Friday's Forgotten Books, July 1, 2011

WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE, Frederick Barton

Baron, a film critic, wrote a quartet of novels, The two of which I read managed to be exciting and thought-provoking. After loving THE EL CHOLO FEELING PASSES, I read this one back in the mid-nineties.

Set in 1988-89, the story is narrated by Michael Barnett, a movie reviewer for the New Orleans States-Tribune and a widower with a drinking problem. Returning home one night, Barnett finds that his house has been robbed--but, oddly, that the only missing item is his dead wife's case file on a lawsuit.

His investigation reveals some sad truths about his city, his friends, about his late wife. and even about himself. Race dominates and by the end, the "prejudice" of the title has become the real subject of the book. I am tempted to go find the two books I never read. It would be nice to read about a pre-Katrina New Orleans despite the corruption it is known for.

Ed Gorman is the author of STRANGLEHOLD among many other fine novels. You can find him here.

Shooting Star and Spiderweb by Robert Bloch Though Robert Bloch made his reputation with horror or horrrific stories and novels, he worked steadily throughout his career in the mystery and crime genres. Shooting Star, one half of a Hardcase Crime double book is not only crimonious it's also set in Hollywood, one of Bloch's abiding fascinations.

The hook here is a novel for those of us who can remember how actor William Boyd bought up all his Hopalong Cassiday movies when they fell from popularity in the Forties and later sold them to TV. Buy low, sell high. They brought him millions.

Failed literary agent Mark Clayburn, now paying the bills as a private eye, is hired to prove that a Boyd-like actor wasn't the decadent man the press revealed him to be following his murder. The man who hires Clayburn bought up the dead star's Hoppy-like movies and expected to make a fortune. But since the films are aimed at kids...who wants to see a hero whose tastes off-screen were, to be gentle about it, sleazy. In Spiderweb failed actor Eddie Haines is hired to be a "psychiatric consultant" to the stars by a rather arch villain named Professor Hermann. By blackmailing Eddie, Hermann has found the perfect tool for his racket.

There are moments that reminded me of Nightmare Alley throughout the book and more than a few scenes that move the novel into the kind of realistic horror of Psycho. Shooting Star is driven by its mystery storyline; Spiderweb, though the storyline is less focused, depends on shock material to keep you turning the pages. Neither of these novels is major Bloch but both deserve reading. For one thing they encapsulate a good deal of the obsessions, sociologically, of the Fifties.

For another we see the dark side of Bloch's obsession with Hollywood. In such masterpieces as his short story "The Movie People" we see his almost innocent sense of what the movies gave to him as a youth. When he speaks of Chaplin and Keaton and Lloyd it's as if he's speaking of secular saints. The movies of his boyhood are holy to him. In these novels and many short stories he deals with the business side of Hollywood. The voice becomes by turns sardonic and angry as he witnesses the passion and beauty of the great films and film artists reduced to power plays and dishonest deals rendered by men who have no idea what they're defiling. I enjoyed both of these books enormously.


Yvette Banek
Joe Barone
Paul Bishop
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/Geoff Bradley
Jack Martin
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Richard Robinson
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Kerrie Smith
Michael Slind
Kevin Tipple