Friday's Forgotten Books, August 7, 2009

It said, "Students at Bob Jones University reading" but they look a bit sinister for that school.

For an entire list of the series, go here.

AUGUST 21-Forgotten Movies

August 28 and Sept. 4th, break.

We could use some more reviewers for Sept. Email me if you'd like to join in.

Blake Crouch is the author of ABANDON, out this summer from Minotaur Books.

David Morrell’s second novel, TESTAMENT, was published in 1975. You might have heard of his debut. Little book called FIRST BLOOD that introduced the character John Rambo and in the process invented the action novel. TESTAMENT is Morrell’s darkest book, and that’s saying something pretty profound. It opens "It was the last morning the four of them would ever be together" and heads downhill from there. Downhill being a good thing in this case. TESTAMENT is about a family being torn apart and having to fight for its survival under the harshest, most excruciating conditions. To give the briefest plot-tease, the husband/father has pissed off the wrong people, and those wrong people intend to murder his entire family, who’s forced to flee their home. There are scenes of such despair and power in these pages that they level you. But this is a book that must be read, and part of the fun is knowing TESTAMENT was written thirty-four years ago, in the age of Forsythe and Ludlum and the Big International Thriller. In contrast, TESTAMENT feel s contained and intimate and linear. Very much a prototype of things to come, and without question one of the best thrillers I’ve ever had the joy and horror to read.

Lisa Bork’s debut novel, FOR BETTER, FOR MURDER hits the bookstore the first week in September,. It’s the first book in the Broken Vows mystery series from Midnight Ink. The second will follow in 2010. For more information, visit www.LisaBork.com.


The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

My son completed his first summer reading assignment for school—The Secret Garden. When he brought the book home at the end of June, I sighed, “Ohhhh” in a most adoring way.

You see, I still have my first copy of The Secret Garden, a Dell paperback edition from 1962. It’s one of the few books I kept from my childhood—because it’s no secret The Secret Garden is a classic.

My son said “The names are hard in this book.” What’s so hard about Mistress Mary Lennox, except for the fact that she’s one tough cookie? Maybe he meant Ayah, Mem Sahib, Colin, Dickon, Mrs. Medlock, Lilias, Archibald Craven, or Misselthwaite Manor. Those names are not so common. I know he had trouble spelling “cholera,” which is also not so common anymore.

Perhaps that’s why the characters and the storyline of The Secret Garden are so memorable—it wasn’t common. This story introduced me to the moors and cholera. It also introduced me to India, government service, children not being raised by their parents, nurses, governesses, housekeepers, gardeners, invalids, hunchbacks, spoiled tantrums, Yorkshire accents, and walled English gardens.

So why is The Secret Garden, first published in 1911, a classic still enjoyed by all ages in every generation? Perhaps it’s the secrets, mysteries, and magic. Tragic deaths. Lost love. Orphans. Laughter and tears. Imagination. Friendship. Animals. Rebirth. Lost souls. Beautiful setting. Redemption. A little girl with a lot of gumption. Or the happy ending. This story tugs on the heartstrings.

My local library has several different editions, most out of print. Many movie and stage versions have been made. But I hadn’t thought about the book in years until my son brought it home from school.

Then I got to enjoy it all over again.

And it reminded me of another favorite Frances Hodgson Burnett novel from 1905, A Little Princess, again about an orphan girl in unfamiliar circumstances using her determination and imagination to get her through and making the world a little brighter for others, too.

I may reread that next.

Eric Beetner is the c0-author of the forthcoming ONE TOO MANY BLOWS TO THE HEAD, and many crime fiction stories. He is a film-maker, screenwriter and you can find him here.

BANK JOB, Steve Brewer:

I just finished another Steve Brewer book, Bank Job, and I loved it. Why is this guy not huge in the crime writing world? He’s published sixteen books including two series and many excellent stand-alones like Bullets and Boost and Cutthroat.
His simple prose style exposes his day job as a newspaper columnist and, true to that form, he gets the action going right away - he never buries the lead. With the whole print journalism industry looking rather precarious now is the time to elevate Steve Brewer to best-selling status in case his paper folds tomorrow. You’ll be glad you did.
His characters have an amazing ability to be good and decent people while also being bad guys (and girls). Some of his hardened criminals are also some of the most lovable characters I’ve read in a while. In modern crime fiction it is easy to just go hell-bent for blood and guts and amorality but Brewer manages to inject some truly respectable qualities to characters like Vince, the aging ex-bank robber at the center of Bank Job and Lily, the assassin on the run in Bullets, a book that makes you root for a cold-blooded killer to get away with it.
I am not normally one for P.I. series but I think I am going to break down and dive into Brewer’s Bubba Mabry series. I get intimidated by having to catch up on so much backstory (starting from scrach on something like the Spenser series is beyond my patience) but in this case I am excited that there are 7 books in the series awaiting me.
One thing I really love is Brewer’s ability to skip around to multiple points of view. In Bank Job each chapter shifts to see the action through one of six major players in the twisted events. He keeps it all clear and uses the device to dole out information so that it keeps us guessing.
It’s not like Brewer is toiling in obscurity but it’s time that he is mentioned in the first breath when talking about solid, never-let-you-down crime writers.

Ed Gorman is the author of The Midnight Room, Sleeping Dogs and other crime and western stories.

THE DISENCHANTED, Budd Schulberg

The passing of Budd Schulberg at age 95 is getting a lot of press, surprisingly so since we don't much value writers in America. While most of the comments are flattering, there are a few that ask us to remember that Schulberg was a "friendly witness" when brought in front of HUAC in the Fifties. It is claimed, without much proof, that his testimony put an old friend or two behind bars. I'm nobody's idea of hero so I have to say that I have no idea how I would've reacted if I'd been dragged in front of those slime ball bastards who ran the committee. Faced with the end of my career or even prison, I don't know what I would've done.

If Schulberg's decision to talk is open to question, his work certainly is not. What Makes Sammy Run. On The Waterfront. The Harder They Fall. The masterful and all but forgotten Wind Across The Everglades. A Face in The Crowd. Wonderful American writing.

One novel that never gets much mention is The Disenchanted. This is a novel about a writer whose fame was lost to alcohol and fashion. The great artist is now a Hollywood hack working on a screenplay with a young writer who worships him. The writing takes them back to their old college where the older writer goes through alcoholic breakdown.

If you know anything about F. Scott Fitzgerald, you know this story is true. Schulberg was assigned to work on a piece of dreck called "Winter Carnival" in the course of which he saw his idol come undone. There are two stories here, the tale of Fitzgerald's destructive love for Zelda and how the honor Schulberg felt for working with Fitzgerald turns to horror and pity (as pointed out in Amazon.com).

I've often wondered if this novel failed to find a large audience because the more literary reviewers just didn't think it was possible for a writer of popular fiction (however important and occasionally profound) to understand a genius of Fitzgerald's caliber.

But the book is so powerful in places it hurts to read it. Line for line it's the best writing Schulberg ever did. No less a figure than Anthony Burgess wrote an essay about it and called it a masterpiece.

Along with the novel, I'd also recommend Schulberg's lengthy essay on Fitzgerald. It tells us far more about the man than all but a few of the many biographies written about him. Below is the link.

Ellen Lamb is a writer, editor and girl about town. You can find her at answer girl.

PAPERBACK THRILLER, Lynn Meyer

Last Saturday's packing/closing party at Kate's Mystery Books might have been a grim
occasion, if not for the company: dozens of authors and book lovers who turned out to pack away 20+ years' worth of books and memorabilia, and find a few treasures along the way.

I was lucky enough to draw Susan Conant [http://conantparkmysteries.googlepages.com/doglovers%27mysteries] as a packing partner, and the two of us were assigned to the back corridor, where we packed unsigned collectible hardcovers. Pulling the books off the shelves was like assembling a syllabus for Crime Fiction 101; what struck both of us, though, was how many of these authors had faded into oblivion after a couple of bestsellers, or a single heavily-promoted, critically acclaimed title.

"Like PAPERBACK THRILLER," Susan said. "That was a wonderful book, came out years ago. The author was a woman named Lynn Meyer. I loved that book. I wonder what happened to it."

As these things often go, I walked outside on my lunch break to see what was for sale on the bargain paperbacks table -- and found a used paperback copy of PAPERBACK THRILLER. Originally published as a Random House hardcover in 1975, it was a main selection of The Mystery Guild, and reprinted as an Avon paperback the following year.

PAPERBACK THRILLER is the story of Dr. Sarah Chayce, a Boston psychiatrist with a tantalizingly under-narrated backstory. She's vegetarian, divorced, childless and apparently the survivor of some long-buried trauma we never get the details of; she's also having affairs with two different men, one of whom is still married. None of these things seems to bother her; in fact, as she tells us her story, she is aggressively sane and well-adjusted, or at least she wants us to think so.

Returning from a medical conference (an excuse for a rendezvous with the married lover), she picks up a paperback thriller in the airport bookstore. It's nothing special; its author, "Greg Pitman," is obviously a pen name. What startles Sarah is the description of a psychiatrist's office that the hero breaks into: it's hers, right down to the powder-blue filing cabinets and the lapis lazuli horse.

Her first, natural assumption is that "Greg Pitman" is one of her patients, but she soon realizes that can't be true. She identifies him as a struggling literary novelist named Charles Elfinstone, with whom she has no apparent connection. He insists he's never seen her office, and says that his description must be a coincidence. But Sarah, for reasons that are not entirely clear to her and are even less clear to us, can't let the question go. She follows it through a tangled, risky web of secrets and shame, to the highest levels of Boston society.

PAPERBACK THRILLER is a fascinating time capsule of mid-1970s New England, as acute a social commentary in its way as Updike or Mailer. Sarah Chayce is a truly modern woman, someone who would be an iconoclast even by today's standards. It's fascinating to spend a few hours in her company. (At 188 pages, PAPERBACK THRILLER wastes neither words nor time.)

I haven't been able to find any evidence that Lynn Meyer wrote another book, which is a shame. I'd love to know more about her, and about the origins of this novel.

James Reasoner

Terrie F. Moran

Bill Crider

George Kelley

Todd Mason

Paul Bishop

Randy Johnson

R.T.

Kerrie Smith

Cullen Gallagher

Jack

B.V. Lawson

Kieran Shea

Michael Carlson