Tuesday, March 27, 2018
Forgotten TV: THE ORIGINAL ROSEANNE: A STASH FROM THE PAST
One of my favorite episodes from Roseanne. There are a lot of great moments and more than that ROSEANNE reflected people who don't often show up on TV. The last three seasons nearly destroyed the first six but not quite. The turmoil surrounding the show always made things iffy but it always felt real. You believed in that house and those characters-two Beckys or not. They were plucky in trying to start their own businesses in standing up for what they saw as right. And John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf were just the best thing on TV at a time when there wasn't as many prestige shows.
Monday, March 26, 2018
Things That Are Making Me Happy
The March, of course. Those kids knock me out, so ready to take on Washington. I hope it doesn't get knocked out of them like it did to us in the sixties. I enjoyed going on the bus with three friends. It seemed the right mode of transportation. And walking along Detroit's Riverwalk was terrific.
Lots of sunny days but where is the warmth?
Weird doc on Netflix about a cult I don't remember. WILD, WILD, WORLD. They pitched a tent and then a city in Oregon in the eighties and proceeded to take over. Or not. Still 3 episodes to go.
THE DEATH OF STALIN was fair to middling. Should have been funnier. And it assumed I knew a lot more about the fifties USSR than I did. So many lousy movies out now.
How about you?
Sunday, March 25, 2018
Friday, March 23, 2018
Friday's Forgotten Books, March 23, 2018
Silence of the Grave (from the archives 2006)
This is the kind of book I used to read all the time thirty years ago and now I remember why. Indridason is a master at plot, creating memorable characters, and evoking Iceland during World War II and today. His detective has a compelling personal life, is likeable and gets the job done. Indridason balances POVs masterfully-there's never a moment when you wish the writer would get back to solving the mystery.
I can't think of anything that didn't work in this book and this is from someone with adult onset ADD.
Yvette Banek, MOTHER FINDS A BODY, Gypsy Rose Lee
Brian Busby, Mary Astor, Margaret Millar and Celluloid Hell
CrossExaminingCrime, MURDER IN THE BASEMENT, Anthony Berkley; MR BOWLING BUYS A NEWSPAPER, Donald Henderson
Martin Edwards, THE PROGRESS OF A CRIME, Julian Symons
Curt Evans, MURDER FANTASTICAL, Patricia Moyes
Richard Horton, THE MOON MAID, R. Garcia y Robertson
George Kelley, THE NEW MAMMOTH BOOK OF PULP FICTION, Max Jakubowski
Margot Kinberg, BIRTHMARKS, Sarah Dunnant
Rob Kitchin, JADE DRAGON MOUNTAIN, Else Hart
B.V. Lawson, BLACK CAESAR'S PLAN, Albert Payson Terhune
Evan Lewis, TO TRY MEN'S SOULS, Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen
Steve Lewis, SHEPHERD'S CROOK. E.C.R. Lorac
Todd Mason, MEMORIES AND VISIONS: WOMEN'S FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION edited by Susanna J. Sturgis
J.F. Norris, GO LOVELY, ROSE, Jean Potts
Matt Paust, DOWN THE RIVER, UNTO THE SEA, Walter Mosley
James Reasoner, RIP RYDER'S WAY, Grant Taylor
Sandra Ruttan, PALE IMMORTAL and HUSH, Anne Frasier
Gerard Saylor, IMAGINE WANTING ONLY THIS, Kristen Radtke
Kerrie Smith, FRIDAY ON MY MIND, Nicci French
TomCat, THE MOUNTAINS THAT DO NOT FORGET, Anne Van Doorn
TracyK, HITMAN, Lawrence Block
Thursday, March 22, 2018
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
What Are You Reading?
THE PERFECT NANNY may be similar to a Judgment in Stone (Rendell). We shall see. Also reading ON TYRANNY by Timothy Snyder, a slim book with twenty lessons on how tyranny succeeds. Quite frightening.
Phil finished Sarah Weinman's new book on Nabokov, which he liked a lot. What about you?
Phil finished Sarah Weinman's new book on Nabokov, which he liked a lot. What about you?
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
WTF with Marc Maron
This is my go-to podcast when I am walking because it's long enough for me to get my 45 minutes in. I always enjoy Marc Maron, but his guests are often narcissistic boobs. People I admired, I often detest by the end of the hour. For instance David Mamet today. Why is it these people have so much confidence in their ability to say the most inane things and think they are profound.
Also Sharon Stone. Rambling philosophy.
Big exception recently was Ted Danson, who I loved.Tracy Letts and Laurie Metcalf were delightful. Jennifer Lawrence, a flake. These people need scripts.Still I admire Marc Maron's ability to try and make the most out of every guest.
Do you have a favorite podcast? I also love Filmspotting and The Last Picture Show.
Also Sharon Stone. Rambling philosophy.
Big exception recently was Ted Danson, who I loved.Tracy Letts and Laurie Metcalf were delightful. Jennifer Lawrence, a flake. These people need scripts.Still I admire Marc Maron's ability to try and make the most out of every guest.
Do you have a favorite podcast? I also love Filmspotting and The Last Picture Show.
Monday, March 19, 2018
THings That Are Making Me Happy!
I am happy that my book launch went okay and even more thankful that it is over. I don't mind talking about my work, but I hate twisting arms to get an audience.
Especially thankful that I had friends who make cookies for the event. How kind they were.
Thankful that Robin Agnew (Aunt Agatha's) came in to sell the books. I have been to events where people sold their own book, and it is awkward.
Saw THOROUGHBREDS, which was so-so, but reminded me of the superior picture, HEAVENLY CREATURES, which dealt with the same theme.
Maybe a hint of spring in the air today...PLEASE.
What about you?
Friday, March 16, 2018
Friday's Forgotten Books, March 15, 2018
SAY FRIENDS, As you finish I BRING SORROW (if you do!) I would be most grateful for an Amazon review. Say what you will, a small press published author needs those review. Thanks!
The Condemned, Jo Pagano, 1947 (from the archives, Jake Hinson)
To
understand The Condemned, Jo Pagano’s strange hybrid of social
commentary and gritty noir, a little background is in order. Born in
1906, Pagano was the youngest son of Italian immigrants who came to
Colorado at the turn of the century so Pagano’s father could work as a
miner. Jo quickly figured out that writing stories beat the hell out of
swinging a pickax, and by the thirties he had started selling stories to
magazines like The Atlantic, Scribners, Reader’s Digest, and Yale
Review.
He moved to Hollywood, and by the late thirties, he was working at RKO Pictures. Around this time Pagano became friends with the novelist William Faulkner. The great writer was in Hollywood doing script rewrites for Howard Hawks, but he spent most of his days chasing girls and getting shitfaced with other scribblers. At the time, Faulkner’s work was little read outside highbrow literary circles, but Pagano was already a devoted fan. Because Pagano could match the Mississippian drink for drink, the two men became fast friends. Faulkner became Pagano’s literary mentor and took special care to warn him about the hazards of selling out to Hollywood. Talent, Faulkner believed, couldn’t survive the compromises one had to make with the studios. He told Pagano simply, “Jo, you have got to get out of this town.” In the midst of this tutelage with Faulkner, Pagano published his third book, The Condemned, in 1947.
The novel was based on the true story of Thomas Harold Thurmond and John M. Holmes, who in 1933 had abducted and murdered a wealthy man named Brooke Hart. After the killers were apprehended and confessed to the crime, thousands of angry people descended on the Santa Clara County jail in San Jose, dragged the men from their cells, and hanged them from two trees across the street. Pagano changed the names and turned the story into a serious crime drama. The central conflict is that of Howard Tyler, an everyman living in postwar California. He can’t find work to support his family, so he takes a job as getaway driver for a small time crook, and big time psycho, named Jerry Slocum. This decision turns out to be a catastrophic mistake because soon Jerry has decided that he and Howard need to move up the criminal ladder to kidnapping.
Neither of Pagano’s previous books—both of which were affectionate evocations of family life among Italian Americans—would have prepared a reader for The Condemned. This novel is a serious literary attempt to deal with Hart’s murder and the subsequent lynching of Thurmond and Holmes. As such, it marks a sharp departure from his previous books in terms of both focus and tone. It is also something of a swing for the fences in terms of style. It bears unmistakable Faulknerian touches such as shifting perspectives, shocking violence, and buried psychosexual motivations, but it also owes a debt to Steinbeck’s social consciousness. It was Pagano’s attempt to write a great, important novel.
After its initial printing in hardback failed to bring literary glory, however, the book was radically abridged and repackaged as pulp (a process that would continue for years: Zenith Books re-released the book in 1958 under the title Die Screaming). The book isn’t entirely successful. Pagano’s weakness as a writer was preachiness. He gives us the character of Dr. Simone, an Italian professor who functions as the film’s moral and intellectual color commentator. This character mouths all of the appropriate leftist horror at the American financial and judicial systems. Moralizing in noir usually comes in the form of boring authoritarians espousing a right wing point of view, but Dr. Simone’s sermons prove that preaching doesn’t work any better when it comes from the left.
In many ways, the abridgment makes for a better read. It focuses more on the central story of the killers—in particular on Howard Tyler’s terrible guilt. After all, the key tension in the story is Howard’s gnawing sense of his own culpability, the tortured humanity of a normal man who fumbles into theft and murder and then watches in horror as his life falls apart. Soon, Pagano accepted the job of adapting the book into a screenplay for producer Robert Stillman. The resulting film that Pagano and director Cy Endfield delivered, The Sound Of Fury, was a masterpiece, a dark and serious look at American society in the post-war era. Endfield rightly seized on Pagano’s strongest material and brought it to the front of the film. He also kept Pagano’s strong supporting cast of characters: crazy homme fatale Jerry Slocum, the careless newspaperman Gil Stanton, and Hazel, the odd young woman who exposes Howard to the police.
The film met with great opposition, with theater managers across the country catching flack for running such an “anti-American” picture at the outset of the Korean War. The film was re-titled Try And Get Me! and peddled around as a genre piece (much as the book had been), but it quickly sank into obscurity. Stubbornly, the film lived on, and as film geeks rediscovered it, its reputation grew. It is now in line for a major restoration by the Film Noir Foundation. Pagano’s novel doesn’t have the same reputation that film the does, but this strange and beguiling work is well worth seeking out. Read Jake Hinkson’s review of Endfield’s movie adaption The Sound Of Fury at The Night Editor.
To
understand The Condemned, Jo Pagano’s strange hybrid of social
commentary and gritty noir, a little background is in order. Born in
1906, Pagano was the youngest son of Italian immigrants who came to
Colorado at the turn of the century so Pagano’s father could work as a
miner. Jo quickly figured out that writing stories beat the hell out of
swinging a pickax, and by the thirties he had started selling stories to
magazines like The Atlantic, Scribners, Reader’s Digest, and Yale
Review.He moved to Hollywood, and by the late thirties, he was working at RKO Pictures. Around this time Pagano became friends with the novelist William Faulkner. The great writer was in Hollywood doing script rewrites for Howard Hawks, but he spent most of his days chasing girls and getting shitfaced with other scribblers. At the time, Faulkner’s work was little read outside highbrow literary circles, but Pagano was already a devoted fan. Because Pagano could match the Mississippian drink for drink, the two men became fast friends. Faulkner became Pagano’s literary mentor and took special care to warn him about the hazards of selling out to Hollywood. Talent, Faulkner believed, couldn’t survive the compromises one had to make with the studios. He told Pagano simply, “Jo, you have got to get out of this town.” In the midst of this tutelage with Faulkner, Pagano published his third book, The Condemned, in 1947.
The novel was based on the true story of Thomas Harold Thurmond and John M. Holmes, who in 1933 had abducted and murdered a wealthy man named Brooke Hart. After the killers were apprehended and confessed to the crime, thousands of angry people descended on the Santa Clara County jail in San Jose, dragged the men from their cells, and hanged them from two trees across the street. Pagano changed the names and turned the story into a serious crime drama. The central conflict is that of Howard Tyler, an everyman living in postwar California. He can’t find work to support his family, so he takes a job as getaway driver for a small time crook, and big time psycho, named Jerry Slocum. This decision turns out to be a catastrophic mistake because soon Jerry has decided that he and Howard need to move up the criminal ladder to kidnapping.
Neither of Pagano’s previous books—both of which were affectionate evocations of family life among Italian Americans—would have prepared a reader for The Condemned. This novel is a serious literary attempt to deal with Hart’s murder and the subsequent lynching of Thurmond and Holmes. As such, it marks a sharp departure from his previous books in terms of both focus and tone. It is also something of a swing for the fences in terms of style. It bears unmistakable Faulknerian touches such as shifting perspectives, shocking violence, and buried psychosexual motivations, but it also owes a debt to Steinbeck’s social consciousness. It was Pagano’s attempt to write a great, important novel.
After its initial printing in hardback failed to bring literary glory, however, the book was radically abridged and repackaged as pulp (a process that would continue for years: Zenith Books re-released the book in 1958 under the title Die Screaming). The book isn’t entirely successful. Pagano’s weakness as a writer was preachiness. He gives us the character of Dr. Simone, an Italian professor who functions as the film’s moral and intellectual color commentator. This character mouths all of the appropriate leftist horror at the American financial and judicial systems. Moralizing in noir usually comes in the form of boring authoritarians espousing a right wing point of view, but Dr. Simone’s sermons prove that preaching doesn’t work any better when it comes from the left.
In many ways, the abridgment makes for a better read. It focuses more on the central story of the killers—in particular on Howard Tyler’s terrible guilt. After all, the key tension in the story is Howard’s gnawing sense of his own culpability, the tortured humanity of a normal man who fumbles into theft and murder and then watches in horror as his life falls apart. Soon, Pagano accepted the job of adapting the book into a screenplay for producer Robert Stillman. The resulting film that Pagano and director Cy Endfield delivered, The Sound Of Fury, was a masterpiece, a dark and serious look at American society in the post-war era. Endfield rightly seized on Pagano’s strongest material and brought it to the front of the film. He also kept Pagano’s strong supporting cast of characters: crazy homme fatale Jerry Slocum, the careless newspaperman Gil Stanton, and Hazel, the odd young woman who exposes Howard to the police.
The film met with great opposition, with theater managers across the country catching flack for running such an “anti-American” picture at the outset of the Korean War. The film was re-titled Try And Get Me! and peddled around as a genre piece (much as the book had been), but it quickly sank into obscurity. Stubbornly, the film lived on, and as film geeks rediscovered it, its reputation grew. It is now in line for a major restoration by the Film Noir Foundation. Pagano’s novel doesn’t have the same reputation that film the does, but this strange and beguiling work is well worth seeking out. Read Jake Hinkson’s review of Endfield’s movie adaption The Sound Of Fury at The Night Editor.
Les Blatt, FOREIGN BODIES, ed. Martin Edwards,
Elgin Bleecker, ODD MAN OUT, F.L. Green
Brian Busby, THE LIVELY CORPSE, Margaret Millar
CrossExaminingCrime, THE RIGHT MURDER, Craig Rice
Martin Edwards, INVISIBLE WEAPONS, John Rhode
Rick Horton, THE MASQUERADER, Katherine Cecil Thurston
Jerry House, BEST PSYCHIC STORIES, Joseph Lewis French
George Kelley, THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF WALLACE WOOD, Vol. 2
Margot Kinberg, SOLOMON V. LORD, Paul Levine
B,V, Lawson, THE CRIMSON BLIND Frederick Merrick White
Evan Lewis, LONESOME DOVE, Larry McMurtry
Todd Mason, FFM: THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, March 1978, edited by Edward Ferman; FANTASTIC, July 1978, edited by Ted White
J.F. Norris, CAST A COLD EYE, Alan Ryan
Matt Paust, CRY OF SHADOWS, Ed Gorman
James Reasoner, WHITE SAVAGE, John Peter Drummond
Gerard Saylor, THE HOMECOMING, Harold Pinter
Kerrie Smith, THE TAXIDERMIST'S DAUGHTER, Kate Mosse
Kevin Tipple. DEADLY CURRENTS, Beth Groundwater
TomCat, JACK IN THE BOX, J.J. Connington
TracyK, THE BLACK SERAPHIM, Michael Gilbert
Thursday, March 15, 2018
School Walkout
This was certainly a moving experience with the kids (11-14) making their own speeches. The 100 adults surrounded 300 students and teachers.It put my book launch into perspective because this is the real future. Hopefully these kids will always have their priorities straight. And maybe teach their parents something.
The launch went well. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Of course, everyone was a friend of ours and felt obliged to show up,
Wednesday, March 14, 2018
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
What are we all reading?
I am reading THE BOOK OF JOY for my book group. I go back and forth between loathing it and loving it. Way too many cliches but there is such good intention on the part of the two men who converse (the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu) that I have to give it leeway.
I am also reading THE CUCKOO's CALLING by J.K. Rowlings which seems pretty good. Also looking at information on the prairie. I got fooled however. I saw a book which described itself as pictures of the prairie. What it did not state was that it was a children's book. Or perhaps it did but I overlooked it. Also the pictures are pretty dull and way too modern. There's a sucker born...
Next up Alison Gaylin's new book
Phil is reading WHEN THE SACRED GIN MILL CLOSES. Just finished WONDER VALLEY by Ivy Pochoda.
How about you?
I am also reading THE CUCKOO's CALLING by J.K. Rowlings which seems pretty good. Also looking at information on the prairie. I got fooled however. I saw a book which described itself as pictures of the prairie. What it did not state was that it was a children's book. Or perhaps it did but I overlooked it. Also the pictures are pretty dull and way too modern. There's a sucker born...
Next up Alison Gaylin's new book
Phil is reading WHEN THE SACRED GIN MILL CLOSES. Just finished WONDER VALLEY by Ivy Pochoda.
Neglected Movies: Meek's Cutoff
Well, this movie led to an Abbott dispute. I found it mesmerizing. Phil found it boring. Very little happens and the ending is abrupt and vague. Based on a true story, it tells the tale of a small group of pioneers heading for Oregon with a guide named Meek who convinces them he knows the way. When they appear lost, they have to choose between picking an Indian who's been hanging around as their new guide or sticking with Meek. Michelle Williams has the biggest role but all of the cast serve it well. Kelly Reichardt directed it.
Monday, March 12, 2018
THINGS THAT ARE MAKING ME HAPPY
Happy to be doing research on the development of the prairie cities. I always forget how much I enjoy research, which is why I was a history major, I guess. That is not to say I have gotten a start on a story yet. That's what often trips me up. When do you climb out of the rabbit hole?
Happy that the Friends of the Huntington Woods Library have willed me food and wine for my event Wednesday night. I have met so many generous, loving people in this neighborhood. They are always trying to make things better.
Love Season Two of Hap and Leonard and my husband even more than me. They have a winning formula there with the setting, actors, stories.
Wonderful doc on Netflix about the artist, Eva Hesse.
Friday, March 09, 2018
Friday's Forgotten Books, March 9, 2018
Paul St. Pierre, Smith and Other Events (1984) (from the archives Ron Scheer)
The longest story, "How to Run the Country," involves a handful of politicos in Vancouver who persuade a local rancher to run for office. The author, having served a term as a Member of Parliament himself, tells this story with apparent delight as he interweaves the complex ironies of political careers and ambitions.
My favorites of the bunch include stories
about the premature funeral for an old Indian from the local
reservation, the long suffering of a ranch wife who literally spills the
beans on her husband, an elderly recluse's long-distance romance with a
young woman, and a husband and wife's indecision about whether to sell
the ranch. In another, a mid-winter trip to town evolves, thanks to a
cowboy's gambling winnings, into a days-long bacchanal in a hotel room.
Smith, the title character, is vividly
drawn, perfectly believable, and as likable as he can be obtuse. The
others, his wife Norah, sons Sherwood and Roosevelt, Arch McGregor,
Morton Dilloughboy and his son Abel, cowboy Henry James, Ol Antoine the
Indian patriarch, Frenchie and Frenchie's wife (who gets her own story),
all of them are equally memorable, including Ken Larsen, whose
arch-conservative values are no obstacle to his loyalty to the Liberal
Party.
St. Pierre’s novel Breaking Smith’s Quarter Horse (reviewed here a while ago) takes up with the same characters and is equally enjoyable. Smith and Other Events is currently available at amazon, AbeBooks, and alibris.
Mark Baker, CRY FOUL, Sandy Dengler
Yvette Banek, COLUMBELLA, Phyllis Whitney
Elgin Bleecker, THE KILLINGS AT BADGER DRIFT, Caroline Graham
Brian Busby, BACKSTAGE NURSE, Judith Rossiter (W.E.D. Ross)
CrossExaminingCrime, DEADLY NIGHTSHADE, Elizabeth Daly
Martin Edwards, DEATH RUNS ON SKIS, Hetty Ritchie
Richard Horton, The Rim Gods, by A. Bertram Chandler/The High Hex, by Laurence M. Janifer and S. J. Treibich
Jerry House, END OF A.J.D. Robert Terrall
George Kelley, THE ARMCHAIR DETECTIVE BOOK OF LISTS, ed. Kate Stine
Margot Kinberg, INNOCENCE; or, Murder on Steep Street, Heda Margolius Kovály
Rob Kitchin, NEPTUNE'S INFERNO, James Hornfischer, THE HUNDRED YEAR OLD MAN WHO CLIMBED OUT A WINDOW AND DISAPPEARED, Jonas Jonasson
B.V. Lawson, THE PLOT THICKENS, ed. Mary Higgins Clark
Evan Lewis, ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, Ian Fleming
Steve Lewis/Barry Gardner, FINAL EDIT, ROBERT CARTER Mark Baker, CRY FOUL, Sandy Dengler
Yvette Banek, COLUMBELLA, Phyllis Whitney
Elgin Bleecker, THE KILLINGS AT BADGER DRIFT, Caroline Graham
Brian Busby, BACKSTAGE NURSE, Judith Rossiter (W.E.D. Ross)
CrossExaminingCrime, DEADLY NIGHTSHADE, Elizabeth Daly
Martin Edwards, DEATH RUNS ON SKIS, Hetty Ritchie
Richard Horton, The Rim Gods, by A. Bertram Chandler/The High Hex, by Laurence M. Janifer and S. J. Treibich
Jerry House, END OF A.J.D. Robert Terrall
George Kelley, THE ARMCHAIR DETECTIVE BOOK OF LISTS, ed. Kate Stine
Margot Kinberg, INNOCENCE; or, Murder on Steep Street, Heda Margolius Kovály
Rob Kitchin, NEPTUNE'S INFERNO, James Hornfischer, THE HUNDRED YEAR OLD MAN WHO CLIMBED OUT A WINDOW AND DISAPPEARED, Jonas Jonasson
B.V. Lawson, THE PLOT THICKENS, ed. Mary Higgins Clark
Evan Lewis, ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, Ian Fleming
Todd Mason, WHISPERS, An Illustrated Anthology of Fantasy and Horror ed. Stuart David Schiff
J.F. Norris, IF WISHES WERE HEARSES, Guy Cullingford
Matt Paust, SIX EASY PIECES, Walter Mosley
James Reasoner, RETURN OF THE KID, Joseph Wayne
Gerard Saylor, MAGNUS HUNTER ROBOT Russ Hunter
Kevin Tipple./Barry Egrang Bar-20, Clarence E. Mulford
TomCat, THE CLOCK IN THE HATBOX, Anthony Gilbert
TracyK, MURDER BEGINS AT HOME, Delano Ames
Zybahn, PRISONER 489, Joe R. Lansdale
Thursday, March 08, 2018
Thanks for the Air Space
I BRING SORROW.
Thanks to THE RAP SHEET and J. Kingston Pierce for allowing me to talk about the story behind the story.
My Favorite Short Stories on Kattomic Energy
How I Came to Write Um Peixe Grande at B.V. Lawson's blog
FIFTY YEARS OF READING MYSTERIES, Criminal Element
One Bite at a Time Interview (Dana King)
Thanks to THE RAP SHEET and J. Kingston Pierce for allowing me to talk about the story behind the story.
My Favorite Short Stories on Kattomic Energy
How I Came to Write Um Peixe Grande at B.V. Lawson's blog
FIFTY YEARS OF READING MYSTERIES, Criminal Element
One Bite at a Time Interview (Dana King)
Wednesday, March 07, 2018
First Wednesday Book Review Club: WOMAN IN THE WINDOW, A.J. Finn
This is one of those books that I expected to like more than I did. The setup is good. A female psychologist is suffering from agoraphobia and is unable to leave her house. Her family has left her due an incident that takes a long time to be revealed. She drinks too much, takes drugs, watches old noir movies and watches her neighbors ala Rear Window. There is one family, in particular, she becomes involved with. If I tell you much more, I will ruin it. There are a lot of twists, the writing is fine.
But here are my problems. 1) a man wrote this book and the female did not quite ring true as a female 2) it felt very calculated-- the kind of book that does not feel like it has risen from the author's psyche but instead from the author's wish to succeed 3) it felt like a movie script more than a novel.
Now if you liked GIRL ON A TRAIN, you will probably like this. Phil did but he knows what he is getting when he picks this kind of book.I am always expecting a bit more than gets delivered. I am not really in it for the twists and turns. I am in it to watch a character achieve some end. Anybody get this?
For more reviews, see Barrie Summy.
Tuesday, March 06, 2018
Forgotten Movies: THE ITALIAN JOB
Publication Day for I BRING SORROW.
Thanks to THE RAP SHEET and J. Kingston Pierce for allowing me to talk about the story behind the story.
My Favorite Short Stories on Kattomic Energy
How I Came to Write Um Peixe Grande at B.V. Lawson's blog
FIFTY YEARS OF READING MYSTERIES, Criminal Element
One Bite at a Time Interview (Dana King)
I cannot believe I have never seen this one till now, but not a note rang familiar. Michael Caine, newly released from jail, is called upon to rob a busload of gold bouillon and puts together the usual team, including a computer expert (Bennny Hill) to pull it off. Mass traffic confusion allows the crime to take place. This is as as much comedy as heist and truly entertaining. I do wish the actresses hired had some ability to act however. Noel Coward is amusing as a bon vivant still incarcerated.The ending is brilliant.
Thanks to THE RAP SHEET and J. Kingston Pierce for allowing me to talk about the story behind the story.
My Favorite Short Stories on Kattomic Energy
How I Came to Write Um Peixe Grande at B.V. Lawson's blog
FIFTY YEARS OF READING MYSTERIES, Criminal Element
One Bite at a Time Interview (Dana King)
I cannot believe I have never seen this one till now, but not a note rang familiar. Michael Caine, newly released from jail, is called upon to rob a busload of gold bouillon and puts together the usual team, including a computer expert (Bennny Hill) to pull it off. Mass traffic confusion allows the crime to take place. This is as as much comedy as heist and truly entertaining. I do wish the actresses hired had some ability to act however. Noel Coward is amusing as a bon vivant still incarcerated.The ending is brilliant.
Monday, March 05, 2018
Things That Are Making Me Happy
We enjoyed GAME NIGHT. A small film but clever and entertaining. THE INSULT was also a very good film abut a dispute between a Christian Lebanese and a Palestinian man. It makes you wonder if these divisions can ever be healed.
Got to watch Kevin play in the state hockey championship for his division. They lost three games in a row but the kids didn't seem to mind. Fun to be there.
Grateful for the friends who gave us a ride to the hospital last week (routine). My non-driving continues to be an issue and will only be more so if I don't conquer it.
Friday, March 02, 2018
How I Came to Write This Book: JACK WATERS, by Scott Adlerberg
Scott Adlerberg lives in Brooklyn. His first book was the Martinique-set crime novel SPIDERS AND
FLIES (2012). Next came the noir/fantasy novella JUNGLE HORSES (2014), followed by the psychological thriller GRAVEYARD LOVE (2016). He is a regular contributor to sites such
as Lithub and Criminal Element, and each summer he co-hosts the Word for Word Reel Talks film commentary series in Manhattan.His new novel, JACK WATERS, a historical revenge thriller, is out now from Broken River Books.
FLIES (2012). Next came the noir/fantasy novella JUNGLE HORSES (2014), followed by the psychological thriller GRAVEYARD LOVE (2016). He is a regular contributor to sites such
as Lithub and Criminal Element, and each summer he co-hosts the Word for Word Reel Talks film commentary series in Manhattan.His new novel, JACK WATERS, a historical revenge thriller, is out now from Broken River Books.
My novel Jack Waters derives,
at bottom, from childhood summer vacations. I dedicated the book to
"Chaits", and Chaits happens to be a bungalow colony in the Catskill
Mountains of New York State where I went for part of every summer, usually
August, from infancy till college. The titular character of Jack Waters,
living in 1904, plays poker to support himself, and poker was an essential
activity during the summers at Chaits. We’re talking the 1960’s and 70’s
here, and we’re talking friendly games for money. My father played and so
did many of my parents' friends and the members of the bungalow colony staff
who were in their late teens. And yes, these teens played with the
adults, using their summer earnings to bet with, and the teens were serious
about their poker and could play well. Then at some point, around when we were
twelve or thirteen, my friends and I started playing our "kids"
games, with the stakes being nickels, dimes, and quarters. Later, when we
ourselves reached our teens, the stakes rose a bit, though our games never
included adults. Poker was a regular nightly activity during those
summers, and it's a game, from childhood, I thought a good bit about.
Though I’ve never played professionally, I know a few people who have, and I
spent time talking to them about the game and their mentality towards it. It’s probably not remarkable, when all is
said and done, that at some point I came to write a novel with a poker player
as the main character.
The novel's setting is the
Caribbean, and it so happens that of my four books so far, three take place
mostly in this region. I'd say this stems from the two
week trips my parents and I went on, starting when I was 11, to the Virgin
Islands. We went several times, and it's there I became acquainted with
the Caribbean's beauty and complexity. We vacationed in Jamaica one
August, and when I was in college, and my parents separated for a while, my
mother moved from New York to St. Croix, so I would visit her there. All
this time and later, I was reading about the Caribbean, its complicated history
and tangle of cultural influences, and this reading continued on when, in
my late twenties, I spent two years in Martinique. I got a Master's there
in Literature of the English-Speaking Caribbean and I just soaked up more of Caribbean
life. By the time I came to write Jack Waters, even though
it's a historical novel, I didn't have to do much research to prepare.
Over many years I’d done all that reading about the region, and I had a strong
sense of the look, smells, and feel of the tropics from my time spent
there. I started writing Jack Waters, and only when I had a
specific question, like what kind of warships was the United States using in
1904, would I need to look something up. Other than that, I wrote based
on what I knew, what I’d experienced, and what I imagined.
So merge an early poker fascination
with exposure to the Caribbean from a young age, and you have the genesis for Jack
Waters. Or maybe I should say the non-literary genesis, because, as
should go without saying, the book was born from a host of literary influences
also. I’ve mentioned elsewhere how Heinrich von Kleist’s classic novella, Michael
Kohlhaas, served as a model. But in terms of a whole chunk of fiction
that I drew upon while I was writing, I can’t not mention certain Latin American authors and the
stories and novels they’ve produced that rank among my all-time
favorites. There’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the way he sucks you into a
tale with his long paragraphs, abundance of incident, and sheer storytelling
genius. There’s the Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier, whose novel about the
Haitian revolution and its aftermath, The
Kingdom of this World, from 1949, tells an epic historical story, following
many characters, and does it in a 180 elegant pages. Jorge Luis Borges, though his fiction consists
of short stories only, wrote some great essays about novelists and novel
writing, and I remember a phase from one of his pieces where he talks about a
specific kind of novel he likes to read, which is a novel of adventure that
moves fast, and has gaps. Jack Waters is a novel of adventure in
part and I made every effort to keep it moving fast. And the gaps Borges is talking about? I take that to mean narrative elisions,
omissions in the story that the readers, through clues and suggestions provided
by the author, can fill in themselves.
This is a way to help achieve compression, something Borges excelled at
and which I always strive for. Why say in
five hundred pages what you can say in eight? Borges also wrote (or
something quite close to this), and even though I don’t think many people,
myself included, can do what Borges does and get novelistic depth and
complexity into a seven or eight page story, the ideal of wasting no words,
even in a form where there’s no limit on page length, remains paramount to me.
It preoccupied me when I was writing Jack Waters. Compress,
compress, compress, I was thinking as I wrote, and I was glad I could get
my story told in 48,000 words. In any
event, as I was saying, I’d been reading and loving the Latin American writers
for years by the time I dreamed up Jack
Waters, and that feel of a ripe, strange,
violent world they frequently conjure up is something I wanted, in however
small a way, to shoot for myself. Their
works were embedded in my imagination when I decided to set my own novel on an
unnamed Spanish speaking island where a military man is president, the United
States often interferes, and a rebellion is brewing in the backlands.
Friday's Forgotten Books, March 2, 2018
Sophie Hannah is a UK writer who writes award-winning, bestselling psychological thrillers. Sophie is also a poet and short story writer. (from the archives)
I'm going to be greedy and choose not one book but an entire series of books: Jill McGown's Lloyd and Hill mystery series, that contains such gems as The Murders of Mrs Austin and Mrs Beale, A Shred of Evidence and Plots and Errors. McGown is a crime writer of unparalleled brilliance, and it totally baffles me that she is not better known and more widely read. Anyone who likes Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse books or Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford novels would love McGown's work. Her series characters, Lloyd and Hill, are police officers who work together. They are also a couple. They are brilliantly drawn, flawed but likeable and entirely plausible. I really looked forward to meeting them again in each book, but, even so, they are not the best thing about McGown's books. Her supreme talent was (for, sadly, she died recently) for creating supremely intricate, brilliant plots that would, frankly, make the work of the best Swiss watch-makers look slapdash. Her plotting has an almost mathematical neatness about it and the way the loose ends are surprisingly yet perfectly tied up at the end of each novel is a wonder to behold. McGown is the rightful heir to Agatha Christie's throne, and ought to be more widely recognised as such.
Yvette Banek, Hoods in Hats
Elgin Bleecker, THE THEFTS OF NICK VELVET, Edward D. Hoch
Brian Busby, LUST PLANET, W.E.D. Ross
Martin Edwards, LOVE LIES BLEEDING, Edmund Crispin
Curt Evans, THE MAN WHO LIKED TO LOOK AT HIMSELF, K.C. Constantine
Cross Examining Crime, THE WESTMINSTER MYSTERY, Elaine Hamilton
Richard Horton, THE THIRTY-FIRST OF JUNE, J.B. Priestley
Jerry House, THE HUGO WINNERS
George Kelly, THE COMPLETE PSYCHOTECHNIC LEAGUE, VOl 2, Poul Anderson
Margot Kinberg, THE ANDERSON TAPES, Lawrence Sanders
Rob Kitchin, THE SENTINEL, Rob Oldfield
Kate Laity, THE DRIVER'S SEAT, Muriel Spark
B.V. Lawson, THE MYSTERY OF THE HIDDEN ROOM, Marion Harvey
Evan Lewis: A CELEBRATION OF LIFE, Allen Billy Crider
Steve Lewis, SWEET NARCISSUS, M.K. Rollins
Todd Mason, THE 1965 ANNALS OF FICTION AND DRAMA
J.F. Norris, WITHERED MURDER, Anthony Peter
Matt Paust, DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS, Walter Mosley
James Reasoner, HAZARD: THE COMPLETE SERIES, Frederick P. Davis
Gerard Saylor, MISSISSIPPI HOMEGROWN, Jesse James Kennedy
Kevin Tipple. BLOOD BOUND, Wayne. C. Dundee
TomCat, IN THE FIRST DEGREE, Roger Scarlett
TracyK, THE QUILLER MEMORADUM, Adam Hall
Thursday, March 01, 2018
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