fiddler at Stratford Shakespeare Festival on July 4, 2000.

This was a different interpretation than the ones with Topol or Harvey Feinstein.

Brett Carver played Teyve as a religious, simple and subdued man. His reading of the part was brilliant for me.

Rao's in Harlem

Megan wrote a piece on her work place, this restaurant, and the mob in East Harlem for the New York Times.

Memory as a Subject in Novels

I have read three novels of later that use memory, or lack there of, as the primary element in a crime novel. In TURN OF MIND (Alice LaPlante), Alzheimer's affects the protagonist. In MEMORY (Westlake), a man is assaulted by his lover's husband and finds his memory diminishing day by day. In BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP (Watson), a disturbance has also occurred and leads the protagonist to try and catalog her owm back story.

What other novels use memory as an important element? Or is it a new thing like recovered memories of abuse was in the nineties?

I wonder if the ubiquitous diagnosis of Alzheimers has made this the current trend.

First Wednesdays Book Review: Austentatious by Alyssa Goodnight

Austentatious, by Alyssa Goodnight

As much as some of us might contend that genre is an arbitrary slot to fit books into--and that all books are basically a story--that's not really true IMHO. If the main thrust of a story is a crime or criminals, we might correctly call it crime fiction even if the writer is Tolstoy. If the main circumstances are set in a hard-scrabble town beset by troubles with cattle rustlers in 1870, we might call it a Western.

If the conflict is between two planets hurling toward each other in outer space, that would certainly be science fiction to me. And if the protagonist is mostly looking for a companion, that is romance in my book.

Now the argument that there is no genre might work better for me if people read outside their preferred setting more often. And some readers do. But a heck of a lot of people only read what is classified as literary fiction-and I find it very hard to persuade them that they might like Started Early, Took My Dog, for instance. Likewise it is hard to convince me to try fantasy, science fiction, or in the case today, chick lit or romance. Although I can be persuaded to watch a movie like FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS, I probably would never read the book.

Looking over the books I have read in the last fifteen years or so, I see only one book that might be classified as a romance and that is THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY. It was one of those arm-twisting cases too.

I have also read no science fiction or fantasy over these years. Am I missing something? Of course.

I just finished AUSTENTATIOUS by Alyssa Goodlight for Barrie Summy's monthly review group. It was clever, well-written, enjoyable, and light-hearted. I liked the use of Austen and Austin, TX in it. I like that music figured into it. It felt real, populated with real people despite its magical elements. Let me tell you a bit about it.

The Austin setting was perfect for the story. Nic James, a newly minted engineer, is browsing in a shop in weird South Austin (been there and this brought that street back to me) and comes across a vintage journal. The journal is tucked between a set of Austen novels so it seems fortuitous to our Austen lover. (I never met an engineer who liked Austen but I suppose there are some). She takes the journal home and once she enters her first thoughts into the journal, those words are magically changed to push her in the direction any good Austen heroine will take--look for romance.

Fairy Jane as Nic calls her steers Nic right onto the path of a perfect romantic figure, Sean, a musician from Scotland. Austin and music are certainly a perfect fit. I pictured Hugh Grant in his younger days. The path of this romance changes Nic in the ways Elizabeth Bennet was changed by her love for Mr. Darcy. And that's a good thing for them both. The corset comes off or is at least loosened.

Alyssa Goodnight says that Jane took over the book at some point and isn't that how the best stories get told. I think anyone who likes a well-written romance will enjoy this book and maybe a few of the rest of you too.

Disclosure: this book was sent to me by the publisher in the hope I would like it enough to review it.

For more looks at books, visit Barrie Summy right here.

Tuesday Night Movie Music

This is a brief discussion of how they created the sound track for THE DESCENDANTS. Having no experience with Hawaiian music-other than the idea it was all about doing a hula, I was very much taken with what real Hawaiian music was like.

Anyone out there a fan of this sort of music?

Forgotten Movies: Rich Man, Poor Man

RICH MAN, POOR MAN was one of the great miniseries from the mid 70s. A great villain, Falconetti (William Smith), is seen here and it launched the career of Nick Nolte, bad boy with a heart of gold.
This is the saga of the Jordache family, from the end of the war through the 1960s.
Peter Strauss is Rudy Jordache and Nick Nolte, his brother, Tom. Susan Blakely played the girl they both loved.

Based on the book by Irwin Shaw this was water cooler TV in 1976 for a couple of months.
I am not sure if I would have chosen Nolte as the actor from RMPM to parlay his role into a great acting career, but women loved him. Peter Strauss and Blakely seem to have largely disappeared except for occasional guest appearances on network TV. For more forgotten movies, see Todd Mason.

Sunday Night Humor

Arsenic and Old Lace

Satruday Night Music: Rosemary Clooney

THE SUMMING UP, FRIDAY, January 20, 2012

THE SUMMING UP, FRIDAY, January 20, 2012


Sergio Angelini A CLUBBABLE WOMAN (1970) by Reginald Hill

Yvette Banek Hag's Nook (1933) by John Dickson Carr

Brian Busby A Bullet for My Lady by Bernard Mara [pseud. Brian Moore]

Bill Crider Destinies Edited by Jim Baen

Martin Edwards The Bleston Mystery by Robert Milward Kennedy (Milward Kennedy and A.G. Macdonell)

Jerry House The Angry Planet (1945) and The Red Journey Back (1954, also published as SOS from Mars) by John Keir Cross

Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen Consequences of Sin by Clare Langley-Hawthorne

Cullen Gallagher Whisper His Sin by Vin Packer

Ed Gorman: A House In Naples by Peter Rabe

Randy Johnson See Them Die by Ed McBain

George Kelley TAMA OF THE LIGHT COUNTRY & TAMA, PRINCESS OF MERCURY By Ray Cummings

Margot Kinberg Bad Move by Linwood Barclay

Rob Kitchin The Dead Detective by William Heffernan

B.V. Lawson The Grey Flannel Shroud by Henry Slesar

Evan Lewis: Spartan Planet by A. Bertram Chandler

Steve Lewis hosting Marcia Muller: Paint the Town Black by David Alexander

Brian Lindenmuth: Tarantula by Thierry Jonquet

Todd Mason: Bob Shaw: MESSAGES FOUND IN AN OXYGEN BOTTLE and Terry Carr: BETWEEN TWO WORLDS http://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2012/01/ffb-bob-shaw-messages-found-in-oxygen.html

J.F. Norris: Do Not Disturb by Helen McCloy

Eric Peterson: Zeppelins West By Joe R. Landsale

Thomas Pluck: Fast One by Paul Cain

David Rachels: Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

James Reasoner: The Bamboo Bomb by James Dark (J.E. MacDonnell)

Karyn Reeves: Loving by Henry Green http://apenguinaweek.blogspot.com/2012/01/penguin-no-958-loving-by-henry-green.html

Richard Robinson: Toujours Provence by Peter Mayle

Gerard Saylor: Stardust by Neil Gaiman

Ron Scheer: William Lacey Amy, The Blue Wolf

Kerrie Smith COLOUR SCHEME, Ngaio Marsh

Kevin Tipple: The Maya Stone Murders by M. K. Shuman

TomCat: Manly Wade Wellman's Find My Killer


Thanks to Todd!!!!

Re: Our Radio Discussion of a Few Days Past

The Internet Archive http://archive.org is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. It is a huge resource of OTR (Old Time Radio) & other materials. You'll find Westerns, Mysteries, & Lux Radio Theatre recordings to name a few. All able to be downloaded or listened to from the site. It's worth listening top & viewing

F. Thorsen
owner, Chronicles of Crime, your mystery bookshop, Victoria, BC, Canada

Thanks so much to F. Thorsen for this valuable information!

The link doesn't work but if you put www.archive.org in google, you should find it.

Friday's Forgotten Books, January 27, 2012

My review of TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY is up at Crimespree Cinema.

Since I can't turn my head, the SUMMING UP will come as permitted.


Ed Gorman is the author of the Sam McCann mysteries as well as those about political consultant, Dev Conrad. He also edits anthologies and writes westerns. You can find him here.

Ed Gorman: A House In Naples by Peter Rabe

Whenever I read Peter Rabe at his best--or hell, even when he's mediocore--I realize how bogus a lot of hardboiled fiction is. Raymond Chandler likely learned about crime from the pulps and B-movies. As did many pulp writers.

Today we tart things up in a way previous hardboiled writers didn't and that gives it a semblance of reality anyway. Or we parody it and that makes us feel superior to it. Nothing wrong with these approaches, either. They're entertaining, amusing, fun.

Maybe it was because Rabe approached his writing as mainstream instead of genre. While he honors the tropes set down by W.R. Burnett and his imitators Rabe's crime novels are idiosyncratic, sometimes to a fault. In a few books he wanders, gets lost, and it's always because he wants to tell us something fascinating but not germane to the story. I actually enjoy his side trips but they do damage a couple of his books.

A House in Naples is about two people who are pretty much despicable, deserters at the end of the big war who run a black market operation. They aren't much better morally than Graham Greene's Harry Lime. Charley and Joe they are, friends in greed. They are living in Naples and living well. But Charley doesn't have his papers and could get extradited. Uncle Sam is not looking favorably on deserters these days.

As the book opens Charley is wounded and recognized for who and what he is. He ends stealing the papers from a dying drunk and then ends up dragging the body into the Tiber to cover his tracks. But by this time his wound has taken his toll. He is barely concious when he looks up and sees a beautiful girl staring down at him from the bridge above. He falls in love. Rabe gives this unlikely moment an ethereal power that few others could have pulled off. You buy it.

The book is a fast, sure read and the ending is a shocker. But the characters and Rabe's observations on post-war Europe are the source of the book's rich bleakness. The bleakness is very much like the realist filmmakers who appeared in Italy right after the war.

Rabe uses The Girl to contrast Charley and Joe. In some respects she's almost a religious figure, a woman who can evoke good or evil in everyone she meets. She evokes what's in you already.

For some reason A House in Naples isn't mentioned as often as Rabe's other most successful novels. But its harsh poetry and exciting action will keep it in memory long after you're

Serge Angellini
Yvette Banek
Brian Busby
Bill Crider
Martin Edwards
Jerry House
Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen
Cullen Gallagher
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
Margot Kinberg
Rob Kitchin
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/Marcia Muller
Brian Lindenmuth
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
Eric Peterson
Thomas Pluck
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Richard Robinson
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple
TomCat